A Virtuous Woman

The steeple of Our Savior Baptist Church rose above the surrounding downtown buildings. Susan walked from the hotel for her day to help Reverend Crawford with paperwork: answering correspondence, filing, tallying donations, going over expenses. Alcoholics Anonymous was meeting in the church basement, but Susan and the pastor had the rectory to themselves.

Randall James Crawford – Randy to his friends and RJ to Susan in private – was forty, a full fifteen years older than Susan, and divorced. What she enjoyed about him was everything that didn’t remind her of her husband. He cared little about money. He figured people would like him or not without his having to do anything special to impress them. He was soft spoken, sure of himself without being cocky and assertive without being pushy. Furthermore, he was attractive: clean-shaved with an intense gaze and a turned up mouth that conveyed optimism.

She locked his office door behind her. He was sitting behind his desk. “Come here,” she ordered.

He complied. She wrapped her arms around his back. He held her face in his hands. They kissed, and kissed again, and Susan felt good for the first time in days. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”

She nibbled at his ear. His hand reached under her blouse, his touch gratifying, so unlike the awkward pawing of her husband. Her eyes closed and the sound she made was almost a purr.

Drawing back, he held both her hands. “Last night, I wished I could hold you right there, comfort you, let you know it would be alright. I couldn’t stop thinking about you from the second I woke up this morning.”

Attracted to RJ as soon as she began working in his office, she’d felt his longing for connection, for closeness to a woman. To her. Their illicit liaison began after the episode of the detective, when Josh became repulsive to her.

Having him on the sofa, nothing interfered with the intensity of her pleasure. Even afterwards, faced with the recognition of her sin, she felt no shame. RJ in black trousers and a white shirt open at the collar, Susan in a pullover blouse and a skirt below the knee, they prayed in the name of Jesus for forgiveness, unlocked the door, and got to work. Anyone entering would only see the innocent team taking care of church business.

“You’re really leaving him? For good?”

She looked up. “I talked to a lawyer this morning.”

They returned to their tasks. Susan went over invoices and wrote checks for the treasurer to sign, while RJ said he was answering an email from a former parishioner asking for spiritual advice. Several minutes passed.

“Have you thought of what comes next?” he asked.

“Freedom.”

RJ said nothing. Susan went on to filing. After a while she became aware that he was looking at her. “Yes?”

“What about freedom from sin? Would you like that?”

“You want to stop?”

“That’s not what I mean at all. What if it didn’t end but we were no longer sinning?”

“Oh, RJ. I can’t think about that now. Divorce is a long way off. I feel like I’ve been drowning. I just need some air.”

This was the fourth time she’d turned down men’s advances in the last three days: the judges’ indecent overtures, her husband’s demands, Danny’s wishful thinking, and now a marriage proposal. All of them wanted something from her she declined to give. Maybe it was the work of Satan in her life, but she wanted nothing more with RJ than their public collaboration and secret trysts. Love was absent from the mix and she would never consent to be his wife.

Her future belonged to her, no one else. After leaving the church, Susan stopped at the bank, where she maxed out cash advances on her credit cards before Josh canceled them and drained their joint checking and saving accounts. She locked the money in the glove, over twenty thousand dollars, boosting her sense of self-sufficiency. Plenty more would come with the legal separation and then then divorce. She texted the housekeeper and rushed to the house when the reply came that Josh had gone out. The housekeeper helped pile her clothes by the armload into the car.

She thought of the people she might say goodbye to. Danny and RJ, of course, but they would try to dissuade her for their own selfish ends. A few girlfriends maybe, but they wouldn’t understand. Not Josh, that was for sure – he’d find out soon enough.

No, there was no one. She returned to her lodgings, packed her carry-on, and checked out.