She is going to give the money to those leeches. Her family. Of course she is not going to spend it on herself.

Trying to remain calm. Merely noting, “Christian? Really? I don’t recall the letter speaking of—”

“They’d have to be Christian people. Who else would answer prayers like this? Society of Deserving Americans—that wouldn’t be atheists.”

Keisha pronounces atheists with an odd inflection, as if it were a foreign word whose meaning she doesn’t quite know, except that it is repugnant.

“Whoever the ‘Society’ is, they are good people. They are people of God.”

Keisha knows. Keisha is certain. No ambiguity here. No persuading her.

Suddenly boredom suffuses me like ether. A wave of something like vertigo passes over my brain.

My experiment! What a farce. A “plot” set in motion—swerving out of my control.

How badly I’d longed to be close to this person, to have her confide in me as in a friend; such intimacy, such rushes of words, I could not have dared anticipate. And now, facing the woman across a table, scarcely three feet between us, I am overwhelmed with dismay, a wish to excuse myself and depart. The bill has already been paid on my credit card.

Keisha reaches into her cloth handbag to show me pictures on her cell phone—a succession of smiling faces. One of them is the insolent brute on the bicycle—I recognize him at once.

“They are the light of my life,” Keisha says, sniffing. “Well, I mean—Jesus is the light of my life. But my daughter Jill, she’s nineteen, just that age when I was married, and—”

I am calculating how to end this politely and flee. Shall I give Keisha the envelope as I’d planned? Or—shall I not?

Both Keisha and I are finished with our meals. Neither of us has been very hungry. But I have ordered a second glass of wine.

How pathetic it seems to me now, my notion of willing this woman one million dollars! No wonder Gopnik stared at me as if I were mad.

This woman. In my disappointment, I am angry with her. I seem to have forgotten who Keisha is, why she is here.

Have pity. She is a figure of pathos, not contempt.

Keisha has laid down her fork. Her eyes move toward her wrist, she is anxious about the time.

Quickly I assure her that the meeting has been a success, in my opinion. “And here are our envelopes, as promised.”

For it seems that two envelopes have been placed, unobtrusively, on a ledge beside the window of our table, beside my chair. The one addressed to MS. KEISHA OLEN contains ten crisp bills, and the other, addressed to a fictitious name, contains, as filler, a many-times-folded newspaper page.

“Oh! Thank you …”