Scott didn’t answer. She crouched down. Her lipstick was glossy and over-applied. Under her arm were a bunch of papers in a manila folder. Scott’s mouth felt dry. The Arizona desert had sucked all the words from him. He could hear his heart sloshing in his ears. All the breath seemed to leave him, and spots formed in front of his eyes.
When he woke up, he was lying on an uncomfortable couch. The room was very cold; the woman who had been standing over him outside was now sitting behind a gray, metal desk, watching him carefully. She sighed with relief as he took in a breath. “I think you had a panic attack,” she said. “My brother used to get them. I’m Veronica, by the way.”
She let Scott lie there for a moment and get his bearings, bringing him a sip of water from a paper cone. After a while, she gestured toward where the adoption agency was and asked if he had been turned down. “Yes,” he answered.
She clucked her tongue. “Their rules,” she said. “The way I see it, whoever wants a child should get one.”
He blinked, startled. “No, I am the child,” he said.
At that, Veronica said she was finished with work for the day. She took him by the hand and brought him back to her apartment, which was only a few blocks away. It was the bottom unit of a sunburst-yellow stucco building, the railings chipped, the walkways crumbling, the landscaping tattered and weedy. The apartment was small but clean, with cheerful striped curtains in the windows. She got him some tea, and then sat down next to him on the couch and asked him to tell her what had happened. Scott did. And when he was finished, he asked what he should do. “Keep going back to that agency,” she said. ‘They’ll eventually tell you, if you want to know.”
“They kicked me out.”
“I’ll go for you, if you want.”
Because he didn’t want to touch any more of the money he’d withdrawn from his trust—he didn’t want his family to trace him here—Scott got a job cleaning a dog daycare center in the university section of town to pay for his tiny one-room apartment. Veronica, who slept over a lot, pestered the adoption agency again and again, but it never came to anything. Still, she kept trying.
A year passed, a whole year in Arizona—the excruciating heat leading to brain-melting heat, leading to God-fearing thunderstorms, leading to thick humidity. There were about two weeks of pleasant weather, and then the cycle repeated again. Veronica was originally from Phoenix. She told him about her job helping undocumented workers find work and medical care and housing. She told Scott stories of how those people trekked through the desert for six days just to reach the United States, some of them falling behind, some of them getting lost, many of them dying of dehydration. “All to get here,” she said. “All to get to this country and have what we all take for granted.”
Scott hadn’t meant to fall in love with her; he hadn’t meant to fall in love with anyone. And yet, maybe he’d fallen in love with her the very first moment she’d squatted down on that hot pavement and put her arms around him. Maybe he’d fallen for her for listening.
But he should have known. He should have known the day was going to come. He was lying in Veronica’s bed, the sheets wrapped around him, the fan pointed at his head. Veronica emerged from the bathroom holding something plastic between her fingers. There had been a big smile on her face when she held the pink wand aloft. Her happiness had been the most shocking part of it all.
After she told him, he sat up in bed. “I’m not going to be able to give you what you want,” he said. “I can’t be the person you need for this.”
“Oh, now,” she said, perching next to him. “You’re just scared. I called my family. You should call yours.”
“Call mine?” he repeated. He shook his head. He expected her, of all people, to understand. “I can’t do that. I can’t do this.”
Her face fell. She set the wand on the nightstand. “Why not?”
“Because … I can’t. I can’t do anything.”
She blew a raspberry at him. “Of course you can. Do you think I just go around sleeping with anybody? Do you think I would’ve even come to you if I thought you wouldn’t have been able to handle this?”
He stared at her. It was then he realized that in her eyes, he had actually seemed capable. Powerful. Up to the challenge. It wasn’t something he was used to.
He stood up and thrust his legs into his jeans. “I have to go.”
“What?” she cried.
“I just need some time.”
“Can you talk to me about it?”
But he wasn’t sure he could explain it if he tried, only that it felt like there was a pressure inside him, a blinking red light ready to detonate. Escaping seemed like the only option. He kept his phone off, not wanting to answer her calls. He would disappear. She would never hear from him again.