Richard Kind

A few men are sprawled on chairs by the stage, the others scattered across the room.

At the stage, Marta dances alone.

From Toby's vantage, she's dwarfed by the expanse of the stage.

Pulsing strobe lights from above and fog rising from the machines below cast her silhouette in a misty blue.

Through the speakers, a glam rocker mournfully pines over her former lover to the beat of a resilient drum.

And the men sitting below Marta gaze up, observe her, and then lower their gazes and return to their drinks.

Toby wonders if they have partners waiting for them at home, or families, friends at least.

He wonders if the life of a flight attendant is not as glamorous as he has made it out to be.

It was his desire to eradicate his loneliness, he knows, that really drew him to ministry.

A loneliness that started in college, surrounded by his fraternity brothers, and one that never went away.

He imagines Hermione staring into her own future, so bleak and bald and devoid of magic.

If God really created humans for the purpose of sharing love, he wonders why God made him so stunningly bad at this.

This, more than anything, convinces him that he is not fit to serve.

Fog surrounds Marta.

She spins on the pole.

She tilts her head upward toward the ceiling.

The rocker laments her unrecoverable past.

The baseline traverses the floor, makes its way to the back, tingling Toby's feet.

A sea separates Marta from her onlookers.

She leans away from the pole and thrusts her arms outward.