The moment that Marianne, no-last-name, the Grand Dame of Venus Day Spa & Bistro, laid her salve-softened 77 year old hands on her feet, Maya cringed inwardly. Her feet, accustomed to being bare unless absolutely necessary, were never going to respond to the kind of ministrations such hands could provide. This was followed by irritation: why did Marianne have to touch her feet in the first place? She had signed up for a spa facial, not a foot massage.

When my mother found out I was going to marry you she said, “A man like that, you’ll always end up sleeping at his back. He’ll never sleep at yours.” And I was ashamed, because how did she know it was already like that with you, that that was how we slept every night together? Our first night lying side by side, you slept with your smiling, open face to the wall and I was the one who curved to your back, stuck too close for comfort. 

The stranger didn’t have a carry-on, the unencumbered sort who never handled a piece of paper or had to wait in lines. Sunglasses at night: trying hard not to be recognized, he was conspicuous as a rock star. When the man stood beside him, apologizing in a husky voice, Prophet Alex recognized him. Kingsway—the Hong Kong pop star, Kingsway Lee, in coach!  An improbability great as a plague of frogs, great as God descending into a burning bush, great as a man walking across water.

Which is to say, a miracle, when Prophet Alex needed one most.