finally

She teaches a course in religion at the local Catholic high school. She is good at her job. She understands the material; the kids get it. They get her. After school, tonight, though it’s not the first time, she will meet a man she knows only through the Internet at a small, dusty motel outside town and spend the evening, there. She does this with some regularity, with different men she knows the same, because it is faceless and dangerous and she finds the two somehow symbiotic, and though she leaves feeling guilty, for she is baptized and was raised Catholic, she also feels leaving strangely alive. Tonight when she leaves, in the darkest, quietest part of the night, she will feel a shadow approach, as she reaches to unlock the car door. She is unafraid, and strangely so. In fact, though no one else would understand -- and how could they? -- she is somehow ready.