The Teacher raises a glass to her friend the Engineer, who has been promoted. The Teacher can’t afford this restaurant, but the Advertising Executive will pay. She always pays. They crowd around a laptop, perfumes mingling, to watch her latest car commercial. The waiters weave around the obstruction. Someone asks about the Lawyer’s big case that has not been decided yet. The Other Lawyer handles lucrative but ethically disgusting cases that no one asks about. The Teacher knows how her friends imagine her in class, as sure as a mother goose, with students trailing obediently behind. Every gathering, she is sainted anew for her work. She regains a bit of purpose and savors it as long as she can, until it evaporates, processed into the air of the school.