“I mean, Coyote’s barely ever mentioned his father to me. It just seems so unreal.” Then she paused. “All of this does, really.”
“Emma, when you see him, don’t tell him about the FBI, or that I went digging around about his dad.”
“Of course not. And, Harden, you know I hardly see him anymore. We’re basically broken up.”
But not broken up enough to let our relationship be public, I thought.
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that . . . there’s some really weird stuff going on, and I don’t know how it’s going to end. I just want to control this part of it, okay? I want to . . . to control something.”
I heard the front door to the apartment open and close.
“Gotta go,” I whispered. “See you tomorrow?”
“Of course, love.” The phone disconnected.
She called me love.
* * *
I walked out into the living room and found Coyote sitting on the couch, reading the Old Testament. Coyote was a different man now, and there was no longer a casual air between us.
“Where’s Jacob?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, briefly looking up at me. “Where did you go after the meeting?”
I felt a brief rush of panic. Had he seen me with Barrillo?
“Came here,” I said.
He mumbled something that sounded like dismissive agreement.
“That was . . . pretty amazing,” I said. He looked up again. “At the meeting. How did you do that thing with the tree?”
Coyote slowly closed the Bible after dog-earing the page he was on.
“How do you think I did it, Harden?”
His gaze bored into me, and I wondered what it was he saw.
“I don’t know. It looked pretty real.”
“What makes you think it wasn’t real?”
At that moment Derek walked in. His entrance startled me, but I welcomed it. Derek was the only thing normal happening in our apartment.
“Hey,” he mumbled, setting his backpack down. He had probably been with a study group. Exactly what I should have been doing, instead of watching a circus performance, being interrogated by the FBI, researching Coyote’s father at the library, then secretly transcribing every moment of all of it. I suddenly yearned for homework.
“Derek,” Coyote said. “You weren’t there tonight.”
He stared down at Coyote. “I heard about it.”
Coyote smiled. “Really? From whom?”
“Another guy from the lacrosse team was there. I saw him afterwards. Told me all about it.”
“And what was his impression?”
“He thinks you’re trying to scam people.”
“Scam? I didn’t ask for money.”
“Not yet,” Derek said. “I told him it was all a big joke, anyway.”
The smile faded in an instant. “Derek, I can assure you that what I am doing is not a joke.”
At this point, Derek would normally have shrugged off Coyote and gone to his room. This time, however, he took a step toward him. “Look, I don’t really give a shit what you do, okay? You pay your share of the rent and you’re hardly ever here, so what more could I ask for?”
“Exactly,” Coyote said.
“But you pulled Jacob into this stupid thing of yours. He’s dropped out for the semester and he’s off the lacrosse team. The kid is walking around here glazed-eyed and distant, and that’s when I even see him. Half the time I have no clue where the hell he is.” His voice grew louder. “His parents are calling me wondering what’s going on, and I can’t tell them anything because I have no fucking idea. All I know is that he’s not graduating this semester because of you.”
Coyote stood.
“He’s his own man, Derek. I don’t make decisions for him.”
Derek took another step forward. “Yes, Coyote. You do. You know you do.”
“You place too much significance on me.”
I saw Derek squeeze his fists before he turned to me. “Tell him, Harden. You’ve known Jacob longer than him. Tell him how Jacob’s thrown away his life because of this stupid experiment Coyote is trying. You’ve seen the changes. Everyone has.”
It was true. Everything Derek was saying was true. While I had never put much stock in Jacob, he at least was someone who had stayed on the path on which he was supposed to be. His life was written for him, and after school he would pass the bar and work for his father. He used to talk about that path all the time. Now that path was overgrown with weeds, and Jacob had strayed far into some other territory.
My momentary silence seemed to enrage Derek further.
“What the fuck, Harden? Are you so far up Coyote’s ass that even you don’t see what’s going on?”
Coyote placed a hand on Derek’s shoulder, but the gesture didn’t seem a peaceful one. It was more like he was holding his prey down so he could get easier access to its neck.
“What do you think is going on, Derek?”
That was when Derek hit him. It happened so fast my mind barely registered what happened. I thought Derek was pulling away to storm out of the room, but instead he took a step back and swung impossibly fast with his right hand. His knuckles connected with Coyote’s jaw—a perfect hit—making a sound like a hardbound book slamming against the top of a wooden desk.
Coyote didn’t go down. How he didn’t, I have no idea. He absorbed the blow, which reeled him back a few steps before righting himself again.
I don’t think I had ever even seen Derek angry before. Of all my friends, he was always the most forgiving, willing to give anyone a second chance. Girls invariably described him as nice and sweet, and, despite his size and his aggressiveness in his athletics, I could never have imagined him in a fight. And yet he just threw the first punch.
“Derek,” I managed to say. “What the hell?”
Derek held up his fists and kept his gaze on Coyote, but directed his words at me. “Yeah, Harden? What do you want to tell me? You want to be on his side for all this? Are you brainwashed, too?”
