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States snapped in false breezes. The old families of the area had endured the heat as they had so many sovereignties; they changed what they could and waited out the rest, forging over iced tea a solidarity that outlasted kings and seasons.
    After finishing his shift at the cantina, José Luis sometimes crouched under the portal to look at silver and turquoise laid out on blankets in long furrows. He used to linger at the rug of a Navajo woman who sat on a precarious throne of milk crates as she awaited the day’s harvest of tourist dollars. Now and again, groups of tourists engulfed her, cutting off my view of José Luis. This used to unnerve me. The Border Patrol had recently opened an office, declaring Albuquerque a border town—a city like El Paso or Brownsville, ordered to empty its pockets and produce its documents. I feared if I lost sight of José Luis, the Patrol might take him away in one of itsavocado-colored vans. And they could have, easily; they were armed to the teeth. I believed that watching José Luis generated protective forces; I vaguely remember some Eastern texts I was reading about the power of mindful observation—ironic, given that sight was my least evolved sense. Where others saw indigo, I saw blue; where others saw teal, I saw green. It’s the draining away of color that happens in a woman’s life when she can’t name her own reality. It is only now that I am able to go back and color in the pale places, creating a mural on the walls of the life I now inhabit.
    To track José Luis, I developed a sixth sense. Scanning the sea of tourists, I managed to latch onto a white patch of fabric among earth-toned clothing the better-off tourists ordered that year from the Banana Republic catalogue. His swatch of T-shirt became a kind of hologram that revealed the whole of him to me in three dimensions. And I held to that vision until the tourists moved on, their purchases made, cameras banked with images of a “real” Indian. Looking backnow, I wonder what troubled me more, the fear that the Border Patrol might see José Luis or that the tourists in his midst could not see him, at least not in three dimensions. No, he was very dark, a dishwasher, an illegal alien. Had he spoken English, it would not have mattered; he still would lack the credentials pinned on those with British or French accents. All over the city refugees were rendered invisible with each stroke of the sponge or rake they used to clean motel rooms and yards and porches. Unlike wealthy refugees who fled their pasts and bought homes in Santa Fe, people like José Luis lacked the money to reinvent themselves. So they became empty mirrors. A ghostly rustle of Spanish spoken in restaurants above the spit of grease on a grill.
    I still have the ring, a simple silver band, that José Luis bought from the Navajo woman. He gave it to me, said it was just a small gift to thank me for being his friend. Years later, I gave it to a psychic who ran her fingers over it and said she saw a man with a scar on his forehead who was saying, I will return. Last night I took the ringfrom the shoe box and held it, my eyes closed, until I, too, saw José Luis: We were making love on a bed in a basement. I slipped the ring on, inhaled, and counted to seven. And I arrived at that stillness so absolute the chaotic fragments of one’s life arrange themselves, if only for a moment, into a mandala of meaning. On the exhale I remembered that José Luis was the first man to touch me in a way that I could feel real pleasure, could feel my flesh yield up its own indivisible truth.
    I was leaning against the white railing of the kiosk when José Luis came to me and said, this is for you. The ring fit only on my wedding finger; the fingers of my right hand have always been stronger and slightly larger around. I tried to say something, tried to crack the silence, but it was like taking aim at a piñata, blindfolded. I could not manage even a simple thank you. At last I