by Liz Durano
I pick up the letter, not needing to turn on any lights to read its contents. That’s one of the things about Taos and living off-grid away from the city lights. It’s why I bought the property and built the Pearl—for the stars. You see millions of them on clear nights like this, and it’s a breathtaking sight, enough to remind you of how little you are in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes I sit here alone with that view in front of me and think. Sometimes I remember the woman I built it for.
I get up from the couch and walk along the pathway flanked by an arrangement of vegetable and flowering plants and even medium-sized fruit trees. It leads to the south-facing glass panels overlooking the property, sloped to take in the sunlight as it rises in the East and sets in the West. It also serves as the perfect nightlight with the stars illuminating the tear-streaked sheet of paper in my hand.
I’m sorry I failed you.
I’m sorry I didn’t stop chasing the dream, the accolades, and the prestige that came with being one of the best in the country. I’m sorry I ended up putting other things before you, foolishly telling myself that you were going to be okay, and that in the end, all my struggles to be the best would be worth it. I’m sorry for being so wrong, for even with all the accomplishments, I realized too late that none of it was worth the price – not when the price I paid was you. I’m sorry for saving everyone else when all this time, the one I needed to save was you.
A lump forms at my throat as I read the letter again. Damn, if this isn’t a suicide note then I don’t know what is. It surely isn’t a fucking poem one writes for the heck of it. I return the letter on the coffee table, resting the gun on top of it just the way Goldilocks had left it. As long as she didn’t sign it with her name, she’ll be Goldilocks to me. After all, I need to put a name to the face—and the tits.
I sit back down on the couch to think. In an hour, the sun will rise, and I’ll have a front-row seat, but I know I can’t remain sitting here like I own the place, even if I do. Nana always said that once the place was rented, I was supposed to stay out of the way like the good landlord that I am.
But the very idea that someone considered killing herself in my sanctuary grates at me. Restless, I get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen, checking the refrigerator to see it fully stocked. She’d shopped enough to feed herself for a week or two, which is a good sign. It means she had planned to stay longer. I know I’m being too optimistic but at the moment, I don’t have much choice. Either that or I’ll need to call the cops and have her removed from the Pearl before she can do anything stupid, maybe get some mental intervention set up for her to help her out. It’s not like I’ve never been in a dark place before, though it was never bad enough that I’d pull out my gun and write some note of apology to someone I couldn’t save.
Save.
The word nags at me. That and the fairy tales that featured damsels in distress and their knights in shining armor coming to save them. I’m certainly no knight in shining armor, definitely not to damsels in fucking distress. I’m not even close to being anyone’s Prince Charming, not when every girl I’d been with has called me an asshole more than once, and other names much worse than that, especially after I dumped them for someone else. Even supermodel Madison Dane.
But still, a part of me wants to give my guest the benefit of the doubt. Mama always told me that there was more to a person than meets the eye and that sometimes, not everything is what they seem. Yet even though it’s plain as day—Goldilocks was planning on killing herself, and in my sanctuary of all places—Mama also said that there are no accidents, that sometimes Fate works in the strangest of ways. Sometimes we’re meant to be where we’re supposed to be. And maybe that’s why I’m here right now, two weeks ahead of schedule.
Goldi-fucking-locks sleeping on my bed or not, I’m where I’m supposed to be.
Chapter 3
Harlow
Crap, I need to pee again, which means I have to get out of bed again and make my way to the bathroom. Whoever designed this place must have been on crack because it doesn’t make any sense. Because of the so-called grey-water system, the water pipes that supply the bathroom faucets all go along the south-facing wall opposite all the bedrooms, where a supply of clean water is kept warm via solar heating. Whatever, when you’re hung over, the specifics don’t matter. When you gotta go, you just gotta go.
But right now, even as my eyes remain shut and I cover my face with a pillow, there are a few other facts that I need to face. First, I’ve got a pounding headache that’s like a marimba band working overtime inside my head. It reminds me of the lightweight that I am when it comes to alcohol since I usually don’t drink more than a glass of wine during dinner, if at all.
Second, I feel like an idiot for even considering killing myself last night, all because my bigger idiot of an ex-husband told me I was so ugly and frigid that I might as well hang myself.
Ugly? Who does he think he is to tell me that I’m so ugly when I’m not? At least, I know I’m not. And frigid? But then, it doesn’t help that I’m such a nerd that I haven’t even been with anyone else but Jeff.
The tears slide down the sides of my face, and I tell myself to stop it, that it’s just me playing the woe-is-me card. I shouldn’t let the words of a bitter man bother me, but I guess no matter how old someone is or how mature she thinks she is, insults still hurt.
Jeff didn’t use to be that way. We used to be happy; two ambitious Fellowship candidates with big dreams, who did everything together until one day, we started competing with each other and didn’t even know it. I can’t even remember how or when it all began, the motivation to be among the best pediatric transplant surgeons in the city, and then later, in the country. Maybe it was how we channeled the desperation that comes with wanting a child so badly by distracting ourselves with work, the accolades and the achievements piling up one after another until we lost sight of why we were together in the first place.
