by Liz Durano
We all sputter our beers or whatever else we may have had in our mouths and turn to look at Dyami. Sarah and Benny stare at him in disbelief while Anita covers her mouth though I can’t tell if she’s shocked or amused. Dax rests his elbow on the table and presses his knuckles against his mouth, fighting the urge to laugh. But Dyami’s face is serious. At the very least, he’s curious.
I look to Sarah and then Benny and hope I’m doing the right thing. “May I answer his question?”
“Please do,” Sarah says before she covers her mouth and there’s that scuffling sound under the table again. Benny just nods his head before taking a swig of his beer.
“The answer is yes, he can. That’s because the system that makes pee and the system that makes babies,” I pause to look at Sarah and Benny and they’re nodding their heads, “aren’t connected at all. They just share the same tube at a certain point. But just because someone can’t pee anymore because their kidneys aren’t working doesn’t mean they can’t, um, have sex.”
Dyami opens his mouth to ask something else when Anita suddenly gets, the legs of her chair loudly scraping the floor. “Who’s in the mood for ice cream? I think ice cream sounds good just about now, si?”
And judging from the sight of everyone’s hands raised up in the air, I guess everyone else is in the mood for one, too.
*
An hour later, I’ve had a total of three beers, and I don’t even argue with Dax when he says he’s driving me back to the Pearl. He’ll drop my car off in the morning and get one of the Villier brothers to pick him up.
“Why have someone else drop you off when I can do that tomorrow?” I say as he opens the door for me and I get into the passenger seat. “It’s not like I won’t have my car by then.”
He shrugs. “Okay.” And then he shuts the door, walks around the cab and gets in behind the wheel. On the front porch, Anita, Sarah, and Benny are watching the whole thing, grinning. I wish they’d go back inside, but they’ve insisted on seeing me off, complete with hugs and kisses like I’m one of the family. I wonder if they’re like this with all their tenants or only the ones that Dax managed to offend.
As Dax turns the key in the ignition, I wave goodbye to the farewell party on the porch, laughing as I do so. I haven’t smiled this much in months that my cheek muscles ache. And why not? They’ve just had a hell of a workout tonight, and I loved every minute of it.
They would have let me sit there and do nothing after dinner and ice cream, but I was having none of it. I can’t help it, but I feel both happy and jealous at the same time. Happy because they’re themselves, and there’s not an ounce of armor between them, but I’m also jealous because I wish I’d had something like this in my life, even the teasing they bestow on poor Dax who takes it like a champ though I suspect he enjoys it. Unlike Dax who apparently was the apple of everyone’s eyes, life as a foster child hinged on hope and most times and if not all times, nothing else.
I have no memories of happy conversations around the dinner table or a unified effort by family members in getting things done. Neither were there any playful nudging of feet and legs under the table, or sitting in the living room with the TV on but no one is watching what’s on because we’re all busy getting to know each other.
I learn that Benny’s mother is Navajo, and his father was Caucasian, an engineer who lived and worked in Roswell. Benny was six when his father died, and from then on, he was raised on the reservation or the rez as he called it, with his mother and her family.
He met Sarah while they were both studying at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and they’ve been together ever since. I don’t understand why they’re “on-again, off-again,” which was how she had introduced Benny to me before dinner, but I figure it’s none of my business. They all look like one big happy family, and that’s what matters. You don’t need a ring to prove to the world just how much you loved someone. My unhappy marriage proved that theory.
But there is something that I just learned, too. Families—happy families like the one that raised men like Dax Drexel—really do exist.
And I want one.
Chapter 8
Dax
Harlow is quiet during the drive to the Pearl though I see her grip the car handle when we go over the Gorge bridge. I can’t blame her. Even in the dark, it can be scary knowing you’re driving on the seventh highest bridge in the United States, rising 565 feet above the Rio Grande. It doesn’t help that besides being a popular tourist destination, it’s also become popular for suicides.
Five minutes later, I turn into the Greater Earthship Community, the truck’s high beams illuminating the road ahead. Out here, it’s living in the middle of nowhere, even if I can see the lights of the closest Earthship, where the Villier brothers live, and another one in the distance which is mostly a single rental for most of the year, and right now, it’s vacant. The path to the Pearl is lit up by solar lights that line the driveway all the way to the outdoor patio with its central fire pit perfect for roasting marshmallows. I had wanted it to look like a pearl in the middle of nowhere, and it sure does.
Living off-grid means residents have to be self-sufficient the best they can; that’s why I installed solar panels for energy (and need to install more), grow vegetables and fruit trees in the indoor garden, and built a reservoir and filtering system for water. But because it’s been quite dry the last few years, and with the Pearl hosting yoga and meditation groups, sometimes we end up having water trucked in at a few cents per gallon. If anything, it teaches anyone wanting to live here the importance of self-sufficiency.
But for the life of me, I have no idea what a city doctor like Harlow James is doing out here when she could be staying at the resort spa in town, complete with room service, a heated pool, and in-room massages.
“Thank you. I really appreciate this,” Harlow says as I park the truck by the side of the Earthship and turn off the engine.
“No problem.”
