She pinched a Phillips-head screw until the point popped her skin. A store clerk walked up and asked if he could help her find something, and when she finished talking to him, she turned and confronted an empty aisle. The bell rattled above the door and she walked to the window to watch him plod toward home, head-up in the downpour.

*   *   *

Bucky Tyler called, came over with a half dozen roses, and drove her all the way to Lafayette to eat in a fine restaurant. She looked down at her eggplant stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat and felt briefly prosperous. Next to them on a room divider was a giant stuffed alligator purporting to creep through a patch of plastic swamp growth. On the way down, Bucky had acted like a high school senior on a big date. He told Cajun jokes while she looked out the window. He talked about what he’d done all week down at his little disposal plant. Here in the restaurant, she watched him eat. He was a good-looking man with a reddish tan and nice moves at the dinner table. The restaurant had a dance floor adjoining the table area, and they got up and moved through a two-step to the geriatric house band’s music. She decided she liked his cowboy version well enough, though he had a little too much hop in his step.

Back at the table, he stared at her over dessert.

“What you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothin’. I’m just glad you got shut of that night-owl husband of yours.”

She looked down at her bread pudding. “He’s gone, all right. No more bull to put up with.”

“Yeah. The barmaids can worry about him now.”

Colette rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. He’s a Catholic boy. Probably thinks he’s still married in the eyes of the church and won’t fool around.”

Bucky lit up a cigarette. “You Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“You gonna get married someday?”

Colette suddenly felt as if she were a business deal looming in Bucky’s future. “I just got rid of one man. Why I want another?” She laughed, then took a big bite of bread pudding before she could say something else.

“I like you Catholics,” Bucky said, leaning back in his chair. “Y’all really stick to your guns.”

“Yeah. Paul would have to die of old age before I could get married again.”

Bucky laughed. “That might work both ways. That’d be good revenge.”

“What?”

“Live a long life, gal, and keep the poor bastard horny till the day he dies.”

She pursed her lips in thought, then pointed her spoon at him. “I don’t think you understand religion,” she told him.

He tilted his head to the side. “What you talking about? My folks were east Texas Church of God.”

Colette nodded and smiled a closed-lip smile, her mouth full of pudding. She wondered if he really thought religion was hereditary.