I grab my bag, ticket, and keys and lock the door. Santa Fe, New Mexico is my destination. I want to get lost for awhile. Roam the streets, eat something new, buy Indian silver, and forget.
My friend picks me up in Albuquerque and we drive into the night. I am glad to see her and we share moments of our life that have passed in the last year. I’m not ready to share how sick I feel inside. I’m not ready to admit that I have lost my man to a woman half my age.
Darkness has descended on Santa Fe, but the streets are filled with life and music. Great Tom Petty songs that drift from the Ore House bar and over into the plaza. People take benches in the park and listen. The moon is full and rises orange in the east. It is indeed a perfect moment. For the first time in days, I feel steady and right with the world.
We are staying at the historic La Fonda hotel. I love historic places and this one is filled with great art, tile, and provides food for the body and soul. Over dinner, my pain unfolds in pieces, like ripping petals off daisies … he loved me, he loves me not …
It’s a confession of vulnerability, emotional attachment, stupidity, and loss until the clock strikes 2 a.m. and exhaustion concludes the diatribe. It feels good to be away. Distance is like time; suddenly the problem seems more a memory that was before, not now.
The morning arrives early for me, as I am a 4 a.m. riser. I am so happy to awake to the clear blue skies of New Mexico, rather than the murky heat that rises from Los Angeles. Coffee is the quest and we set upon the streets. The Indians have laid out their wares on the plaza and the desire for silver rises like a miner inside of me. Everything reminds me of him. My Navajo biker dressed in leather and silver crosses stands like a ghost beside me. My grief rises as quickly as the sun.
My companion is a shopper extraordinaire and the leather is dazzling. Shops smell heavy of purses, bags, boots, and jackets. I am suddenly lost again in the moment of consumerism. “Buy something great and forget,” she says as she disappears into the bowels of the cows past. I follow behind and find her grinning and holding on to an incredible biker jacket straight from a Hells Angel closet. It is covered in studs and pins and patches gathered from the major biker clubs and rallies. Silver studs spell out “Spitfire” from shoulder to shoulder. It is so marvelous and cool and the most expensive jacket I have ever seen. I try it on and I hear my Harley Davidson Flathead call out to me. It is from another era as is this bike, but my sensible voice is whispering, “You can’t afford it.” My friend takes a photo of it as a sweet memory of cool things. The smell and the art of it reside with me, replacing my thoughts of him.
The night moves in and we fill it with great food, a glass of wine and a vintage 1939 movie, The Women. It is a film about a woman whose man leaves her for a hotter, younger Joan Crawford. I love this film, but I’m suddenly the Norma Shearer character with the exception that she gets her man back. My man is still tucked in bed with Joan.
Another magnificent morning greets us with coffee and Torte Milanese on the menu. It is heavenly as is everything in Santa Fe. The café draws us past the shop that stores the fabulous Hells Angel jacket and the doors swing open as we pass. It’s a sign, says my companion. “Try it on one more time,” she beckons. It is heavy and wonderful. I stand silently in the mirror grinning. My friend to one side lists all the reasons I should buy it. “Remember the forgotten Christmases and birthdays, the long silences, the years of plans that never materialized, the loss … remember the loss.”
The weight of it in the bag as we leave feels like my heart. The pain inside of me is as sharp and crisp as the silver studs. The jacket is an iconoclast of how I feel inside. It’s time to go home and I grab my bag, ticket and keys and lock the door.
