I am in 1991 again and pulling my truck into the parking lot at an industrial warehouse building with three big orange and black letters on the front: “TBG”. I presume that the letters stand for The Bullhead Gym. I notice that Vincent Wauneka is seating in my passenger seat.
The parking lot is surprisingly empty. My guess is that very few people in Bullhead use this gym because most people here live for the present moment. They take every opportunity they can find to feel pleasure while avoiding pain. Working out would mean pain for them. They do not look forward into a better, healthier future. A battered red VW bus from the 1980s with Nevada license plates is parked next to a black-and-white police cruiser with “Bullhead Valley Police” printed prominently on it.
The dozen or so customers using the generous selection of free weights and weight machines inside the gym are mostly male and all under the age of forty. The one-room facility is eerily and unnaturally bright from many rows of white-hot fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
I walk with Vincent Wauneka down one narrow aisle of the gym surrounded on both sides by overweight and sweaty gym customers. Carefully watching over a male client is a guy who is assisting him with his bench presses. Must be a personal trainer. He looks like he is in his late twenties. He is tall, muscular, and is barefooted with large, perfectly shaped feet. He wears a deep green muscle tee shirt bearing the orange and black letters “TBG” and bright blue gym shorts—both of which seemed a size too small for him. Nobody could make such wardrobe choices accidentally.
This personal trainer easily is the best-looking man in the entire room. He is exceptionally handsome with a well-toned physicality, deep blue eyes and thick, wavy dark blond hair.
I conclude that this young man with perfect body proportions is the exact kind of man that the ancient Romans immortalized in their marble statues.
“Theodore Avila! I want you to meet my personal trainer, Carlo Zee.” I feel instinctively that this introduction is a pivotal moment but I do not know why. As I approach, I reach out my right hand to the Roman statue.
While speaking in German, the personal trainer shakes my hand and just keeps talking like I’m supposed to be able to understand him. “Whoa. No comprende, dude,” I say to the trainer noting how weak is his handshake for a man who is so masculine. “You’re from Germany?”
Vincent Wauneka laughs boisterously at me. “No,” the trainer says, “New York City. Just fuckin’ with you, man. My mother’s a native of Germany. My father’s Italian. From Brooklyn.”
Vincent Wauneka says in an unnecessarily loud voice, “Great genetic combo, Teddy, right? Works so well. Isn’t this guy hot? Carlo has a solid, and, I would add, unusually thick cock. I think any guy here in this gym would want to suck that big man-sausage.”
Suddenly, the entire gym falls into an impossible silence. While literally everyone has stopped what he or she was doing to listen to Vincent Wauneka, not one single person in the gym even so much as cracks a smile. It is so quiet I can even hear the stretching sound of the leather as Vincent Wauneka shifts his weight in his red and white gym shoes. In a couple of seconds, everyone returns to working out.
The Roman statue does not look the least bit embarrassed after what Vincent Wauneka has said and the personal trainer smiles proudly, revealing sexy white teeth. He leans his face closer to me as if he is going to whisper something. Instead of whispering, however, the personal trainer’s voice is louder than I was expecting. I’m sure everyone in that gym hears him say to me in a richly masculine voice, “Welcome to Planet Bullhead. Not like any other world you’ve ever visited, spaceman.”
Why did he call me that? I panic at that thought that this man somehow knows I am a time travel agent visiting Bullhead in the year 1991. I take one step backwards to get away from the sudden invasion of my personal space. I do not see that I am backing directly into a fully stocked steel weight tree, knocking all of the weights over with a very loud metallic crash. My backwards motion sends all of the dozen or so perfectly circular weights each into perfectly unpredictable trajectories across the floor of the gym. Vincent Wauneka and his personal trainer both are laughing in complete enjoyment as most of the round weights roll away harmlessly.
One of the round weights travels threateningly towards the glass front door of the gym. And the rolling motion looks oddly surreal. You wouldn’t think that a rolling weight that was awkwardly knocked off a steel weight tree would gather sufficient velocity to affect much impact. But, somehow, the laws of physics must be different here on Planet Bullhead. The rolling weight strikes the glass front door of the gym with sufficient momentum to cause a loud crash, sending shards of jagged glass cascading to the floor of the gym.
