The Goat and the Grown-Up

*This story was born from a daydream about a loan officer meeting his match in a woman who's lived a little. Thank you for reading, I hope it makes you smile in all the right places.*

So here's my morning. Coffee at six. Drive through Scottsdale traffic. Then a voicemail from my boss that changes the whole day.

"Manny, weird one for you. Hillside property out past the citrus groves. Seller's in a rush. Oh, and there's apparently a goat involved."

A goat. I played it twice to make sure I heard it right.

I'm twenty-nine. I've been a loan officer for six years now. I do appraisals on the side because the money's good and it gets me out of the office. Karl in accounting says I look like a kid wearing his dad's blazer. I've learned to ignore Karl.

The drive out was long. Desert town, maybe forty minutes past Phoenix. Dry heat, the kind that makes your knuckles crack. October, but you wouldn't know it. Eighty-nine degrees at ten in the morning.

The house sat up on a hill like it owned the road. Mid-century modern, all glass and clean lines. Floor-to-ceiling windows catching the sun. Saltillo tile patio out front, orange trees going dry at the edge of the lot. Nice place. Really nice place.

And in the middle of the front yard, a goat. Just standing there. Eating a shrub.

A woman came out the front door at a half run. She looked about fifty, tall, silver hair pulled back, wearing a blouse that had clearly lost a fight with the morning. She was yelling at the goat.

"You are not welcome here! Shoo! Shoo, you horrible little beast!"

The goat looked at her. Then went back to the shrub. I parked and got out.

"Ma'am?" I called. "Need a hand?"

She spun around. Flustered. Cheeks pink.

"Oh, thank God. Are you with animal control? Please tell me you're with animal control."

"Loan officer, actually. Manny." I held up my clipboard like it was credentials. "I'm here to appraise the house."

"Oh no." She pressed a hand to her face. "You're serious. You're here for the showing and there's a goat eating my landscaping."

"There is. But the goat problem comes first, I think."

"It came up the wash this morning. I've been chasing it for two hours. I used to fly 757s full of two hundred people and I cannot outmaneuver one goat."

I almost laughed. Didn't. Good instincts.

"Retired flight attendant?" I asked, walking toward the yard.

"Twenty-six years. Juliet." She stuck out her hand, then pulled it back when the goat bolted past. "Oh, come on."

The goat wasn't hard to catch. Honestly, goats are dumber than people think. I cornered it by the orange trees, grabbed the scruff, and it just went limp like it had been waiting for someone to take charge. It looked up at me with these flat yellow eyes.

"Oh my god," Juliet said. "You just grabbed it. I've been sprinting around this yard since eight o'clock and you just grabbed it."

"Twenty-nine years of being the responsible one. It pays off eventually."

She laughed. Real laugh, head back. I noticed she was prettier than the flustered thing running across the lawn had first suggested. Not going to lie about that. Not that I did anything about it, standing there holding livestock.

"What do I do with it?" I asked.

"There's a rope in the garage? Maybe? I don't know, I've been here three weeks getting it ready to sell and I already hate the desert."

We tied the goat to the fence rail with some clothesline she found. It immediately began eating the fence rail. Whatever.

"Ice tea," she said. "You've earned it. God, you've earned it. Come inside, it's brutal out here."

"Actually, I should do the walk-through first. Get measurements while the light's good."

"You're going to measure my house while a goat watches from the fence."

"That's the job, ma'am."

"Juliet."

"That's the job, Juliet."

The house was even better inside. Original terrazzo floors. Big open living room, windows onto the whole valley. I took my time with the tape measure. She followed me around with the iced tea, asking questions about the market, about comps, about whether the buyer was serious. I gave her the honest version. Fair price, decent timeline, nothing weird on the loan side from what I could see.

"You're younger than I expected," she said, when we ended up back in the kitchen.

"Everyone says that."

"No, I mean. Sorry. You just seem like you know what you're doing."

"I do know what I'm doing. I just also have a baby face. It's a curse at the bank. Clients ask if my supervisor is available."

"I think it's nice," she said, and then went a little pink again and busied herself refilling my tea that was still three quarters full.

Around one o'clock a car pulled into the drive. A silver Camry, driven with great caution. A woman got out. Older, same bone structure as Juliet, so I did the math on sister before she said a word.

"There is a goat tied to your fence," the woman announced through the open door.

"Hello to you too, Sheri."

"I said there is a goat, Juliet. Tied to your fence. With what appears to be a bedsheet."

"It's clothesline. This is Manny. He's appraising the house. He caught the goat."

Sheri looked at me the way you look at a used car. Up, down, up again.

"He caught the goat," she repeated. "And how old are you, Manny? Twelve?"

"Sheri." Juliet looked horrified.

"Twenty-nine," I said, grinning. "I get that a lot. It's fine."

"He's a senior loan officer," Juliet said, in a tone that suggested she'd already done some homework on me, which was flattering in a way I wasn't going to examine too closely.

"Well," Sheri said, hanging her purse on her arm and coming inside uninvited. "Aren't you handy. Do you fix things, Manny? Or just catch livestock?"

"I fix things," I said. "Depends on the day."

Juliet made a sound into her tea glass. Sheri raised one eyebrow and went to inspect the kitchen like it was on trial.

