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.

Her body fitted next to mine and now I could really imagine that Corabelle was next to me. We were on a holiday, our honeymoon maybe, and this was all we could afford. Her parents were watching Finn for a couple nights, and we’d gotten away. The girl laid her hand on my chest and I held it.

“Rosa,” she said.

“I’m Gavin.”

“You rest, Gavin.”

And so I spent my first night with her in a seedy hotel room and slept through the haze of pain medication and sore balls. I stayed in Tijuana for a week, until I figured out that I wasn’t going back home and I needed to find a job. Settling in San Diego made sense, and since I was already accepted to UCSD, I could easily get admitted, take a GED for my diploma, and start my coursework.

At first I went back to see Rosa just to get a sense that I had taken a few steps into my past. I always paid her, but it was probably my fourth or fifth visit before we finally got to business, when my loneliness hit a peak. After her I found other girls, closer, in San Diego, and realized that prostitutes were a perfect solution. No strings. No mess. No mistakes.

Over the years, I got to know Rosa better. She always seemed happy to see me, and now that I was restless about Corabelle, I wanted only her.

The apartments where she lived were stacked in rundown buildings with adobe facades. Normally I wouldn’t enter one alone, being so obviously an outsider, but every time I thought about what Corabelle might be doing with that baby-faced punk, I couldn’t give a shit about any of it. Bring on the switchblades, the fistfight, even the gunpoint. Anything was easier than trying to be the good guy again just so Corabelle could finish me off.

I knew better than to leave my bike on that street, so I rolled it right into the corridor between the two halves of the building. I kept my back to the wall as I pulled out my phone to text her.

It took a few minutes, but she finally responded with “I’m coming down.” I didn’t know if that meant she was rushing someone out, but I didn’t much care either. Rosa was my top choice, and tonight it would take more than any ordinary girl to settle me.

The locks began twisting and creaking as someone fumbled with the other side. When Rosa opened the door, I didn’t respond like I expected. She looked the same, long black hair now laced with blond, her curvy body strapped into things that pushed up and squeezed in. She motioned me inside, looking both ways down the corridor into the night. I grasped the handlebars of my bike and rolled it in as I always did, and we shoved it into a little room under the stairs where people stuffed their trash until collection.

“Mi amante,” she said. “I am glad to see you.” She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in to her lips. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, but I managed a passable kiss. She led me up the stairs to her door.

Some people would probably have considered the place squalor, but to me it was typical for the district. The walls were peeling and the rail rusted out. A weak light sputtered at the landing.

Inside the apartments, the tenants took care of their spaces. Rosa covered her walls with large woven tapestries in red and gold and green. Candles burned in every corner, and a CD turned low just covered the street sounds with rhapsodic love songs in Spanish.

“Sit,” Rosa said, pushing me to the sofa, also covered in bright blankets. She moved to her kitchen and returned with a Corona. “Bad day?”

I nodded and knocked back half the bottle. Rosa could handle this. I’d come here in bad shape before.

“Ah, pobrecito. Let me fix.” She knelt and began to untie my boots.

I laid my head back on the sofa and tried to relax. Her ceiling was covered in stains. We were all born into such different circumstances. I hadn’t been that much better off than Rosa, a tumbledown house on a bad street in a small town. My biggest luck had been to back up to middle-class row houses across the alley, and Corabelle.

Damn it, I’d come back to her again. I took a long pull of the beer and watched Rosa set the heavy boots aside. She wore some tight contraption of a shirt with lace strings up the front. It pushed her breasts up so that they started spilling over. She caught me looking and tugged on one of the strings, letting it loose.

Normally I’d already have my hands on her, pulling that off, burying my face against her skin, but today I felt so detached, like she was on a screen rather than in the room. She seemed to understand this and stood up, turning in a slow circle as she plucked at the rest of the laces. They came out, one by one, until the shirt fell open and she shrugged the whole thing off her shoulders.

Her dark naked breasts were kissed by candlelight. I should have been feeling it, and alarms started going off that I wasn’t. This couldn’t be about Corabelle. I wouldn’t let it. Rosa had been my escape for years, easy and friendly and open to whatever I wanted.

Damn it, it was already happening. I couldn’t help but compare them, Corabelle’s innocent beauty next to Rosa, who seemed to be trying so hard with the eyelashes and rouged cheeks. Where Rosa was ample, Corabelle was slight. I should have had my hands and mouth on the feast in front of me, but I just sat there like a chair, nothing stirring in my pants.

I’d make this happen. I would force it. With a growl, I grasped Rosa’s hand and pulled her toward me. She tumbled into my lap with a light laugh.

I pulled her into a kiss, plumbing her mouth with my tongue. She met me with practiced ease, and as soon as I sensed her working to please me rather than responding on her own, I jerked away again. Bloody hell. She’d been fine before.

“Very bad day,” she said, smoothing down my hair. “Let me fix.” She reached between my legs and squeezed.

It wasn’t going to work. Not today. I lifted her off my lap and set her on the sofa. The window beckoned and I stood beside it, looking out on the streets. People walked down below, making deals, passing cash for women or drugs or wagers. I didn’t used to know any of this. If none of the crap had happened four years ago, I still wouldn’t know. I’d be out of school, teaching kids like we’d planned. Finn would be wandering around, a year away from kindergarten, and WHY THE HELL WAS THIS ON MY MIND AGAIN?

“Something’s different, Gavinito.”

I shrugged. “Old life came back.”

“Like the day we met?”

“Something like that.”

“The reason why you get cut so young?”

I whirled around, tugging out several bills — money I couldn’t really afford to be wasting — and left them on the table. “I have to go.”

Rosa nodded, picking up her shirt. “I see you again soon, when day not so bad?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

She worked the series of locks on her door and pressed against the doorframe. She seemed to know I wouldn’t be back. “Adios, Gavinito.”

“Good-bye, Rosa.”

I rushed down the stairs, anxious to be out of there. I shouldn’t be messing with Corabelle for the same damn reasons. It’s not like her learning about the vasectomy four years later would make it any easier. She’d want kids eventually, and I’d screwed her over.

But then, what if she didn’t? What if she felt like I did? Maybe this would be the right thing.

I had to talk to her. I had to know what she wanted, where she was going. And if there was any place for me. I’d make one. I’d make her see.