We call it the land of entrapment, a play on the state’s slogan, the land of enchantment. I drive with a penny under my tongue, having been told that copper disappears the trace of alcohol. I feel good behind the wheel, in control, the windows rolled down, pine trees whipping past, my friends piled in the backseat.

I take the backroads, past Zia, Museum Hill, St. John’s College, and when we get home, I make crêpes in the kitchen, my post-party trick. It’s only when I’m standing over the stove, spatula in hand, batter spattering in the cast-iron, that I realize I don’t remember the drive at all.

We sleep in my bed, head to toe, or on the couches in the living room. My parents, still together, but barely, are on the other side of the house. We live in an old adobe, two old adobes adjoined in the nearer century by a gallery, a long hallway with a long bookcase. The walls of the house are thick and the windows small, meant to keep the heat out and the cold in.

The first time that I sneak out, I am thirteen, maybe fourteen, and I am with Alyssa Klein. Lulu, we call her. After my parents have gone to sleep, we slink out the side door, attached to the kitchen, and open, silently, the iron gate to cross the bridge that covers our acequia, the acequia madre, which hugs my house and irrigates the garden and our little illegal lawn on Mondays between nine and ten a.m.

We walk to the top of Canyon Road until we find Trey’s car. He drives us down the hills of Palace Avenue. Summer in Santa Fe and there are sage bushes, lilacs, cherry trees. They lean over the adobe walls, fragrant and beckoning, so we steal fruit, flowers, and then we steal into La Posada, the hotel on the plaza with a long, luxurious pool and a private hot tub.

Trey is three years older. Trey Anderson. Trey “Maverick” Anderson on Facebook. He laughs loudly, nasally, despite our pleas to keep quiet. He is back in town after years of skiing professionally in Idaho. He almost made it. But I can see now, as he sits on the edge of the tub, body steaming as he cools down, the scar on his knee. A torn ACL and the subsequent surgery.

He drives us home and we giggle into our cell phones. He has sent us both goodnight texts and it’s unclear which one of us he prefers. I have in the past kissed a boy and then given him to Lulu, forced him to ask her out instead of me. And then I spent the whole year pining, touching my thigh to his in the library. So I know now not to do that again. I want Trey to myself but I also know, somehow, to be patient, to wait. He is, everyone says, a player. He lost his virginity to an older girl when he was just thirteen and who knows what happened in Idaho.

Lulu’s house is harder to sneak out of but her parents are less attentive. She lives at the top of a steep hill, away from town, in a new house that her dad designed. There are high ceilings, tall windows, and solar panels. Here, we walk right out the front door, but then we skid down the dirt driveway, not wanting any car headlights to wake her parents.

The following weekend, Clay picks us up with Nico. Older, of course, but they are at least still in high school. Lulu sits up front, Clay’s hand on her knee. I sit in the backseat with Nico while he diligently stares out the window, afraid I think that simply making eye contact with me will invite further attention. My palms sweat and I chew the inside of my cheek.

Trey comes to the party, thank god, and he prowls around the kitchen, flirting with almost everyone. Ebony, Paige, Kelsey. But I have heard how the boys talk about these girls. Prudes, they say, and so I build myself in opposition to them. Available and easy. I tell people that I don’t want a relationship, I’m not looking for that anyway. It’s true, in part, if only because I don’t want anything to keep me tied to this town. I am waiting for real life to begin. I want to meet real men, real friends, in real cities.

But Trey is determined to win me over. We kiss at this party, outside, against the house, stucco scraping my bare shoulders, but I refuse, when he asks, to go out on a date.

Lulu goes out with Clay though and I come along. Still in the backseat, still next to Nico who still ignores me. We go to soccer games, beer pong tournaments, the movies. We pour whiskey into coke slushies, and we spend hours in parking lots. On the roof of the movie theater, outside CVS, in the drive-through at McDonald’s. On these nights, I stare up at the sky. I still can’t name any constellations, but I recognize, always, Orion’s Belt, and the Milky Way. I pray for a time after this to come sooner.

