Paul slid partway out of the truck. “We’re not doing anything, you hear? It’s you who’s got your head in a toilet.”

A woman two cars down yelled, “Flush it.” Russell LaBat began struggling through the high grass, carrying a flashlight. The PA from the storm-wasted snack shack and projection room came alive in a deep vacuum-tube thunder. “Will the group by dat Ford pickup please refrain from makin’ any more noises.” Two cars flashed their lights and four began honking.

Colette started to cry. “You bastard. If you come home tonight, I’ll shoot you in the foot.” He began to step all the way out of his truck, but she slammed the door and jammed his leg, ducking away as he cried out at the pain. In a second she was in her Toyota, spinning out of the clamshell lot, peppering the parked cars with little sun-bleached shells and raising an obscuring cloud before the patched screen, drawing yells, horn blasts, flashes, and curses from the dark ridges of automobiles fanning out toward Zeneau’s swamp.

* * *

Colette drove back to the rent house and fixed a cup of tea, which she drank smoking-hot, straight down. When she finished, she looked at the empty cup and wondered where the tea had gone. She scoured the dishes in a cloud of steam, as though punishing them for their sins, and then looked around for something else to do. In the bedroom, she began sorting the pile of laundry on the mattress. She pulled out Paul’s machine-shop coveralls and threw them against the wall. She folded her panties and brassieres as if they were presents and placed them in her underwear drawer. While she was folding her husband’s briefs, she began thinking about the last time they’d made love; she stared at the bed, slowly folding six pairs of drawers and six T-shirts, tucking the smooth cotton under an elbow. She fished out his socks, which were all white and exactly the same, except for a dark pair he’d worn to go dancing with her Saturday night and to Mass on Sunday morning. These last, she snatched in a strangling hand before putting his things away. One thing he could do well was dance twelve different variations of the jitterbug. In fact, Colette thought he danced too well, and too long, as if dancing were a drug and he could never get enough. He moved in such a way that other people watched him, and that was all right; she could even match him for a couple of hours. Then she would get tired of all the motion and sweat. Sometimes she would drive home and leave him at the Big Bayou Club or at the Cypress Dance Hall, and he would come in at 2:00 A.M., smelling like an ashtray.

The last thing she picked up in the bedroom was a pair of Thom McAn loafers, which showed her their heels from under the dust ruffle of the bed. Lifting the shoes, she remembered the first time they had danced together, when they were fifteen, in the high-school gym. The sophomores had hired a ragtag band out of New Orleans that played mostly disco, now and then throwing in a country tune or an oldie so the chaperones could pretend to dance. Paul had hung back against a cinder-block wall, eyeing suspiciously all the no-touch wiggling, shoulder shaking, and hand clapping. Since first grade, he’d been in the corner of Colette’s eye, but she’d had no reason to exchange more than two sentences with him. She’d seen him dance before, though. He was from a blue-collar family, and he’d told her once that he’d learned to dance from his younger uncles when the family would go out to the Big Gator on Saturday afternoons to eat boiled crabs, drink beer, and twirl to a jukebox loaded down with Van Broussard, Tommy McLain, Rod Bernard, and the Boogie Kings, a type of Cajun rhythm and blues fit only for medium-paced jitterbug or a stutter-stepped belly rub.