Coyote blue

is too weird. Too fucking weird." He lowered the lid of the toilet and sat facing the shower stall, assuming the posture of Rodin's Thinker. For once in his life, it really seemed to matter that the sex be good, but this was like a combat zone. "I can't do this," he said.
    "Sure you can," a voice said from behind the shower curtain. Sam screamed and jumped to the top of the toilet tank. Coyote stepped out of the shower holding a beaded leather pouch.
    "What in the hell are you doing here?" Sam asked.
    "I'm here to help," Coyote said.
    "Well, get out of here. I don't need your help."
    "You are wasting that woman."
    "Do you have any idea what is going on around here? Listen." Another door slammed and Nina resumed shouting at Yiffer. From what Sam could make out it had something to do with the yard sale.
    "You must leave here, then," Coyote said. "You must find a place on the woman's body and live there. Hear only her breath, smell only her scent."
    "If you don't get out of here I won't even have a chance. What if she sees you? How could I explain your being here?" Thinking about it, Sam realized that if he told Calliope that there was an ancient trickster god in her bathroom she would accept it without question – would probably ask for an introduction.
    Coyote held out the beaded pouch. "Put this on your member."
    "What is it?" Sam asked, taking the pouch.
    "Passion powder. It will make you as strong and stiff as a lance."
    Sam shook the contents of the pouch – a fine brown powder – into the palm of his hand. He sniffed it. "What is it?"
    "Corn pollen, cedar, sweet grass, sage, powdered elk semen – it is an old and powerful recipe. Try it."
    "No way."
    "You want the woman to think you are not a man?"
    "If I try it will you go?"
    Coyote grinned. "Put just a pinch on your member and you will pleasure the woman to tears."
    "And you'll go?"
    Coyote nodded. Sam tentatively took a pinch of the powder and began to sprinkle it on his penis.
    Calliope opened the bathroom door, catching Sam in mid-sprinkle. "You won't need that, honey," she said. "I'm on the pill."
    "But…" Sam looked around for Coyote, but the trickster was gone. "I was just…"
    "Being responsible," Calliope said. "Thank you. Now come to bed." She took his hand and led him out of the bathroom. Sam submitted, glancing over his shoulder for signs of Coyote.
    Yiffer and Nina had taken the fight to their bedroom. Nina was calling Yiffer an idiot and going on about a newspaper ad being misplaced. A door slammed downstairs and Yiffer stormed out of the bedroom. "I'm going to kick his ass!" he shouted. In the hall he looked up at Calliope and Sam as he passed. "Hi, kids," he said, then he proceeded down the hall. Sam could hear the kitchen screen door ripping off the hinges as Yiffer went through. "You're history, biker boy!"
    Calliope pulled Sam into the bedroom and closed the door.
    "Shouldn't we call the police or something?" Sam asked.
    "No, he'll be okay. Lonnie's afraid of Yiffer. He won't fight him and he's afraid to shoot him because of jail."
    "Oh, everything's fine, then," Sam said.
    "Come to bed," Calliope said. Sam shot a glance to Grubb, who was lying quietly on his side staring suspiciously at Sam over the edge of a pacifier, as if saying, "What are you doing with my mom?"
    "Can we blow out the candles?" Sam asked.
    Without a word Calliope blew out the candles and pulled Sam down on top of her on the bed. Outside, the sounds of Nina screaming down from the top of the stairs, Yiffer pounding on Lonnie's door, and J. Nigel crying for attention faded into white noise.
    "You must find a place on the woman's body and live there." In the dark, the noise far away, Sam ran his hands over Calliope's body and the world of work and worry seemed to move away.
    He found two depressions at the bottom of her back where sunlight collected, and he lived there, out of the wind and the noise. He grew old there, died, and ascended to the Great Spirit, found heaven in her cheek on his chest, the warm wind of her breath across his stomach carried sweet grass and sage, and…
    In another lifetime he lived on the soft skin under her right breast, his lips riding light over the ridge and valley of every rib, shuffling through downy, dew-damp hairs like a child dancing through autumn leaves. On the mountain of her breast, he fasted at the medicine wheel of her aureole, received a vision that he and she were steam people, mingled wet with no skin separating them. And