After driving westward on Interstate 40 for what seems to him like an eternity, Ted Avila needs a break. So he sits alone in his late-model 1991 sports utility vehicle parked with the engine turned off. He catches his breath sitting there in a large parking lot adjacent to a three-star hotel in Kingman situated at the edge of the freeway. He turns his head to glance into the back of the 4×4 and frowns. He was expecting to see cardboard boxes bulging with his belongings there. He remembers driving across the country from Rhode Island after leaving his failed marriage.
Standing at the front desk inside the Kingman hotel, Ted Avila carries in only a brown, medium-sized gym bag. The young female hotel clerk accepts his Arizona driver’s license and credit card and smiles at him as she hands him a large key constructed of thick aluminum to enable his entry to his hotel room upstairs. He stares at the old-style room key as if he thinks there is something wrong with it.
While he feels grateful to be in the hotel elevator, Ted Avila instinctively knows he is not where he belongs. In the reflection of the mirrored elevator doors he watches himself. He feels embarrassed because he has not washed his rumpled green cargo pants for several days now yet he continues to wear them daily. The previous day’s sweat in his thick blue hoodie provides a vague reminder of a long journey. His dirty work boots are ready for any difficult terrain he may encounter today, but how useful are hiking boots going to be while he is riding in a hotel elevator?
All he wants is to sit down and enjoy a quiet dinner meal. How can he explain to himself what he is experiencing? In his hotel room with only that gym bag, he sets down the large key on the dresser by the television set and accepts that he is not there for an extended stay. He remembers driving to Kingman. He has distant memories of the many times he has traveled on Interstate 11 northward within Arizona, but he knows full well that freeway does not yet exist. How can he know the future?
He remembers a few details about his job in the news department at channel 6 in downtown Phoenix. He thinks about being in Kingman to follow up on leads for a story he is researching.
“Where am I going?” he asks himself aloud while seated at a table in the small hotel restaurant with its Desert Southwest décor. But there are no other customers in the restaurant. Nobody hears his question. He is aware of an instrumental version of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans “Happy Trails” cowboy song descending down upon him from the high ceiling. A cool drink of beer from a frosty mug tastes perfect in his parched mouth. The healing properties of cold beer upon a lonely and confused man certainly must be an eternal concept of some transcendent significance.
He speculates that it would be highly unacceptable to die alone here while visiting Kingman, Arizona. He believes there are certainly far more appealing places for a man to face his final moments.
Ted Avila reviews his situation in his mind, attempting to process his experiences better:
When I awaken in the morning, I am still fully clothed. It is clear to me that I fell asleep on top of that Kingman hotel bed after eating. I make my way back downstairs to the restaurant again on the ground level in desperate need of nourishment.
I choose to sit at the nearest seat I see as I enter the restaurant—at the very left edge of the counter where there will be only one seat next to mine. Most people would choose to sit at a booth or a table. Not me.
I feel the need to be alone, so I choose that first seat at the counter. That choice would mean only one person could possibly sit directly next to me and so I will be able to guarantee my solitude. At this early hour, I feel certain that I will be able to enjoy the peace of eating breakfast solo. I quickly consume one cup of coffee and a breakfast pastry to prevent myself from the unwanted side effects of low blood sugar.
When did I pick up that hitchhiker in the Navajo Nation? Something about him seemed off. He told me about the special healing ceremonies of his people. I wanted him to take me to one of those. Did he? When was that? I remember standing with him in the early hours before sunrise at the edge of a bonfire. But that plays back more like it was merely a vivid dream I had.
That is the precise moment when I look to my left into the hotel’s elevator lobby. I see a young cowboy standing there.
When he realizes that I am staring at him, the cowboy salutes me.
My mouth opens involuntarily in surprise. The cowboy continues to salute me as I stare at him. He is smiling like he knows me and is happy to see me again.
I look around me at the restaurant counter to see if there is anyone else nearby. Certainly, the cowboy must be saluting someone other than me. I am quite alone at that early hour except for him. He must be saluting me in particular.
When I look closely at him, I see that he is walking directly to me. I am annoyed that my morning solitude has been interrupted by this cowboy, but I say nothing. He is wearing very tight blue jeans that emphasize his bulge.
He sits down at the restaurant counter right next to me. I study him carefully because he has invaded my personal space. He is young, tall and muscular. He wears impossibly tight blue jeans that attract my gaze involuntarily to his midsection. His cowboy boots are faded brown in color. They looked like they have a lot of mileage on them, as though this cowboy has just walked all the way to Kingman from El Paso.