In September, Clay breaks up with Lulu because she won’t put out. I text him and he invites me over to watch TV while his parents are out for the day. I have now, finally, my learner’s permit, and I take my mom’s car all the way to El Dorado. He brings me into his bedroom and I straddle him on the couch. This is the year I pierce my cartilage. But we are not allowed to wear jewelry at soccer practice, so I take out the new stud too often. Today, my ear is sore, tender, and when we reposition so we’re side by side, I say Ow. I’m not sure which one of us quits first, but we do not have sex, and I have that feeling that I will get often but that I cannot yet name that I have made him nervous by making so clear what it is that I want.

I drive home, palms moist on the wheel, and then I call Lulu. We talk while I walk along the acequia. Dry now. I kissed Clay, I say, but nothing else happened. Nothing else will happen, I promise. For some reason, I expect her to forgive me, my confession contingent on the fact that he did not choose me either. But instead, she hangs up. She ignores me at school the next day. At soccer practice. At winter formal.

In these quiet months, Trey texts. He is attentive and silly and I cannot leave my phone alone. T9-word as addictive as his flirting. Reading dinner, my dad calls. So while he thumbs through The New Yorker and my mom reads another sad novel — Louise Erdrich, Anthony Doerr, Henry Miller — I stare at my cell phone.

Finally, I acquiesce, agree to go on a single date. My barter: I get to drive. I pick him up at the top of Gonzales. He lives by the Dr. Seuss tree, a tall and spindly pine that leans over the road. He jumps into the passenger seat, willing, and already, he teases me. The hot girls, he says, always have such messy cars.

We get ice cream downtown, gelato from Echo, and we walk up to the Cross of the Martyrs. The path is winding but not steep, the switchbacks make for an easy climb, but I feel silly. How many teenagers have gone on this exact date? How many tourists? From the cross, we can see town, squat adobe buildings capped with farolitos, and a great expanse of sky. There are dense clouds in the distance, the kind of grey that promises rain. But still, the sun pierces through them and it’s shocking. God clouds, I say, though I am still a devout atheist.

He kisses me here, as I assume he’s kissed all of the other girls, and the wind whips, messing up my hair. It gets caught between our lips, but he is patient, laughing. He moves the strands, over and over again, until finally he just holds both sides of my face, creating our own private cocoon. I hadn’t known yet that kissing could feel like this, childish and grown-up all at once.

I agree to see him again but no more dates. We go to parties and we go skiing. He waits for me mid-slope, never rushing. We build pillow forts in his bedroom and we house-sit for his neighbors. In the middle of the night, I make us crêpes, topped with whipped cream and strawberries, and he kisses the side of my cheeks until I am permanently flushed, brimming.

We have sex one week before my sixteenth birthday because I don’t want it to be a big deal. We do it on his floor, instead of on his bunkbed, and I keep my skirt on the whole time. It's Abercrombie. He comes quickly and says, sorry I’m out of practice, and I love this, how he is suddenly re-rendered innocent, no longer this elusive experienced guy.

I get home ten minutes after curfew and my dad is awake. He looks at me strangely, as if he can smell the sex somehow, sense that something has changed, and then it takes me thirty minutes to untangle the rat’s nest at the back of my head.

When spring comes, we lounge around the parks. Fort Marcy, Saint Patrick’s, Atalaya. We eat weed cookies and I get so high that I am immobile. I can only lie on the grass and look up, watch the clouds as they come and go. Later, I will learn how to talk about New Mexico with strangers, with the language of reverence, but for now, all I know is this: an insatiable boredom.

Trey and I go to prom together. He buys me a corsage but I refuse to come over and let his mom take pictures of us. I wear a dress from All Saints, metallic grey, with a deep V-neck and a tight, wire corset. He chews gum all night and he dances with me, uninhibited, spinning me until I’m dizzy and then holding me close. His friends take photos of us, faces pressed together, and when they post them on Facebook, I untag myself from every one.

I want to be unencumbered, I don’t want to be in love. For my junior year, I move to France, live with a host family, attend a public lycée. We break up because what are we really without physical proximity? We Skype, often, but then he starts dating the other Hannah. She is it seems my opposite. Light-hearted and proud to hitch herself to him. On Facebook, photos appear. She wears tiny pink crop-tops, abs visible, and her limbs are always strewn around him.

