Revelation

by Wilson, Carter;

  Coyote chuckled and offered his best politician’s grin. “No sex,” he said. “Let’s just hang out. I want to ask you some questions.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The motel was three blocks down the street from the bar. We headed there after stopping at a nearby liquor store. Coyote was insistent, though my heart wasn’t really into drinking more. Coyote always wanted the people around him well lubricated, and looking back on it all now, it makes sense. You have a lot more power when you’re the only sober one around.

  The motel dated back to the fifties and hadn’t received more than a few coats of paint and, God willing, new bedsheets since that time. There were a handful of similar places around Wyland, and all of them lived and died on university demand. This one seemed to be on the death side of that seesaw.

  Coyote checked in, paying forty-three bucks for the night. The four of us walked into a small room reeking of cigarette smoke and disinfectant. Two double-beds and a faded yellow chair with a Rorschach-test stain on the fabric occupied most of the space. I didn’t know where to sit so I remained standing, mute, my hands buried deep in the pockets of my old Army jacket.

  Coyote removed the bottle of tequila and the four shot glasses he’d bought.

  He poured out the shots along the top of the television and gestured for each of us to grab a glass. Jacob fiddled with an ancient heating unit, trying to warm the cold room. His last act before finally giving up was punching it twice on the control panel, then grunting like a confused ape.

  “I need to check in,” Trina said, her confidence seeming to fade. She picked up the phone next to the bed and asked, “Okay if I make a call?”

  “Go right ahead,” Coyote said.

  She dialed out and lowered her head as she told someone the name of the motel and that she wouldn’t be taking any more appointments that night. She answered a few questions with either a yes or no, and then finally whispered “three hundred.” After hanging up, she grabbed a shot glass and threw the tequila back. “I’m not sure how many of these I’m going to have,” she said. “You can understand I don’t want to be completely out of control here.”

  “Of course,” Coyote said, downing his own shot. This surprised me a bit, but I was guessing he wouldn’t be drinking too much more. I had still never seen him drunk.

  Jacob and I drank ours as well. I don’t know if I could tell you the difference between a five- and fifty-dollar bottle of tequila, but this stuff was smooth, or at least good enough to make me reconsider not drinking more tonight.

  “Who were you checking in with?” I asked. They all looked at me, seeming startled that I finally said something.

  “My agency. I always need to tell them where I am.”

  “So were you at the bar just . . . looking?”

  “No. I don’t do that. I’m not a street walker.”

  I could feel my face redden. “I . . . I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t know how . . .”

  “That guy at the bar—the one you got into it with—he called my agency and asked for me. I met him at the bar, and we were going to go to his place after.” She reached into her purse and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. The ceiling seemed used to it.

  Jacob said, “So that guy was your John and you blew him off to come with us?”

  She sighed. “I’ve seen him a couple of times before. He pays well, but he’s not the most . . . respectful guy out there. He’s heavy with the coke. I think he deals it to different campuses. I just wasn’t in the mood for his shit tonight, and by the time you came up I was looking for an excuse to get out of there anyway. Life’s too short, you know?”

  I turned to Coyote. “So when did you learn Spanish, anyway?”

  He smiled. “Here and there. I know enough to get by.”

  Jacob said, “More than that, how the hell did you know where he was from?”

  “Lucky guess, mostly. He called you a cuca, which they use in Colombia to call someone a pussy.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “I just know things.”

  He didn’t say it to be elusive or arrogant, but more of a surprised statement. As if he thought everyone was like him, sponges soaking up every piece of information and retaining it forever.

  “Impressive,” Trina said. “And what did you say to him? I was a little worried those boys were going to mess you up.”

  “It was nothing,” Coyote said.

  Trina smiled. “Come on.”

