“I don’t know,” I said. I looked at her face. She had a kind face. “Okay. I’ll be back here at six.”

It was hotter in New Mexico.

DeLois’s last name was McIntosh. I learned this because it was written on a notebook on the floor of her older, nondescript Japanese sedan. Below her name, in the same loopy cursive, was the word poetry. She caught me looking down at it.

“I take a class once a week up in Albuquerque.”

“That’s good.”

She insisted on driving instead of having me follow. Because of the many turns to her place, she claimed I’d never find my way back. She would bring me back to my car.

“Taking classes is a good thing,” I said.

“You haven’t read my poetry,” she said. “And you’re not going to. It ain’t fit for human consumption.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Anyway, I like the class. Do you teach at a college? You just seem like a teacher at a college.”

“I do.”

“What?”

“Geology.”

“Professor,” she said. “So, where did you disappear to? I didn’t think you were coming back. And you didn’t say good-bye.”

“I had to go to a funeral.”

“I’m sorry.”

I looked out the window. The landscape was still fully lit. “This is actually a pretty place,” I said.

She laughed. “You’re either taking too many of those pills or not enough.” She turned off the highway onto a gravel road. “Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“What does your wife do?”

“She’s a college teacher too. She’s a poet.”

“No shit. Do you like her poetry?”

No one had ever asked me that before, and I was caught a little off guard. “I can’t honestly say I understand it.”

“So no.”

“I don’t understand it, anyway. I’ll leave it at that. I’m just a scientist.”

What seemed like a half dozen more turns convinced me that she had been right about driving. We ended up in a high-walled canyon on a dirt road that looked like it had been made for flooding. I recalled DeLois telling me that her husband or boyfriend had left on a run to the store and had never come back. I considered that maybe he was just lost.

The cabin was nestled against an outcropping of rocks that seemed geologically out of place. There was a wraparound porch and a garden and the only tree for miles, a small desert willow that she had obviously planted.

“Nice tree,” I said.

“It struggles,” she said.

“You have power out here?”

“Generator.”

I had always envied people who lived off the grid. I was impressed by DeLois.

“I inherited this little getaway from my father. He was a rough old son of a bitch. The real deal.”

“I guess so.”