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  Emma’s screams slowly faded as Harden’s consciousness did the same. His last thought before blackness consumed him was whether or not he would ever open his eyes again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DECEMBER 1989

  The waning days before winter break seemed insurmountable to most students; the hurdle of finals and the anticipation of a long-awaited respite stretched even an hour into a long and twisted trial of patience. Not for me. Christmas was a week away, and going home to Pennsylvania was like a dental appointment. I did it because it was the right thing to do, but not because I wanted to. I was leaving in two days.

  As Jacob was fond of saying, winter finally stopped cock-teasing our little town and settled in for a good fucking. It would be like this until April. The icy air wiggled through the cracks of my clothes and snuggled up against my skin with the comfort of frozen metal. Goddamn Northeast. I’d been to Colorado skiing once, and that was the kind of cold weather you wanted. Dry. Sunny. Not here. Here, shitty winters were an industry, and we pumped out the best product in the country.

  Thursday night and nothing to do. Derek finished his finals two days ago and had already left for his home in Rochester, which left me alone with Jacob and, for the weekend at least, Coyote. Jacob was here through Saturday, and, with no classes left, had turned our living room into a shantytown of blankets, dirty socks, potato chips, and beer cans. He felt compelled to establish camp and rent the top twenty films in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 list. He wanted me to watch Citizen Kane with him, but I couldn’t do that to Orson Welles. Orson deserved better than Jacob with one hand on a day-old sandwich and the other tucked down the front of his sweatpants.

  I came home from my last class of the day and was surprised to find Coyote in the apartment. I usually didn’t see him until Friday.

  “Hey, Harden.”

  He was in the kitchen with what looked like enough vegetables to open a farmer’s market, cramming fistfuls of them into my blender. Damnit. That blender was one of the few appliances I owned, and I knew he wasn’t going to clean it.

  “Yes, you may use my blender,” I said.

  He shushed me as he turned my blender on to the ice crush setting and set the contents into a psychedelic whirl. I used the blender to make margaritas and protein shakes. Now it was filled with fucking green Kryptonite.

  A few seconds later he turned it off, dipped a wooden spoon into the soupy mix. He tasted it and nodded with pride.

  “Pesto,” he said. “Want a taste?”

  “No, thanks,” I mumbled. “You’re going to clean that, right?”

  He ignored the question.

  “You done with finals?” he asked.

  “Yup. You?”

  “Modern lit tomorrow, but it’ll be easy. Let’s go out tonight.”

  This was unusual. “You’re not at Emma’s?” I don’t know if my heart skipped a beat, but there was at least a small palpitation. Did they break up?

  “She went home already.”

  Of course. Damnit. “Sure,” I said. “Have anything in mind?”

  “Let’s go somewhere. Drive away. Get out of town.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Ask Jacob. He’ll have a good idea.”

  Jacob. Of course Jacob would want to go. I walked into the living room and found him on the floor under his ratty denim comforter with two pillows propped up behind him. He looked up.

  “Number twenty, baby,” he said, the two-day-old stubble covering his face like black mold. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  “Enjoying it?”

  “It’s pretty fucked up.”

  “Yeah, it’s no Singin’ in the Rain.”

  “That’s number ten. I watched that Tuesday.”

  “I know. You told me.” I looked at the screen and saw Jack Nicholson doing a pretty good Jack Nicholson impersonation. “You want to come out with Coyote and me tonight?”

  He propped himself up on an elbow. “Right on. Where you headed?”

  “Coyote wants to drive somewhere. Ideas?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me, as long as they serve Jack and Coke.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  “Cool.” Jacob returned to his movie and filth. He would be insistent on taking a half-hour shower before he went out tonight.

  I went into my bedroom and tossed my backpack on the twin bed, then looked over at my answering machine. Best thing I ever did was get my own phone line installed in this place. It was a bit of an extravagance, but sharing a line was just too painful. It seemed like every twenty minutes a different Jen was calling for Jacob.

