Coyote Dreams

Lecture given, I shoved off Petite’s hood. Morrison got between me and the driver’s-side door, not quite touching me, his eyebrows drawn down in concern.

“Walker?”

“Do me a favor, Morrison, and forget I said that, okay?”

“I’m not sure I should.”

“Dammit, boss. Please.” I turned my face away, looking at the wheel well of the car next to my Mustang. Someone had put hollowed-out, spinning hubcaps on a Subaru station wagon, which seemed a lot like gilding a potato peeler. “It’s not what you’re thinking, okay?” I said to the Subaru.

“Are you sure?”

I sighed, looking back at Morrison. Sunlight made his eyes a ridiculously clear blue, even as he squinted into it to see me better. “Yeah, Morrison, I’m sure.” I didn’t want to say the word we were both thinking. It was ugly and scary, and besides, it hadn’t happened, despite my horrible phrasing. I edged around it with “Nobody hurt me, I promise. Not physically. And who gets this far in life without some emotional scars, anyway, right?” I even managed to dredge up a crooked little smile, just because Morrison looked so damned concerned. If he’d been someone else— if I’d been someone else—I’d have put my hand on his cheek and kissed him for fussing. But we were both ourselves, so all I said was, “Okay?”

After a long silence he nodded and stepped back. “All right, Walker. If you say so.” He walked around Petite’s wrinkled back end while I unlocked my door and climbed into her oven-hot interior to unlock the passenger door. Morrison put the drum in the back again, and I pulled out of the parking lot, concentrating on driving so I didn’t have to talk. Morrison didn’t push it, and the ride went as it always did when he and I were in a vehicle together: in silence.

I was the one who broke it, as we climbed out of the car back at my apartment building. Morrison nodded as he got out, a dismissal if there ever was one, but I reached across Petite’s roof and said, “Captain.” He hesitated and curiosity won out, making him turn to look at me again. “Thanks for getting me this morning. I’m sorry I wasn’t more help with Billy, and I’m sorry if I made things awkward with his brother.”

A faint smile curled the corner of his mouth. “What do you want, Walker?”

I ducked my head and breathed a laugh. “Nothing. I just wanted to say thanks. And…” I made a fist of my hand and bounced it lightly against Petite’s roof, twice. “That’s all.” I met Morrison’s eyes with a brief smile and shook my head. “That’s all.”

He waited a long, long moment before nodding. “You’re welcome.”

I watched him walk away, wondering just how much research he’d done on me, after I’d confessed Joanne Walker wasn’t my real name. I knew he’d done some. I would have, too, in his position. I just didn’t know how much. Maybe the flash of concern had been because he knew a lot more about me than I thought anybody west of the Carolinas or north of the Mason-Dixon line did.

Or maybe it was because Morrison was a decent man and I’d chosen unfortunate words at the hospital parking lot.

Either way, I’d just let the best opportunity I might ever have to find out go, throttled by anxiety and my own unwillingness to talk, think or act on my past. Someday I was going to have to turn around and face all of the crap piling up behind me. A lot of people had told me that recently.

It was the first time I’d ever said it to myself, though.

I sighed, thumped Petite’s roof again, got my drum and went upstairs to see who was left in my apartment.

Tuesday, July 5, 11:40 a.m.

The answer was an anticlimactic nobody. There was a note from Mark on top of the box of doughnuts Gary’d brought, which said Maybe we could get to know each other in a less Biblical sense over dinner, and had a phone number written on it. I crumpled the paper and dropped it in the trash, then got a maple bar out of the doughnut box.

Beneath the maple bar was another note that said Take his number out of the garbage, you crazy dame, and call him. I laughed out loud and went to pick up the phone as I crammed half the doughnut into my mouth. It was after eleven, which meant Gary was at work by now, driving his cab. The old man had changed work schedules so he’d be able to play drummer boy for me every morning. I didn’t know how I’d ended up with friends that good.

I got Keith, the guy who manned the phones, on the line, and asked him to have Gary call me when he had a chance. I’d sent Keith flowers once for taking a message, and since then his surly mood always took a turn for the cheerful when we talked.

Gary called as I lay on the couch, polishing off a third doughnut and feeling like a bloated warthog. “Did you read the note he left me?” I demanded without saying hello.

“’Course I did. Had ta let myself back in to do it, too. You ate the maple doughnuts, didn’t you?” He sounded proud of himself. I laughed and dragged myself off the couch. Talking on the phone always made me want to walk around. That was safe with the kitchen phone, but the one in the bedroom had a cord, and I’d half killed myself with it more than once.

“Yes, I ate the maple doughnuts, and, Gary, how did you let yourself back in? I know I haven’t given you a key.”

“Gotcha an apple fritter, too,” Gary said. “An’ I wrote down his phone number, so even if you didn’t take it outta the garbage like I told you, I’m still gonna leave it lyin’ around your apartment.”

“I ate it, too. I’d think you were my dating service, except I don’t think they’re supposed to fatten you up for the kill.”

“Three doughnuts ain’t gonna fatten you up, Jo. You should give him a call.”

“Can’t,” I said. “Isn’t one of those dating-rules things that you’re not supposed to call for three days, or something?” There was nothing interesting in the kitchen except more doughnuts, and I couldn’t face eating another one just yet. I wandered across the apartment toward my bedroom.

“That’s after the first date, Jo, not after you went to bed with the guy.”

I winced. “I don’t think seventy-three-year-olds are supposed to say things like that, Gary.”

“Darlin’, this old dog says plenty he ain’t supposed to. How’s Holliday?”

I winced again and sat down on the edge of my bed, pulling a pillow out from under the neatly arranged covers to hug it against my chest. It smelled like Mark. I thought augh again and got up to go stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. “Still sleeping. Something’s keeping me from waking him up. I was going to do some research and see what I could find about sleeping sicknesses.” The woman in the mirror looked just like she had yesterday. Short black hair, warmly tanned skin, hazel eyes. Scar on her cheek, generous nose scattered with a few freckles, all the same things I expected. I knew her pretty well. She wasn’t the kind of woman who got drunk and slept with men she didn’t know. Hell. She didn’t even sleep with men she did know. Arm wrestling, as Mark had mentioned, now that sounded like my style. I rubbed my biceps absently, still staring at myself in the mirror. He must’ve gone really easy on me, if I wasn’t sore.

Sore.

Something pinged at the back of my mind and I moved to the bathroom doorway, looked toward my bed. “I didn’t sleep with him.” There was a sort of fluting laugh to my voice, a sound of childish relief. I could all but hear Gary blinking at me.

“What?”

“I didn’t sleep with him. I mean, we didn’t have sex.” I sat down hard in the doorway, my legs no longer eager to hold me. “Jesus.”

“You gonna tell me how you came to that conclusion, Jo?” Gary sounded wary. I laughed, the same high sound as before.

“I haven’t had sex in ages, Gary. I’d be sore.” My heartbeat had jumped up to about a zillion miles an hour, making a lump of sickness that tasted like apple fritter in my throat. I didn’t know relief could feel so awful. “I’d be sore and I’d be sticky and I haven’t taken a shower this morning and I’m not either of those things and so I didn’t have sex with him. Oh, thank God.” For some reason I was ice cold and shaking.

There was a profound silence that suggested that old dog saying things he shouldn’t or not, I had perhaps overstepped the bounds of friendship with that particular announcement. I was about to apologize when he said, “Kinda glad to hear it, sweetheart. Didn’t really seem like your style.”