Coyote blue

down, then losing his temper in spurts, Calliope appeared in the doorway, still naked.
    "We need to talk," she said.
    Sam was dressed now, desperately yearning for a cigarette, but he'd left them in the car and he wasn't about to pass the maniac downstairs without more information. "That would be good," he said.
    Calliope picked up her dress and slipped it on, then sat down on the couch. "You're probably wondering who that is downstairs."
    For the first time she seemed really uncomfortable, and Sam felt for her. "It's okay. I've had some trouble with my neighbors recently. It happens."
    She smiled. "I used to be with him. He's Grubb's father "
    "I gathered that."
    "I was doing a lot of drugs then. He was exciting: riding his Harley, tattoos, guns."
    "Guns?"
    "I left him when I found out I was pregnant. He didn't want me to have the baby and he didn't want me to quit getting high."
    "But why move upstairs?"
    "I didn't. He moved in downstairs. You're the first man that I've had over since the split. I didn't know he'd act this way."
    "Why don't you move?"
    "You know how Santa Barbara is. I couldn't even pay rent here if it weren't for Nina, let alone come up with first, last, and a cleaning deposit."
    Sam could see that she was still embarrassed. "You could ask the landlord to remove his doors. It would be quieter."
    "I'm sorry. I really wanted it to be nice."
    "Maybe I should go." Despite the weirdness, he didn't want to leave.
    "I wish you would stay. When Grubb goes to sleep we can go in my room. If we're quiet…"
    "I'll stay," Sam said. "He won't come up here and shoot us, will he?"
    "No, I don't think so. He keeps talking about getting custody of Grubb. Killing us would look bad with the judge."
    "Right," Sam said. So what if she had been involved with a psycho. At least it was a psycho who thought ahead.
    Calliope led Sam down a hallway to her room at the back of the apartment. "I'll get us some salad," she said, leaving Sam to sit on the twin bed next to the crib where Grubb was drowsily gnawing a pacifier. The room looked like it had been decorated by a Buddhist monk from "Sesame Street." On top of the dresser sat effigies of Buddha, Shiva, Bert, Ernie, and Cookie Monster, as well as an incense burner, a small gong, and a box of Pampers. A stuffed Mickey Mouse on the dressing chair wore a necklace of quartz crystal and a rawhide ring that Sam recognized as a Navaho dream catcher. The walls were hung with pictures of the Dalai Lama, Kali the Destroyer, and the Smurfs.
    Looking around, Sam felt tempted to construct an excuse and bolt. Now that he'd had a moment to think about it, his tough and adaptable veneer was feeling pretty thin. If he could just get back to normal for a while he'd be okay. Then it hit him: there was no normal to return to. The controlled status quo that had been his life was no longer there; it had been shattered by Coyote, and Coyote was out there somewhere. Calliope, and all the chaos around her, had made him forget. Even with Smurfs, psychos, and kitchen pals, the forgetting was worth staying for.

Chapter 16 – Live, Via the Spirit
    World Satellite Network Santa
    Barbara
    Lonnie Ray Inman was sitting in a worn leather easy chair listening for noises to sift down from upstairs. He had loaded and unloaded his Colt Python.357 Magnum four times, nervously fumbling its deadly weight as he alternately entertained fantasies of vengeance and prison. Every few minutes he would rise and go to the window to see if the black Mercedes was still parked out front, then he would pause at the front closet, where he opened and slammed the door until the violence in his heart subsided enough for him to sit again. He was short and dark and muscles stood out on his bare arms like cables. The front of his black tank top was soaked with blood where he had ripped the skin of his chest with his fingernails, trying to destroy the tattoo of a naked woman, the same woman whose picture was airbrushed on the tank of his Harley, the same woman who had turned his thoughts to murder. Lonnie Ray Inman dropped six cartridges into the cylinder of the Python and snapped it shut, determined this time to make it out the door and up the stairs, where he would burst through the door and kill Calliope's new lover.
    Fuck prison.
    ~* * *~
    A thousand miles away, ten thousand feet up in the Bighorn Mountains, Pokey Medicine Wing watched Lonnie loading the gun. Pokey was into the second day of his fast and had been searching