He leaves on his cowboy hat, which is, of course, white. I guess a guy can keep his cowboy hat on his head while indoors in the state of Arizona. Maybe there’s a state law here to that effect. I know that Arizona tends to have more than a few unusual ideas about what is considered legal.
I notice that the cowboy’s torso seems to be trying to force its way out of his white tank top. His skin is evenly tanned as if he has spent a lot of time outdoors with his shirt off. The moment he sits down next to me his masculine scent overpowers me. This guy captures my complete, undivided attention. I immediately forget about wanting to be by myself.
He smiles politely at me. His bright white teeth are perfectly framed by thick lips. “Mind if I sit here?” he asks me way too late. He has a surprisingly deep voice with a Southern accent. Before I can answer him, he says, “I will move on over to some other seat if you want to be alone.”
“You’re good there,” I say to the cowboy. “You’re not from around here, are you?” I ask him.
“No, sir,” he replies. “I’m from Lew-zee-ann-uh.”
“Ah,” I say to him. “You were in the Army?”
He frowns at me. “No, sir,” he says.
I answer him, “You were saluting me. Navy, then?”
“No military service. I was born and raised in Nawhlins,” the cowboy says with the exact pronunciation that is expected of all Louisiana natives. “Mostly worked in my uncle’s shrimpin’ business.”
“New Orleans. You’re a real long way from home,” I say to him.
The cowboy replies, “Wanted to change up my life. Work on dry land. Not on water.”
“A cowboy from Louisiana?” I ask him.
“Just a costume,” he replies. “I play a cowboy. Just an act. In a Wild West cowboy show. For tourists. Out on old Route 66 near the airport.”
“Well, you certainly look the part, cowboy,” I tell him, trying not to stare too long at the way he fills out his blue jeans.
“You’re in the military,” he says to me. “That is why I saluted you. Case you’re wonderin’ about that, sir.”
I am so overwhelmed by how sexually aroused I am getting sitting there next to the cowboy. I just answer him without thinking, “Yes.”
His innocent eyes grow wider in response because he knows that I have given him the wrong answer. “Not supposed to talk about it, are you?” he asks quietly as if with respect. “Secret mission or something like that.”
I instantly sink into a deeply mortified feeling. “Forget it,” is all I can manage to say to the cowboy.
“You gonna order breakfast or keep asking me questions?”
“Food,” the cowboy replies with a handsome smile. Then, he adds, “I feel like I should buy you breakfast since I obviously have interrupted your private thoughts here this morning.” He brushes his thick right hand through his long blond hair that reaches down to the nape of his neck. This seems to be a gesture that this man has perfected to draw attention to his good looks.
I cannot remember ever having felt so quickly attracted to a man. The cowboy is too perfect, too tempting. He has the look of a man who has successfully left behind the innocence and immaturity of teenage life. Yet, he is not yet physically worn down or wounded by adulthood’s inevitably rough lessons. Or Earth’s gravity.
Seems likely this man has the youthful stamina to have eight or ten or even a dozen orgasms every day if that’s what he wants. Why would I want to be by myself when I could be with someone as fresh and alluring as him?
“I have a gift,” he says to me quietly just as the waitress delivers my order of scrambled eggs with sausage. “I’ll have the same as him,” the cowboy tells the waitress without taking his eyes off me.
I cannot break eye contact with him even though I want very much to look away. “What gift are you talking about?” I ask him.
“You should drink your coffee,” the cowboy says to me like it was more of a command than a suggestion.
I finally break eye contact with him and drink from my coffee cup. Somehow, I don’t remember that the waitress had given me a refill.
“A gift,” the cowboy repeats in the same exact way as before. “My relatives down in the Gulf region. Born with certain gifts.”
“Good looks?” is all I can think to ask the cowboy as I focus on sipping from my coffee cup instead of looking into his eyes.
I hear him reply softly, “Thanks, sir. But not what I meant. Look at me.”
I turn my head towards him in response to what he had said to me. Once again, I am locked in unwanted eye contact with him. “Telepathy. That’s what you mean,” I say to him confidently.
The cowboy makes a slight, almost imperceptible gesture with his left hand. At that exact moment, I felt that I am suddenly free to turn away from him. But I chose instead to keep making eye contact with him. “Wow,” he says to me. “You’re challenging me, sir?”