I am horrified. I spin around to see what the personal trainer’s reaction is going to be. He and Vincent Wauneka are still standing by the fallen weight tree. The trainer grits those perfectly white teeth in dismay. He shakes his head in disbelief and suddenly looks quite threatening.
I can hear Vincent Wauneka laughing uncontrollably as his personal trainer takes a few short steps to stand very near me. This man gives off an aura of classic masculinity and authority. He is not someone to mess with. He stands so close to me that I can detect the cool, intoxicating scent of his body heat blended with his spicy deodorant.
I say to the personal trainer, “I have money. I will pay you for this.” I cannot believe what I have done. Did I really just break the front door of that gym?
Vincent Wauneka walks up behind his personal trainer, and with his right hand reaches around to playfully grab the man’s crotch and squeezes tightly. As expected, Carlo Zee doubles over. My mouth opens in surprise—just what Vincent Wauneka expected would happen. The trainer’s sexy blue eyes are dancing as he quickly recovers from having his package manhandled.
He responds by caressing Vincent Wauneka’s face with his right hand and gently squeezes his lips to make them pucker. “Here’s what I’m gonna do,” Carlo Zee announces to me while he continues to hold onto Vincent Wauneka’s face and kisses him on his puckered lips.
Vincent Wauneka tries to free himself and mumbles, “Fucking let go of me, Carlo!”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Carlo Zee says to me as he releases Vincent Wauneka. “As long as you sign up to hire me to be your personal trainer.”
I watch Vincent Wauneka rub his face and squint angrily at Carlo Zee. “But I don’t live here,” I say to the personal trainer, who apparently is not listening to me. He quickly asks, “Why the name Theodore?”
As I prepare to reply with my standard answer that I was named after Theodore Roosevelt, the first cowboy president, Carlo Zee slips his gym shorts down to his thighs. He grabs his impressively thick cock and large balls right there in front of me. My eyes are held captive by this man’s masculinity. He has shaved his public hair down to a thin stubble to accentuate his impressive genitals. That makes me smile. Carlo Zee thinks my smile is because I got to see his cock and balls up close.
∆∆
I check into an extended-stay motel just down the street from the gym. I need sleep. I figure that while I am staying on Planet Bullhead, I want to blend in, so I book a standard room with two queen-size beds in the one-star motel. Staying in that motel for a while will allow me to sign up with Carlo Zee as my personal trainer on a short-term contract so that I will be able to repay him for the glass door that I shattered. I begin to accept that I am in the year 1991 on a mission working with Vincent Wauneka centered around Carlo Zee as our target.
I wake up wearing only my boxer shorts after reclining on one of the beds in that motel Bullhead. I look at the clock radio by my bed and see that it says “1:30 AM.” I get dressed and walk out to the sidewalk from my motel room and head down Colorado River Drive. How can the air temperature feel so hot at this hour in the darkness? The stress I feel is exactly the same as if I had been deliberately awake deprived of sleep for several consecutive days. I need to concentrate on walking because of how sluggish I feel. I miss the lower gravity of the moon.
My mind tells me to relax. I must accept and embrace the unfathomable reality that I actually do work as a time traveler. Inside my head, I can hear the soothing words from my medical doctor with his authoritative English accent. He’s given me the approval to go back to work on secret missions to the past even though my body tells me that I should be resting in bed alone somewhere quietly and undisturbed for at least a full week.
My foggy memories include the experiences of going through an intense psychological screening when I first began my career as a time traveler. I made several personal admissions at that time to the medical staff. I told them: Dating back to when I entered puberty, I consistently dreamed of masculine men. Throughout my life, my dreams have been populated by imaginary Wild West cowboys whom I manipulated to do my bidding and who always wear the familiar costumes of Hollywood Westerns that were popular during the 20th century.
I also admitted how I dreamed of cowboys being hung by the neck until they were dead. Even during my youth, I realized that such dreams are not what one should expect from a male who is attracted to females. I was convinced that I was not at all typical compared to other guys I knew growing up in Northern Arizona.
I consider the likelihood that the agency selected me to be a time travel agent because of my attraction to men and not women. Manipulating men sexually is at the center of the work that all MMDI time travel agents do. Never do my missions to the past involve manipulating women sexually. I confidently accept that as a core truth. As I stumble down the Bullhead sidewalk half-awake, I begin to accept that perhaps it was a big plus for me that I admitted during my orientation after Vincent Wauneka recruited me about dreams of my manipulating men.
