She has sent a wide-eyed little boy inside for another chocolate milkshake and he brings it out to her under the tree where she holds the gasping wheezebag who used to belt out one Elvis song after another in his white jumpsuit with the silver zippers. He’d been nabbed for bad checks in Texas, was on the run from a Mann Act in Alabama, but Flenco fell in love with his roguey smile and twinkling eyes the first time she saw him do “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” at the junior-senior prom. His battered travel trailer had a cubbyhole with a stained mattress that held the scented remnants of other nights of lust. But Flenco, pressed hard against the striped ticking with her head in a corner, found in his wild and enthusiastic gymnastics a kind of secret delight. Shunned by her schoolmates, sent to the office for passing explicit notes to boys, downtrodden by the depression caused by her steady eating, Flenco was hopelessly smitten in the first few minutes with this hunk of “Burning Love.”

Now her lover lies wasted in her lap, his true age finally showing, his wrinkled neck corded with skin like an old lizard’s as he sags against her and drools. She’s not asking for immortality; she’s not asking for the Fountain of Youth; she’s only asking for a little more time. The hope that burns in her heart is a cradle lit to the memory of physical love. She wipes his hot face tenderly with a wadded napkin soaked in the cold sweat from the milkshake cup. Mr. Redding turns and digs his head deeper into her belly. People at the tables in the café are staring openly through the windows now, and Flenco knows it’s only a matter of time before somebody calls the lawdogs.

“Can I do anything for you, baby?” she says.

Mr. Redding turns his eyes up to her and the pain buried in them is like a dying fire.

“Hell yeah you can … do … something … goddamn … do something … oh shit … for me. You can … goddamn … oh shit … you can … just … hell … by God … shoot me.”

“Oh baby, don’t talk like that,” Flenco says. Her eyes mist up and she covers his face with her breasts until he reaches up with both hands and tries to push the weighty mass of her mammary monsters up out of the way.

“Goddam, what you … what you trying to … trying to … I didn’t say … smother me,” Mr. Redding says.

Flenco doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes and feels the former flicks of his tongue across her breastworks in a memory as real as their truck.