I assure him once again, “No need to call me ‘sir.’ And, you can stop poking around inside my head. You’re gonna really piss me off.”
He looks stunned and quickly turns his face away from me. The cowboy asks me what seems like a strange question: “You could feel me inside your mind?”
I try to muster as much authority as I can. He resumes eye contact with me, but I know somehow that I am no longer under his control “Fuck, yeah. Don’t know where you learned to do this. But I definitely could feel you. There you were, inside my mind.”
He smiles apologetically. “Most people do not have the mental skills that you do,” the cowboy says.
I reply to him, “So, you take advantage of people with your mind games. That’s why you like working it so hard wearing that cowboy costume. At that tourist trap. You’re good at what you do. Manipulating people. They never know what hit them.”
His eyes reveal that I’ve hurt his feelings. That surprises me. He seemed to have me completely under some sort of spell. But maybe I have broken free.
“Truth is, you’re not too far off the mark about me,” he admits. “I can tell you weren’t expecting me to be honest and say that.”
“I agree to let you buy me breakfast,” I say to him. “You weren’t expecting me to say that, were you?”
He sighs with obvious frustration at me. “Okay. I agree to buy your breakfast. You figured me out very fast, sir. Sorry. We say ‘sir’ a lot in Nawhlins.” Then, the cowboy quickly adds, almost like it was an afterthought:
“And yeah, I can read you. All your memories.”
“Okay,” I say to him with a chuckle. “Good luck with that. I’ve likely been through some sort of trauma. Fucked up my brain. Not sure. Memories are all over the place. Not in proper places where memories are supposed to be. If you know what I mean. If there is a proper place.”
He scares me when he replies, “I saw that, yeah.”
The waitress delivers his order of scrambled eggs with sausage and gives him a cup of coffee. She then refills my coffee cup and walks away.
“Not that I believe you,” I say to him. “But, I’m curious. Tell me what you saw when you looked inside my mind.”
“You hold many secrets,” he says as he started to eat his scrambled eggs.
“Does that kind of shitty opening line usually work for you in your parlor games in Louisiana?” I ask him aggressively as I watch his thick lips and how his face moves as he chews his food.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he says in response with a self-conscious grin and a mouth full of food. He stops eating his breakfast and looks at me more carefully than before. I could tell that he knew he would have to work harder to get inside my head if he actually could do that. He says, “Most people do not have sophisticated mental training like you have had. Nor as smart as you are.”
“So, you think by trying to flatter me, I will be easier to read?” I ask him.
“Look,” the cowboy says, “I’m for real. What I’m doing is not fake. You should sense that.”
“Okay,” I admit. “I will stop pushing back. I thought at first that you were coming on to me. Sexually, I mean. That was the vibe you gave off when you sat next to me. Showing off your chest and shoulders in that tank top. Your package. Contained for the moment in those blue jeans like you cannot wait to let your cock out and show me.”
He replies, “You’re right. Again. Absolutely. I was coming on to you. It’s natural. And, I’ll tell you something: You can easily get me into your bed upstairs on the third floor this morning. That’s right. You weren’t expecting me to say that, were you?”
I can feel my face glowing bright red from deep embarrassment. “You can stop saying that ‘weren’t expecting’ line. I accept that you do have the power to read my mind. My third-floor room. Pretty unnerving to me you knew that specific detail,” I say to him. “Someone here at this hotel told you that, right?”
“Try to just relax,” the cowboy says to me. “Nobody told me shit about you. Just let me look under the hood, as it were. Maybe you just have some wires that got twisted. Make eye contact with me again. Please.”
So, I do what he has told me to do. The young cowboy squints at me as though he is having difficulty keeping his eyes open as he tries to maintain eye contact with me.
I fantasize about what this man might look like at the moment of orgasm. His entire naked body shudders uncontrollably. His eyes are tightly closed. His mouth is opening as he begins to inhale. Then he suddenly exhales and his eyes pop open. He watches his juices explode into the open air.
Then he rubs his forehead and frowns as if he has acquired a sudden, unexpected headache. He quickly gets up from the counter of that restaurant and hurriedly moves towards the hotel lobby entrance. For some reason, he unexpectedly is motivated to leave the building immediately.
