Wyatt had a whole theory about the construction.
This is where I need you to understand something about Wyatt: he does not experience inconvenience the way other people do. He experiences it as an opportunity to have a theory. The Taos Plaza has been under some version of active improvement for what feels like the entire span of our relationship, and Wyatt has reframed it, positively, at least four separate times. First it was "character." Then it was "you can really see the bones of the space." Last month it was "honestly the temporary fencing gives it a kind of gallery feel." This week, standing in thirty-five degrees with the wind doing whatever it wanted to us, he told me this was "actually the best time to see the plaza" because the tourist crowds hadn't fully arrived yet.
"So we're here early," I said. I was wearing my real coat. Wyatt was wearing a flannel over a long-sleeve, which he had gambled on because his phone had said fifty-three degrees and he had rounded up aggressively in his head.
"We're here first," he said, which is not the same thing but which he said with such conviction that I momentarily forgot that.
The surface work was ongoing. There were sections of new pavement, some shade structure updates going in along the edges, a stretch near the corner that looked like it was in the middle of becoming something better but had not yet finished becoming it. Wyatt stood at the edge of the caution tape and looked at it the way people look at sunsets. "You can really see the vision," he said.
"I'm cold," I said.
"The vision," he repeated, like I hadn't spoken.
We had come down because Wyatt had heard something about a Dennis Hopper Day happening in a couple weeks — Easy Rider rally, film stuff, a whole thing — and he wanted to "get a feel for the energy of the plaza before it gets chaotic." I want to be clear that this is a reason he said out loud with his mouth. Pre-scouting a plaza for a motorcycle rally that was seventeen days away, in weather that was genuinely trying to discourage us.
He had also mentioned something about the BRIC entrepreneurship hub, which I do not fully understand but which Wyatt has already described as "exactly what this town needs" twice, despite neither of us being entrepreneurs or living in Taos.
We are visiting from Albuquerque for the weekend.
At some point he pulled out his phone and showed me a KTAOS Solar Center events calendar — karaoke, volleyball, something called Yappy Hour on the Pawtio — with the energy of a man presenting a comprehensive itinerary he had definitely prepared for me and not just found thirty seconds ago. "We could do the Sunday thing," he said. "Or the karaoke."
"You don't do karaoke," I said.
"I could start," he said.
He was shivering slightly by now. Not dramatically, just in the way where you can see someone's jaw working a little harder than usual and their shoulders have crept up toward their ears. He had his hands in his pockets, which is the flannel-gambler's last resort. I offered him my scarf and he said he was fine and then ten seconds later said "actually yeah okay" and took it.
We got coffee. Wyatt held the cup in both hands and looked back toward the plaza construction with the expression of a man who has had a vision confirmed rather than a man who was slightly underdressed and cold and maybe should have checked the weather more carefully before driving two hours to walk around a work zone.
"Next time we come for the rally," he said, "we'll know exactly where to stand."
I looked at him. He had my scarf. His coffee was steaming. The clouds were doing nothing helpful. A section of fresh pavement gleamed dully under the flat gray light, cones arranged around it with total indifference to Wyatt's interpretations.
"Yeah," I said. "We'll know."
He smiled like that settled it.
I love him. I packed an extra pair of socks and did not offer them yet. That's where we are.