  Coyote shrugged, then stood silently for a few seconds. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  He looked at all three of us, each for a few seconds, before landing his gaze on Trina. She crossed her arms as she smoked, making herself smaller. “I told him I was a stranger in town and no one knew who I was,” Coyote said. “I said I had a gun in my car and I would wait for him to leave the bar, and then I would kill him. No regrets. No conscience. I would then just disappear, and the police would never find me. And he would be fucking dead.”

  “Holy shit,” Jacob whispered. “Did you really tell him that?”

  “I did.”

  “You’re crazy,” I mumbled just a little too quiet for anyone else to hear.

  “What made him believe you?” Jacob asked.

  Coyote looked at him. “What makes you think I was lying?” He poured four more shots.

  “Okay, you’re freaking me out now.” Jacob took a step closer to Coyote. “Do you really have a gun in your car?”

  “I do.”

  I was the first to consume the second shot.

  Trina lifted her glass but did not drink. She just stared intently at Coyote. “What’s your name?”

  “Coyote.”

  “Like the dog?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  “So, Coyote, would you have really killed him? Over me?”

  “Of course not. I don’t even know you.”

  She seemed suddenly confused, and I filled the silence. “What kind of gun is it?”

  “Smith and Wesson M-and-P forty caliber.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Define ‘good.’”

  Trina finally took her second drink, slamming it back with the skill of someone who had done many shots in her young life. Jacob followed suit, coughing after swallowing it down.

  “What am I doing here?” she asked. “You didn’t rent a hotel room just to have a conversation with me.”

  “Why not?” Coyote asked. “What makes you less human that we can’t desire to spend nonsexual time together?”

  “Because that’s not how it works in my world.”

  “Maybe you need to spend some time in a different one, then.”

  Coyote’s earlier confession came back to me then. About his need to consume people. This is what he was doing with Trina. He wanted to control the situation. He didn’t want sex—it didn’t interest him if that’s what she was paid to do. He wanted to make her vulnerable, unbalanced. And paying her not to have sex did just that.

  Jacob fell back into the yellow chair. “I don’t really know what we’re doing here, either. I wanted to hook up.”

  “At the cost of getting all our asses kicked,” I said.

  “You still can hook up, Jacob.” Coyote put a hand on Trina’s back. “You just need to pay for it.”

  “I’m not paying for it.”

  “Then we need something else to entertain us.” Coyote poured another round of tequila, but not for himself.

  “It’s your money,” Trina said. “I don’t care if we do each other’s nails and watch TV.”

  I smiled. Something about Trina was growing on me, and I was glad she wasn’t in that bar anymore. When we first came into the motel room, I had the sinking feeling something regrettable was going to happen. I didn’t want anyone having sex with Trina, least of all Coyote. Now, although I wasn’t sure what we were going to do in the room, I knew it would be all right.

  Trina took another drink, an
d I sensed that alcohol was a problem for her. Less than ten minutes had passed since she wanted to be in control, and in about fifteen more she would be far from it. She swung her hair back. “You wanted to ask me some questions?”

  Coyote nodded and thought for a minute. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “How long have you been an escort?”

  “Eight months.”

  “You like it?”

  She put her glass down on top of the TV set, a dribble of tequila forming a ring around the base of the glass. “Sometimes it’s okay, but it usually sucks. And sometimes it’s fucking horrifying.”

  “How much money you make in a month?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’m paying for your time. You don’t like sex with strangers, so you should be happy all I want to do is ask some questions.”

  She pulled a strand of hair back behind her ear, and the light from the dirty lamp caught her face in such a way I could see how much makeup she was wearing. “Enough to pay my bills.”

  “How many appointments a day?” he asked.

  “One. Sometimes two.”

  “How much does the house get?”

  “Half.”

  “What’s the worst experience you ever had?”

  The alcohol seemed to be working itself through Trina’s system because her defensive posture started to relax. She sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs, remaining there for a long time. Then: “Third client. Guy from Morgantown. Huge, hairy guy. Probably three hundred pounds. Didn’t shower at all, and I was too scared of him to ask. When we were done, I went to the bathroom and threw up.”

