“Colette, you got a tongue on you like a fillet knife.” His voice was bone-tired and made her walk the rail around the mound of carcasses and sit on the rear bench with him. She lit a rusty lantern and hung it on the steering stick. “Where are you hurting?”

“Sometimes the scalding feeling comes back across my chest and stomach. My heart speeds up and I feel like I got mono and the flu at the same time.”

“You need a sandwich.” She bent behind the engine and picked up a little plastic cooler. “Ham or egg salad?”

“You ought to know the answer to that one.”

She opened cans of soda and they chewed their food slowly in the lamplight, not knowing what to say to each other. Finally he told her, “This is the first time I’ve been around you when I didn’t smell your perfume.”

“Ran out. What do I smell like?”

“Nutria blood.”

“Yeah, well, you smell like gas.” She looked up and saw the sky weakening to lavender, the clouds pale ghosts of themselves.

“Colette.”

“What?”

“You ever, you know, miss me in bed?”

She threw her sandwich bag overboard. “Aw, hell, what kind of question is that to ask me here in this little boat where I can’t slap you and run off?”

“Can you answer it?”

“Hell no.” She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them. What about you?”

He took a long pull on his soda can. “Lotta nights I had to sleep on my back, you know? Before the accident, anyway.”

“Hey, you can’t mess around. You might make somebody a good husband.”

“Ow. Colette.”

She ducked her head. “Okay, I’m sorry again. But just don’t ask me whether or not I get horny, because you know the answer. Here.” She handed him a bottle. “The mosquitoes are getting worse. Put this on yourself.”

They doped themselves with repellent, for the mosquitoes were now humming all at once above the canal in droves, as if in response to a signal. “Kill the lamp,” he said. “It’s letting them find us.”

She leaned over and turned down the flame. For several minutes everywhere she looked, she saw the yellow tongue of the wick. “You feeling better?”

“Yeah. I was hungry and disgusted.”

“Now?”

“Just disgusted.” By the flashlight he refilled the lubricators on the engine. The deep rum-rum of the bullfrogs barreled up and down the canal, and the high-pitched squalls of nutrias arched over the boat in the tones of frightened children. These sounds meshed in with a fabric of trilling spiders and the rasp and saw of giant black grasshoppers. Colette clicked on the spotlight and set it in the bow. A pair of eyes swam toward her, and she grabbed the rifle.

“Don’t shoot it.”

“Why not?”

“Look at how far apart the eyes are.”