Table of Contents
Title page
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
EPILOGUE
BLUE COYOTE MOTEL
Dianne Harman
Blue Coyote Motel
Copyright © 2012 Dianne Harman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Published by: Dianne Harman
www.dianneharman.com
Interior design and typesetting by Amy Eye, The Eyes for Editing
Cover design by MAE I DESIGN
Edited by The Eyes for Editing
Copyright 2012 by Dianne Harman
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62407-167-6
Dedication
To Tom, who raised an eyebrow, put a pencil behind his ear, and started to edit.
Addiction is hard to understand unless you have experienced it.
PROLOGUE
Jeffrey Brooks believed that, with the use of Freedom, a drug he had secretly developed, there would be no more wars, hatred, or discrimination, which had plagued the world for centuries. They would simply vanish. Religious strife, dictators, and terrorism would all become things of the past. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha; each had wanted freedom from strife, but each had failed. He, Jeffrey Brooks, would be the only person in the history of mankind to deliver the Holy Grail sought by so many, world peace. Surely he'd be awarded the Nobel Prize and wouldn't those bastards at Moore Labs be sorry they had fired him.
Get a good job. Find a rich man. Get out of the barrio. These were the words of wisdom passed from mother to daughter, repeated over and over, day after day. The very beautiful and sexy Maria Rodriguez had grown up with those words. They became her sacred mantra and Jeffrey became her Savior.
CHAPTER 1
The red engine warning light on the dashboard was blinking without stopping. Doug had noticed it for the last fifty miles, but now it had his full attention. His 1997 Dodge had over 140,000 miles on it and he'd been meaning to get an engine tune-up. He never seemed to have enough money, but it looked like he better find the money and find it fast.
Doug felt like he was on another planet. Nothing existed in this barren part of the world, but endless miles of dirt and tumbleweeds, sweltering and brown from the lack of water. The uninhabitable desert stretched for miles in every direction. The scorched land looked like something from a science fiction photograph. He felt as parched as the barren land before him. There were no signs of life other than an occasional car on the shimmering highway. He idly wondered if what he had always heard was true; that there really were “desert rats” who lived here, people who preferred the solitude of the desert. The thought was incomprehensible to him.
His cell phone rang. He was sure it was Lisa, his ex-wife, making her weekly demand for the past due alimony payments he owed her. Shit, if he couldn't even afford to get an engine tune-up, where in the hell did she expect him to find the money to pay her? Sweating even more profusely than usual, he answered the phone.
"Doug," his boss Jack said, "how did the sales calls go in Phoenix today?"
Doug pictured Jack in his Armani suit, sitting behind his antique mahogany desk in the high-rise corner office of the Century City Aravalve Western Headquarters. The gold lettering on the door that led to Jack's office read "President." He visualized Jack's sporty red Porsche convertible in the basement of the office building, in the stall numbered "1." In his mind's eye, he also saw Jack's beachfront home in Malibu, the young, tan, blond, arm-candy trophy wife, the requisite two adorable children, and the perfectly groomed yellow Labrador retriever. The annual company Christmas party held every year at Jack's home depressed Doug about as much as anything ever had. The president of Aravalve was cool and successful, everything Doug wasn't. Doug hated him and at the same time, he wanted everything that Jack had.
Doug answered, "Well, not that great. Both customers told me to come back in six months; that they didn't need any valves right now. I gave it the old college try, but it seemed like no matter what I said, they just weren't interested."
"I want you to come to my office first thing Monday morning. You're way below your sales quota. The other salesmen are selling valves. They seem to find a market, but for whatever reason, you're not closing any sales. We need to talk," Jack said.
Swell, Doug thought, here we go again. Looks like I'm going to be fired Monday morning. He wondered if he would even be able to get another job. Five jobs in three years was not a great track record and from the way Jack sounded, he doubted that he would be getting a glowing recommendation. In this job market, finding anything new would be hard. He was already dreading Monday morning.
There was a time when everything in Doug's life had been good, really good. He was a lineman on the high school football team, big and burly when it was a good thing to be big and burly. Another 100 pounds later, it wasn't. He had tried everything—the lap band, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and every other diet out there. Nothing had worked and the weight sure didn't help the high blood pressure his doctor kept warning him about.
Both of Doug's parents had died at an early age from heart problems. He was worried he'd meet the same fate, but he just couldn't seem to get a handle on controlling either his weight or his high blood pressure. His doctor had given him pills, but they weren't helping.
