Page 8 of Every Breath

Chapter Five

The next stoptakes me to the Harwood Museum of Art, a two-story adobe museum in the heart of Taos. It began as a private home of Burt and Elizabeth Harwood and later became Taos’ only library in the early 1900s. It’s since been gifted by the Harwood Foundation to the University of New Mexico and hosts many events that Benny and I have attended. It also houses well-known Navajo artist R. C. Gorman’s work featuring Pueblo and Navajo subjects.

I meet Alma Thomas-Villier at the entrance of the museum. By now, I’ve told myself to just let things happen. Clearly, Benny planned this ahead of time and the last thing I want to do is mess it up just because I’m about to die from curiosity.

“Hey, Sarah! How are you?” Alma asks as I give her a hug. She’s a new transplant to Taos from Los Angeles and recently married to one of the Villier brothers who helped Dax build the Pearl, the earthship he calls home.

“I’m good. How’s the family?” The family is Sawyer Villier, her husband, Drea, their newborn baby daughter, and Tyler, her two-year-old son with her late husband, Drew.

“They’re somewhere getting me something for Valentine’s,” she says, laughing. “What about you? How’s your day going so far?”

“I don’t know. You tell me,” I reply, peering at her. “How’d you get roped into this? Did Benny call you?”

“Benny?” She shakes her head, frowning. “No, Sawyer told me you were meeting me here. That way, he and Ty can do their thing. Why? Is something supposed to be happening?”

I love how innocent she looks as I waggle my finger at her. “You’re good, Alma. Like Harlow, you’re good. I just saw her at Zia Moon.”

“Oh, I love their coffee.” She interlaces her arm with mine. “Why don’t you show me around the museum? Sawyer told me you know this place like the back of your hand.”

“I do,” I say, laughing, telling myself to enjoy the ride. “Don’t ask me to draw though, unless you want to see stick figures in action. Not-safe-for-work action at that.”

Alma and I spend the next hour going through my favorite rooms in the museum, those that feature Pueblo and Native American art as well as temporary installations that are mostly modern. I tell her about the events they often hold here like Tai-chi and yoga classes and the trips that Dyami’s class takes here during the school year where they get to learn about art and create their own pieces. But it’s not like Alma doesn’t know. She takes her son here a lot, too.

Still, it’s the only thing I can do so I don’t ask her what the heck is going on and what’s going to happen next. I hate to admit it but I’m actually having fun. If Benny had this planned for some time, then he did a good job planning it. If this is something he came up on the spur of the moment, then he did a great job, too. He isn’t the head of his department for nothing.

“Did you know this is where Benny first told me he loved me?” I say as Alma looks at me in surprise. “Yup. Right here.”

I don’t say any more, the rest of the information running through my head like a documentary I never expected to switch on. But somehow this is what this little adventure is doing to me, like a forgotten photo album discovered and its pages slow flipped and viewed.

When Benny finally said those three words that day, I’d been waiting for him to say them for a long time. Although we first met while students at UNM in Albuquerque, it wasn’t until two years after we both graduated that our paths crossed again.

“But I thought you guys met in Albuquerque and started dating then.”

“We did, but we didn’t really date although that’s what everyone thought,” I say, chuckling as I continue. “Benny was actually the resident man-whore, if you ask me although he’d never admit it. But all the girls were crazy about him.”

“But you guys were together, right? I thought Dax said you were inseparable then.”

“In a way, but it wasn’t romantic or anything. We hung out, studied together, argued a lot—because Benny always thinks he knows everything—and just did what friends did. Or that’s what I did on my end. I was so determined not to fall in his bed but that didn’t mean I made it easy for him when he tried asking me out on an official date,” I say, laughing. “He’s never forgiven me for that.”

“Not sleeping with him then?”

“For being the first girl to say no to him,” I reply. “I mean, have you seen him? Sometimes I pinch myself still because I can’t believe we’re still together after so long.”

“So what happened?” Alma asks. “I mean, how’d you end up together-together, like a couple?”

“We ran into each other in Shiprock when I was working as a traveling nurse.”

“I didn’t know that,” Alma says. “Why a traveling nurse?”

“Because it paid well. I also needed to be in the same state because Dax at that time was getting into trouble a lot and Mom needed an extra hand to tell him to quit it. I’d work three days straight and the next three days, I’d stay in Taos and give Dax hell. He was sixteen then and a pain in the butt.”

“And that’s when you met Benny again?”

“Yup, that’s when I met him again and I guess by then, things were different. We’d grown up. One of us got cockier and the other got more… confident. He actually got Dax all straightened out,” I say, remembering the day Benny walked through the doors of the Emergency Room like it was yesterday. Tall and tanned from collecting samples by the San Juan River, it was a shock to the system to see him again. He’d cut his arm when the truck his colleague drove rolled off the embankment and broken glass from the side window cut through his bicep. I cleaned it and under the harried doctor’s orders, stitched it up. All that time, we never showed any sign that we knew each other. He was too busy watching my every move while I kept reminding myself to remain calm, the words It’s only Benny running through my mind like some mantra as I gave him a tetanus shot.

But this time, I knew if he’d ask me out to dinner or suggest we play hopscotch under the covers, there was no way I’d say no. And when he did, I didn’t. It was as if all the foreplay had been done back in Albuquerque two years earlier and we were ready to take it further—but just far enough so we were still comfortable, still believing we didn’t need each other for more than just sex.

No commitments, okay?I’d told him while making dinner at his apartment that night because he ended up with a fever from the tetanus shot and I told myself he needed a bit of TLC. I don’t have time for complications.

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