When I step outside of the Kingman hotel to check on him, the former New Orleans shrimp hunter is on his knees near some ceremonial cactus bushes at the edge of the parking lot. He is bending over forward with both hands upon the dirt in the desert landscape. He looks like he had just eaten something so deeply corrosive and painful that his body needed to dispel it quickly and totally.
I approach him, but he holds up his left hand and gestures to keep me at a distance. He gets back up onto his feet with a look of relief on his face. He takes several deep breaths through his mouth knowing he has stopped himself from vomiting.
Then, he starts sobbing uncontrollably as he remains on his knees. He cries out mournfully like a young person who has never before experienced deep, unrestrained grief.
I turn to walk away to give him privacy. But the young cowboy cries out to me, “Don’t go, sir.”
So, I stand there watching him struggle to get up from his knees with his back turned to me. I see him withdraw a bright white handkerchief from a back pocket to wipe the cold sweat from his face. He takes off his cowboy hat and runs his large left hand through his thick blond hair. Then, he quickly stuffs the handkerchief back into his jeans pocket. He puts his cowboy hat back on and turns to face me.
I stand there in silence just staring at this young man. He looks both highly masculine and yet utterly vulnerable at the same time. That odd combination of traits makes me want to just hug him and take him upstairs to my hotel room as fast as possible, remove all his clothing, and fuck him. He slowly walks up to me until he and I are face-to-face with only a matter of centimeters between our noses.
The cowboy clears his throat and says to me softly as if he is whispering, “Mr. Avila, you know what? I really need to sit down somewhere. Right now.”
I am stunned that he not only knows my surname but also the correct pronunciation. Most people always get it wrong. I have no choice but to believe that he really can get inside and look around my mind. I say to him, “My 4×4 is parked here in front of the hotel. Let’s go sit there, okay?”
The cowboy nods and with his large right hand pointed forward for me to lead the way to my truck. I want him to walk in front of me because he seems so unsteady. I do not think he will be able to remain on his feet and I want to help catch him should he suddenly drop to the pavement.
“Don’t worry, I won’t fall down,” he says to me as he keeps facing away from me and keeps walking.
“How are you going to sit in my truck unless I show you where it is?” I ask him in a loud voice so he will hear me even as he is moving farther away from me.
“Got that taken care of,” the cowboy answers confidently as he keeps walking and correctly announces all the letters and numerals from my Arizona license plate as I catch up to him in the hotel parking lot.
“This way over here. Can’t see it yet. You got a new 1991 model.”
“This is too fuckin’ weird,” I say to him. “Go back to walking ahead of me, okay?” As I walk behind him, I watch his ass as he confidently strides forward. I want to forget everything that is happening to me and just take this cowboy up to my hotel room for some intense sexual activity to occupy the entire morning. Isn’t that what he wants? Why else would he be spending this much time with me?
The cowboy and I arrive at my SUV. I take out my keys and unlock the passenger side door to let him in. He removes his cowboy hat before sliding into the passenger seat.
I walk around the front of the vehicle to the driver’s side while keeping my eyes on him. When he is sitting in the passenger seat, tears start streaming down his handsome face. Once I am inside my truck, I ask him, “You okay? What was going on there?”
He cries freely as though he truly is not embarrassed to be showing so much emotion to me. He looks at me as though he wants to start talking, but he cannot speak because he is unable to stop crying.
“Just take your time,” I say to him. “No problem. You’re okay here now. At least seated, you can’t fall down and bounce your heard off the pavement in this parking lot.”
He regains his composure after a few minutes. He wipes away the tears from his eyes with his hands and looks at me again. His expression is one of strong sympathy.
“Who are you really? And, what did you see poking around inside my brain?” I ask him.
He clears his throat and replies, “Really am from Lew-zee-ann-uh. No bullshit. Lot of folks in my family can do what I do. Reading people’s minds.”
“I meant your name, cowboy. Tell me your name,” I say to him.
“Matthew Lejeune,” he replies.
“Okay, Matthew Lejeune,” I answer him, careful to pronounce his surname the same exact way that he has. “What kind of spooky shit did you find when you jumped into my head like your kinfolk on the bayou taught you to do?”
He replies with a very uncertain and unsteady voice. “Was no parlor trick. No mind games. Wish you would show me some respect.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “Just cannot tell whether you’re my enemy.”
He coughs nervously and he tells me, “Your intense mental training far surpasses anything I have encountered before.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I admit to him.
“Don’t know how to explain it to you, sir,” he says. “Your mind. You’ve had some seriously fucking advanced training. Military-grade training. For your mind. But you should know that I am not your enemy.”