It seemed like his whole life had gone downhill after college. Until then, his future had looked bright, particularly when UCLA gave him a full-ride football scholarship. Scouts from the pro teams had been at most of his games during the early part of his senior year. Everyone predicted that he'd be playing pro after graduation and Doug was expecting to be offered a big contract along with a signing bonus. He knew he was really, really good, but during the last regular game of the season, he blew out his knee. It was a career ending injury and his pro football career was over before it had even begun.
Doug had easily been the most sought-after athlete on campus by the coeds. His wavy black hair, sky blue eyes, and large muscular body made every one of them want to take him home and many did. An audible sigh of anguish came from every campus sorority house when word got out that he had married Lisa, the beautiful, blond cheerleader he had known since high school. They married the summer after his junior year in college. A few months after his football career ended, Lisa g
ave birth to their stillborn son. Nothing between them was ever the same, each silently blaming the other for their son's death.
After he graduated from college, he found there wasn't much of a market for has-been football players. Certain that he would be playing in the pros; he hadn't spent much time preparing for a job in any other field. He began a series of lackluster jobs, enough to financially get Lisa and him through each month. She went to beauty school and got a job as a nail technician. They lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in a seedy, run-down, area of Los Angeles. Money was always tight, but it was all they could afford. The marriage turned into a succession of bitter arguments, just one unpleasant scene after another and five years later, they divorced.
His current life consisted of fielding Lisa's calls for money, trying to hold a job, and worrying about his escalating weight. He knew carrying 325 pounds on a 6'4" frame was not healthy, particularly given his parents' history of heart problems. His doctor always hassled him about smoking and he knew the cigarettes weren't helping his health, but what the hell, he thought, he deserved them. His life was shitty enough without giving up one of the few pleasures he had left. His future looked like a black hole of nothingness with no way out. If there was a better way, he hadn’t found it.
There was one more thing, something no one knew about. With all the weight he'd gained, women no longer found him attractive. Increasingly, he found himself visiting prostitutes, just to get some sexual relief. The tighter the money got, the sleazier the prostitutes. He hated himself for what he was doing, but he couldn't stop. After all, he reasoned, as bad as his life was, wasn't he entitled to a little relief now and then? Even if it came in the form of a low-life prostitute? Every time he looked in the mirror, he saw what he had become and he felt disgusted with himself.
Forgetting his ongoing problems for a moment, Doug tried to concentrate on the current situation, the red engine warning light on the dash. Swell, he thought, as if the day hasn't already been bad enough. Now it looks like something is seriously wrong with the car.
He was smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert, otherwise known as the armpit of California. There was nothing to speak of ahead or behind him but miles and miles of empty desert. Blythe was seventy-five miles behind him to the east and the Palm Springs resort cities were another sixty miles or more ahead of him to the west. Interstate 10 was a pretty lonely place when you had car trouble. The outside temperature gauge on his dashboard read 103 degrees, the wind was howling, and tumbleweeds were flying, stopped only by the intermittent fencing on the side of the road. This is just fucking great, he thought, anyone else would have car trouble near Palm Springs, but no, not me. Where do I have car trouble? Seventy-five miles outside of Blythe in the middle of summer. He took it as yet another omen of how fucked up his life had become.
Just then, he spotted an old, run-down gas station about a mile or so ahead. He pulled in and got out of his car, barely able to breathe in the stifling heat. The dry wind blowing the tumbleweeds sounded like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. A weathered-looking old man greeted him and introduced himself as Lou. Doug followed him into the small office that was badly in need of a paint job, new linoleum and a floor to ceiling cleaning. He could barely notice any difference from the temperature outside.
"Say," Doug said, "got anyone who knows how to fix an engine problem on that car of mine out there? And how do you stand this heat? Don't you have an air-conditioner?"
"Most air-conditioners don't work well in this heat," Lou said. "They die. Not a brand out there that can stand up to it. Only ones that can are big commercial ones and I sure as hell can't afford one of those. As for your car, sure, I can probably fix it. Let me have a look. I've been doing auto repair for over forty years so there's not much I can't fix. If you need some part, it usually means about a day to get what I need from the auto supply shop in Blythe. Believe it or not, they send new parts out to me by Greyhound bus. I only get delivery once a day, so that's why it takes a day or so to fix any sort of major problem."
He walked out to Doug's car, and took a look under the hood. "Yeah, I can’t be sure, but it looks like you need a new water pump," Lou said. "I'll call the auto supply shop and they can send me the part. You're going to have to spend the night, but there's a nice little motel up the way that reopened about two months ago, the Blue Coyote. You can drive my old truck up there. Three miles and you'll see the sign. When I get the part in and the car's fixed, I'll drive up to the Blue Coyote tomorrow and we'll switch cars. You can pay me then."