  No messages on my machine.

  “Emma told me you wrote something about religion.”

  I turned around and saw Coyote in the doorway. He leaned casually against the doorjamb, looking very much like an Eddie Bauer model, wrinkled white button-down shirt, olive pants.

  “I did,” I said, glad to know Emma had been talking about me. “You inspired me, actually.”

  “That’s what she said. Can I read it?”

  I hesitated. Coyote wasn’t an easy critic of anything, so I could only imagine what he would think of my writing. If he didn’t like something, he never hesitated to tell someone. “I suppose,” I said. I navigated to the file on my computer and printed him out a copy—it had grown to nearly thirty pages by the time I had handed it in.

  “I’ll read it over break. Let’s get out of here in a couple of hours, okay?”

  It apparently wasn’t a question, since he was already walking away as I started to answer. From the living room, I heard a woman in the movie asking a busload of psychiatric patients if they were all crazy.

  * * *

  I was a good-looking guy in Coyote’s car. It was hard not to be. The interior was a mess, but only because Coyote didn’t care enough to ever pick up anything he ever placed there; the passenger seat was littered with receipts and food wrappers, and the cup holder contained an eighth-inch of caramel putty that once was a Coke. But the car’s sleek black exterior glistened in the icy moonlight, and in the cradling hum of the German engine I felt a part of something special. Or, at least a little extravagant.

  We headed south. The small town that lived and died by the matriculation of Wyland faded into the night behind us. There was freedom in this car. We could turn wherever and whenever we wanted, and we had a bunch of hours to still chew up before we could call this a memory. Of course, it only took about a half hour of driving before the excitement wore off and we got bored.

  Jacob—whining from the backseat like a four-year-old—kept asking for different music. He found Coyote’s CD organizer and kept asking for Jane’s Addiction, while Coyote ignored him and kept playing The Smiths, singing quietly along to Morrissey’s suicidal croonings. The trees along the side of the road whipped by us in a measured rhythm as a half-moon rose outside my tinted window.

  Montclair was another small upstate New York town, little known except as home to Bradford College, a respected, all-female center for higher education and, if one was to believe the rumors, chock full of lesbians. The stories about Bradford sung like Greek myths. It was said Bradford’s small population of straight students craved men with a preternatural ferocity, and a decent-looking guy at a bar on any given night in Montclair could scoop up women as easily as goldfish in a soup bowl.

  We drove to Montclair. It was Jacob’s idea.

  None of us had been there before, and we pulled into a small city garage a block off what looked to be a promising commercial strip. We emerged into the frigid air, and I spotted two bars nestled among a fast-food place, a liquor store, and a pharmacy boasting the quickest prescription-filling time in town.

  Both bars were doing a good business, so we chose the first one we came to. It was named Hoolihan’s, and it was a typical college-town bar, the kind that was really just a piece of shit but the students would remember for the rest of their lives as the center of
the universe. My fake ID wasn’t challenged, and we walked in and managed to find a recently vacated table in the center of the room.

  “Too many dudes here,” was the first thing Jacob said. I was thinking the same thing, but it sounded really stupid coming from his mouth so I was glad I didn’t say it.

  “You expected all women?” Coyote asked, mulling through a drink menu.

  “Better odds, at least.”

  “They’re all morons like us who came here expecting to get blown by some sex-starved coed the moment they walked through the door,” I said.

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Except it’s all fiction.” I glanced at the beer list and found Sam Adams, which was pricey, but I decided to treat myself. A waitress came over and barely said a word as she took our order.

  Billy Joel sang about Vietnam as our first beers arrived. After a half hour, Jacob and I were both on our third drink, while Coyote stayed on his first. He was driving, so I knew he’d only have a couple over the course of the night. I wasn’t buzzed yet, but would be soon.