“Take it easy, Derek,” I said.
Coyote remained silent, his arms dangling loosely at his sides, his hands not even balled into fists. I could see a sizable welt blooming on the left side of his face, but he didn’t reach up to feel for blood. He stood there in a defenseless position, yet there was nothing passive about his look. It was a look I would never want directed at me.
“Take it easy?” Now Derek was shouting, not at Coyote, but at me. “Why am I the only one who sees that nothing good has happened since he moved in here with us? Don’t, Harden.” Derek held up a finger in my face, and for a second I panicked that I was next on his assault list. “Don’t let him do this to you.”
“Do what?” I asked. Yet I knew the answer. I knew exactly what he was talking about, and I cursed myself that I couldn’t react in the moment, like Derek, and bring to light all the things I knew were bad in our apartment. There was evil there. Coyote was a devil, as much as the devil actually existed among us. He was there to change and corrupt, and he would not be satisfied until he had taken as many of us with him as possible.
Derek turned back to Coyote. “I want you out,” he said. “Jacob, too, if he’s still too caught up in your shit to know what’s good for him. I’ll pay for your rent until the lease is up, but I want you out now.”
Coyote stood still for a few moments and then he cracked his mouth just enough to expose a bloody half-smile.
“Yes, Derek. I think that’s a good idea.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Things were happening fast.
After Derek told Coyote to leave, Coyote did just that. It took him perhaps all of thirty minutes to casually pack his possessions and take them to his car, choosing to leave many of his things behind. Derek stayed in his room, and I remained in the living room, watching a bruised and smiling Coyote make trip after trip to his car.
“You really going?” I asked him.
“It was time anyway, Har
den. I need more space.”
“Space for what?”
He didn’t respond until he had come back for another load of his belongings.
“There are going to be many of us,” he said. “There has to be for all of this to work. It’s not just Jacob and me. We need a place of our own.”
Then he left for his car. When he came back for one last load, he set down two armfuls of designer clothes on the couch next to me.
“You can have these.” I eyed the clothes and knew just this pile was worth more than everything I owned altogether. “You could use a new look, Harden.”
“You don’t need them?”
“I have what I need.”
I still couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed he was moving out. “Where are you going to go?”
“Emma’s, of course.”
The words sucked the breath out of me. I hadn’t even considered that was where he would go, but of course it would be.
“Do . . .” What I wanted to ask was, Do you know she wants nothing to do with you? But I didn’t. “Does she know you’re coming over?”
“No,” he said.
The thought of Coyote sleeping in the bed next to her angered me, and I felt impotent to do anything about it. Would she really let him stay there?
“See you around, Harden.” He held out his hand, and as I always did, I took it and offered a pump. “I don’t know if you still want to be involved, but I need you. You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t think you really need anyone, Coyote.”
He smiled and released my hand. “If that were true, I’d be a much different person.” He handed me his apartment key. “But I definitely don’t need this anymore.”
I took it and squeezed it in my palm.
Coyote headed for the door, and I called out after him, wanting to know one more thing.
“How many people wrote on their pieces of paper? At the meeting?”
He turned. “A hundred and twenty-four.”
“You read them all?”
“Yes, of course.”
I was glad I had thrown mine away.
“Why did you ask them to write that? The memory that haunts them most?”
His look was one of disappointment, as if I had missed the easiest question on a test. I hated that I actually cared about letting him down. He let out a sigh before answering.
“Because, Harden, in my experience, those who are haunted are the most vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable to what?”
“To everything.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
MARCH 1990
I saw Emma the next day. We both had midmorning classes on the same quad, so we met behind the music building in what had become one of our many rendezvous points. I had managed to call her the night before, right after Coyote left, to tell her what had happened and that Coyote was headed to her place. I barely slept during the night, tossing about in an impossibly warm bed, wondering what was happening at her place.
I arrived first, trying to look like I always loitered behind the back of the music building once the temperature dipped below thirty. Emma arrived after me, wearing a wool cap and a forced smile. Something was wrong.
“Hi, baby,” I said, hoping I was misreading her. I wasn’t.
“Hi.” Her voice was flat. Not a good sign.
I wanted to reach in and kiss her, but we didn’t do that in public. There was always a wall between us like that, and I hated that I was becoming used to it.
“What is it?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled a fog.
“We broke up.”
Are you kidding me? She couldn’t have told me better news.
“Did you tell him—”
“I didn’t say anything about us, Harden.”
“Then why did you—”
“We had sex last night.”
Cold air burrowed through my thin jacket like maggots on a corpse, and I could feel the chill eat me from inside out. My stomach tightened to a tiny ball.
“Emma. I . . . I don’t know what to say.” What I wanted to say was that those simple words just broke my heart.
“Let me finish, Harden. I’m so sorry.”
Now she started to cry, and yet I wasn’t even sure if I could hold her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hold her, and I hated myself for that.
