“What is he doing?”

The man in the suit handed me back the court order. “The county has petitioned the court in its behalf, Mrs. Lazaro. This should come as no surprise to you. I’m sure you had ample warning; your house is up for auction starting tomorrow morning.”

“Auction?”

The pager on his belt went off. He asked if he could use my phone on the kitchen counter, then went to it without waiting for an answer. I stared at the court order, but didn’t see any of the words; I was picturing all the county tax mail I’d been throwing away unopened since last winter, sure I’d done my part and they were now after the wrong person.

“Is your husband home?” It was the tall deputy with the crooked mustache.

“That’s none of your business.”

The deputy looked like he was about to say more, but then just looked at me.

“What? Why do you need to know that?”

“We need to notify all residents of the house, Mrs. Lazaro.”

“Well, he doesn’t live here anymore.”

The tall deputy nodded at me, then folded his hands in front of him and looked down at my bare feet. I walked away from him, but I didn’t know where to go.

The other deputy was short, chewing gum, watching the locksmith like he wanted to remember how to do that himself. The man in the suit finished his call and waved the tall deputy over, whispered something to him, then came back into the living room and said he had to leave but Deputy Sheriff Burdon will assist you in vacating the property. That was his exact word, vacating, and he said it in a low tone, like it was a skill not many people had. Then he was gone, and the tall deputy with the crooked mustache asked where I kept my coffee. He suggested I get dressed and he’d make up a pot. I hesitated a second, but I felt like all three of them could see through my robe. I went and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and when I came back out, the short deputy was using my phone, the locksmith was already going at the back-door knob, and Deputy Burdon was setting four of my cups on the counter. He glanced at me and said I might want to put on something cooler, there’s no fog today and it’s going to get hotter.

“That’s all right ’cause I’m not leaving.” My throat felt dry and stiff.

The locksmith looked up from his work on my back door.

Deputy Burdon rested one hand on the countertop, and he had an understanding expression on his face, but I hated him anyway. “I’m afraid you have no choice, Mrs. Lazaro. All your things will be auctioned off with the property. Do you want that?”

“Look, I inherited this house from my father, it’s paid for. You can’t evict me!” My eyes filled up and the men began to blur. “I never owed a fucking business tax. You have no right to do this.”

The tall deputy handed me a napkin from the counter. “Do you have a lawyer?”

I shook my head and wiped under my eyes. “I can’t afford a lawyer, I’m a house cleaner.”

He took a notepad and pen from his front shirt pocket, wrote down the name of a Legal Aid office in San Francisco, then ripped out the page and handed it to me. “Nothing’s written in blood. You just have to clear out today. Who knows? You might be moving right back in next week. Do you want to phone some friends to come help you pack up?”

“No.” I kept my eyes on my full coffee cup.

“I’m afraid everything has to go today.”

The locksmith was using a battery-powered drill on my back door. I could smell the sawdust spilling onto the linoleum. “There’s no one to call.”

He looked at me, his brown eyes narrowed like he thought he knew me from a long time ago. I felt my cheeks get hot. He reached out his hand. “My name’s Lester.”

I hesitated before I took it. He stood then used my phone to call the Golden State Movers, signed a slip of paper for the locksmith, took from him the new keys I wasn’t supposed to have, and stepped out onto the front stoop with the other deputy. They were standing close to the screen door and I heard Deputy Lester Burdon tell his partner to go back out on patrol, he was going to call in some personal time and help this lady clear out.

The storage sheds across from the El Rancho Motel were his idea. It took only four hours to move my life from the only house I’ve ever owned to one of those steel shacks with the padlock I now have to pay for and can’t afford. The movers didn’t have any boxes to sell me, so the tall deputy went out for some while the moving men—three college kids—started hauling out my Colonial living-room set with the plaid upholstery, a wedding present from Nick’s mother and father. I was feeling kind of numb, stuffing the small things into plastic trash bags, each one thrown into a moving truck like this was all natural, part of some bigger plan that shouldn’t have surprised and upset me so much.

AFTER A WHILE, the band quit for the night and I turned off the lamp and sat there against the headboard. I heard an eighteen-wheeler pull into the lot, and the last call noise inside the barroom. I was fighting the urge for a cigarette. I stretched out on the motel bed, rested my hands over my breasts, and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I was wondering again where Nicky was, Los Angeles maybe, or Mexico, though nobody back East knew he’d even left me. So I lay there in the dark, remembering what Irish Jimmy Doran said to me. He was from Dublin, small and wiry with bad teeth, and he tended bar where I used to waitress at the Tip Top on old Route I. I saw him in the grocery store parking lot right after Nick got his job offer in Frisco. It was a gray day in April, but Jimmy was squinting his eyes like the sun was on him, and when he saw me he came over and gave me a big hug, smelling like Chesterfields and Schnapps. I told him we were off to California, the land of milk and honey.

“Dat’s what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: ‘America, the Land of Milk and Honey.’ Bot they never tell you the milk’s gone sour and the honey’s stolen.”

AT THE FIRST sign of daylight spreading over the cars in the El Rancho parking lot, I gave up trying to sleep and drove the Bonneville down the coast on Highway 1. The sun was still coming up from the east. The ocean to my right was maroon, the sky above it silver. There were sand trails through the thick purple ice plant that grew along the roadside. The few cars I passed had their headlights on, and I kept hearing Deputy Burdon’s voice in my head warning me to stay away from Bisgrove Street until I’d talked to a lawyer and straightened things out or else I’d be trespassing and up for arrest. This got my heart beating fast, and I kept the radio off and drove for twenty minutes, past the state beaches through the tourist-shop town of Montara to Moss Beach, where I stopped at a gas station/beach supply store and drank coffee at a table by the window. The morning was still quiet. The beach across the road was empty, and I watched a seagull dive into the water for a fish. At the front of the store was an old woman behind the register. I went to the cigarette machine, stuck in my coins, and pulled the knob hard: Who did they think they were evicting? And for what? A tax they billed to the wrong fucking house? My dead father’s house?

I backed out the Bonneville and drove south along the water. I lit another cigarette and I kept seeing Nick’s face the morning he left, the way he looked in the shadowed room after he woke me with a nudge, sitting on the side of the bed. At first I thought I’d slept late and he was on his way out the door to work, but then I saw how early it was, and I could smell all the cigarettes on his breath, and I knew he’d been up a long time. I moved to switch on the bedside lamp but he touched my hand to stop me. Then he held it. In that dim light, I couldn’t make out his eyes.

“What, honey? What?” I said. I was thinking of his father or his mother, a late-night phone call I’d missed. But as soon as he opened his mouth and said, “Kath,” I knew it was about us again, and I started to sit up, but he put his other hand on my chest and I stayed still and waited for him to say what he was going to say. But he never said another word; he sat there and stared in the direction of my face, and even when I asked him what, what’s the matter, Nicky, my heart jerking all confused under his hand, he only stared, and then, after another half minute of nothing, he squeezed my fingers and left the room, and I jumped out of bed in just a T-shirt and followed him through the house to the front door, saying, “Wait, wait.” I stopped and watched him get into the used Honda we’d just bought as a second car. Daylight was breaking out over the yard and the woods across the road. Then I saw the two suitcases and his bass guitar in the backseat, and I ran out into the driveway, the January air hitting me like a bat. He was already backing up and I rapped on the driver’s window and screamed his name and kept doing it until he shifted gears in the street and drove down the hill, not once looking back at me, even in the rearview mirror.