I took the Saint Francis exit to Cerrilos Road and continued through the southern part of Santa Fe, which seemed not much different from any other small city, with shopping centers and auto dealers and gas stations and the type of businesses that hug highways. Melinda Waters’s office was listed on a street called Paseo de Peralta, and my reading of the map I’d grabbed at the rental counter put that right off Cerrilos. But the address numerals didn’t check out and I followed the signs north to City Center and the Plaza and suddenly we were in a different world. Narrow, winding streets, some of them cobbled, forced me to reduce my speed as I rolled past diamond-bright, one-story adobe and Spanish colonial buildings plastered in sienna and peach and dun and gold. Pools of melting ice glistened like opals. The luxuriant trees that lined the road had managed to shrug off all but reminiscent flecks of snow, and through their branches streamed the sky’s blue smile.

Different businesses filled the north side: art galleries, sculpture and glass studios, gourmet cookware emporia, purveyors of fine foods, high-fashion clothing and hand-hewn furniture, custom picture framers. Cafés and restaurants never tainted by corporate logos abounded, promising everything from Southwestern to sushi. SUVs were the steeds of choice, and sinuous, happy people in jeans and suede and boots that had never known the kiss of manure crowded the sidewalks.

We reached the central plaza, a square of tree-shaded green set up with a bandstand and surrounded by low-rise shops, drove past a covered breezeway where a couple of dozen down-parkaed Indians sat behind blankets of silver jewelry near the Palace of the Governors. Across the square was a massive blocky structure of fieldstone that seemed more European than American. More restaurants and galleries, a couple of luxury hotels, and suddenly Paseo de Peralta had disappeared.

“Very pretty,” said Milo, “but you’re going in circles.”

At Washington Avenue, in the shadow of a salmon pink Scottish Rite temple, I spotted a white-haired couple in matched shearling jackets walking an English sheep dog that could’ve supplied the garment’s linings, and asked directions. The man wore a plaid cap, and the woman’s hair was long and braided and gray and set off by silver butterflies. She wore the kind of makeup meant to convey no makeup at all, had crinkly eyes and a ready smile. When I showed her the address she chuckled.

“You want the northern part of Paseo de Peralta—it horseshoes at the Plaza. Herb, where’s this address, exactly?”

The man shared her mirth. At least I’d made someone happy. “Right there, my friend—just up the block.”