  Coyote remained silent. We all did.

  “What about you?” she finally asked Coyote.

  “What about me?”

  “What kind of whore are you? What would you do for money?”

  “I have more money than I already know what to do with,” he said. “That makes it difficult to be motivated by it. But I do find it interesting to consider the impact of money.”

  “Like what?”

  He set his shot glass down, and I think I was the only one paying attention to the fact he hadn’t refilled it. “I don’t know how much money you need,” he said, “but you must need a lot in order to start escorting. I imagine I could write you a big enough check to change the course of your life. I wouldn’t miss it. My father probably wouldn’t even notice.”

  She looked up and her eyes opened more fully than I’d seen all evening. “You would do that?”

  “Of course not. I don’t even know you. But it’s interesting to think I could.”

  Her eyes faded. “You’re just an asshole, you know that? Is that your deal? You like the power trip?”

  “More than anything,” he said.

  She folded her arms and thought for a moment. “That gun in your car. You ever use it on anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you have it?”

  “Just in case.”

  “You think you could actually kill someone if you had to?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That old motel room became as silent as an abandoned house.

  Trina studied him, and I don’t think she was afraid of Coyote. In fact, I think she was less tense than Jacob and I were.

  Then she said, “You have, haven’t you?” She leaned forward and stared at his unblinking eyes. “You’ve killed before.”

  I thought she was joking, but I could see in her expression she wasn’t. I got the sense Trina had seen the eyes of a monster before, and she recognized the look in Coyote.

  Coyote pulled his gaze from her for the first time and stared at the floor. An electric buzz seemed to flow through the room, and my fingers began tingling with an almost painful heat. I became vaguely aware I was holding my breath.

  Coyote picked up the bottle and took a swig directly from it, something I’d never seen him do. So much for him needing everyone else drugged but not himself. He put it back and then went and sat down next to her on the bed. Jacob watched them from his chair, and I remained standing next to the bed, frozen.

  “Not with a gun.”

  Jacob’s voice suddenly burst through the room. “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true,” Coyote said.

  “Come on,” I offered. “You haven’t.” I was really hoping it wasn’t true.

  “I have.”

  “It must have been an accident.”

  “Sort of.”

  Trina didn’t back away from him. “Tell me,” she said. Not tell us, but tell me.

  Coyote leaned forward and placed his forearms on the tops of his legs and interlaced his fingers. Several seconds passed before he spoke.

  “I was thirteen. On a camping trip with my dad in Virginia, in one of those state parks that people get lost in all the time, they’re so big. It was summer, and the heat was unbearable. I never understood why we had to go camping when it was so goddamn hot. My dad didn’t even like camping. Or me, for that matter. But my mom had been dead for years, and my dad was always trying to find new ways to apologize for that. Camping was one of them.”

  Coyote had told me his mom died in a car crash. I wondered why Coyote’s dad had to apologize for her death, but I didn’t interrupt.

  “We were there four days. Just the two of us. We’d wake up in the morning, my dad would cook something up for us, and we’d spend most of the morning hiking. Fishing in the afternoon, usually. It was boring as hell. I think we were supposed to be bonding, but we always drove back home in silence. We never had anything to say.”

  Coyote sighed and took another pull from the bottle.

  Was all this some sort of act?

  He removed the bottle from his lips and gestured if anyone else wanted any, but no one moved. He wiped his lower lip with an index finger and continued.

  “One morning my dad wasn’t feeling well, so he slept in. I made myself breakfast and headed out on my own. We had an expensive walkie-talkie set, so he could always contact me. I just began walking through the woods, making sure I kept a line in my head on which direction I’d come from. I was just walking. Nothing more. Just walking.

