This was the part where the fantasy inevitably fell to pieces, and tonight was no exception. As he rode down Spring Garden Street with his windows tightly shut, the solitude left room for reality to squeeze past fantasy. There would be no house in Delaware for him and Misty. The dancer wouldn’t come to her senses. He could never save her with money, because only the willing could be saved.

He passed Broad Street, turned at Fifteenth, and as always, reality gave way to regret. He hated the lust that fueled his strip club visits. He was shamed by the pleasure he derived from Misty’s body. He was, after all, a man who believed in a power beyond his desires, and just as he did each week when he fell short, he went to a place where he could seek forgiveness for what he’d done.

Turning on Ridge Avenue, he parked his car near Broad and Fairmont. Then he walked across the street to a magnificent church that stood along the rapidly changing boundary between North Philly and Center City.

He saw a light shining out from the sanctuary and saw two men inside with vacuum cleaners and dust cloths. He knocked on the church’s glass doors. They didn’t hear him. He knocked again, harder this time, and the whir of the vacuum cleaner stopped. A man in blue work clothes came to the door, looked into his face, and shook his head sadly before reaching for the locks.

“Why don’t you just come on Sundays like everybody else?” said the manager of the two-man cleaning crew.

“Because I need forgiveness on Tuesdays,” the CPA said, pressing two twenties into the man’s hand.

The manager took the money and stepped aside to let him in. Then, with a facial expression that was equal parts reverence and contrition, the CPA walked into the sanctuary and made his way to the altar. He fell to his knees and began to pray for forgiveness. What he got was something else altogether.

The sound of breaking glass made him leap to his feet, and the echo of two shotgun blasts made his eyes grow wide with fear.

He turned and looked down the aisle and saw blood running down the wall. The manager with whom he’d spoken stumbled into the sanctuary and fell atop the other worker, who’d already been shot dead.

The CPA fell back to his knees as a slightly built man in a black suit and hat walked slowly down the aisle. He was holding a sawed-off shotgun, and his intentions were all too clear.

“He that keeps company with harlots spends his substance,” the man said in a gravelly voice.