Paper Thin

Nanette wakes up at seven-fifteen, looks out the window, and tries to convince herself that today will not be so gray and cloudy if she can just doze off for another couple hours. Outside it is late Southern fall, but Nanette wishes for Spring in the desert, when everything is just starting to bloom – the first neon pink flower on a cactus, the first pansies, fashioned into hotel logos surrounded by fountains. As soon as she thinks of those transplanted flowers, she remembers how They see each mountain vista as a future luxury condo, each “scrubby” desert acre as a potential mall or golf course. Her Phoenix has long ago been flattened or gentrified, rebuilt and expanded. The first and last time that she and Matt visited her parents there, Nanette wondered aloud if the only mountains people bothered to look at anymore were the crappy renderings…