Corabelle saw us and froze. The dude seemed oblivious and tried to lead her away, but she wouldn’t move.

Everything inside me wanted to claw its way out — rage, disgust, and somewhere way down there, despair. I was going to be too late.

She grabbed the boy’s hand, and he looked surprised. They took off along the front of the building and down a path away from us.

I started to swing my leg off the bike even though I was in the middle of the sidewalk, but the girl punched my arm. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m not going to let you mess with her unless it’s what she wants.”

“I’m what she wants.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what it looks like to me. You need to back off. I don’t care how well you can put a girl up against a dish counter, that boy is bound to be better for her than you.”

I snatched up my helmet and shoved it on. This was pointless. I needed away from all this, and the fire in my belly wasn’t an easy one to quench.

The Harley roared, startling a bunch of birds in the tree next to us. The pink girl backed away. She’d probably delete my number. I’d gotten nowhere. I probably wasn’t going to get anywhere.

I left campus behind to head to the garage. I had a short shift this afternoon, then the night was free. I could see if Mario wanted to shoot pool, but really I knew what I had to do. Scrounge up a bit of cash and head to Zona Norte in Tijuana. There, the girls were easy and paid to like you, and I didn’t have to think about real life at all.

•*´`*•*´`*•

The border guard glanced at my ID and waved me on with a halfhearted “Be careful.”

The half-hour drive from San Diego to Mexico helped put the scene with Corabelle behind me. I felt like I was at my second home as I left the searing lights of the border complex and rolled down Segunda Benito Juarez toward the red-light district.

I knew my way around Tijuana and the women there. No attachments. No risks. Just a simple ease of a simple need by a seasoned pro.

I turned off the highway and onto the main strip. The streets were pulsing with neon signs for hotels and taquerias. Cars rolled slowly, trolling for girls. They stood in their territorial spots, and if one was picked up, another took her place.

They waved as I zipped past, flashing a lot of skin. High heels, leopard prints, red vinyl, and fishnet. Not my scene whatsoever.

The best girls weren’t there, just the ones aiming for turistas. Overpaid and under-interested. And mostly managed. I hated the girls with pimps. They had too many bruises, and I struggled to kill my urge to drag their asses out of there.

Just a couple streets over would be the ordinary girls, the professionals-on-the-side kind, many of them wives or students or making their way on the streets on their own. They kept quiet, avoiding attention, not wanting to catch the eye of anyone who might try to claim them or make their lives more difficult than they already were.

Tonight I wanted Rosa, and the thought of her already had my mood downshifting into something more manageable. Rosa lived with her brother, or so she claimed, and worked in a little farmacia during the day.

In fact, that’s how I met her, just a couple weeks after I left New Mexico.

I’d driven my Camaro through the border states, aimless, exhausted, stopping nowhere. The picture of Finn they passed out at the funeral sat on my passenger seat and I glanced at it often.

The only real thing I’d done as a parent was sign away my kid’s life. And after my stupid exit during the funeral, I was pretty sure the world had decided I was no more fit to be a dad than my own father had been.

Somewhere in Utah I decided that a vasectomy was the way to go. Corabelle had been on birth control, and it hadn’t mattered.

Once I got the idea in my head to do it, I couldn’t think about anything but finding a doctor and getting it done. I had no other goals, no other place to go.

I went to three clinics stateside, trying to find a doctor willing to do a vasectomy on a teenager. No dice. I remembered my grandpa used to get his denture work done in Ciudad Juarez because it was cheaper and there wasn’t any hassle with insurance or paperwork.

I was already west by then, so I sold my laptop for cash and drove along the border until I got to Mexicali. A doctor there sent me on to Tijuana, where I finally found someone who didn’t want to see ID, and cash on the table was good enough to get snipped.

The procedure itself wasn’t too bad. They gave me some pill that made me loopy and sluggish. I felt a needle and some pinching. Afterward, though, walking was impossible. I couldn’t really understand the nurse’s instructions and had no idea what I was supposed to do for pain.

I ended up at the farmacia in hopes of scoring something stronger than Tylenol. The girl behind the counter was beautiful, long black hair curling down her back, not unlike Corabelle’s. She spoke enough English that I could explain what had happened, and she consulted with a man in the back. She gave me a cold pack and a jockstrap and a bottle of pills with the stern instructions to take only two per day.

I was saved. I stayed at a hotel across the street, unable to go any farther, and I remember looking out the window and seeing her close up the shop. The nightlife was colorful and the pain, while duller, kept me up for hours.

In that hot little room, though, the magnitude of what I’d done started to hit. I couldn’t go back to Corabelle, not ever. She’d take it personally. She’d assume I didn’t want a baby with her after all. I would have to stay away. I’d finished us.

I don’t think about those first few hours after the surgery any more than I replay that span of time after the ventilators went silent. But when I pulled myself together enough, I tried to find a diversion inside those four filthy walls.

All the TV channels were in Spanish, so I pulled a chair up to the window, surprised when I saw the girl back again, lounging on the corner, wearing a low-cut stretchy blouse and a short skirt.

She seemed uncertain about what she was doing, and that innocence caught my attention. A man approached her and they argued a moment, but she sent him on his way. Probably wanting something for free. When an hour passed and she had no luck, I made my way painfully down the stairs and out onto the street.

She saw me coming and pressed her hand over her cleavage. “Feeling better, señor?”

“How much?”

“Perdón?”

Suddenly I worried that I was dead wrong. She was just hanging out here, waiting for someone, someone who was really late. I waved my hand at her. “Sorry. Never mind.”

I turned away, but she caught my shoulder. “You are not well for this.” She glanced down at my pants, bulging from the cold packs.

“I know.” My ache for Corabelle was suddenly fierce, and the comfort of this woman seemed like it might help.

“Okay. I come. You are up there?” She pointed at the hotel.

I nodded.

We walked back across the street and up to my room. I had to take it super slow, and she held my arm, keeping me steady.

“This doctor. Was he good?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

She helped me get settled on the bed. “Why you do this? You are so young.”

“I have my reasons.” I reached out for her hair, tweaking the strands between my fingers. When she faced away, taking off her shoes, I could almost believe she was Corabelle.

We still hadn’t agreed on a price, and I had no assurance that she wouldn’t rob me blind if the drugs knocked me out. But most of my stuff was in a locker on the other side of the border. I could probably afford to lose everything I had on me. I twined my fingers through her hair, relieved I could touch her without worrying about her reaction, and closed my eyes.