“Well, what caused you to throw up and act so stricken with grief out here in this hotel parking lot?”
He looks me directly in the eyes for the first time since we left the hotel restaurant. I could tell that he has been deeply wounded emotionally because of what he had experienced.
“I saw you. In this very 4×4 we’re sitting in right now,” he says. Then, he starts to get tears in his eyes again. “Reading other people. That’s easy for me. Real easy. But with you, there was a lot more going on in there that I did not anticipating finding,” he says with hesitation, obviously having difficulty expressing himself. Then, he starts talking with more confidence. “You are not who you present yourself to be. You are someone else. You are from somewhere else, not here.”
“You’re too young and inexperienced to be able to do this,” I say to him. “How old are you?”
He chuckles nervously and asks, “You wanna see my ID?”
“Your date of birth, man,” I reply. “When were you born?”
“I was born on the fifteenth of July in 1970. I’m twenty-one now. Street legal.”
“Okay, street legal,” I say to him. “You’re making all this shit up. You’re an actor. And a damn good one, too.”
“Well, yeah, sure, I know a lot about acting. I’m not acting right now. Promise you.”
“You say I have advanced training. You expect me to believe I am not who I say I am?”
“I only am telling you what I read in your mind. That’s all.”
“Sure, okay,” I reply. “I’m just not sure that what you think you saw means anything. It could all just be in your over-active imagination. Just random shit. Images and ideas that mean nothing whatsoever.”
He says, “You look like you’re around thirty years old. But when I was reading your mind—. Your memories are, as you say, a real mess. Twisted wreckage. I did learn that you remember your work. You remember working in the year 2190.”
What this young man has told me makes me feel suddenly very dizzy. “What?” is all I can manage to say.
“You have memory loss,” he says to me. “Your memories are like scrambled eggs. But I could clearly get from reading your mind about your line of work. And the fact that you remember working a couple of hundred years in the future. Every other person who’s mind I’ve read has memories of the past.”
I just stare at the cowboy next to me in the passenger seat of my 4×4. “It’s 1991,” I say aloud to him. “You know that. I know that.”
“Of course,” he replies as if I am trying to trick him. “And yet, in your mind, you remember your work from a couple of hundred years from now, sir,” the cowboy says to me.
I cannot break away from intense eye contact with him. “I don’t want to know anything more from you. Or dates you say I remember from the future. Nothing. I don’t understand how you are doing this.”
“Mr. Avila,” he responds. “I don’t understand, either.”
“Do you also know my first name?” I ask him.
“Yes, of course,” he answers. “You’re Ted Avila. From that news show in Phoenix.”
“So you’ve seen me on the news?” I ask him.
“Fuck no,” he replies. “Don’t watch much television. Never watch the news. We don’t get channel 6 up here in Kingman.”
“You mean to tell me that you just read my mind and picked up my full name, my occupation in television news, and you think I’m from the future?”
He replies, “Yeah. Like I told you. Reading your mind is an easy thing for me to do. Born with this mind-reading ability like other members of my family.”
“Tell me, Matthew Lejeune,” I say to him. “Do you really work out on old Route 66 in that cowboy costume as an actor in a show for tourists?”
“I do,” he replies. “It’s all true. Everything I’ve told you. Everything. I’m staying at this hotel for now. Just moved here from the Gulf not quite two weeks ago. Haven’t yet found an apartment I like. Living in Kingman is not at all like living in Nawhlins.”
“So, you were on your way to work today when you went into the restaurant for breakfast?” I ask him.
“No, I got time off from the Kingman cowboy show so I could find my own place and move out of this hotel,” he replies. “I need a place of my own where I can live. As I passed through the hotel lobby, I saw you sitting at the restaurant counter. Something told me to salute you and then walk up and talk with you.”
“Something told you. How nice for you,” I say to him.
“I had no choice,” he says. “I was drawn to you. I sat down next to you like I was supposed to. Now I feel like we are linked somehow. I don’t like this.”
I try to ignore what he has just told me and instead asking him, “Do you always go out in public dressed in that cowboy costume?”
“Why not? Yeah,” he replies. “This is Arizona. A guy can get away with dressing like a cowboy here. Easy to do.”
“I know that,” I say to him. “I was born here in Arizona.”
“I know, I picked that up also,” he says. “Place has an odd name.”
