The schoolteacher had an affair in Santa Fe.
She was a schoolteacher and a tourist.
And an affair adds dimension.
It makes a place more than memory.
The notion of it inverts.
Santa Fe now resided inside of the schoolteacher.
The city had a cracked voice and blonde hair
and a slightly sagging belly and pictures
of a New York niece on its phone and
an ambivalent relationship with combing its hair
and an irrational fear of left turns.
She expected young artists with vague academic worldviews,
chainsmokers talking loudly about point of view and Heidegger.
Instead the artists were retirees, painting nothing but landscapes
of red earth, attempting to improve on the natural world.
The schoolteacher did not like this kind of art.
It was trivial.
Wholly unnecessary.
Then the blonde artist walked up behind her
in a stucco gallery. He said, "You hate it don't you?"

"Yes."

She turned. He appeared to be in his early forties.

"Tourists never understand it."

"I'm not a tourist."

"You are. You've never been within the land."

"Don't talk to me like this."

"This is how women prefer to be talked to."

"Not this woman."

"Even you. You want to be told you're wrong.
'I look fat' No. 'Everybody hates me.' That's not true.
I'm skipping the stage where we agree. I'm going
straight to the stage where we are opposites.
Plus and minus."

"The part where we *****."

"Or connect or lose ourselves."

"I bet you live in a loft. Dozens of half-finished
canvases strewn about. Dabs of dried paint on
newspapers."

"I live in my big sister's basement. She isn't home."

"There's not enough wine in the world."

"That's where you're wrong," he said.