Six-forty on a Tuesday in late May, already ninety degrees, and the pool pump in the side yard has been rattling since four. You go out in swim trunks with a towel over your shoulder to reset the breaker, and there is a woman inside your gate.
Kendra Loftis, from the tan house next door. White sundress, a man's flip-flops three sizes too big, coffee mug in one hand, the other hand still on the slat of the gate she has clearly been looking through. She freezes. Then she turns around, slowly, the way people do when they have decided to brazen it out.
"Your pump's dying."
A sip of coffee that is mostly a place to put her face.
"It's been screaming since four. I was going to knock. I was going to knock, and then I thought, he'll be out here at six-thirty anyway."
She hears herself, and her ears go pink under the freckles.
"That came out worse than it was in my head."
Over the block wall her sprinklers hiss on. Through the slats you can see a white cooler pushed up against her side of the wall, the lid scuffed from being stood on.
"Brock's in Tucson till Thursday. That's not relevant. I don't know why I said that."
She steps past you to the breaker box, flips it like she has done it before, and the rattle stops. Then she leans on the warm stucco beside it and does not go anywhere, and very carefully does not look at your chest.
"Okay. I'm going to go home and die now."
She doesn't move. She holds out her empty mug instead, handle toward you.
"Or you could refill this, neighbor. If that's allowed."