The bright blue and yellow neon lights on the exterior of a pancake house directly down the street from my motel attract my attention. I feel happy as I think about the possibilities of fresh, hot coffee, so I pick up my pace toward the restaurant. Because the Bullhead Pancake House is not very busy during the overnight shift, I sit down alone at the nearest opportunity to get off my feet before I collapse from emotional and physical exhaustion.
I find a round table for three with a bright red tablecloth. The murals in this restaurant communicate a 1960s American Southwest motif, complete with the obligatory Joshua Trees. You almost expect to see Roy Rogers and Dale Evans reincarnated here and singing their famous duet Happy Trails in full costumes as they waltz down the aisles between the tables and booths.
Instead, there is a handsome young cowboy singer in full Wild West costume strumming a guitar as he walks and sings. He stops by my table for three where I sit by myself. He makes intense eye contact with me as he plucks his guitar strings with his thick, sensuous fingers. He sings in a clear, strong voice about daring to discover the mysteries of true love. All I would ask from this handsome young cowboy is that he dare spend just one night in bed with me.
A waitress approaches my table carrying a pot of coffee. She is around forty, heavy-set, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a bright red and white uniform. When the waitress smiles at me, I see by her nametag that her name is Margo. I am horrified that she could be a long-lost twin sister of Katherine Snowe, my ex-wife whom I ditched in Rhode Island. The waitress says, “You really look like you need this coffee.”
“I’ll have to trust you about that. Thanks,” I reply to her as she fills my empty coffee cup. I close my eyes so I can focus entirely on the glorious scent of the coffee as I take my first sip. I hear the cowboy singer walk away from me to another table in the restaurant.
Of course, there is no way that Katherine Snowe would ever lower herself to be a waitress. Nor would Katherine Snowe ever wear a bright red and white uniform. Katherine Snowe avoided wearing bright, contrasting colors because she believed do so would make her look thinner. When I reopen my eyes, I see that seated directly across from me in the second of the three chairs at my table is the dreaded Katherine Snowe born in South Weymouth, Massachusetts but now lives alone in Providence, Rhode Island.
I was never what anyone would describe as “attracted to” Katherine Snow in either an emotional or sexual sense. Why did I marry her? When we had intercourse, she did not seem to enjoy it. I accept that was my fault. After I ejaculated into her, she consistently cried for a full 15 minutes nonstop. That mere sex act consistently produced in her what to me seemed like deep grief and regret. Why did I marry her?
Katherine Snow looks at me from across the table in that Bullhead restaurant and asks, “You didn’t think you could get away from me that easily, did you, Teddy?”
“You’re merely a hallucination,” I tell her. “The byproduct of my lack of sleep. I spent many sleepless night driving cross country after I left you. You hear what that cowboy is singing about? Romance and pain. Those two things go together well, don’t you think?”
She asks, “What kind of chicken-shit place is this with all that stereotypical fucking cowboy imagery? That music sucks. Where are we? Do you think I could order a drink in this horrid place? A real drink. With lots of rum in it?”
I can only say, “This all seems so unreal.”
“Teddy, how do you, of all people, distinguish between what’s real and what’s not?” she asks me. “You’re someone who claims to work on television for fuck’s sake. Not that I believe your cover story, of course. Not one word of it. You have a secret life and a secret career. I am certain of that!”
The table is suddenly covered with a red and white-checkered tablecloth. She and I are not in the chicken-shit pancake house with all the stereotypical cowboy imagery. Instead, we are at the same exact round table for three, but we are now in an Italian bistro back east. The young man singing tableside is dressed totally in black and plays his guitar while he sings an Italian song.
I have lost my sanity! I know that now for certain. I am in an awakened state, and yet I feel like I am experiencing overlapping dreams that I cannot control. This is very frightening. I can remember how I lied to Katherine Snowe about working in a news department of a local television station in Rhode Island.
There was just no way that I could tell her the truth about secretly being a time travel agent who had been granted the right to live with her in the 20th century as part of my cover identity. Saying that to her would only convince her that I am a lunatic. I’m supposed to be an agent who travels back to the past to fix timelines. But I wonder how it is I can be considered qualified by the agency to fix other people’s timelines when I can’t even control my own?