Doug gave the old man his contact information, got in the truck, and headed up the road. He saw the sign for the Blue Coyote just where Lou said it would be. The endless desert sand blew across the highway in the shimmering heat. Doug hoped the place would be clean and at least have a cold beer. He needed something to eat and also a working air-conditioner that offered some relief. Right now, the cold beer was the main thing on his mind. He could almost taste the beer on his tongue and feel the ice-cold brew sliding down his throat. The heat was ungodly, particularly if you were carrying around 325 pounds of weight. Shit, he thought, I weigh almost one-sixth of a ton. Now there's a happy thought.
As he started to turn into the Blue Coyote driveway, he became aware of raised high voltage power lines dancing in the distance. When he looked at the power lines a little more closely, he noticed that something was off. It looked like one of the high power lines was going directly into the motel. Although Doug hadn't been a Phi Beta Kappa in college, he remembered something he had read in some magazine about how dependent everyone and everything was on electrical power. He couldn't imagine why the Blue Coyote would need such a large amount of energy feeding into it. Even in this unremitting heat, even if the air-conditioning system ran 24/7, which it probably did, and even if there was a back-up generator, why so much energy? He forgot about the power line after he turned into the driveway, pleasantly surprised by the way the motel looked in this godforsaken out-of-the-way place. Unlike most places in the desert that, almost without exception, looked battered and rundown, the Blue Coyote looked like it had been freshly painted with desert plantings arranged attractively around it.
He parked Lou's old, rusted truck, got out, and entered the reception area. A young brunette with a beautiful smile greeted him. "Hi. I'm Maria. Welcome to the Blue Coyote," she said. "Our rooms are a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night, but they're really comfortable and with the central air-conditioning, you won't even know you're in the desert. There's an honor bar with beer and wine and some other things that can be microwaved. I'll have baked goods for you in the morning."
Doug was speechless. He had never seen a woman as beautiful as the one in front of him. Long, lustrous black hair framed a face that would have inspired poets and artists. And her body! Her body was perfect, from her full, lush breasts to her small waist to her long legs. His mind was numb and his jaw went slack. She rendered him incapable of doing anything but staring. What in the hell was she doing in this godforsaken place? He wondered if he was hallucinating. This simply couldn’t be. It was impossible to imagine that a woman as beautiful as she was even existed, let alone in this place, but the vision in front of him remained and when he was finally capable of thinking, he realized the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was indeed in front of him.
Doug thought a one hundred and twenty-five dollar room rate in this nowhere place was exorbitant, but there wasn't much to choose from, which was exactly why they probably got that kind of money. He clearly needed somewhere to stay. He wasn't sure if Aravalve would reimburse him, but if he hadn't made the sales calls in Phoenix, he wouldn't be here now. They really owed it to him to pay for his room. Even if Jack fired him Monday morning, Doug was determined to get Aravalve to pay for the room.
He signed the registration card and the young woman gave him his room key. He went to the refreshment area where the drinks and food were located, picked up two ice-cold beers and went to his room. It was a small mot
el, five rooms in all, but his room was large and clean. The floor was tiled and the bathroom even had spa caliber complimentary shampoo, conditioner, body soap, and body lotion. There was an oak framed painting of a blue coyote on the wall, howling at the moon. Doug had seen the blue coyote motif all over the Southwest, but in this remote place, it seemed particularly appropriate. He wondered if he'd hear coyotes tonight. That could be pretty scary out here. Even so, he looked forward to the coming darkness and welcomed the night.
The air-conditioning felt great. He turned on the shower and stepped in. It felt good to get the desert grime off his skin and the warm water loosened the tension in his neck, shoulders, and lower back. Endless hours of sitting in a car didn't help his chronic back pain. It seemed the longer he drove, the more it hurt. He was constantly reminding himself to lower his shoulders, to let the tension go.
After his shower, Doug opened one of the beers and lay down nude on top of the bedcovers, letting the air-conditioning cool him off. He watched the news on the room's swing-arm flat screen television and opened the second beer. Man, he thought, someone has put some serious money into this place. Why would anyone invest money in flat screen televisions, spa bathroom items, and designer tiles on a motel in this nowhere place?
As he began to relax, he decided that maybe things weren't quite as hopeless as he'd thought earlier. Maybe he could convince Jack to give him another chance. He knew he hadn't really tried hard enough to sell the valves. If he could sell more valves, he could get the money he owed Lisa. It wasn't her fault he'd blown out his knee and their life had begun to slide down the rabbit hole. Maybe he could even convince that cute new receptionist at Aravalve to have dinner with him.
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