SUN BEAMS:..."Christmas In New Mexico"...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

SANTA FE, New Mexico |...Monique had finished stringing the new Christmas lights full-across the fence by the time Patrick came home from feeding the cows in the Back-40 pasture.

"Nice," he'd said to her as they stood in their small kitchen, both looking out the small window toward the property's aging back fence.

And then she'd let out a whoop and a holler when she plugged the extension cord into an electrical outlet and the lights had burst forth as if some collection of energized lightning bugs. This would be their first Christmas together after a tumultuous romance that had seen Monique split for Texas and stay there for almost a year.

Patrick had gone after her and even survived a weird crash on a Texas highway, but their reunion had gone badly and he'd come home to New Mexico by himself. Monique had left her mother's house west of Fort Worth and taken a waitress job at a Dallas country & western honky tonk bar.

The moon had worked wonders and she'd one day up-and-driven herself back to his place.

Here, they busied themselves at being nice and warmy to each other, Patrick loving her as much as he'd ever loved her and Monique working him over with her kind of love, the best kind, is what she would have said about it.

"Christmas concert in town tomorrow night," he was telling her as she began to tidy-up the kitchen ahead of supper.

"We should go," she replied, nodding.

Patrick no longer wondered about his coming weeks and months. His feeling was he'd been alone long enough, and Monique coming back was some sort of strong signal that by his side is where she belonged.

"By the way, what's for dinner?" he asked, not really caring about what she might be serving.

"Check out the crock pot," she told him. Pot roast was his favorite supper during the winter months.

"And for dessert?" he asked, getting only a sexy wink, which told him everything he needed to know, about her and about her love for him...

-30-

[EDITOR'S NOTE:...This one from a pile of short stories written when I was in lovely New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment...]