“He . . .” She struggled to talk through her tears. “He came over. I let him in. I . . . I didn’t want him there, and we got into a big fight. I told him he couldn’t move in and he flipped out. Afterwards . . .”
“Emma, you don’t have to tell me.”
“I need to, Harden.”
What she didn’t understand was I wasn’t ready to hear any more, but I had to. It was what I was supposed to do.
“After the yelling, he wanted to have sex,” she continued, wiping more tears from her reddened cheeks. “I told him I didn’t want to, that he was crazy. But he . . .”
My breathing stopped. “He what, Emma?”
“He was really angry. I thought if maybe I had sex with him, he would calm down. I . . . I was scared.”
“What?”
“He’s different, Harden. He’s changed, even since a week ago. He . . . I think he wants to hurt Derek. For real. I had never seen him like he was last night.”
So why the hell did you fuck him? I wanted to shout. But I couldn’t. Goddamnit I couldn’t, and it was killing me.
“What happened, Emma?”
“I slept with him. It was horrible and angry and . . . ugh, I don’t know. Afterwards I regretted it and I cried. Then I broke up with him. I can’t be around him anymore.”
“He raped you,” I said. I wasn’t even aware I had said this aloud.
“He didn’t rape me, Harden.”
I jabbed a finger at her. “He wanted sex. You didn’t. You feared for your safety, so you finally agreed. Is that right?”
“It’s more compli—”
“Is that it?”
My words stopped her short. She stood silent for a moment before nodding almost imperceptibly.
“You need to call the police,” I said.
“No, Harden. Let it go. I’m okay. It was my own dumb mistake.”
Rage suddenly consumed me, and it wasn’t all directed at Coyote. Yes, a part of me said, it was your own dumb fucking mistake, Emma. You are an intelligent, strong woman, yet you let this animal have his way with you to calm him down, but then you still broke up with him. Didn’t that just enrage him more?
But my true rage was focused on Coyote. Being with Emma had pushed me past a threshold I had toed my entire life. I was in the world of passion now, and I wanted to embrace every facet of it. As much as she had brought about the beautiful side of passion in me, I now tasted the darker side of it.
I wanted to kill Coyote.
“What . . .” I tried to remain calm and supportive, but struggled. “What happened when you told him you were breaking up with him?”
She stopped crying. “He smiled. He was perfectly calm. All he said before he left was, ‘I think that’s a good idea, Emma.’”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
APRIL 1990
It was late and the library air was onionskin dry.
Nightshift, eight to midnight. I enjoyed working the evening hours. No one bothered me much, and, aside from having to deal with a handful of administrative duties, I was free to do my classwork.
I pushed the book-laden wooden cart through the stacks, shelving the discarded volumes of information back into their dusty homes. I was in the most desolate of the stacks when I heard the soft pattering of feet on industrial carpet. The library was closing in less than fifteen minutes, and I hadn’t seen anyone else in at least that long.
I was in the middle of the stack, the ends fifteen feet from me on either side. I turned my head in both directions and saw no one.
I put the book up on the shelf, close to where it was supposed to go.
I listened.
I wanted to peer through the stacks, but the old metal shelves had a solid backing, preventing me from seeing through to the other side.
Libraries are funny beasts. In the right moment, it’s hard to think of a more calming and more meditative place. In the wrong moment, at those times when silence is a scream without the noise, there’s nothing quite as unsettling as the sound of tens of thousands of books not being opened.
This was one of those times.
Then I heard the noise again. Someone was close.
Whoever it was, they weren’t pulling books from the stacks. That sound is unmistakable, and I heard none of it.
Whoever it was just stood there, listening to me, as I listened to them.
I looked at the next book on my cart. It didn’t belong in this aisle. Next one over.
I pushed my cart forward. My hands clung to the old wooden edges smoothed over by hundreds of palms before mine. I felt a thin sheen of sweat beneath my fingers.
I reached the end of the aisle and pushed the cart out into the open, turning it toward the next row of books. The one where someone waited for me.
I turned in.
No one.
The aisle was empty. Just books and their stillness.
Then something appeared at the end of the stack.
A person. Hands at his sides, arms tight with tension. Blocking my exit. He wore a mask.
It was the mask of a baby face. Eyes squinted. Mouth stretched into the smile of a carnival barker. Head disproportionately large, as if the baby had drowned. Cheeks bulbous and obscenely red.
He didn’t move.
I froze.
Then movement behind me.
I turned.
Another baby-faced person blocked the other exit from the aisle. I hadn’t even heard him approach, yet he stood only feet behind me. Close enough to touch me. I could hear this one breathing beneath the plastic of his false face. Shallow and sweaty breaths.
I grabbed the fattest book on my cart, holding it in both hands in front of me, like a shield. I could swing it pretty hard, but it probably wouldn’t do much good. If the library was empty and they came here for me, I was shit out of luck.
Nothing made sense, but in that moment, nothing had to.
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