All I know is that by the time I realized that I was competing with my husband, it was too late. Jeff didn’t want to go into counseling to save our marriage and afterward, I didn’t see the point of it either. And three failed implantations and one stillbirth later, the marriage was over. The only thing left were the assets, accumulated after six years of marriage between two successful surgeons.
And now here I am, hung-over after almost killing myself over an angry man who wanted me to sign the quitclaim deed to the house we both owned in the Hamptons, and so he needed to know where I was because he was having the documents couriered ASAP. As if signing such documents were that easy! We’re in the midst of a damn divorce as it is! And even if I knew where the hell I was, I wouldn’t have told him.
It was then that he said what he thought about me—ugly bitch, frigid, good-for-nothing ice queen. You’re not even half the woman as my Leilani. Why don’t you do the world a favor and just hang yourself, Harlow?
The venom in his voice chilled me. How Jeff hated me. Ever since little Marcus—that’s the name I had given him before they took his little body away—emerged forever sleeping, Jeff hated me. It was all my fault, he said. Your eggs are all shriveled up, and soon you will be, too!
It was the last thing I needed then—his hatred—but it was the only thing I got. That, and everyone’s pity; and more of the same pity when he filed for divorce less than a month later. Mercifully, I didn’t fight it. I had no strength left in me then, too lost in my grief to care who got what. I left everything up to my lawyer to negotiate for me, even when I knew the man played tennis with Jeff at the country club. I had my work at the hospital, and my patients, and that was all I needed to get me through each day.
Until the day came when I had neither.
Though never done formally, one of the Board members told me in confidence that the Board of Directors thought it would be in everyone’s best interests that two doctors in the midst of a nasty divorce no longer work together in the same hospital. He claimed that the longer I stayed at Miller G
en, the worse Jeff would treat everyone, maybe even the pediatric patients.
I remember thinking then that there had to be a silver lining somewhere, and there was. After packing my life away in a storage unit and making sure Kathy Pleshette, my office manager, updated me on my patients via secure email, it was time to see the rest of the world. But instead of flying to exotic locales and having the adventure of my life, I decided to take the convertible and go Thelma and Louise on the open road. Only there would be no Thelma on this trip—just me—which meant, hopefully, there’d be no trouble. I stayed at the best hotels along the way, and I kept to myself.
When I ended up in Albuquerque last month, I met Andrea Martin, a doctor who ran a community clinic in the South Valley. We hit it off immediately, and while staying in a quaint hotel in Old Town Albuquerque, I consulted with her patients for free, most of them suffering from kidney failure as a consequence of hypertension and diabetes. When she suggested I visit Santa Fe and check out the Georgia O’Keeffe museum and other things she knew interested me, I jumped at the chance and even saw my first outdoor opera. From there, I remember someone telling me about these strange structures off the highway in the outskirts of Taos, and I was off, wishing I could shut my eyes as I drove over the Gorge Bridge. This time, even though I could have stayed at one of the nice hotels in town, somehow, I chose the Pearl.
Anita Anaya, the little old lady who met me at the door of the Pearl, told me that it belonged to her grandson and that she was in charge of renting it out to small groups and families while he lived in Flagstaff. She wondered if I was expecting anyone else since every occupant had to be in the rental agreement, and when I told her no, she was clearly surprised. She worried that a city girl like me wouldn’t last more than a day out here alone surrounded by sagebrush, with coyotes yipping at night. For the first few hours as I sat alone with my gun next to me, afraid of everything that moved beyond the glass, I feared she was right. Then I saw the full moon aglow amid the thousands of stars in the sky, and that’s when I knew I’d be okay.
Until the damn phone call from Jeff that sent everything to hell.
I should never have answered his call yesterday. It would have saved me from this hangover, or worse, actually pulling the trigger out here in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea just how hearing his voice for the first time in months could still throw me off-kilter, hurtling me back into self-doubt and self-loathing. Worse, Leilani is 21 years his junior, for crying out loud.
I scream as loud as I can, my headache responding like an explosion going off inside my head, but I don’t care. I’m not even upset that Jeff is with someone so young. I’m angry that she can give him the one thing that I can’t, and for that, I just need to let it all out one way or another.
But first, I need to pee.
*
An hour later while drinking my coffee and reading yesterday’s paper on the patio, I spot a silver-hued truck turning into the private road leading to the Pearl. As I stare at the dust clouds trailing behind it, my heart begins to race. Is that the courier with the quitclaim deed? How did Jeff find me?
But even if it is, it’ll be a waste of time for the courier to have driven all the way up here for nothing. After last night’s bawling session, there’s no way in hell I’m giving up the house in the Hamptons. As it is, Jeff already got the Upper East Side apartment when I signed away my share shortly after Marcus was born. I don’t even remember why I did it, only that I couldn’t stand knowing that there was an empty nursery waiting for a baby who would never come home.
But for Jeff to want me to do the same for the Hamptons property borders on insanity. Does he really think he can intimidate me into giving up the vacation home, too? I may have had a moment of weakness last night when I almost blew my brains out because of his latest tirade, but after a long shower where I probably wasted half the water supply in the Pearl, I’m feeling more like myself. I even ripped my pathetic suicide note to shreds and put the gun away, vowing that I’d never allow myself to feel that vulnerable ever again.