“Would you like to come in?” she asks. “Sarah said something about your tools being in here, and I thought…”
“I don’t plan on loading any of my tools in the cab right this minute—“
“Come in, anyway,” she says, cocking her head towards the front door. “Show me around.”
“Didn’t my grandmother give you a tour?”
“She did, but I’m sure it’ll be different coming from the man who built it. It is beautiful, and I’m sure you’re very proud of it.”
My throat tightens. “I am. But I’m hardly ever up here as it is, and that’s why Nana thought we could rent it out.”
She doesn’t say anything as she watches me. Then she smiles. “So show it to me, anyway, unless it’s past your bedtime and you’re expected to be back home by now.”
Was that a challenge? “Nana might get away with telling me not to eat with my mouth full, but no one can tell me when to go to bed.”
Harlow pushes open the passenger door, and I can’t help wondering what she’s up to. She’s had three beers, and her guard is down. “So come on in then, unless you don’t want to.”
“Twist my arm now, why don’t you?” I joke though I don’t miss the playful glint in her eyes, and boy, am I in trouble now.
She laughs. “Can I be any less obvious? Consider it a curated tour.”
*
It takes me close to an hour to give Harlow a very personal tour of the Pearl. She asks me so many questions that I have to rein myself in from boring her with every minute detail that went into building it, from its foundations built with earth-rammed tires and beer cans donated by the Villier brothers to the way the colorful bottles in the walls were put together. She listens intently as I talk about the inspiration behind certain pieces of furniture, like the slab dining table made of Dutch elm (my first big project under my mentor) and the rationale behind having an indoor fruit and vegetable garden that has nothing to do with zombie invasion preparations (self-sustainability). We even harvest a few fruits a
nd vegetables, filling a basket that Harlow retrieves from the kitchen just before I show her what Sarah has playfully christened Bluebeard’s secret room—minus the dead ex-wives hidden inside.
Instead, hidden behind the only locked door in the Pearl is my man-cave minus a big-screen TV or mini-bar. Just a drafting table, and a solid cherry slab with a planing stop where I get to design and create my pieces, though when I’m here, they’re just scale pieces. There’s a simple shelf at the far end where I keep pieces of wood for carving, and right now the shelves are mostly empty, the only thing remaining is one of my first creations, a small display cabinet constructed without nails or glue. Spartan at best, Dax’s Man-Cave Deluxe is also the coolest part of the Pearl on hot days, bermed by soil on all three sides. The south-facing doors slide open to the rest of the residence, and it’s perfect on days when I’m here all by myself.
While computer software and 3D printers are all the rage these days, I still use hand tools to create my pieces, starting with a sumisashi, a bamboo pen, and an ink pot and string line called a sumitsubo. It’s the last thing people expect when they meet me, at first glance just another kid from New Mexico who knows his Japanese terms as well as the ancient art of Japanese joinery. I even speak it fluently, thanks to the Japanese American carpenters who work with me in Flagstaff and New York. I spent five years as an apprentice to Takeshi-san, a well-known Japanese craftsman who settled down in Santa Fe fifteen years earlier. Under his tutelage, I learned everything I could about Japanese joinery or sashimono before he died of lung cancer four years ago. Unlike Harlow and her many years of medical school, I never went to college; a high school diploma is as far as I’ve gotten, and whatever I learned from Takeshi-san. But then, none of my clients require me to have a specialized degree to craft them a cabinet or a dining table, unlike patients who come to Harlow needing a kidney.
But we don’t talk about medicine or sashimono the moment we step into my sanctuary. We don’t speak at all. Sure, I could tell Harlow all about carpentry, but I don’t, not when watching her walk around the room admiring everything tells me more than words can say. There’s a reverence in the way she touches everything, and the way she studies the drawings left on the drafting table, of impossible staircases that have since won awards, and bath tubs made of wood. So far, they’ve all been completed, the drawings just reminders of my last brainstorming session here.
She takes a long deep breath as she runs her fingers along the sides of the small wood cabinet sitting on the shelf, closing her eyes as she takes in the smells of local and exotic woods that still linger in the room since I was last here three months ago.
“I love the smell of wood and earth. In the city, you don’t get this much although there is Central Park. But even that place gets crowded,” she says. “But this, the Pearl, is very grounding, and most especially this room. It almost feels like a… a womb. A place where ideas are born.”
“Thank you. And yes, it is grounding. It was built for that reason.”
She smiles wistfully. “Your family grounds you, too. They love you.”
“They do, just as much as they love picking on me, too,” I say, wondering what she’s getting at. Behind my smile, there’s a fight going on. A part of me wants desperately to close the distance between us and feel her in my arms as I kiss her while the other part chastises me to behave. But Harlow has been setting my nerves off-kilter since dinner, and now that we’re alone in the one place I feel the safest, even more so. Except for family, no woman has ever set foot here before, not even when the Pearl was rented. It’s always been locked until I come to town. Yeah, just like Bluebeard’s special room.
If I can’t hold her in my arms and kiss her, I might as well be close enough to drown myself in her big brown eyes before I apologize to Nana and tell her that I’m driving back to Flagstaff tomorrow. I’ll just have to come back after Harlow leaves. It won’t make her happy, just as it won’t make the employees happy either to have their grouchy perfectionist of a boss back. But right now, I don’t have any options.
