Excerpt from The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Walking down the hill toward the house I could almost hear the sounds of children playing and the happy drone of families enjoying weekend barbecues. It was a ghost town without the town and without the ghosts, since no one had actually ever lived there. I imagined ghosts of ghosts, less than ghosts, and I felt oddly welcomed into their company.

The model house had held up exceptionally well through the however many years it had been sitting there abandoned to the elements.

Maybe, like most orphans, I thought too much about houses. I'd never owned or lived in one as an adult. I had strong opinions and a tendency to evaluate houses in a particular way—windows first, placement mostly. Then the porch, whether or not it had one and what direction it faced. I liked porches and I've always been partial to those that were eastward facing. Finally, came the roof. I've never liked a roof that's too pitched. If I wanted a hat I'd buy a hat. A sharp-pitched roof always seemed to put me off for some reason.

The house was alone in a bed of sand and the windows were unbroken and clean, and placed slightly lower for the cooler morning air. The porch faced east toward the sparkling mica-flaked mesa about fifty miles away. Any desert dweller will tell you the true beauty of a desert sunset can be best appreciated by looking in that unlikely direction, the east, away from the sun. A single, faded green metal lawn chair relaxed on the porch. Someone would have been happy sitting there on a fine cool evening. The roof had a graceful, easy pitch that welcomed instead of threatened the sky.

I walked around the house. There was no sign anyone lived there, or had ever lived there. In the backyard I paused and took in the unhindered view all the way west to the Wasatch Mountains. The south side had the least wind. I stepped up close and rested my forehead on the shady wall just beneath a clean window. In the freedom of the moment and the beauty of the setting, I unbuckled my belt so I could fully abandon myself to the long-anticipated event.

It was almost quiet in the shade. Wind made a high whistling complaint as it slipped in and out of the eaves above me. When I looked up at the whistling, my sight traveled past the window— a kitchen window, I guessed. In that fraction of an instant my eyes glided over the disapproving face of a woman.

A good many bad behaviors have been honestly attributed to me over the years. Most of them I have just as honestly and sometimes even cheerfully acknowledged. Pissing on the side of someone's house, however modest or isolated, had never been among them. Such a breach surpassed bad manners and marched straight into the territory of criminally stupid. In the Utah desert it is likely to get you shot.

In my haste to retreat my jeans slipped to my knees. I stumbled backward and over. Despite my best efforts, the flow continued undeterred while I thrashed around on my backside. It occurred to me at that moment I might have borne a striking similarity to a cheap Walmart lawn sprinkler. All that was missing were a couple of brats in swimming suits jumping over me—and, of course, the lawn.

By the time I got control of the floodgates and up on my feet again, the face in the window was gone. But I had seen her. I was certain of it. I walked around to the front of the house to check again for signs of a resident. There were no tracks, human or machine. There was no evidence of any kind that would have warned me I was trespassing. I expressed my apology to the porch. I waited. I announced again, this time a little louder. Only the wind answered me. A block away, as I headed up the slope to the arch, I heard a woman's voice tell me to go away. She didn't need to tell me twice—or even once.

Under the arch I turned and squinted back down at the model home with all the glass in the windows and the chair on the eastern-facing porch. At my truck I looked up toward the archway and realized it was just high enough on the hill and far enough away that it couldn't be seen from the highway. I wondered if it had been designed that way.

Excerpted from The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson. Copyright © 2016 by James Anderson. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.