A middle-aged man with Elvis sideburns leaned out of the car next to them and called, “Colette, baby, I can’t hear the movie.”

She turned like a released spring. “My husband is out with another woman and you want me to talk like I’m in church?” She gestured to the weedy lot stippled with dew-covered cars. “Does this look like a church, Mr. Larousse? What is it, the First Church of Messing Around?” The man rolled up his window as a car on the next row flashed its lights and a voice from the dark piped, “Give it a rest.”

Her husband put his big machinist’s hands palm-up in his lap. “Hey, c’mon. We wasn’t gonna do nothing but watch a movie.”

“Yeah. Right now. What about later?” She was winding up, her voice sailing. The locals liked to look at Colette because she was slim and fair-skinned, with dark hair, a straight nose, and eyes like little rain-soaked pecans, but her voice when she was angry was a diamond on glass. “What about now?” she yelled. “I’m sitting at home picking cockleburs off my panty hose because you won’t cut the damned lawn, and you’re kicked back in the drive-in watching Nazi movies with another woman.”

A voice came from two rows back: “Colette, shut your trap, baby.” Her head snapped around, but the speaker did not show himself.

Paul leaned out to her. “You better not raise too much racket. This place is full of bad asses from Tonga Bend.”

“Since when am I scared of levee rats?”

Even the blond woman looked at her. “You want to land us all in the hospital, keep talking like that.”

Colette put her face into the truck. “Why are you with my husband?”

“I wanted to see this old movie and nobody would bring me.”

“It’s a damned depressing movie. Who would want to watch this crap?”

“Colette.” He put a hand on her arm. “I promise I’ll cut the grass tomorrow.”

The blonde leaned over. “Bring me back to the lounge, will you, baby?”

Colette brushed off his hand as she would a spider. “So you picked her up in a bar? You brought her here where half the town could see what you were doing while I was at work?”

On the other side of the pickup, a cowboy stood up in his convertible. “Y’all hush up, now.”

“Go back to Texas if you don’t like my voice,” Colette told him.

“I paid three dollars to get in this movie. You gonna give me my money back?” His huge white hat was blocking a little patch of screen, and the car behind him flashed its headlights, so the cowboy sat down.

“I’m just watching a movie with a friend,” Paul said.

Colette stared at the woman’s big hair, her bulging silk blouse, and wondered how many times he had been out with other women while she was wrapping pennies at the bank after hours. Her heels sank into the dirt of the Silver Bayou Drive-In as she gathered a lungful of air. “That does it. I’m throwing your lying ass out. The next time I see you, it’ll be in divorce court.”