“We’ve been coming here to this bistro for years,” she says to me. “All we have left in our relationship is eating and drinking together, do you realize that? At least the Italian food here is delicious. And you seem to like listening to that singer.”
“I’m having déjà vu,” I tell her. You have said that to me before. I know it.”
As always, she is oblivious to what I have just said to her. “You’re behaving like you’re somewhere else. Far away from me and everyone else in this restaurant.”
“Exactly. Told you already. I am somewhere else. I’m in Arizona. Another sleepless night,” I explain. “I’m a time travel agent from the future. My missions specifically require me to get sexually involved with other men to manipulate them. I lied to you about working in television. I lied to you about being a male who is attracted to females.”
“Is that waitress anywhere around?” she asks me, ignoring everything I said.
“I really must have fucked up the space/time continuum somehow.” That’s the best that I can manage to say in response. When I reach for my glass of red wine, it morphs into a coffee cup instead—just like I expect would happen in an alternate universe. The entire restaurant fades quickly from the Italian bistro back to the pancake house in Bullhead.
The young man singing as he strums his guitar has switched to English from Italian. Now he is wearing a cowboy costume instead of being dressed totally in black. I’m not going to worry about any of this. I’ll have to find a way to make all of this work out even though his seamlessly weaving both English and Italian lyrics together in one country song is disconcerting to me.
I think I can recognize the English lyrics he is singing: “She cries when you fuck her. That is not a good sign.”
Katherine Snowe remains there across the table from me at our table for three. She continues to have her glass of red wine in her hand. Her face rapidly is becoming the same color as the wine.
“I’m tired, Teddy. Really tired,” Katherine Snowe says as she examines my face. “You always manage to look so young. Especially compared to me. How is that possible? I look like I’m an old woman now. You must be a vampire. That’s your true identity. Has to be.”
I’ve heard all this before. She and I had this exact conversation back when we lived in Rhode Island. I remember now. This is a replay of a previous experience that I have had. It seems so vivid.
Katherine Snowe says, “I’m tired of acting. I’m tired of pretending to be some other person.”
The waitress, Margo, carrying a plate with food, comes out to where I am seated with my ex-wife, who apparently does not see her twin. “Here you go, sir. Three scrambled eggs and wheat toast,” Margo says to me.
“Thank you very much,” I say to Margo.
Katherine Snowe attempts an Elvis Presley voice and says the famous phrase in the iconic way he always said it: “Thank you very much!” Then she adds, “Don’t thank me, you sarcastic prick. I’m pouring my heart out to you and all you want to do is make jokes.”
The waitress asks me, “You need more coffee?”
“Yes,” I reply to her question about more coffee. “Okay, I’ll come back,” says the waitress. At the exact same time, my ex-wife says, “Okay, I’ll go away. That is what you want, isn’t it?”
The waitress walks away from our table for three. I expect that the pancake house will once again fades back into the bistro. But that does not happen. Nor does my ex-wife go away. Instead of leaving me alone at that table for three, she says, “You know what, Teddy. You’re cruel to mess with me like you’re doing here tonight. I’m trying to tell you that I want to be myself and not pretend to be someone else. I am only one person. I can only be one person.”
The waitress who looks exactly like my ex-wife returns to our table. “This coffee is very hot,” Margo says. “Watch out.” I hold up my wine glass to Margo even though the glass is half full of red wine. “Watch out,” my ex-wife says to me, echoing what her twin just said.
“I will not let you ignore me,” Katherine Snowe adds. Margo pours hot coffee into my wine glass. I grimace, expecting the glass to crack because of the heat of the coffee and then spill hot liquid all over my arm. But, strangely, the coffee floats on top of the red wine and the two liquids do not interact whatsoever—just as I probably should expect to happen in someone else’s universe.
“Oh sure, show me your famous grimacing face, Ted,” Katherine Snowe says. “You’re so predictable.”
“Thank you again,” I say Margo, who smiles, and walks away. Meanwhile, my ex-wife is livid.
“You think that you can always use humor to save yourself. Well, not tonight. There’s no humor left for us. The laughs are all gone now. I’m telling you this because I am going to change who I am. Whether you like or not. I have made my decision,” she says.
