the cook: the wiener slides out — "What Joelle now slides with three…"

The chemistry completed in loving, grotesque detail: the mix cooked and stirred to stiffness and then thumped out hardened on the wire, a monstrous white cylinder the scene insists on describing as a corn dog. The tenderness the prose lavishes on the mechanics — every stage timed and judged by feel — is the love-affair's real texture, the devotion the roster names, expertise indistinguishable from worship.