“You’ve got a light?” To her credit, her tone is neither condescending nor forced in its ordinariness. It is what it is; just how the woman, a stunning starlet, can only be what she is: Hollywood royalty. The lady sovereign is asking him for a light. He can do that.

“Sure-er.”

The way she gently, almost not at all, takes the hand holding the lighter, while never breaking her gaze, is obviously practiced; but it works perfectly, as always. The driver, as free from illusion as one would ever want to be, cannot help but feel the calculated tingle filling his stomach and groin. They course with an electric current, conducted through the infinitesimal tap of a screen goddess upon the lowly ranch-hand of Fresno.

The starlet recognizes her effect all too well. She enjoys the driver’s reaction, try as he might to hide it, with knowing eyes. They flash with corneas of smooth, brown marble. A smile comes to her lips. They part imperceptibly, and a rush of misty blue smoke comes dancing out. The cigarette smells of heaven, or closer yet, honey mixed with vanilla. A man would kiss those lips just to get a taste of that divine scent. The driver’s heart leaps. It whispers “Paula”, as a reflex, but his mouth has never watered, as it does now, at the smell of laundry powder wafting from his fiancée’s stringy hair.

The driver knows to walk away. There’s nowhere else this encounter can lead and he may as well save himself from any foolish hopes; or fantasies, more like it.

He thinks of how he had excused the exemplary woman for her initial comment, reminding himself that she is only human. “Well, arent’ah human too?” Not just human, but a flesh and blood man. “An’ wat’she?”; beneath the perfectly kept-up exterior, of course.

Against the driver’s best intentions, a picture of the woman’s genitals comes into his head. They are not vulgar and sticky like most. He sees the partial split of a nascent bud. It has the burning, plastic flamingo type of pink that he has never actually seen in nature, let alone in such a complex flower. Its petals, though sure to be delicate, have a fleshy appearance as if one could bite into them and juice would flow out: a fruiting flower, this rare and softly curved specimen. The driver would part the lips slowly, to release the same honey-and-vanilla fragrance, only this time it would gush out in a sweet musk, not smoke, and envelop him so that he would never want to leave.

All of this invades the driver’s mind while the woman replies, “thank you.” It’s the clearest he’s ever heard those words pronounced. They leave a ring in the night like an old church bell over a cemetery, when no one is around to hear.