“Sedona,” I say to him. “A woman’s name. It’s about a three-hour drive east of here. Haven’t been back there since I was a kid. Here I am with you today. With some cowboy. And you’re tuning into my hallucinations. This obviously is my mental breakdown, and you’re just playing a bit part in this tragedy in my mind.”
The young man breaks off eye contact with me. He stares straight ahead out the windshield of my SUV at the hotel entrance. He looks as though he is frustrated that I do not believe him.
He touches the fingers of both hands to the inside of the windshield. “At least two different guys shot their loads here in the passenger seat while you were driving,” he says. “Their man-juices splashed onto the glass right here.” He points to a certain spot on the inside of the windshield with his right hand and he traces it on the glass using circular motions with his left.
I am so stunned that I cannot reply. I reach over and touch his left shoulder with my right hand. I can feel the warmth of his skin. He inhales suddenly since I surprised him by touching his shoulder. His facial expression is that of a man who is about to have an orgasm. Merely because I touched his shoulder.
So I very quickly withdraw my hand from his shoulder. He looks over at me with sadness on his face. “You see what happened? Told you I feel linked to you,” Matthew Lejeune says. “Locked to you mentally. Against my will. I cannot stop reading your mind. Your memories almost made me shoot my load. I want to get as far away from you as possible. Trust me. I just cannot break free from you for some reason. This has never happened to me in my entire life before.”
“Yeah, well, your entire life consists of a couple of decades,” I say to him, trying to change the subject quickly. I do not want to explore what I may have just caused happen to him. Sarcasm is a better choice for me now. “When you’ve working as I do in the future, you’ll understand. You know nothing about life.”
When he realizes the meaning of my sarcastic reply, he chuckles. Then, he says, “Your touch. How did you make me feel pleasure from your memories?”
“Let’s not go there, okay? Talk about something else, will you? I’m here in Northern Arizona from Phoenix. Working on an investigative story. For the news program. I can justify talking to you about that.”
He nods at me. He apparently does not want to talk about what just happened any more than I do. He says, “So you wanna see if I would make for a good interview? For what you’re working on. For the television news show. I’m just an entertainer. Cowboy character. Singing and dancing for tourists mostly. All just pretend. But, I know a lot about hanging men by the neck.”
I ignore what he said and choose to imagine seeing Matthew Lejeune on a Wild West stage in a small saloon. There is honky-tonk piano music playing a fast-paced tune to a packed house of all-male cowboy customers. The venue is a small bar that looks authentic as though it was back in the Wild West days.
Patrons are watching sexy cowboy actors, including Matthew Lejeune, dancing suggestively on the stage. He is one of five performers. Each man obviously was selected for this show based on the way Hollywood films and television series conceived of masculinity during the late 20th century—men with square, lantern-jawed faces who look like they have spent their entire adult lives working out in a gym somewhere.
Matthew Lejeune and his four fellow cowboy gang members on that Wild West stage show are not like cowboys that the polite public would expect. This group owns the stage wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, and cowboy hats while they simulate cock sucking and butt fucking accompanied by a lively honky-tonk piano song.
“Then, at the end of the show we put on for the tourists, we’re all hung,” he says to me as we are seated together in the Kingman hotel restaurant. “No cowboy boots on. No shirts on.” What Matthew Lejeune says interrupts my fantasy of his cowboy gang dance.
“All hung?” I ask him. “You mean all hanged?”
Although I am not touching him physically, I can sense his thoughts clearly. He knows what is going on. He looks over at me with sadness on his face. “You see what happened? I feel that I am linked to you,” Matthew Lejeune says. “Locked to you mentally. Against my will. I cannot stop reading your mind. You almost made me shoot my load. I want to get as far away from you as possible. Trust me. I just cannot break free from you for some reason.”
“I’m an investigative journalist. Working on is about hangings,” I tell him. “Here in 1991. Nobody knows that. I never talk to anyone about my producing this story about hangings.”
“Coincidence, then. Is that what you think? In the grand finale of the show I’m in for tourists is a scene in which all five of us cowboy outlaws are hoisted up off the stage floor at the end of our nooses to die brutally,” he replies. “Tourists love that. Especially the men.”
“And why wouldn’t they?” I ask sarcastically.