When I come home, I am teased often. What happened in Fraaaaance, the boys say. I blush and answer earnestly. Nothing, I shrug, but they all think I’m lying. I am though happy to be driving down these roads again – Monte del Sol, Alameda, Old Pecos Trail. I start hiking, for the first time in my life, climbing up Sun Mountain, Picacho Peak, the Borrego trail, anything to avoid coming home after school. My mom has taken to napping all afternoon and the smell of her sleep, the dampness, permeates each room. My dad and I eat dinner at Whole Foods, the Tune-Up, Shohko Cafe, and I notice the sunsets, stark red, even from the parking lots.

The girls at school still won’t speak to me after the Clay incident, so I become friends with a new set of boys, all my age. A senior now and there are no more older guys to sneak me out. Wyatt, Ben, Axel, Graham. They stay up late drinking, playing board games, rolling spliffs. They feel innocent to me and there is something nice in this, a relief, as if I get a kind of do-over.

For Wyatt’s birthday, we spend the day at Abiquiu, water-skiing on the reservoir. The lake is bright turquoise and the surrounding cliffs, a deep burnt orange. We spend the night in a nearby cabin, and I rest my head on him while we smoke around the bonfire. I feel his stomach rise and fall, and when everyone else goes to sleep, I sit on his lap, straddle him, and we kiss. The surrounding woods dissolve and I can feel only the hum of a current moving between us. For weeks, my clothes smell like cedar.

It is the summer before college and I dredge my body through the long sunlit hours. I work at my dad’s store, Design Warehouse, and answer questions about contemporary furniture. Herman Miller, Knoll, Vitra. I learn about the leather, the Italian manufacturers, the long lead times. People ask if I’ll take over the family business, and my dad always yells, from the other side of the store, Hell no! I want my kid to be an artist. Film, food, fashion. Those are things that matter!

At night, I rejoin the boys. We travel as a pack, sleeping at Wyatt’s house one week and Axel’s the next, wherever there are fewer parents. We drink jager-bombs and margaritas, and we dance, screaming, in the kitchens. We raid the bathrooms for oxy and smoke from long, elegant bongs. We watch porn together, not sexually, but passively, the bodies abstracted on TV while we drift in and out of sleep on chaise longues.

Just as I begin to feel comfortable with Wyatt, joining him for family dinner on Wednesdays, pouring through photo albums, accepting jewelry from his mom, I sleep with his best friend instead. I take Axel’s virginity in a hot tub at Bishop’s Lodge. If Wyatt is hurt by this choice, he doesn’t let on, muting only the physicality of our previous flirting, no longer draping his body next to mine.

I still see Trey at parties, bouncing around town. He is louder than I remember and his cheeks more sallow. He chugs a liter of vodka in front of a cheering crowd, and when I find him later, puking in the bathroom, he says Don’t worry, it was just water. He is always dating someone new, one girl or another, and still, I touch his back when I pass him in the hallways, and still, we kiss when no one else is around. For some reason, this never feels like cheating, as if my affection, having come first, gives me a kind of permanent claim, a right to proximity.

I go to college in New York and he stays behind. He gets his GED and becomes a firefighter, an EMT. He moves to Boulder and then back to Santa Fe. I see him over winter break. We eat green chile cheese fries at Atomic and he is thinner than ever before, his face pock-marked, but still, he has dimples, a way of teasing me. Head tickles? he says and he lies down in my lap on the bonco and I brush my hands through his hair.

We have sex in my bathroom, wrapped in the comforter on the tile floor because my bed is covered in clothes, knick-knacks. I am putting everything into boxes, for storage or the thrift store. Now that I’m gone, I can’t imagine ever coming back. The sex is slow and intimate and tender in this way that we only ever sporadically achieved when I was a teenager, as if it was just an accident when it happened back then.

In March, I meet Stanton at a bar on Amsterdam and 110th Street. He is from Idaho and he expects me to make a joke about potatoes, already defensive, but instead, I say, I hear there’s great skiing in Sun Valley. He cocks his head as if he is just now seeing me. We go out for drinks at The Shanty, Radegast, Maison Premiere. He lives in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, in a one-bedroom apartment, and he works in finance, but begrudgingly, having inherited his dad’s consulting firm, and he is a great cook. He roasts chicken, sous-vides salmon, bakes a perfect apple pie.

