She was standing in Walmart and staring at a line of television screens showing the same Spiderman movie in different sizes and layers of definition, wondering in a daze why the audio was for SpongeBob Squarepants, when her phone began buzzing insistently in her back pocket. She pawed at it distractedly, ready to hit "reject," when she noticed that it wasn't her sister calling, but a local number.

"Ugh," she mumbled to herself, realizing she probably should answer it. She couldn't remember the last time she had answered her phone. No one but her sister had called it for some weeks now. What if it was the school telling her not to come back in the Fall? Because she was a pervert who molested former students. It was probably Melvin though, come to think of it. She had left him another message about her broken air conditioner and the overall disrepair of the house.

"Hello?" she said cautiously.

"I'm calling for Miss Courtney Park please," a man's voice drawled on the other end. For a brief instant her breath caught but then she realized the voice was too old to be Cam's.

"This is her," she said, her muscles relaxing. Mr. Squidmore cried out in angst as Spiderman crawled down a building toward a girl.

"Miss Park ma'am, this is Kyle Walker. Cam's father."

Her stomach lurched and she gasped, pulling the phone from her face as though it was on fire. It was all she could do not to throw it down the aisle and run straight through the automatic sliding doors and out into the boiling afternoon parking lot and her waiting car. Instead she brought it slowly back up to her ear, although she didn't let it touch her face, preferring to keep it a few inches away.

"—apologies if he made a mess of things and I'll be coming by this afternoon if it's alright with you ma'am and—" she pulled the phone away again and studied it like those actors in soap operas always did right after the end of a shocking telephone conversation. Her thumb hovered over the "end call" button, but she brought it back up to her ear again.

"—straightforward enough of a repair, I don't know why he couldn't handle it himself—"

She quickly hung it up and then turned the phone off for good measure. Then regretted her decision and immediately turned it back on. While it powered back up she watched Spiderman make out with the girl, who appeared nonplussed at being stalked by a man in a costume from above. Meanwhile she could hear that pink blobby thing declaring his never-ending love for Sponge Bob. What was his name again? Patsy? Michael? Probably if she hadn't lost the baby, and her fiancé, she would be well acquainted with Sponge Bob and his friends by now, and would be swapping wry stories about the show's awful silliness with her other mom friends over—what? Coffee? Mommy/Baby yoga? Facebook? Would having a child have made her capable of sustaining friendships with other women? Would it have meant receiving phone calls from people other than her annoyed sister and the father of a teenaged student she had accidentally made out with in her kitchen?

When her phone began vibrating again she briefly considered letting it go to voicemail but then told herself to grow the fuck up already.

"Hi, hello?" she said, trying to sound like someone who was truly sorry that her phone was not behaving. "Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me?"

"Hello, Miss Park ma'am? Sorry about that, I think it was on my end. So does that work, around 4? I'll come by after my last client of the day if that is convenient for you ma'am."

"Hi, yes Mr. Walker, that sounds great. Sure, I'll be home then." She hoped he was referring to coming by to fix her air conditioner and not something else, such as confronting her over the molestation of his son, but there was no way in hell she was going to ask him now.

"Great see you then. It shouldn't take but a half hour or so. Bye now ma'am," and he hung up. This time when she stared at the phone she was trying to remember why the hell she carried it around with her in the first place. What a terrible idea.

***
"Phew, this ain't that bad, I don't know what that boy was talking about," Cam's father—she couldn't think of him as anything else—cried out optimistically after pulling off the same vent cover that Cam had two days before. "Although you should talk to your landlord about this, he needs to keep it clean. Who you got, Melvin?"

She nodded, transfixed by this man chatting, and smiling, and radiating genial life throughout her dark, sad living room. That song "Here Comes the Sun" suddenly burst into her head, or at least the chorus, since those were the only words she could remember. She felt an overwhelming compulsion to start humming it.

"Well, I know he can be a real pain in the ass so I'll talk to him for you Miss Park. I can tell he hasn't been taking care of this property the way he should, but our mamas are bridge partners, have been for the past 40 years, so he'll listen up if I talk to him. He won't want me to go talk to his mama about him, that's for sure," and Cam's father began laughing at this as though he would never get tired of the lifelong comedic gold of Melvin and his mother.

She certainly wouldn't. She couldn't even get past the idea of her horrible landlord having a mother, never mind one who would make him mind his manners with her or anyone else.

