At my wife's insistence, we shopped the art district of town for overpriced candles and curtains. My wife bought a small print for our kitchen. The artist told me that the image of a coffee cup and spoon came from an unidentified internet site. Clearly cheating, I thought.
By sundown the trunks were filled with large white plastic bags, some were paper with rope handles. Because of the amount of shopping, and because I was to meet up with a college friend of mine at an all night diner after shopping, we took separate cars. My wife separated the trunks into things that she wanted to look at at home immediately, and what could wait. The print stayed in my car. I was to buy frame hooks and have it up by the weekend.
I had about an hour to meet my friend, and despite having sore feet from the amount of walking that I had already done, I decided to browse the shops. The art district, also a major tourist attraction, presented various tourist traps. The horseback rides and aerial views. Key chains and license plates with your name printed on them. T-shirts, 2 for $10 or $6.99 each. Photo images with "your picture here" on the arm of a large Marlboro-like cowboy. "Genuine" bottled dirt, sand and rocks from the land, western wear and post cards of western wear. Everything smelled like leather or cedar. The ice cream shop lacked the power to overcome it. The upscale barbeque restaurant even deflected its smoke out and away from passersby, as if barbeque was too lower class to be so advertised, but was fine once decorated around parcely and procelin. Menus outside of restaurants were exotic and expensive. Even the local people had never heard of or eaten the things offered at these places.
I thought about her at her wedding. But all that I could imagine was her wearing a large western dress. It was black, burgundy and grey, maybe something I remember from a movie. She wore black shoes and black lace gloves. She lifted her skirt a little to walk up stairs because walking seemed like an extraordinary ordeal in a dress so elaborate. She seemed to be walking up the stairs in frustration, as if determined to punch someone for taking away the deed to her family land or something. Maybe this wasn't her I was imagining at all but some character in another story, because I had a difficult time picturing her face on the dress.
The art district was active only in two sections at this late hour, the bar, The Can-Cantina, and the local art gallery. Both were interchangeable as beer, wine and artichoke hearts were consumed in both spaces and patrons crossed the street that divided the two. The Can-Cantina was an outdoor, live music bar. The art gallery was well lit inside, with room for shadows in other areas that seemed to intentionally offset the brightness of the lights which focused on the art. I checked my watch, then I suddenly saw her there drinking an exotic beer I hadn’t heard of and standing in a group of people. She was swaying slightly. I walked into the gallery and bought a $3.00 beer and kept my eye on her. She caught my eye, and we looked at each other. She looked back at her group but was smiling now, or mildly laughing. I wanted to think it was because she had seen me, but I wasn't sure if she'd just laughed at what someone was saying. Her art work was mostly photography based prints of the city’s "old" buildings. She was taking advantage of tourist themes too. Tourists bought images of these buildings to mail home to loved ones to get them to try to understand their new or temporary environment, or hung them on their wall to remind them of the time that they were on vacation.
Because the prints were in black and white, they did well to emphasize the new buildings attempt at appearing to be filled with historic value. She focused mostly on the "general store" and the few mountain scenes. She had some kind of watercolor print also, a beach scene that looked like what you would see at a getaway condo. There was one abstract painting she created on display. I wanted to see clues in all of this, hints where she was trying to tell me that these paintings were of me or about me. Something that would let me know that she had always thought about me, or at least had been thinking about me.
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