I bring him to Santa Fe for Christmas and he brings presents for my parents, beautiful art books. Marlene Dumas for my mom, Rothko for my dad. Trey calls. Once, twice, three times. I don’t answer, but I take Stanton up to the Cross of the Martyrs. I had my first real kiss here, I say.

When I’m back in New York, writing a paper on Chantal Ackerman or Maggie Nelson, I get fourteen missed calls. I learn on Facebook before I learn from friends that Trey has died. Our fucking roads. Immediately, I think of all my nights drunk driving, the mornings too — but when I finally reach Wyatt, he tells me that it was suicide. He shot himself on the side of Old Las Vegas Highway.

I do not fly back for the memorial, but my dad goes. He tells me, between tears, that the cathedral overflowed. Your first love, he says.

I graduate and move to Bushwick, my bedroom twenty feet from the elevated Knickerbocker M train. It rattles me awake every hour and I think, someday I’ll be nostalgic for this, but right now, I just want time to pass faster, I want a new life to begin. I break up with Stanton and then find that I have no idea how to cook, how to take care of myself. This obstinance, a refusal to ever enter the kitchen, felt like feminism, but now I only know how to scramble eggs, fry French toast.

I work as a camera loader on set and then an assistant film editor in post. Either way, I spend long hours in dark rooms. Sound stages then edit suites. At first, this is satisfying, nudging each frame until the cut feels right, but then I start to miss the light, a connection to the outside. What am I even doing here?

My parents split up and I fly home to help my dad sell the house. He rents a giant dumpster, iron, the length of our driveway, and he puts everything into it. I try to keep his old love letters, received when he was in his twenties, but when I look for my secret stash, it’s gone. He’s found it and thrown that out too. I beg him to keep the house, plead, but he says we can’t afford it. It needs a whole new roof, and the willow trees are dying anyway. They don’t get enough water from the acequia.

He buys land in Tesuque, twenty minutes outside of town, and starts planning his dream house. I want emptiness, he says, only negative space. Meanwhile, my mom rents a small casita and fills it with clutter. She thrifts side tables, arm chairs, old easels. She sews curtains from re-used bed sheets and the house becomes such a cornucopia of patterns that my eyes don’t know where to rest. Quickly, almost immediately, she falls in love with her neighbor. He has two puppies and three peach trees in his front yard. Together, they make pies, cobblers, jam. She learns how to jar the extra fruit and she tells me, I just love how he lives without creating extra waste.

Back in New York, people ask me about New Mexico. What was it like growing up there? And I answer: Have you ever been to the Southwest, it’s so beautiful. We talk about Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Agnes Martin. I don’t talk about the tattoos I got on Cerrillos Road, across my pelvis and shoulder blades. I do not mention the fake ID I had at fifteen, tucked alongside my learner’s permit, that I used to buy cases of André from Albertsons. There are stories about arroyo parties, running through apache plumes and Indian paintbrushes, trying not to get arrested. Instead, I say Oh yes, the light and It really is an incredible community of artists.

One night, at a bar on Avenue A and 7th, I meet Adrian. He’s an architect and a painter, and he is from Mulvane, Kansas. I find, despite my determination to live in this city, that I only like men who grew up in small towns. He tells me about the train tracks outside of his childhood bedroom and I tell him about the coyotes outside of mine. The bobcats and mountain lions.

When we go back to Santa Fe for Christmas, we stay at La Posada, swim in the long, luxurious pool and soak in the private hot tub. It is uncanny, spending time here as a guest, and I can’t shake that feeling, that fear that I’m about to get in trouble.

Larry gets sick first, my dad, even though my mom is an avid smoker. Two packs a day for forty years. Long Covid, he says, at first, and then, Atrial Fibrillation, once he is properly diagnosed.

For years, he has had an irregular heartbeat and now his body is completely exhausted, each organ overcompensating. The doctors recommend surgery, but he refuses. I don’t believe in Western medicine, he says, but still, he starts taking new meds. Lasix, Metoprolol, Sotalol. He falls asleep at the wheel, crashes the car on Bishop’s Lodge. The airbags deploy and he is lucky that no one else is on the road. He tells me, over the phone, not about the crash, but about the insurance. It’s gone up by four hundred percent!