I’ve heard her say this to me before. Many times.
I devote my attention to my wine glass. The coffee is a dark brown and it continues to float on top of the red wine, moving in a slow circular motion like galaxies. I know that the weird separation of liquids in my glass violates the laws of physics. As I have come to suspect, the rules where I am right now must be very different compared to being back in the lunar base.
“And staring at your wine glass is not going to provide you with an answer,” my ex-wife says. “What’s wrong with you? You haven’t even touched your chicken Parmesan.”
I can see that the plate in front of me contains an order of breaded chicken that has been topped with Parmesan cheese and then smothered in deep red marinara sauce. I use my fork to touch the chicken to see if it is actually physically there on his plate. Margo returns and notices that I am prodding my food. “Are your eggs cooked the way you wanted?” she asks me.
“Everything’s okay,” I reply. Margo seems pleased with my response and she walks away. But my ex-wife is not pleased with what she heard me say. She is growing more agitated.
“You can’t even be honest with me about food,” Katherine Snowe says. “You say everything’s okay. And yet, you seem surprised that I haven’t been honest with you about our relationship. I chose to deceive you. Deliberately. Because it was part of my act. I have believed for many years—since we first met—that you could not handle the truth about me. So, instead, I pretended to be happy. For you. For the sake of what I thought you wanted in our marriage. What you thought a wife should be for you.”
I must go along with this and stop fighting it or trying to understand it. Perhaps if I cooperate and just flow with it, I can make it end quicker. So, I ask her, “Why do you feel that you cannot be yourself?”
She replies, “You’ve never done too well with me being depressed all the time. It’s a disorder. You know that. My shrink prescribed Prozac for me. You haven’t done well with me being on Prozac all the time, either. You’ve told me several times that Prozac makes me drink more and you think it makes me suicidal. But, you’re wrong about all this, Teddy.”
“What do you want me to say?” I ask her. “You know what? I hope that someday, maybe in the future, people will stop calling this ‘a disorder’ like you do.”
She sticks out the middle finger of her right hand very near my face. She says to me, “I want our marriage to be a safe haven for me. Yes, a safe haven. You heard me. That’s what I said. A place where I can be myself, where I can be depressed without criticism or disapproval from you. I want you, as my husband, to accept me because you are my husband. You must take care of me. Our vows said so.”
“Yeah,” I reply to her, “our vows. Well, maybe there’s an escape clause in there that we weren’t told about at the altar on that fateful day. Or, you know what? Remember how that priest who presided over our marriage was drunk? Maybe his impaired condition means that our marriage isn’t legitimate? I think I’ve read about a Roman Catholic Church law about mental intent that has been compromised by bad faith or Satan or chemicals or renegade angels. Something like that.”
At that precise moment I see Vincent Wauneka walking in through the front door of the pancake house. His stunning long hair floats in the air. Are men allowed to walk into Arizona restaurants without wearing a shirt? I believe that I must be imagining him, too. He cannot be real. Vincent Wauneka wears a cowboy hat and boots like he was born to do so. The cowboy singer walks up to Vincent and drops to his knees as if he is ready to start sucking Vincent Wauneka’s cock.
The young cowboy singer has gotten back onto his feet and has started singing again in English and Italian. Vincent Wauneka puts his right arm around the waitress’s waist gently in a gesture of friendship. I can feel that I beginning to get an erection merely watching this man.
“Hey, Margo,” Vincent Wauneka says to the waitress as if he knows her well as they arrive at my table. “Theodore Joseph Avila,” he says to me. “Mind if I join you?” Why did he use my full name and correctly pronounce my surname? Before I can reply to him, I watch Vincent sit down in the third of three chairs at the table. I’m sure that I have experienced this exact moment before.
I realize that my ex-wife does not see Vincent Wauneka even though he can see her. The waitress can see him. I can see him. Why can’t my ex-wife see him? Why can’t the waitress see my ex-wife? Katherine Snowe announces to me in a overly formal tone, “We should pronounce this relationship of ours dead.”
Vincent Wauneka leans over and says to me quietly, “First sane thing she has ever said to you, dude. Am I right? Or, am I right?”
My mouth drops open in surprise. I am helpless. I answer both my ex-wife and my time-travel partner by saying, “You’re right.”
