He picked up a pair of cheap beach sandals, a deeply unnecessary impulse buy. There was a dark-haired teenage girl waiting behind the counter, a Louisiana local. She was bored and lonely in the cold and quiet grocery, and she gave him a dazzling smile, a hello-handsome-stranger smile. She was wearing a bad nubby sweater and a flowered shift of cheap gene-spliced cotton, but she was good-tempered and pretty. Sexual fantasy, crushed and derailed by the day’s disappointments, flashed back into life, on a strange parallel track. Yes, young woman of the bayous, I am indeed a handsome stranger. I am clever, rich, and powerful. Trust me, I can take you far away from all this. I can open your eyes to the great wide world, carry you away to gilded corridors of luxury and power. I can dress you, I can teach you, remold you to my will, I can transform you utterly. All you have to do for me is ... There was nothing she could do for him. His interest faded.