He comes to New York in August and I take a week off work so we can drive to Long Island. He tells everyone that I work in The Biz. By this, he means the film industry. He doesn’t care that I mainly edit commercials. Heineken, Pfizer, Nationwide. Still, he says, I expect a seat at the Dolby Theater!

We rent a small house in Montauk and we spend our days at the beach. We play paddle ball and we swim, though neither one of us is very strong in the water. Desert dwellers. Adrian paints a portrait of me and Larry on the sand. We’re sitting side by side, reading. He holds the latest Philip Roth biography and I hold a collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin. At night, we go to Balsam Farms to pick up produce or Duryea’s to eat lobster rolls. We take photos by that infamous sign. The End, it reads.

The following year, when we try to recreate the idyllic scene, I’m single and Larry has a new girlfriend. The house we rent is bigger but the sheets are polyester. My skin breaks out in hives, too much fabric softener. He sleeps in late and I go on the early coffee runs by myself. We do not play paddle ball and he takes long naps by the water. I call Adrian, beg him to take the train out. He says, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.

Ann is attentive and nurturing. She brings Larry water and tea. She keeps track of his meds, carries around small pill boxes in her purse. The house in Tesuque is almost done, and together, they pick out furniture, envision how it will all come together. Chickens, Ann says, we’re going to have chickens.

When I fly out for Christmas, Larry does not pick me up at the airport. Instead, I rent a car from Enterprise, eat huevos at Frontier in a booth by myself. When I pull onto I-25, my eyes can’t adjust to the light, the absence of it. The highway is dark and the desert expanse around me, even darker. I try to clean my glasses one-handed, but it’s no use. I see better without them.

The new house is just how he imagined. Sparse. There is one great room and two small bedrooms. It’s like a loft, he says, like Tribeca. He talks about Marina Abramović, the importance of seeing only light and color. The dining table is long and oval, ebonized oak, and there is one couch, facing the fireplace. In each corner, a chair. Rietveld and Judd. Not meant for sitting.

In the morning, we drink coffee on the patio and Ann introduces me to the girls. They call the rooster Noah and all of the hens, Greta. There are only seven eggs today, not twelve, and on closer inspection, we see that one of the chickens has died. That happens sometimes, Larry says, and he bags her up.

We go to the store to check on numbers and say hi to Jon. Up down up down, Larry says, you know, that’s retail. I nod and he pushes the hair back from my forehead, using the palm of his hand, the way he’s done since I was little. You really are a merchant’s daughter, he says.

He goes to the back office to work on payroll and I ask Jon: How’s he doing? Jon is in his mid-thirties, from Farmington, and he speaks with the slightest New Mexican accent. It is so familiar to me, sonically so engraved in the back of my mind, that I always salivate a little while talking to him. He is one of those men who has led many lives in a short time. He worked as a miner at eighteen and then raised another man’s son with his high school sweetheart. Now he is here, engaged for the third time, and working at Design Warehouse, selling four-thousand dollar ottomans. He is meant to inherit the store, take over a percentage each year until they are equal partners. He makes a sign with his hand like más o menos. Tell me, I say.

He’s okay. You know, he’s tired. He comes in late and when he’s here, sometimes, he naps at his desk.

At this desk? I’m sitting on an Aeron chair smack dab in the middle of the store.

Yes, he says, but look at this. From under the desk, he retrieves a box. It’s labeled “nostalgia” and it contains all the clutter he won’t let into the new house. Photographs of my mom, the love letters from his twenties, and at the very bottom, I find, neatly folded, Trey’s hoodie. One I thought I lost when I was in college. I press the cotton to my nose, instinctively, as if the worn fabric will have retained some scent of him after fifteen years. It hasn’t but I let it unfurl. The silk screened icon of a skier. Knees bent at an impossible angle.

Back in New York, I work long hours, clients coming in at five pm, ordering quad espressos. The shape of my days distorts. In Whole Foods, ten minutes before closing, the fluorescent lights strobe. I gather apples, broccolini, endives. Standing in front of the pyramid of all equally unripe avocados, my eye twitches. Too much solitude. Instead of texting my friends, I reach out to an old crush. I send him a song that he used to send me and I write, still good.

