The moment we drove over the cattle guard, a beat-up truck materialized out of road dust and pulled in front of us. The wizened rancher-type driving it didn’t need to say anything. In fact, he didn’t get out of the truck. 

We practically glowed in that New Mexican dusk—two gringas in a snow-white Toyota. Interlopers. There was nothing to say.

We had been to the Ghost Ranch that was open to the public, but that wasn’t where she lived. We spent days trying to figure out where the real house was, the one with the door she painted. 

It was a Thelma-and-Louise kind of trip. Spur of the moment. Utterly impractical. I was trying to punish B. He was never going to leave his wife. My therapist said that’s my MO—I only choose unavailable men.

When O’Keeffe met Stieglitz, he was married. He left his wife and children to be with her.

I needed different—different colors, different smells, a different angle to the light. I needed to be somewhere vastly different, and New Mexico delivered on that with its flat open spaces, ochre dirt, and sage brush. 

What Nikki was running from wasn’t clear. But with the way she popped Xanax, clearly there was at least one demon chasing her.

We searched for the Lawrence tree. We haunted Abiquiu. We even questioned the young girl working the desk at the inn. She acted like she had no idea what we were asking. 

We had spent days trying side roads off Highway 84, and when we found the compound, we didn’t even have the chance to look around. Of course the place was guarded.

The spark didn’t last for O’Keeffe and Stieglitz. They flamed out. He took another lover. She seemed more prolific without him, maybe even happier, painting in New Mexico and Lake George. But it is hard to tell anything from the outside of a marriage.