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solidarity, he said, his hazel eyes smiling. He touched my arm and I laughed, sipped from the chalice of happiness the universe set suddenly before me. He said, I love it when you laugh. Yes, it was real laughter, the kind that makes fences inside you fall. And seeing his opportunity,he crossed yet another border. Sweet collision of lips and tongues. I tasted Kahlúa and chamomile and some other barely familiar herb, steeped and sipped in another lifetime.
    Yes, I believe it happened that way; I feel joy
now
echoing in me, striking against the canyon walls of forgetting. Our faces floated above our bodies, helium balloons linked by static. Like a radio alarm clock, the cicadas started up. Time stopped. There began a never-ending August that, years later, I would remember every time I smelled the sea in a swamp cooler or tasted the sea in another man’s mouth.
    August 1982
    He said he loves me. He said he
loves
me. (I used to plead with my first boyfriend to say it!) José Luis kissed me for the first time, but what he said means even more. It’s happening just as I knew it was meant to happen. Spanish lessons, a ring that fits on my wedding finger, our drives back and forth between Soledad’sand Old Town. But most important of all, the word love. Without it my feelings spill all over the place—and it’s always me (and my friends) who have to mop up afterwards.
    Now I have reason to improve my Spanish. I have a word and a way of life to conjugate: Quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos.… To want and to love, the same thing! God, make this thing last. Make it last. I sound crazed, I know, but with good reason. My period’s due any moment, and I have found true love. The kind that pulls all of life in one direction. It’s too much. Already, his presence in my life is helping me forget all the sadness (what was it about?) that pulled me down for so long before he came to Albuquerque. And with the power of love I’m going to help him forget, too. Help him to forget the war that he fled from, that he says he still dreams about.
    This morning I woke up to the sound of San Rafael’s bells, and I remembered yesterday. I felt a grin spread through my whole body, pure bliss. The thought of being with him forever is intoxicating. But I’ve got to be careful. I’ve got to stay in the present. The minute I get hung up on the idea of
forever
, on what will happen tomorrow, I ruin everything. For all I know, the universe could get scratched like a record groove. We might do nothing but repeat yesterday morning over and over—couch to coffee maker, coffee maker to couch. (Yet what a gift this would be!)
    From the Tao Te Ching: Heaven is lasting and Earth enduring. The reason for this is that they do not live for themselves alone; therefore they live long.
    We did not make love, that is to say have intercourse, for weeks. Something perversely Catholickept our explorations above the waist, the old religion erotically charging the most humble expanses of skin. Inner elbow, collarbone, fingertips. We touched each other on Soledad’s couch until 3 A.M . when the train’s cry severed the night. It’s late, we have to work tomorrow, he said. But I don’t need sleep, I don’t need food, just you, I answered. I unpeeled myself from him, removed myself like a bandage. The cruelty of limits stung: the need for sleep, food, a paycheck however small. If an hour were a house one could move into for good, I would have built a wall around the 2 o’clock hour, a brick wall arrayed against the disfiguring fury of the future. He playfully yanked at my hair and patted my cheeks as if plumping up a pillow. He said he worried I might fall asleep while driving to Old Town. I assured him I would not; after being with him I always tuned in to a rock station, volume full throttle. He took my hand and walked me through the portal where red chile ristras were suspended like tongues of fire. We opened a rotting wood gate that led to the frontyard. After I