Blue Coyote Motel
Authors: Dianne Harman
Table of Contents
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
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 gave 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.