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By chris Date: 2006 Apr 21 Comment on this Work [[2006.04.21.18.24.1861]] |
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In the summer the desert was always there but they hardly ever went to it. It was the heat, mainly, but also the general feeling of not wanting to do much in the summer that affects people who live in warm climates. Albuquerque, New Mexico was warm. The movies that summer were almost uniformly disappointing, too. Everyone knew this, yet everyone seemed to spend much of their time and money getting disappointed in them. David was originally from New Jersey, and that was his fourth summer in that place. Once the windblown lonesomeness of spring gave way to the big, calm blue skies of summer, he felt like it could be home. It was not home yet but he felt sure it could be. David met Linda shortly after the dissolution of his marriage. It had been a mistake from the start and the kind of mistake that, even when you are making it, you know is a mistake. There was much unpleasantness all around (even in the ending of it), but it was over that spring and David knew only that he did not want to ever marry again. By summer he met Linda. He still knew he did not want to marry, but right away he also knew she was different. He did not call it love at first. He did not call it anything. The women he had dated before were just ways to pass the time. Of course he did not think this at the time but eventually he came to realize it to be true. Linda was shorter than those other women, for one thing. She had a voluptuous, healthy figure and warm smile and deep brown eyes and a laugh that he liked the first time he heard it. Something in him knew he would be hearing it often. His ex-wife often told him, toward the end of things, that he would marry a Mexican. Even David came to believe he would marry a Mexican. This was not why his marriage ended but it was a part of it. Linda was not Mexican but Spanish. Her descendents had originally come from Spain and the distinction, though obvious and real, was one often lost on those not familiar with this part of the American Southwest. So on that day in July they found themselves in the desert, at the volcanoes on the edge of town. Like most everyone they hardly ever went to it in summer but there they were because this was the place David loved most and because he wanted to share it with the woman. It was not a test. Over time it became one of those things that through repeating became almost like a truth: that it was a test. But, truly, it was not. Some of the women he had seen in the past made a big show of wanting to go to the desert, but when the time actually came found reasons not to go to the desert. Linda was different, as David thought from the beginning. She loved what he loved, and he knew on that day that he could do the same thing. In was in this way that they started. It was not until they were married for some time that David learned that, in her language, her name was another word for beautiful. He was not surprised. |