My ex-wife pushes her chair back from the table in frustration. “Take me home, Teddy,” she demands. “Or, I swear to you I’ll drive your car. You know I always keep a spare car key with me. Even though I’m drunk, I’m gonna get behind the wheel of your car!”
Vincent Wauneka quietly says to me, “Let her drive off and die. You got me now. Someone you actually are attracted to sexually.”
I cover my eyes with my hands as if I can succeed in blocking out everything around me. The sound of many plates crashing to the floor of near the front door of the pancake house—maybe is it really the sound of two cars crashing head-on into each other—suddenly makes me and everyone else in the place turn quickly to the front of the restaurant to see what happened. The singing cowboy’s lyrics are clear to me, “That is not a good sign.”
When I look back at the sexy man seated across from me at our table for three, I no longer think about my ex-wife. Nor do I find it possible to care that she may just have killed herself behind the wheel of my car as she has so often threatened to do.
I turn my attention to Vincent Wauneka. I am conscious of my erection as I say to him, “I’m totally exhausted. I don’t know what just happened. You saw her. I saw her. But she didn’t see you!”
He leans forward towards me and says quietly, “Totally not important.”
“How do explain that you could see her?” I ask him. “You saw and heard that cowboy singing, too?”
“How do you explain that you met me at my hanging?” he asks. “How do you explain that you died when your truck went off that cliff? We also were in Laughlin in a resort hotel room where I think you very much enjoyed having sex with me. None of this will make sense to you if you try to apply logic. Just do your job. Everything will work out as it should.”
“You must be someone from the spirit world who’s here to torment me!” I explain.
“No, I am real,” he assures me. “Just like you. We work together. Not supposed to talk like this. Just go with it. So, you got a motel room down the street from this pancake house? You were having trouble sleeping.”
“And you know this how?”
He ignores my question and instead says, “I worked out late at the gym training with Carlo. Was just down the street here. Past your motel. As I walked by, I saw you sitting in here, so I stopped in. You look a little strung out. When was the last time you had a decent night’s sleep?”
“Probably before I got married,” I tell him. “I couldn’t sleep. Yeah. In my motel room right down the street. Just like you said. I come in here to this pancake house and the waitress looks exactly like my ex-wife.”
“You think you started hallucinating that you were here with your ex-wife,” Vincent Wauneka says, taunting me.
“This is supposed to help me?” I ask him. “It was not a hallucination. Or a dream. The conversation that I had with her was from the past. She and I had dinner at a bistro in Rhode Island. We said certain things to each other. Hurtful things. This all seems like it was replaying here from my memories while I’m in this fucking pancake house.”
“You believe that your mind can replay your memories like you are watching a video?” he says with a big smile on his face.
“Yeah, spirit man, what other explanation is there?” I ask him.
“Amnesia,” he announces. “Something like that. Memories all screwed up somehow. Think about your ex-wife. Think about what you remember. Talk to me.”
“So you have training in mental health? Is that what you expect me to believe here?”
“Just fucking talk to me,” he says.
“Okay, I can remember certain things. That much I can tell you. I had my wife committed to a psych ward. Back in 1989. Then I immediately left her and filed for divorce. Now I’m here in some strange pancake house in the Mojave Desert with a weird ghost of a dead Indian that I watched hanged by the neck.”
“How long have you been driving cross country, Teddy?”
I can find no answers to give him. So, I say nothing.
“Men like us should never marry females,” he declares confidently.
“I wanted to fit in. Like I was expected to. It’s difficult here in this society. Wasn’t sure I felt any attraction to women. Yeah, okay. I’m sure I feel attracted to men. Married Katherine Snowe because she gave me a blow job on our very first date,” I tell Vincent. “Fit my covery identity. Took it too far. Confused me. Not sure who I was sexually. Katherine Snowe looks exactly like our waitress here. Not just a resemblance. They could be twins who were separated at birth.”
This is the exact moment that the waitress returns to the table for three carrying Vincent Wauneka’s order—scrambled eggs and wheat toast—exactly the same as my order. She winks at him when she sets down the plate in front of him. “You two boys sure have the same tastes, don’t you?” The waitress who is the twin of my ex-wife walks away without waiting for a reply. He smiles as he is obviously amused at what the waitress said.