I should have left. Seriously. The appraisal was done. The measurements were in my clipboard. The goat was someone else's problem by now, probably back up the wash. My afternoon was free but that's not a reason to stay.

Juliet walked me to the door.

"Thank you," she said. "Really. You saved my showing tomorrow. I owe you."

"You owe me nothing. I got iced tea out of it. Best trade I've made all week."

"Come back Thursday," she said, quick, before I could answer. "Sheri's only here through the weekend, but Thursday I'm making dinner, and you seem like the kind of man who eats."

"I am absolutely the kind of man who eats."

"Then it's settled." She smiled, and something about it made my chest do a thing I hadn't felt since, honestly, since Dina at the bank, and that ended three years ago without a single harsh word.

Thursday. Dinner. I got in my Corolla and sat there for a second with the AC blasting.

A goat. A retired flight attendant. Dinner on Thursday.

Karl was going to be insufferable about this and I hadn't even told him yet.

So there I am in my Corolla, idling, about to pull out, when Sheri raps on my window like she's arresting me.

"Roll it down, please."

I rolled it down. "Yes ma'am."

"Do you have a minute? Juliet left her phone charger on the counter and I need to run into town for a few things. Could you keep an eye on her? She's been flying solo on this house business and frankly it's gone to her head."

"I'm not a babysitter, Mrs. Sheri."

"It's just Sheri. And I'm not asking you to babysit. I'm asking you to drink more iced tea and be neighborly. It's a desert. People die of politeness out here."

Hard to argue with that logic. I got back out and she drove off with the caution of a woman who believes every road is out to get her, and I went back up the walk. The goat bleated at me. I bleated back, because I'm mature.

Juliet was at the kitchen sink when I came in. She looked over her shoulder.

"You're still here."

"Your sister commanded it. She's very frightening."

"She is, isn't she. She's been terrifying men since Reagan." She dried her hands on a dish towel. "Well. I guess you're stuck with me for an hour."

"Tragic," I said. "Absolutely tragic. I'll try to endure it."

She laughed at that, a real laugh, head back, and I noticed she had one of those laughs that makes you want to keep talking just to hear it again. Dangerous. I told myself to behave. Then I went back to the living room and started measuring things I had already measured, because apparently behaving means fake work.

"Are those the same walls?" she asked, leaning in the doorway with her own glass of tea.

"Maybe."

"You measured that wall at eleven."

"Walls settle. Desert houses especially. The ground out here moves, you know."

"Manny."

"Walls can shift two inches in a morning, Juliet. It's science."

She sat on the arm of the couch and watched me fake-measure, and I have to say, being watched while pretending to work is not in the job description. I clicked the tape measure back in and gave up.

"Fine. It's done. I was lingering."

"I know," she said. "It was sweet."

It was not sweet, it was pathetic, but I let it go. I flopped into a chair across from her, because my legs had apparently decided we live here now. The room was all windows and low furniture and these gorgeous old pieces that looked like they'd survived forty years of actual living.

"Where'd you get the furniture?" I asked, because it was better than telling her she had a nice laugh.

"Ten cities and a storage unit. That lamp came from a fleabag motel in Tulsa that was being demolished. I asked if I could buy it and the guy gave it to me for free. I have stolen nothing, before you ask. Mostly."

"It's the best house I've appraised this year. And I don't say that to flatter you, I say it because it's true. The buyers are going to lose their minds."

"You're what, twenty-nine, and you say lose their minds. What do the kids say now? Slaps? Bussin?"

"Oh no."

"Bussin' house," she said, delighted. "I've been practicing. My niece's kids talk and I understand maybe half."

"You're not that old."

"I'm forty-eight."

"That's not old. That's like, established. Distinguished. My mom's age."

Her face did a little thing. "Oh, wonderful. Your mother."

"That came out wrong."

"Did it?"

"Okay, it came out exactly wrong," I admitted. "What I meant was, you look like you could still be working. Flying. Whatever. Most people my age's moms are not you, is the point, and the point is bad."

"Worse and worse," she said, sipping her tea, enjoying this way too much.

I put my face in my hands. "I'm going to go measure the fence."

"No you're not. Sit. Tell me why a senior loan officer who is good at his job, and clearly is, gets so twisted up about it." She pointed her glass at me. "You did it outside too. Baby face. Curse at the bank. Clients ask for your supervisor. You said it like a joke but you've clearly said it a thousand times."

I looked at her. She looked back, waiting. Not pushy. Just waiting, like she had all afternoon, which, fair, she did.

"It's stupid," I said.

"Manny."

"It's not stupid stupid. It's just, I've been at the bank six years. Six. I got senior at twenty-six, which basically never happens, and half the office thinks it's because I've got a young face that reads as trustworthy, whatever that means, and the other half thinks I'm somebody's nephew. Dina, my ex, she used to introduce me at parties as her work husband and people would laugh, like, actually laugh, and she'd laugh too, and I'd stand there being thirty pounds of charm and nobody took any of it seriously." I shrugged. "There's a version of this where I'm thirty-five and clients still ask me to fetch my boss. So yeah. It sits on me a little."

She set her glass down. She got up, crossed the room, and sat on the