South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky

and tidy, open boxes that arrived in yesterday’s delivery, and set the new paintings and ceramics in place before opening the store. Passionate arias wake her every morning, and she lies in bed listening, Mr. PurrBunny asleep at her feet, realizing she is far from home, and this realization causes feelings both satisfied and unsettling.
    From her canvas chair on the gallery’s flat roof that serves as a deck, Lee has long views, over the freeway and, in the distance, the rocky orange mountains to the west, as well as the makeshift campground in the bare yard below where three vendors stay. She hears the sizzle of burgers on a portable grill. Shirley says Derek lets these particular long-time vendors set up their booths in front of his store, and camp out back, because Derek’s store doesn’t sell photographs of the Grand Canyon or beaded jewellery boxes or antique postcards. (“Cynical,” Sam says of Shirley.) The vendors—one of them a Bavarian photographer who wears a green alpine hat with a feather—live in vans or tent trailers and pull small U-Hauls for their wares. They’re set up adjacent to the ravine, called a wash, a natural catchment for rain during Arizona’s monsoons in July and August. Across the wash, she can see lights from a restaurant, the bookstore, and other galleries. A male Gambel’s quail calls his harem with a cry that sounds like Chi-cago, Chi-cago . From her vantage point Lee watches the Bavarian photographer throw something to his yippy little dog. She remembers this dog from last year.
    She hears the squeak of the door downstairs. Derek appears from under the line of the roof and, limping slightly, moseys over to the campers. Cooking meat this late in the evening will bring the coyotes closer, she knows he’ll tell them. Last week a coyote killed the restaurant cat; the screeches were terrible. She didn’t mind that the cat was dead; it was an aggressive black male that would climb the stairs, jump onto the balcony, and hiss through the window at her own Mr. PurrBunny.
    A month or so ago, Lee hurried into the kitchen to make a quick sandwich and saw a huge rat, the size of a squirrel, panting in a corner. When she shrieked, Mr. PurrBunny leapt to the counter and from there to the top of the fridge, where he, the coward, watched Lee scramble around, find her gum boots, plaid jacket, and fur-lined gloves in order to corral the thing and not get bitten. Wearing those items from home, her Canadian clothes she calls them, made her feel brave. She herded the rat into the spare room that stored boxes she would repack when she left and shut the door. She used a strategy of boxes laid side by side six inches from the wall to create an alley. The box at the end, long enough to hold a table lamp, was open. Using a broom, she herded the rat along the makeshift passageway. Once he scooted into the box, she screwed up her courage, flipped it upright. She heard him scrabbling around in the bottom. She taped the top shut with duct tape. Muttering curses, she dragged it downstairs and knocked on the gallery’s back door. Derek answered. Behind him she could see the supplies in the mailroom. “I found a rat in the apartment,” she said. She set the box down on its side and waited to see his reaction.
    â€œIs it in there?” Derek pointed and Lee nodded. He stepped out from the doorway and stomped on the middle. The box moved, kind of rocked, scuffling on the gravel. Derek stepped hard again and dented another section. They could see where the rat made a bulge. Derek took aim, brought his heavy shoe down a third time, and the bulge flattened out. Lee felt a stir of admiration; she hadn’t known Derek harboured such anger, such merciless violence just waiting to erupt; it was impossible to guess the depths of another’s pent-up rage.
    When she came back upstairs, Mr. PurrBunny was busy sniffing the trail of the rat through the apartment, from