Yes, he replies, it is. How are you? He is married now and he has a daughter. But still, he meets me for a walk in McCarren, and still, we start sleeping together again. He reminds me of Trey, his dimples, his irreverent childlike nature, but also, the speed at which he can switch from kindness to cruelty.

In March, I fly out to New Mexico again. The flights are delayed so I spend more time in airports than on planes. LaGuardia. DFW. After three years of black box meds and two cardioversions, Larry has finally agreed to surgery. He is still reluctant though and I can hear the grimace he makes when we talk on the phone, his words bracketed by the sound of air being sucked in through teeth. He tells me that I don’t need to fly out, it’s not that high-risk, and I say, I know, it’s just that I’d rather be at the hospital than staring at my phone. During the procedure, they will cauterize the problematic tissue in his heart, hoping that when it heals, the electrical impulse will return to a normal rhythm.

He fasts the night before and then we drive to St. Vincent’s at six am. We take the main roads. Cerillos, Zia, Rodeo. The sky is pale blue with purple streaks. Georgia clouds, I say, and he agrees. Color like pigment. He has the first slot and this is good. They check us in quickly and then I step out of his small room so that he can undress, put on a hospital gown. Ann puts his shoes, Prada with two inch platforms, into a plastic drawstring bag, and his clothes. Thom Browne pants, high waters, hemmed to show off his ankles, and his pink, Japanese button-down. When I come back inside, he says, I’m always too well-dressed for this town.

He asks for his book, his reading glasses. We wait for the nurse, the anesthesiologist, the second nurse. Each person scans the barcode on his wrist. He doesn’t read, but he keeps Long Island Compromise on his lap while he dozes in and out of sleep. Ann looks at me, and she mouths, I’m so glad you’re here.

They connect him to an IV, give him extra fluids, review, again, which meds he took and which meds he didn’t take in the last twenty-four hours. Ann brings out a printed email from the doctors. She cross references the notes with his many prescription bottles. I know that if she wasn’t here, that would be me.

I step out of the room again so another nurse can shave him. The surgery is laparoscopic, done through small incisions in his neck and groin. The door opens when a doctor enters, leaving it slightly ajar, and I see the nurse as she moves his penis to the side, pulling so the skin is taut where she shaves. The door closes again, latches shut, and I shift the weight between my two feet. I am tired, having not slept much after the flight, and I feel somewhat superfluous. Do I need to be here? Through the door, I hear voices. They’ve made up a song. It has a Motown lilt to it, and they repeat the chorus: Are you ready? Yes, I’m ready! and then my dad lets out his short and infamous woot.

They wheel him on a gurney through the hall and we accompany him to the OR doors. I kiss him first, on the cheek, the way he’s requested I do in the last few years, no more adolescent side hugs allowed, and then Ann gives him a long embrace. He told the nurse that she was his wife, and though they are not married, I understand this lie of convenience.

We wait and hours go by. I drive to Whole Foods, get blueberries, granola, cantaloupe, and finally, there’s a phone call. The surgery went well but he’s having an adverse reaction to the anesthesia. He’s experiencing extreme nausea so they have him in a special room to administer the Promethazine. Maybe in an hour, the nurse says, you can see him.

They tell us to wait in room 602 so we walk over. The hallways are long, windows overlooking parking lots. So much asphalt. The bed is unmade and it smells strongly of antiseptic. When I complain about the sheets, the nurse says, yes, we do that on purpose, so it’s easier for him to get in.

I hear his voice before I see him. Hoarse and gravelly. I need to pee, he says. They wheel him in and the nurse says Sir, please stay still. He ignores her, tries to sit up, but he’s still connected the IV, and the EKG, wires stretching from his chest to another machine. Sir, she says again, sit down.

Hi Daddio, I say. Singsong. He looks towards me but not at me, his eyes bleary and roving, as if he has the spins.

I really need to pee, he says.

I count the hours since we checked in, almost twelve, and all those fluids. The Lasix, his least favorite med, makes it so he has to pee every hour. In New York, when he visits me, his walk changes, turns into a waddle, until he says, I’m just gonna pop in here, when we pass an open restaurant.

Okay, sir, the nurse says, if it’s an emergency, you can pee in this. She holds out a plastic jug. You’re not supposed to stand for another hour, we need your incisions to stop bleeding.

