The Unmaking Katherine E. Standefer (bio) On the first day of the year, the ground lay heavy and hard beneath white flecks of gravel. Fog curled out of the canyons. Up in the Tucson Mountains, the saguaros wore white faces. The tomato plant, left uncovered, blackened on its vine. I was with him, inside. My hair cast a gold curtain about our faces, white blanket tucked across my back, our bodies warm. The man looked so much younger in that low light, smiling beneath me: all edges disappeared. ________ What happened all that winter was we fucked and then we drank cold dark beers out of glass jars, or cradled a bomber between us like a sippy cup. It was good beer. He was a good man, passing me his hand when I reached for it. The train came by. Those long nights. We fucked, and I fell in love. There was an agreement in place, from the beginning. I could not see myself dating him, I told him. He squinted at me, hurt. "Are you saying you want something casual?" ________ Long before he kissed me, my lover was a burglar. I pictured him in the low belly of the Mojave, casing a car in a parking lot where the weeds made a mess of the asphalt. Pictured a man and a woman getting out, flipping the trunk. They carried flats of fruit cocktail and milk cartons into a homeless shelter. The kid, right behind them, scrawny and silent, slipped loaves of white bread and jars of peanut butter under his armpits, and took off through the heat to eat. As a man he worried about my unlocked doors, the security screens so often agape, my open blinds. He would arrive at the front window of my little adobe house instead of at the door, and stand before the glass and knock. At the sound—at his dark silhouette—I jumped. Then laughed. "I thought I'd be like all the creeps who watch but don't knock," he said, when I went to let him in. Then he loosed the blinds down, tugging at the cord. "An advertisement," he said, adjusting his bandanna. He used to break into houses. When he told me to turn down the lights, I was gauzy and smiling in my dismissal; I'd lived in towns where we didn't even have locks on the doors. "I'm from a town where someone would break into your car for the buck-forty change in your cupholder," he said, [End Page 164] sliding his hands onto my waist. "So, burglar," I said. "What did you steal?" Up on my tiptoes to kiss him. "I was like, twelve," he said. Uncomfortable, but he kissed back. "I get that." I cupped his face. "Still." He sighed. "Jewelry, guns, and money, mostly," he said. "Good news." I kissed him. "I don't have any of those." ________ It had been easy to make up my mind the first time I met him, that Saturday afternoon in October, with wide slices of pizza and cold beers in front of us. The monsoons had stretched on, a long run of heat and hurricane water sliding north from the Sea of Cortez in dark tangles of cloud. The man's blond ponytail, a gnarl of curls, looked wet with grease or sweat. He wore a wifebeater. His biceps seemed alarmingly large. I'm smarter than I look, his OkCupid profile had said. "Here, taste this," he said when I first walked up, and pushed a small beer snifter toward me with a smile. "What do you think it is?" "Imperial stout," I guessed. "Bourbon barrel. The Tres from Dragoon Brewing?" It was a local brew, released recently. His voice was strangely high for a man his size. "Yeah," he said, smiling. "Nice. You said you liked stouts. I had to see your stuff." He paused. "And you probably like barleywines, and the occasional saison?" "You personality typing me by beer?" I said. "Yep." ________ What is it we want from a date? I expect flattery. I like to see a man wowed. In general, the fact that I am...