  “After about an hour I met another kid. Redhead kid. About fifteen. Pretty amazing I ran into anyone, actually, since I was offpath. He was throwing rocks at a squirrel in a tree when he saw me. After a minute or so, he gave up and started talking to me. His name was Paul, but he said his friends called him Paul. I guess it was some kind of lame joke, but he laughed a lot at it. I remember that. I remember how the patches of freckles bunched up when he laughed at his own stupid fucking joke.

  “He was camping with his parents at a site on the other side of the lake from ours, and he’d been walking around by himself all morning. His parents just let him wander off. I mean, he was far away from his camp—much farther than I was from mine—and his parents had no idea where he was. ‘How do they contact you?’ I asked. He just looked at me and laughed, those freckles bunching up again. ‘They don’t, Mickey. I just show back up when I feel like it.’ He kept calling me Mickey. I don’t know why. I told him my name was Wiley, and he just kept calling me Mickey.

  “At that point my dad called me to check in, his voice crystal clear over the walkie-talkie. I told him I was fine, and he told me to come back soon. I was thinking about turning back anyway because something about this kid bothered me.”

  Coyote bowed his head again, like someone on the business end of the confessional booth. He continued.

  “I told Paul I had to leave and I started to walk away, but he told me to wait. I asked him why, and then he told me he wanted my walkie-talkie. I didn’t understand, because the only person he could call on it was my dad, but then I realized he just wanted it. Not to use right then. But to keep. He wanted to take away my fancy Sharper Image walkie-talkie, the one my dad bought just for this trip. I told him no. That’s when he tackled me.

  “He was heavier and stronger than me, and seconds aft
er he knocked me over, he had me pinned down. He grabbed the walkie-talkie and threw it to the side. After that, he just started hitting me. No reason at all. He had what he wanted. He could have gotten up and left. But he wanted to hurt me. I couldn’t move, and he just wanted to throw some pain my way. He couldn’t hit the squirrels, so he was going to hit me.”

  Coyote took a deep breath, and Jacob and I exchanged looks. Was any of this true?

  “I screamed,” Coyote continued. “Yelling at him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He wasn’t laughing, but his eyes were wide with excitement. Every time he punched me, his thick, rust-colored hair flung back and forth over his head. His teeth were crooked, and two of them jutted forward, like they’d be perfect for opening cans. I stared at his ugly fucking face as he beat the hell out of me on the forest floor.

  “At one point I stopped feeling pain and real fear set in. This wasn’t a boyhood fight, I was thinking. I’d had a few of those. This was serious. He was going to keep punching me until either he exhausted himself or I died. One of those things was going to happen in a matter of minutes if I didn’t do anything.

  “I swung at him, but my arms weren’t long enough to reach his face, and he just dodged my swings and dug in with his own fists. Finally, I laid my arms to the side and I found a rock. About the size of an apple, but not round like that. Sharp, like it had just broken off something bigger. I picked it up, and with just the little strength I had left, I threw it at him. It was a great shot. It smashed right in the middle of his forehead. He fell right off me and rolled onto his back.”

  He paused.

  “It was self-defense,” I said, my voice sounding weak and soft in the room. Coyote looked up at me.

  “It isn’t over.”

  Trina was now looking vacantly at the wall behind Coyote, and I had no idea what she was thinking. I turned to Jacob, and from the expression on his face I could tell he no longer wondered if Coyote was bullshitting.

  “The kid was still conscious. He stared up at the trees with a vacant look on his face, a large red knot forming on his forehead. There wasn’t any blood. Not yet. No blood. Just a big red welt.

  “He didn’t move. His arms. His legs. Anything. The only things moving were his eyes, back and forth. I got up and picked up the rock and stood over him. I could taste blood in my mouth. I could hardly breathe from all the punches he put into my stomach, but I was so goddamn full of rage I couldn’t walk away. I had to look at him, you know? I had to look at this boy who tried to kill me. As I stared down at him, his eyes finally stopped moving and stared directly at me. He was wheezing from exertion. ‘I’m going to kill you now, Mickey’, he said. ‘Give me a second and then I’m going to kill you.’