  After the first hour the bar filled completely, and the ratio of men and women seemed to even out. It was getting more difficult to hear each other, which was good because we were running out of things to say. Jacob started looking anxious, as if he was going to miss out on some great sexual opportunity if he didn’t put all his energy into the hunt. He looked around the bar frequently, popping his head up every now and then like a lion peering over high grass.

  “How about that one?” he asked, pointing to a young blond talking with a guy who looked to be in his midtwenties.

  “Sure,” I shouted over the noise. “Tell her boyfriend hello while you’re hitting on her.”

  “No way. That guy’s gay. He’s playing cover for her.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Coyote said. “Want us to come with you?”

  “Nah, I’m all over it.” With that, Jacob stood up, checked his fly, and headed in the blond’s direction.

  I was jealous of his courage, even if it bled into the realm of stupidity. I had a hard enough time approaching girls as it was, and Jacob didn’t even blink before talking one up in front of her boyfriend. As much as I often thought Jacob was little more than a ball-chasing Golden Retriever in the body of a college student, I admired his confidence.

  “Dollar says he’s back at the table in two minutes,” I said. “Or at least not talking to her.”

  Coyote looked on as Jacob wove through the crowded bar toward his target. “I’ll take that bet.”

  Good. Now this was getting fun.

  Jacob sidled up to the blond, who flicked her head toward him. She appeared confused at first, and then nodded her head in an impatient manner as Jacob leaned in close to tell her something. Even from our table I could see the guy’s knuckles whiten as he squeezed his beer bottle. Then Boyfriend stepped forward and placed his nose inches from Jacob’s face, his chest expanding beneath a tight black t-shirt. Jacob straightened and tilted his head, then raised his hand in the universal sign of take it easy, man. But he didn’t back away.

  “This isn’t good,” I said.

  “Clearly not,” Coyote said, fixated on the scene. I glanced briefly at him and saw excitement in his eyes. “Maybe we should help him.”

  Help? I wasn’t even sure what that meant. One thing I knew, however, was I wasn’t going to lose another tooth, especially not because of Jacob.

  Boyfriend pointed over Jacob’s shoulder, which I’m guessing was his way of telling him to get the fuck out of there. Then Jacob did something amazing and stupid: he grabbed Boyfriend’s raised arm by the wrist and lowered it. Damn.

  Things escalated from there. Boyfriend gave Jacob a light shove, and now I could finally hear their voices. The crowd around them quieted down and turned their attention to the scene.

  “ . . . just trying to make a little conversation, dude.” It was Jacob. God bless him, he was still trying.

  “Let’s go,” Coyote said, rising from the table. Before I could respond, he was already walking away, and I had little choice but to join him. I just hoped Boyfriend didn’t have friends of his own.

  As we moved in, I could now hear the conversation clearly. An oil stain of people was growing around the two men. Boyfriend had a thick accent I couldn’t place, but it made me think of Pacino in Scarface, which sounded wholly out of place in upstate New York.

  “Maybe you should go to a different bar, cuca.” Boyfriend’s words sounded slurred, and I wasn’t sure if he was drunk or if it was the accent.

  “Hey, man, it’s a free country.” Jacob inched up to him so their chests were nearly touching. Jacob had about two inches and maybe twenty pounds on him, but Boyfriend carried the look of a junkyard dog, a creature that would attack anything without concern for its own safety. “Maybe that’s not something you’re used to, but here in the States we can say whatever we want.”

  “Stupid fucking American. I’ll give you a dollar if you can name any other country in the world.”

  “Colombia,” Coyote shouted out, his Spanish accent surprising me.

  Boyfriend jerked his head around and stared at Coyote. I took a step forward, evening my stance with Coyote. I was feeling more confident, at least until I saw two other guys approach the widening circle from the back. I wasn’t sure if they were with Boyfriend, but they sure looked like they wanted a piece of whatever was going to happen.

  “That’s where you’re from, right?”

  “Yes,” Boyfriend said, and for a moment the tension softened in his shoulders. “Has estado allí?”

  “No. But I know the women there are beautiful.”

