The power had been shut off for non-payment.

When he opened the app, the past-due notice was in red, and the autopay was gone.

“Mom,” he said, and his voice cracked, “it’s not the grid.

She cancelled everything.” Noreen snatched the phone and stared at the notice, and then remembered what day it was and scrambled to open her own account, and found six dollars and change and nothing incoming.

The water, the internet, the trash — all of it bouncing.

In a single night the cool, comfortable house I had paid for had become a sealed box heating up in the desert sun.