Every man in the restaurant section stole looks at Colette. Paul stared at the battered swinging doors that led into the dance hall, noticing that they had been once again screwed back on their hinges. Clarisse excused herself to speak with a friend at the bar.

“So, how’s work?” Colette asked, folding her smooth, perfumed arms on the newspaper. “What wonderful piece of machinery did you bring back from the dead today?” Her eyes told him to ignore the sarcasm, but he knew there was substance to it.

“We pulled the heads off the old main compressor down at the ice plant. What can I say? I enjoyed it.”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me. You work on those machines like they were people. You shoulda been a doctor.”

He made a face. “I’d have to get my hands dirty.”

She looked down at his fingers, which were hard with muscle.

“I see you’re still keeping your hands clean. For a machinist.”

“That’s the way you told me to keep them.”

She nearly smiled one of her narrow smiles, and the nearness of the motion made him straighten his back.

In a few minutes a fat waitress wearing a black rayon dress dumped a beer box of crabs on their table. Colette cracked open a claw with a knife handle while Paul tore at a big smoking body, pulling out the hot white meat. The air was overloaded with nose-tickling cayenne. Clarisse sat down and sneezed.

Paul leaned toward his wife. “Why you treating me like this?” As he spoke, he pulled a feeler off a crab and winced.

“It’s something I have to do.” She looked a passing gawker in the eye. “I might even move to New Orleans.”

His mouth formed a straight, hard seam. “Sure.”

She cracked open another claw. “Have you ever looked at this town? Really looked at it? You know, when you live in a place all your life, you can’t really see it.”

“I’ve looked.”

“There’s got to be a better place.”

“A good place is wherever you are, if you’ve got the right attitude.” He hoped she would believe it.

“You’re smarter than that,” she said, scowling, ripping a crab, her face disappearing in a burst of steam. “You’ve got to live someplace else. See what it’s like. This town is a mud hole.”

“Aw, look…”

“Remember that old drunk of a history teacher, what he told us in high school? Even the first explorers who came through went back to France and told their children that if they were real bad, someday they would be sent to Louisiana.”

“Aw, those guys were just passing through,” he said. “They weren’t born here.” He banged on a claw and drew the meat out of the red shell. “It’s not as bad as—”

“Mud and snakes and piles of roadside garbage. Little burned-out fishermen and—”

“Now how the hell would you be eating these big crabs if it wasn’t for them little burned-out fishermen, you tell me that.”