He shakes his head, rises so that he’s sitting on the edge of the gurney. He won’t use the jug in front of me. Okay, sir. They finish disconnecting the wires and she holds his elbow, his shoulder as he gets to his feet. His gown comes undone and I see his tuchus, his skinny, dry legs. The bathroom door shuts and after a few minutes, we hear the sound of urine hitting water.

Back in the bed, he shivers, curls up into a fetal position. Is this normal? I ask the nurse and she nods.

He’ll be okay.

It’s so cold, he says.

Sir, I’m gonna need you to lie on your back please. We need your legs to be straight, to avoid clotting. He repositions but keeps shaking.

Finally, Ann speaks. Do you have any extra blankets?

In the hall.

She comes back with a stack of thin sheets. They’re warm, she says, fresh from the drier. Together, we layer them over him. He still has not been able to look at either of us, and I find this unsettling, the way his eyes shift back and forth, unfocused. The nurse leaves and he curls back into the fetal position. His hair pressed flat against his pale face. Daddio, I say, and he nods. I’m here, I say.

And he replies: I’m just gonna close my eyes. Take a little schluff.

I want to tell him to lie on his back, like the nurse said, and Ann must see this impulse, but she motions to me. It’s okay, let him rest. So we do. We sit side by side on the vinyl couch, turquoise, of course, and the sun sets. The room becomes fluorescent, and finally, he wakes again. The night nurse is here, encouraging him to eat now, order food. She makes a checklist on the white board: input, output, walking.

Ann sleeps on the vinyl and I drive back to the house. I could see friends but I’ve fallen out of touch with almost everyone. I could see my mom but after ten years of sobriety, she’s started drinking again. I walk into the spare house, keeping the lights off until I reach my bedroom, the “guest” bedroom. It is hot in here, stiff with unmoved air, and I open the windows, praying too that the sound of crickets will overwhelm me, but instead, the night is quiet. I text the married man and he sends me a heart. You’re doing great, he writes.

In the morning, I drive back to the hospital and Larry seems better. Glasses on, a book in his lap. He is allowed to check out, but he moves slowly. At home, he shows me, proud almost, the bruises on his thighs. Purple and black and blue. He can’t really be alone, so Ann stays, and I grocery shop, run errands, and go to CVS. The pharmacists there know his name, know mine. You live in Brooklyn, right, honey?

Yes, that’s me.

You’re his number one daughter! He talks all about you.

One and only, I say, repeating the schtick we have done forever.

I cook for us. Arctic char and broccolini. Spaghetti and clams, his favorite. His energy returns, slowly, and he is, it seems, still in sinus rhythm, though he is obsessed with his heart rate, checking, constantly, on his Apple Watch.

When I drive back to the airport, the car sways on I-25. The winds are strong enough to knock a truck over, and most of them, I see, have pulled off to the side. On la bajada, I slow down. Dotting the medians, there are flowers and elaborate memorials.

I try to end things with the married man. You don’t know me, I say, outside of these four walls.

What, he says, do you think you’re defined by your favorite karaoke song? A list of simple pleasures?

No, I say, of course not.

I do know you.

Okay, I say, maybe that’s true, but I’m starting to need more than this, and I feel like my attachment to you is keeping me from meeting someone else.

We’re lying on my bed, face to face, nose to nose, and finally he concedes. If that’s what you want, he says, I want that for you.

We agree to be friends. Lunch, we say, we’ll meet for lunch. And for a while, the resolve holds. We share plates at Superiority Burger, cocktails at Cafe Colette. On one perfect afternoon, he meets me at Gagosian uptown to see the Cy Twombly show.

My dad’s favorite painter, I say. In the first gallery, there are three wall-sized panels. Immediately, tears spring to my eyes and I wipe them away. The paint is a coarse, dark grey and it is streaked with white chalk. The effect, being so close to the canvas, is like sitting next to a window during a thunderstorm.

When we leave, he asks, what was your favorite painting?

A small sketch, I say, the one titled Afternoon in a Garden with Poetry.

Mine too, says.

When we hug goodbye, I sigh into his chest, and he says, Oh, you do still love me.