I reach for what I expect to be my coffee cup only to discover that it is actually a glass of orange juice. I drink it down quickly, savoring the sweet, cool taste in my mouth and throat. Maybe if I concentrate on the orange juice, my erection will go away.
“While you are here in Bullhead, I should be able to help you out. With my connections. Meet people so you can do your work for that Phoenix television station,” Vincent Wauneka says to me.
“No, I don’t belong here,” I assure him.
“You do not seem to know what year this is,” he scolds me. “You are not thinking clearly. Besides, you need to sign up with Carlo. You owe him for that destruction you caused at the gym today.”
”Destruction,” I repeat to him. “Real supportive.”
”You are attracted to Carlo. But you are supposed to be.”
I study Vincent Wauneka’s intense eyes and the bulges of muscle that comprise his shoulders. I am helpless. His intense masculinity is overpowering me. I will not be able to resist him. “You are a mystery to me,” I hear myself saying to him. “Maybe it’s true that I don’t know for certain what year this is. I’m lost. But I do know I saw you dead. I feel as if you have some odd cosmic influence over me. Now you’re here. You walk in here to this pancake house in the middle of the night like all this was supposed to happen. Yeah, I was attracted to Carlo Zee when I met him at the gym, yes. But you are something else again. What am I gonna do?”
He says quietly, “I think you should have more caffeine.”
“No, I need sleep,” I say to him.
Vincent Wauneka says in response, “Sometimes, you have to do the exact opposite of what you think you should do. It always works out better that way.”
I just nod to him, not certain if I think he is brilliant or foolish. Margo arrives and pours me some fresh coffee. “You guys haven’t eaten a thing. What’s wrong?”
“I believe my friend here is having a complete breakdown,” Vincent Wauneka says to Margo. She shrugs as though she does not want to be part of this conversation. Then, she walks away from our table.
“Well, that was really mature,” I say to him.
“Take me back to your motel room,” he says, “Come on. I will do whatever you ask. Do what you need me to do. You want me. I want you. Nothing wrong with that.”
I can only stare at him in wide-eyed disbelief.
“A man’s orgasm is a healthy thing. Helps him sleep,” Vincent Wauneka assures me. “You need to have at least two orgasms every day. I will help you.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask him.
“You analyze things way too much,” he declares.
I tell him, “That’s what my ex always said to me.”
“And did you listen to her?” Vincent Wauneka asks.
“Fuck no, I did not listen. She was depressed,” I explain. “Constantly. Drank too much as she self-medicated. One famous night after I drove us home from dinner together at the Italian bistro in Rhode Island near where we lived, she started throwing up from all the booze. She slipped in her own vomit. She smashed her fucking face into the side of the toilet bowl. That’s why I had her committed. I had to end that fucked-up relationship.”
Vincent Wauneka just looks at me. He obviously cannot think of how to respond.
I just keep talking as I realize that my erection is diminishing because I am remembering my marriage to Katherine Snowe: “I was like a little kid trying to fight back against something overwhelming that I could not fully understand from the adult world in did not belong. I took all the liquor that we had in our condo that night. Went into our laundry room and opened up each of the liquor bottles we had. Then, I poured every one of them down into the drain of the washer. Didn’t use our kitchen sink for that. So, she would not be able later to smell the liquor in the drain in our kitchen and yell at me for what I had done.”
Vincent Wauneka nods to let me know he understands.
“Chose to leave her that night. Decided to divorce her, so I got a lawyer in Boston. I drove here all across the country. Too many days on the road. Got a better job in Phoenix. Bigger market.”
“After all you have been through,” he says. “You do realize that you deserve to be happy. I can help you. We need to go back down the street to your room. Come on.”
Now I am fairly certain that Vincent Wauneka bought my whole television career cover story. “I really was born here in Arizona. Sedona, to be exact,” I say to him just for insurance.
“Yes, I believe you,” he says. “Even if you persist in thinking that I am a dead man or a ghost from the underworld.”
“This all proves one thing: I am lost,” I say to him.
“Hey, let me share an old Navajo saying,” Vincent tells me slowly and deliberately. I turn to study his lips form the words as he tells me, “A lost man. With no direction. Dare not ask the dead for help.”
I study his eyes, trying to figure out what he means.