"Mr. Walker, you don't have to do that," she began, embarrassed to hear herself pick up the Texan drawl dripping from every word spoken by Cam's father. What she wanted to add, but didn't, was her fear that Melvin would plot some way to avenge himself on her, and she had all she could handle with his constant perving and leering every time she spoke to him. He was the reason she started sleeping with mace under her pillow. And a knife.

"Call me Kyle, Miss Park," he said, and then his smiles disappeared as quickly as they had come, and he looked at her in all seriousness. She felt a chill of fear crawl down her spine. She knew she wasn't off the hook this easily.

"Miss Park, is Melvin giving you a hard time? I know he can be something awful to handle, especially for a young pretty woman like yourself. Is he doing that, is he giving you a hard time?"

He crouched back on his heels now, and suddenly she saw Cam in the long, assured lines of his body. She shivered. He didn't resemble his son at all, she had thought with relief earlier when she saw him climb out of the truck that afternoon, four o' clock on the dot. She had been peeking through the blinds, more sweat than usual pouring down her face and body, her skin, she knew, flushed deep with a fearful, guilty rash. He was tall like his son, but definitely a man, thicker everywhere, heavier in the ways that mattered. Like Cam he wore jeans, but eschewed the cowboy look for a much more practical-looking baseball cap and work boots. He also sported a beard, which helped relegate him to safety of a father figure, and she felt much more relaxed with him in her living room than she had with Cam, especially once it was clear he was only there to look at her air conditioner.

Well, she HAD felt more relaxed until he leaned back and gazed up at her just like his son had, and with the same searching look. That was when she noticed his smell of male sweat and tobacco, and the fact that he didn't really look like one of her student's fathers, even with the beard. She tried to remember him from parent-teacher conferences and graduation but drew a blank. Maybe his wife had been the one to show up for those kinds of things.

"Is he, Miss Park?"

She realized she hadn't answered him, had instead turned away to look vaguely at the dusty, hairy mess that was her ventilation system. Would it EVER get cleaned at this rate? How hard would it be for her to just do it herself or, even better, move to a new place once and for all?

"You can call me Courtney Mr. Walker," she said, and smiled hesitantly. His face darkened at that, and she hurried to add "Kyle, I'm sorry, I meant Kyle."

But that wasn't what he was looking grim about. He stood up and took his hat off his head and wiped his forehead with it, looking like a model straight out of a beer commercial just finishing a day of hard work and looking forward to some refreshment. She realized with a start that she should have offered him something cold to drink by now, and then noticed the square lines of his jaw and fell silent instead. He was also tall, taller than Cam. And while he was certainly more filled out, he possessed that same lean, wolfish quality that his effervescent ... well charm is what it was really. He was no ray of sunshine, he was a smoldering pile of coals, and she had absolutely no intention of getting burned again.

"Goddammit Melvin," he growled then, and she saw how dangerous this man was. How could she have seen him as a jolly dad figure? And what had she done to make his disguise crumble to ashes right this moment, in her poor filthy living room?

"No, Mr. Walker, Kyle I mean, it's fine. It's fine," she said hurriedly, stepping away to sweep up some newspapers and untangle a blanket from some pillows on her sofa. What a fucking mess. All of it.

When he didn't reply she turned, half expecting him to be up on her business just like Cam had been. Instead, she saw with relief that he had his hands on his hips and was surveying her vent, deep in thought.

"Well Courtney, let me clean this thing out for you, and we will give it a test run. You let me know tomorrow how it's working, and we'll see if it needs anymore work. But I am thinking all it really needs is a good cleaning." He turned to her with an encouraging smile, not even a wisp of glowering anger left on his face. For the first time in three days—probably longer, come to thing of it—she felt a smile begin to spread across her face.

"Really Mr. Walker? I mean Kyle. That would be so amazing. It really would. I can't thank you enough. I, it's been so hard with all this heat you know. And let me know how much it is please, I can write a check right now."

She turned to go find her purse and her checkbook, which she was hoping was in there because if it wasn't—well she had no idea where it could be. Then she felt his hand on her arm, pulling back gently, and an "Oh" escaped her lips and she froze where she was, looking at the floor. He let his hand drop immediately and strode quickly toward the front door, putting his hat back on his head and reaching for the handle.

"No ma'am, there is no charge," he said, not looking back at her as he swung it open and walked out to his truck.

"Now why don't you go get yourself somewhere nice and air-conditioned while I take care of this for you. Go see a movie and by the time you are back this place will be nice and cool," he called back to her and then he was rooting around in the back of the truck, leaving her with nothing to do but pick up her purse and do just as Cam's father had instructed.

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