  He nodded. “Claro. But we are not there. We are here, and she is with me.”

  Coyote turned to Jacob. “Jacob, she’s spoken for. Let’s go sit back down and drink the beer we’ve already paid for.”

  The woman at the center of all this finally spoke. “I’m not with him,” she said, pointing to Boyfriend.

  “You see?” Jacob said.

  Boyfriend turned to her. “Yes you are, whore.”

  “Hey, hey, hey . . .” Coyote raised his hands up. “Let’s keep this civilized.”

  I still hadn’t said a word. The two guys in the back kept eyeing us, as if sizing up the odds, but Boyfriend hadn’t even acknowledged them yet.

  Boyfriend turned back to Jacob. “Why don’t you do as your little bitch girlfriend says and go back to your table?”

  Jacob was twitching. Actually twitching. I guessed the first punch would be thrown in a matter of seconds.

  The woman lurched forward and grabbed Jacob by the arm. Holding onto Jacob, she turned to Boyfriend.

  “I’m going with him.”

  Jacob beamed like he’d just won the lottery. But Boyfriend turned his black eyes toward the woman and seized her arm.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Let me go, asshole,” she said.

  From somewhere behind the bar, a deep voice called out. “Take it outside, boys.” I turned my head and saw the bouncer walking our way from the front door. Things were happening fast.

  Coyote stepped forward toward Boyfriend. He said, “Can I tell you something? As a friend?”

  Boyfriend let go of the woman’s wrist, looked Coyote over, and then nodded.

  Coyote leaned close into his ear; I watched the man’s eyes as Coyote said something undetectable by me. After about twenty seconds, Boyfriend’s eyes showed a mix of fear and anger. He turned away from Coyote and told the woman, “Go with them. What do I need with you anyway? Whore.”

  Coyote stepped back, turned, and gave me a wink. The woman hooked her arm around Jacob, who seemed very proud of himself considering he had actually done very little.

  “You four . . . out.” It was the bouncer. Our time was up, and Jacob was leaving with a girl.

  Coyote pulled two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and left them on the bar. I went back to our table and collected everyone’s coats, and then we
all left. Outside, we put on our coats and the three of us stared at the woman. She had her right hand on Jacob’s chest.

  “I’m Trina, by the way.” She reached up and gave Jacob a kiss on the cheek. Jacob apparently couldn’t believe his luck, because his normally dopey expression morphed into a mask of borderline catatonia.

  “It’s Coyote you should be kissing,” I said. “What did you tell that guy, anyway?”

  Coyote shook his head. Nothing.

  Trina leaned into Coyote and kissed him on the cheek as well, which brought Jacob out of his euphoria.

  “For four hundred bucks I’ll thank all of you as long as you want,” she said.

  A thick silence draped over all of us as we each processed her statement. Only Coyote seemed unfazed.

  “Holy shit,” Jacob said. “You are a whore. I thought that guy was just being a dick.”

  She took a step back. “I’m not a whore,” she said. “I’m an escort. You guys don’t have to be such pricks.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen a hooker before in real life.

  Jacob was shaking his head. “I almost got into a fight over an escort?”

  I looked at Trina and tried to see the hooker in her. She was young, cute, and had the blue-eyed excitement of a cheerleader making the squad. My heart broke a little bit knowing she fucked guys for money.

  She saw her opportunity slipping away, so she put up her hand. “Look, if you guys don’t want to party, then I need to get going.”

  Coyote pulled out his wallet. I froze as I saw him thumb through hundred-dollar bills.

  “Dude, what are you doing?” Jacob asked.

  Coyote ignored him, handing Trina three bills.

  “Here’s three hundred bucks,” he said. “Let’s hit the liquor store for some supplies, and we’ll all hole up in a hotel for the night. I don’t feel like driving back tonight anyway.”

  My body started to shake. This was getting way out of my league.

  “It’s going to be four hundred for all of you,” she said, taking the money.