“I was just thinking about what you said during dinner…” she begins softly as I stand in front of her.
“Yes?”
“If you need to work in here,” she says, looking around the room, “then, by all means, you should.”
“You don’t need to—”
“I insist. The Pearl is over 6,000 square feet, isn’t it? It’s clearly too big for one person, and if you just need to do your work in here, you can do that without bothering me all the way on the other side.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Think about it,” she says, shrugging. “Doesn’t this place accommodate up to six people? As it is, I’m just hogging the place, and there’s no reason for you to drive back to Flagstaff just because I’m here. There are vegetables needing to be harvested and the kumquats, too. I can’t do all that on my own.”
I chuckle. “So you need a farmhand.”
“No, I need company and even when I do harvest all the tomatoes and the garlic and eggplant and whatever else is in the garden, where’s the fun in eating all that alone? Even when I drop off the vegetables at Anita’s, whatever I keep…” She pauses, shrugging. “Whatever. I’m just putting it out there that you can stay here if you want.”
“But I thought you came here to be alone.” I can’t stop thinking of the gun and the note.
“So? Let’s say I changed my mind. You don’t have to entertain me or anything, nor I, you. But if you need the place to design such gorgeous tables like the one your grandmother has or whatever it is you do in here, then, please. Don’t let me stop you.”
“You didn’t think so three days ago.”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest, her left eyebrow arching. “Three days ago, you made me believe you were a courier sent to have me sign some legal documents I wasn’t keen on signing. Not only that, you tried to talk me into signing an amended rental agreement—”
“I said I was sorry about that.”
“I know.” Harlow takes a deep breath and shrugs. “Like I said, think about it. You don’t have to give me your answer now. I know you planned to go back to Flagstaff, but I’d feel bad if the reason is me.”
It is you, I almost say, and sharing the same space with the woman who sends the butterflies in my belly fluttering like crazy is, well, crazy.
“If I take you up on it, I’ll have to insist on reimbursing you whatever you paid.”
“And I’ll have to insist you don’t,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re just here to use this room and maybe some parts of the general living areas, and nothing more. So just bring your amended rental agreement tomorrow stating that I agree to share the Pearl with you, Dax Drexel, for the purpose of work and nothing else.”
I frown. “You mean, no wild parties?”
She shakes her head. “Nope.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Dr. James.”
“Call me Harlow.”
“Alright, Harlow,” I say, stepping out of the workspace and waiting till she follows me outside before closing the doors and locking them. “I’ll think about it.”
“You can always say no, Dax.”
The way she says my name sends a tingle down my spine but I tell myself to behave. I don’t dare look back at her as she follows me to the front door and watches me head back to my truck. I pull open the door and pause, my heart thundering inside my chest.
“Thank you for dropping me off tonight, Dax, and for the tour,” she says as she leans against the door frame, watching me.
“Anytime,” I say, a part of me not wanting to get behind the wheel just yet. “I’ll drop your car first thing in the morning.”
“Take your time.” I make a move to get into the cab but pause. It’s now or never, dude. “Harlow, have you ever been to Bandolier National Monument? Over by Los Alamos?”
Her eyes widen. “Is that the one with the cliff dwellings?”
“Yup.”
“N
o, I haven’t. But I was planning to go there this week. I was just searching online for directions this morning.”
“Want to come with me tomorrow?” I ask. “We can take in the views and revisit history. Just a day trip and then we’ll be back before evening.”
From where I stand, I can see her eyes light up. “I’d love that.”
“We have to get there early to avoid the crowds and the heat,” I say. “So you’ll need to be ready before six—“
“I’ll be ready,” she says, smiling and I have to catch my breath. The good doctor is even more beautiful when she smiles.
“Six it is then,” I say as I force myself to get behind the wheel and shut the door. Then I start the truck as casually as I can muster even though deep inside, I’m screaming like a prepubescent boy about to go on his first date with the most popular girl in school.
Chapter 9
Harlow
Holy cow! I can’t believe I flirted!
Worse, I flirted with a man who’s way too young for me. I can’t exactly explain why I did it, not in a way that would make sense to the surgeon in me other than it’s all his cologne’s fault—and his man-smell, if that is even a word. It’s not body odor, like someone who just came from the gym—no, this is just his smell—pheromones at work—and it’s so delicious it made my belly do flip flops in the passenger seat of his truck, and I had to squeeze my thighs together and grab hold of the door handle.
How can a man do this without touching me? He was minding his own damn business driving and here I was, sitting next to him, imagining him on top of me, making love to me. No, not making love. Fucking me. Oh, my God, and I even said the word, fuck. Not only have I given someone the finger in the last week, but now I’m saying a word I never say. Am I so desperate to have sex with the first man to cross my line of vision that I’m already acting like a whore?
To make matters worse, I asked him to give me a tour of the Pearl again and then told him he could stay if he wanted to! Sure, I meant during the day, but that would mean I’m still sharing what I’d intended as my sanctuary with someone else!
