“Good morning,” said the priest, a pale outlander from Indiana. “Are you having a little car trouble?”

Paul smiled in spite of a headache, hoping his eyes weren’t bloodshot. “I guess you might say that.” The priest had run the parish for twelve years but still seemed fresh from the wheat fields, unaffected by the south Louisiana ways of hard drinking, poverty, white heat, and green humidity, the general funk of the place. He was bald, optimistic, and tall, unlike everyone else in the parish.

The priest walked closer and took a winesap apple from his pocket. “How are you and Colette getting along?”

So he had heard already. “I guess we’re hitting a few bumps in the road. We ought to be able to work it out.”

The priest took a bite out of the apple, folded his arms. “What’s her complaint, Paul?”

He twisted the nozzle and turned off the spray. “I don’t know.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Yeah, something about staying out too late.”

“Do you?”

“Hey, Father, I don’t need much sleep. I can’t sleep is more like it. Not until late.” He soaked a hand towel in Lysol and leaned in to work under the windshield, realizing that he would have to remove the heater vents from under the dash.

“Most people watch television.” The priest bit the apple as though he were trying to hurt it.

“I like to dance. Listen to live bands. You really think some late-night TV will make me a better person?”

“Would Colette like to go dancing with you?”

Paul threw the cloth into a bucket and grabbed a fresh one. “About once a month, she’ll come out on a weekend. But you got to understand that she runs out of gas about eleven o’clock. She’s not a night person.” He was not sure how much the priest knew. He looked up at him, his sweating bald head, his worried eyes. “You had a bad morning, Father?”

The priest swallowed hard. “I did two counseling sessions this morning. Couples heading into divorce. You know, this is a bad era, even for Catholics.”

“Well.” Paul picked up a long screwdriver and leaned in under the dash.

“Nobody wants to earn love,” the priest said.

“Yeah?” Oh God, he thought.

Father Clemmons stepped closer and bobbed the apple core in the air before him. “People think love is something you decide, something you will. It isn’t that at all.” It showed in the priest’s face that Paul was ignoring him, so he pursed his lips for a moment. “Paul, how long did it take you to learn to play that little Cajun accordion?”

“Aw, man, I wore the nickel plate off those buttons before I even learned to keep time. Sometimes I wanted to throw that thing down and kick it across the yard. But I know what you going to tell me. That marriage takes practice and you got to be patient and all that sermon stuff. That might work on paper, Father. But if you had to live with a woman that was like a bomb with a short fuse, the answer wouldn’t be so clear.” He pulled a segmented hose out from under the dash, dropping it on the lawn with two fingers.