In the fall, Larry decides to have another procedure. It’s not required but recommended. It’s called a Watchman, he tells me, over the phone. I’m doing dishes after having eaten another meal alone. My neck cramps, the phone balanced between my ear and shoulder, and he goes on. The thing with AFib, he says, is that it really increases your chances of having a stroke. The blood pools, randomly, and then clots. The Watchman, placed in an artery, will keep the clots from entering my blood stream.

Well, I say, that sounds good. I don’t mind eating alone, but the cleaning always gets to me. I call him for company.

Would you be willing to fly out again?

To Santa Fe?

You don’t have to, he says, it was just so nice having you last time.

He brings me to the store, to the back office, and he shows me a filing cabinet. My will is here, he says, you’re the executor.

Okay, I say.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be morbid.

It’s okay.

I just want you to know.

Got it.

Then we drive to the banks, the Credit Union and Goldman Sachs. He does not want me to be the beneficiary of his accounts but the co-owner. May I live a long time, he says, but just in case, this will let you take the money right away. You won’t have to wait.

And the house? I say.

That will go to you, but I’m sure you’ll have to sell it. It still has a mortgage.

And Ann is okay with that?

Yes, she’ll get the furniture.

And the art?

No, that goes to you.

The Reitveld and the Judd?

The chairs go to Ann.

But you said —

Don’t be funny.

Okay, I say. We sit at the Credit Union for a long time. I take off my sweater, overheating. The computer system is slow. There are posters taped all over. Pictures of New Mexico sunsets captured from the car, framed by a rearview mirror.

The surgery goes well and they give him a different kind of anesthesia, intravenous rather than gas. He recovers more quickly and in the morning, when the doctors do their rounds, he says Can I present? Seventy-six year old male with persistent Atrial-Fibrillation, here for a Watchman insertion. Post-op. He is up now, walking around the room, and he draws a self-portrait on the white board. Wily.

In New York, people ask me about the Grand Canyon and White Sands. I tell them that I still haven’t been and they tell me about Tent Rocks, Truth or Consequences, how beautiful the drive is from Santa Fe to Marfa.

One after another, my high school friends move home. Lulu, Wyatt, Axel. They get married and have kids. They buy houses. They become graphic designers and architects and landscape photographers. When I ask my dad if he thinks I’ll ever meet someone again, he says Maybe it’s time to freeze your eggs.

I don’t drink anymore and I take trains more than I drive, but still, when I’m walking at night, I look for the moon. I can rarely see any stars but the prayer remains the same as it always has been.

Larry visits me in the city. He wants to see his old friends from college, men he hasn’t spoken to in fifty years. It feels like a goodbye tour but that feels too sad to say out loud. We get dinner at King in the West Village. We are the first table seated, afternoon light still pressing against the windows. Instead of trading stories about their twenties, they talk about their kids and grandkids. Larry grabs my thigh, hard, and says Hopefully she’s still fertile!

On the train back to Brooklyn, I text the married man, beg him to come over. But he is home. He sends a selfie with his daughter. Bathtime! he writes. It’s not that I think he is available or that I think he ever will be but that I so badly need to be held by someone who has known me for a long time.

Within the year, Larry’s heart falls back into arrhythmia. His exhaustion returns. On the phone, he says, Don’t worry, sweetie, I feel good, really good. Ann’s in the kitchen now, making your radicchio salad. When you have kids, he says, we’ll move to the city. We’ll live right down the street, and we’ll help you.

That sounds good, Daddio, I say, I can’t wait.

Often, I dream about our house on Acequia Madre. Sometimes, the married man is there with his daughter. Come in, he says, and I help his wife unload groceries into the fridge. Other times, it’s filled with strangers, guests who lounge on the lawn, forget to water the rose bushes.

Tonight, I dream about an old man. He swings in a hammock fastened between the willows. The branches creak. Hello, I say, greeting him as though we are familiars. As I approach, I see that his legs are bandaged, that his eyes are covered with thick glasses. I’m getting better, he says, I can feel it. But when I pull back the bandages, I see that his legs are covered in sores, puss-filled and swollen. The smell of his body is acidic, like wilting arugula.

Yes, I say, looking good.

In the early morning, I wake up, and I see not the light of the moon, but the light of Moonburger, a neon sign for the new restaurant by my apartment, and I know, with the certainty of dream logic, the kind of certainty that fades throughout the day, that it’s time to move home.