This version of myself is more familiar to me, even if I’m in the unfamiliar territory of Taos where everything around me seems barren, like my womb. But this is the version of me that is self-assured, before the time when I felt like I was good for one thing only, having Jeff’s babies. What if I could never have kids? Did that make me any less a woman?
Scientific facts alone tell me that the answer is no. Plumbing-wise, I’m still a woman, and no one, not even Jeff can tell me—or make me feel—otherwise.
Not anymore.
Chapter 4
Dax
Oh, good. Goldilocks is dressed this time, and alive.
Well, that second part, I was sure of, but the first part—the naked part—that was up in the air for a while considering I got to see Goldie buck naked running to the bathroom just as I was about to leave at five in the morning. She better be careful walking around naked like that, even in her own Earthship. My neighbors have been known to have their telescopes trained here because of the damn yoga retreats throughout the year. Even in their yoga pants, the women looked as good as naked to some of my neighbors who had nothing better to do but peep into other people’s houses and smoke their ganja while discussing the latest developments on sustainable living.
I sometimes hang out with them, and did so more often when I was still building the Pearl with their help and guidance, but these days, I’m usually holed up in here designing something new. Even a man like me needs some solitude now and then although my desire to be by myself for the next three weeks has been ruined by a messed-up schedule (my fault for not checking my messages before coming up here) and my inability to stay away from Goldilocks.
I park my truck behind her dusty Beemer, wondering why she doesn’t have it parked inside the attached garage and save it from all the dust and sun. But at the same time, it’s none of my business. It’s her car, after all.
Goldilocks is wearing a beige cardigan over a t-shirt and jeans, and designer canvas shoes. A straw hat covers her head. She’s curvy, with tits I’d recognize anywhere, and as she comes closer, I force my gaze back up to her face. Any more staring at her chest and my dick will be poking a hole through my jeans—and that would be rude. It doesn’t help that it’s been a while since I’ve been with a woman, all of two months. It’s not like I don’t have them calling me all the time. I do. But with my production schedule on overdrive, it’s amazing how fast time flies when you’ve got custom work to complete for a Hollywood mogul with a house in need of a grand wooden staircase in Big Sky, Montana, leaving one hardly any time for pussy. Pretty much, I’m horny as hell, and seeing Goldie’s tits this morning did not help that sad predicament. It’s not like I’m ruled by my dick—I sure hope not—but there’s just something about Goldie here that makes my stomach feel all tingly, and the damn feeling goes all the way down my dick.
It also doesn’t help that I got to see her naked as she stumbled to the bathroom when I was heading towards the door. Her with those perfect tits and a perfect body. Fuck, it does things to a man where it shouldn’t be doing things. That’s why I didn’t even wait for her to come out of the bathroom and introduce myself. I simply snuck out and drove to Nana’s house for a cold shower and some sleep—and to review her rental agreement.
She’s supposed to be some big-shot doctor from the East Coast, traveling around the country on her own. It explains the gun, but it still bothers me considering the note it was sitting on, though that bit of information I kept from Nana. She would have panicked if she knew what I’d seen, or in the case of the note, read. So I have to talk to the good doctor and figure some things out. She may not like what I’ve got to say, but then Dax Drexel was never known to be subtle.
*
She meets me halfway between the unpaved driveway and the Earthship, her hands on her hips. I haven’t even begun to introduce myself and already she looks pretty pissed off to see me.
“Miss Harlow, I’m—“
/>
“That’s Doctor Harlow James to you, young man,” she snaps, glaring at me. “So what is it now? Are you the courier? How did you find me? I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here because I am not signing any papers unless I have my lawyer with me. But if you think all you have to say is jump and I’ll say how high, think again. The lawyer will have to wait until I get back to New York.”
I almost tell her that I’m not this courier she’s falling all over herself to meet and that either way, she may not like the papers I carry in the brown envelope I’ve tucked under my arm. Well, almost.
“That’s a shame because you do have to sign these papers, Doctor Harlow James, and I’m not leaving until you do. In fact, I don’t plan on leaving at all.”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest, and her chin tilts up. I don’t even care if her eyelashes are those extensions women are into these days, but they do a fantastic job at framing her beautiful big brown eyes. She’s fiery when she’s angry, and I like it.
“And what if I don’t? What are you going to do about that?” She glances towards the house, probably wondering if she should run right about now, and get her gun.
“Nothing. I’ll just bring my lawyer so you’ll sign it and agree to my terms or leave—”
“Jeff’s lawyer, you mean?” Suddenly she’s right in front of me, poking her finger in my chest. Startled, I step back, but she takes a step forward.
I bring my hands up in mock surrender. “Damn, Goldie! Chill!”
She doesn’t even hear me. She continues poking me with that finger of hers like I’m her personal push-button remote. “That prick couldn’t even be bothered to tell me that he’s sending you over here, and now, you’re threatening me with your lawyer? Since when did couriers need their own lawyers, anyway?”
