Harvey Stoner was leaning on his car trying to roll a cigarette when Louise came out of the store with her oil-stained package of cold lard. A thin line of tobacco rattled on paper, scattered to a sudden wind. He didn’t look up. Though Louise had seen him many times she had never known him to smoke a cheap cigarette. He was a cigar man. She stopped in front of him. He had oiled his hair so much she saw the teeth marks of the comb. He smelled as sweet as a woman. She leaned in close to him.

“You do this, mister,” she said, knowing his name but wanting the secret.

She cupped her palm and took the cotton pouch from his hand. She curled the paper with her long fingers and poured a puff of tobacco in the tunnel, pressed the paper with her thumb, rolled it forward to hide the tobacco. She licked the cigarette length then rolled it shut, licked it again, twisted the ends, then handed the cigarette to Harvey Stoner.

“There you are,” she said. He looked down at the cigarette, elegant and thin in his pinkish palms.

“Looks like a girl’s,” he said.

Louise noticed his fat, gold ring, the square red stone that blinked back at her. His nails were clean. She thought of Baptiste’s hands, his black fingernails kneading her belly, her breasts. For one small second she imagined Harvey Stoner pressing his oiled head between her breasts. She looked at Harvey as he lit the tip of his new cigarette. She heard the swift curl of fire to paper, watched the first fragrant whiffs of white smoke fade. She turned away from him.

Louise headed toward the highway. She could feel the wind at the crease of her elbows and it was cold, like rain coming. She felt that Baptiste was still gone from her. He had left her. In her heart she knew he was waiting on some other woman. She thought he was probably looking at Hemaucus now. He was probably standing outside her window while her brother sat in the kitchen. Baptiste was waiting to see Hemaucus’s dark skin, waiting to see her panties fall to the floor, waiting to enter. Louise believed Baptiste no longer wanted her. He had had everything he wanted from her. He had seen the mystery of her.

Louise heard coughing behind her and she turned to find Harvey Stoner, one hand on the hood of his car, bracing himself. He was bent over, hacking smoke, the cigarette small in his hand. He looked up to see her looking back at him and he got into his car. She heard the floored engine, the little rut of tires in dirt gravel. He drove on past Louise, one hand draped on the steering wheel, cigarette in his mouth, eyes watering, while rain sizzled on the dry road and smoked back up toward sky.