I raise my face to the two young men, but the sky is bright and even with the new colah upon my head I must further shade my eyes with my hand.

“Yes sirs, you are doing a superior job.”

“Thank you,” replies the one with the tattoo of a restaurant upon his shoulder. “Did you get everything settled with that woman?”

“Excuse me. To what woman are you referring?”

“The lady who cut her foot. She didn’t talk to you?”

“If you please, come down here so my neck does not freeze this way.”

The najar descends the ladder with his leather apron of tools hanging over his short pants. He is not wearing a shirt and I see his back is almost the color of a Bombay Indian. When he reaches the ground he turns to me and wipes the sweat from his forehead.

“I just wanted to make sure she talked to you. She said she would.”

“Oh yes, my wife told to me your girlfriend cut her foot. I am sorry to hear this.”

“Girlfriend? I never saw her before. She came up to the roof this morning all upset because we were doing this job. She said she’s the owner.”

My hands become heavy and my voice trembles. “What are you talking, young man? I am the owner of this home. I have for it paid cash. Who is this woman?”

“She looked nutty to me,” the other najar says from the roof, smoking a cigarette. “She’s swimming with one fin. She’s probably down the street telling somebody she owns their house, too.”

The najar beside me laughs and I smile, but I do not quite believe in this smile and stop. “In my country crazy people are put in hospitals, but here you let them wander as free as sheep.”

“This is true,” the young najar says, picking up from the ground a paper bag of nails, then climbing back up the ladder to his work. The other one extinguishes his cigarette beneath his foot upon the new boards.

“Please tell to me if the woman returns, thank you very much.” I continue pushing my grass cutter to the rear lawn that is completely in the shadow of the house. There is only a thin line of sun upon the ground at the base of the tall hedge trees and it is there I stop to pull the cutter’s rope two times before the engine starts. I give it as much benzine as it can drink, and I feel thankful for all the noise it makes.

FOR ALMOST THIRTY MINUTES I SAT IN THE CAR PARKED ACROSS THE street from the Hall of Justice building in Redwood City. It was eight or nine stories high, and the concrete sidewalk was so white under the sun I had to lower the visor and put on Nick’s old Ray-Bans that were too big for my face. Across the street from the Hall of Justice was an old courthouse building with a huge dome of stained glass, and there were no trees on either side of the main street, just parking meters and shining cars. Every few minutes I got the urge to open the door to go find Lester for a possible lunch date, but then I’d think of that ring on his finger, that sadness in his eyes, and I’d smoke a cigarette, tap my own wedding ring on the wheel, and wonder just what it was I thought I was doing.

I watched a couple of uniformed deputies walk into the Hall of Justice. One was big like my brother Frank. I thought again how much I’d like to see him, just him and me sitting at a restaurant table in the North End of Boston for lunch somewhere like we used to. He’d be dressed in one of his polo shirts, turquoise or mango orange, and whether I was talking to him about money I owed or somebody I was seeing, he always gave me the same advice which pissed me off, but sometimes made me feel better too.

“It’s easy, K. On one side of the page you got your Costs and on the other side your Benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. That’s all you ever have to do. I live by this.”

Sometimes it was comforting to be around someone who looked at life like this. And I would’ve told my brother months ago about Nick if I’d known he wouldn’t tell his wife who I knew would tell my mother. “But what if you don’t know the difference between a benefit and a cost?” I would always ask him. “What if you’ve never been very good at telling a plus from a minus?”

It was lunchtime and small groups of men and women were leaving the building for food. I kept smoking and watched three women in business skirts and blouses sit at a concrete bench not far from my car. They were eating from small plastic yogurt containers. One of them laughed, finished her yogurt, and bit into a cookie. I knew I didn’t want the office life they were living—I knew that—but from where I sat watching them eat and chat in the sunshine, I felt like I’d been apart from groups of normal people and their nice conversations my whole life. On another day I might’ve let myself feel homeless and husbandless and with no friends, but now I felt almost better than them, tougher, like I knew more about life from having really lived it out here on the rim.

I inhaled the last of my cigarette to the filter and stubbed it out in the ashtray. I was getting ready to leave, forcing myself to think about finding a safe place to park my car for tonight’s sleep, when someone tapped on the window glass at my head and I jerked back. Lester Burdon was standing there in the sunshine in his uniform, holding a sheaf of papers. I lowered the window all the way and the heat from outside hit my face. My mouth was dry and I wished I had something for the cigarette breath.

“This is a surprise.” Lester said, glancing at the empty passenger seat like he was trying to see who brought me here.

“A good surprise? Or a bad one?”

He smiled, his crooked mustache straightening a little. “Good. It’s good.”

“My lawyer thinks she can get me back into my house. I thought you’d like to know.”

“I’m glad to hear this.”

“You had lunch yet?”

“I’m due in court.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the domed courthouse building behind him. “I’m usually out on patrol right now. I’m surprised you found me.”

“Hey, you found me.” I smiled and started the car but I felt like a woman caught peeing behind a shrub, her butt sticking out. “Well, gotta go.”

“Wait, I’ll be up near you this afternoon.” He rolled up the papers in his hands, wringing them a little. “Coffee?”

“Depends on what time,” I hoped I didn’t sound as see-through as I felt.

“Four o’clock? I’ll swing by your motel?” There was a line of sweat right above his eyebrows.

I thought of last Sunday night, seeing his car pull away from the El Rancho when I got back from the store. “I’m not there anymore. I’m staying at the Bonneville.”

“I don’t know it.”

“You’re looking at it, Lester.” I put the car in gear and rolled the window up halfway. “I’ll meet you at the Carl Jr.’s in San Bruno. Have fun in court.” And I pulled into the street without hardly looking, but no one honked at me and there was plenty of road ahead and behind, and I felt my luck might really be changing after all.

I MADE SURE I wasn’t at the restaurant first, but when I drove into the parking lot in San Bruno at five past four the sun was in my eyes and I didn’t see his Toyota station wagon or even a cruiser. I waited in my car till a quarter past, then hop-walked into the restaurant, keeping the weight off my wrapped foot, and I scanned the people at the counter, in the booths and sitting at the tables, but he wasn’t there and I didn’t want to be standing near the door when he came, so I made it back to my car and sat behind the wheel another twenty minutes, eyeing everything that drove into the lot. But no Lester. At quarter to five I drove away, though I had no idea where I was going or what I would do once I got there.

I felt more than disappointed. I drove around San Bruno, past short stucco houses and small dried-up yards, vaguely hoping I’d see Lester’s car and follow him back to our late coffee date. My throat felt thick, my eyes burning a little. I hadn’t felt this lonely in weeks, and I knew it was because I’d gotten my hopes up and I guess I just hadn’t pictured kind Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon standing me up. At a traffic light, a bald man in an open jeep winked at me and my eyes filled and I pulled away without waiting for the light to change.