“I mean, hanging an entire cowboy outlaw gang. Wow. It’s a great way to end our show,” he says. “Tourists really like watching that. Some of the men, the tourists, seem to get sexually aroused as they watch our pretend hangings. We use these special rope devices that makes the hangings look very real, but it’s completely safe. The male tourists grab their crotches while we’re up there doing the show and stringing up a guy by the neck. I can tell they find cowboy hangings arousing. I don’t think they can help how they respond to what’s going on that stage.”
“You see this from the stage in the middle of your performance?” I ask.
He replies, “Well, it feels really strange being hanged. Even though it’s only acting. I know it’s only acting. It feels kind of real. How can that be erotic? I have no idea. But I struggle and fight for my life at the end of that rope. The five of us cowboys are up there acting, of course. We have special harnesses to fake the hangings, but we are not in any real danger. We kick our legs in agony, not wanting to die like that. Acting, you know? Always makes me wonder what it must’ve felt like for a real cowboy to be hanged back in the days of the western frontier. Couple of times I started to get a hard-on when the noose pulls on my neck and I am suspended in the air above the stage. I don’t mind telling you I was bothered by how my dick responded like that. Against my will.”
I reply, “So, tell me—what are you thinking? I am here researching ritualistic hangings in Arizona. Law enforcement doesn’t understand what’s happening. Suddenly today I meet you here at this Kingman hotel. You just happen to be involved in public hangings. Only for show biz, of course. Nobody is actually executed in your Wild West show. It’s all just pretend. You expect me to believe it’s all just coincidence that we met here this morning?”
He reaches into the right front pocket of his tight blue jeans. He hands me a partially crumpled color photograph of five shirtless cowboys shown as they are hanged on a stage. “You can keep this,” he says. “I’m in this snapshot with my fellow cowboys. Actors, I mean. Just so you know I’m telling you the truth. Whatever psychic connection you created between us—.”
“Wait just a fucking second,” I interrupt him. “I did not find you. It was the other way around.”
“From my vantage point,” he says, “You pulled me into that hotel restaurant with your mind. I’ve been zapped like an insect that happens to fly into one of those bug lights. Except this insect—talkin’ about me here—didn’t die. Just fried to a fucking crisp. Being dead would be a whole lot easier on me. I’m sure of that! Instead, I saw horrible things. And you and I are linked. Definitely linked. Our minds are locked together. Truth is, I believe if I help you regain your memories, I can disconnect from you. That’s my only option. Then I can go on and live my own life. You go your way. I’ll go mine. Like in the old cowboy songs.”
I glance back at his handsome face. He is telling me the truth. He smiles reassuringly. I know he is being completely honest with me. I decide at that moment that I will trust him unlike I had ever trusted anyone else in my life. “You got a deal,” I say to him. Maybe my memory loss is preventing me from recalling any cowboy songs about time travelers and mind readers.
“Your work on that television news show. That’s not for real.”
“What are you talking about? The show is real. Maybe manipulative of the audience. Like all television does. I really am investigating men’s hangings here in northern Arizona.”
“Well, yeah, maybe you are looking into men’s hangings. That’s also why I gave you the photo. You can keep it. But working in Phoenix is just a cover story you’ve got going. Your real job is somewhere else, very far away from here.”
“You got that from reading my mind? Is that what you are telling me?”
“Mr. Avila, I did not ask for this. I don’t want to be here talking to you right now. This is painful for me. I didn’t go poking around your mind deliberately in search of your secrets.”
“What secrets?”
“You work at a top-secret facility. In the future. Not on some television news show down in Phoenix. You’re not really investigating hangings in Arizona in 1991.”
“That’s what you think? My secret is I work at a top-secret facility very far from here? What kind of facility did you see in my memories?”
“I’m not sure. I see several machines. That’s what I will call them. They are odd-looking blue machines made out of some kind of glass, I think.”
“You think?”
“Your memories reveal that you sit inside these round blue machines.”
“Oh, they are round? Like a bubble?”
“Shaped like a hockey puck, not a bubble. Hockey puck turned on edge. And large enough for a grown man to sit inside, completely naked.”
“Hockey puck. Far away from here. Naked men.”
“Yeah, I don’t know exactly where. But your memories are that this base is top-secret and underground. Not near here at all.”
“A base with blue glass hockey pucks turned on its edge large enough for a man to sit inside. Underground. And far away.”
“Yes, I have told you the truth about what I saw. You were recruited for that top-secret work by a native American man on the Navajo Reservation not far from here.”
“Get the fuck outta my truck, cowboy. Right now. I need to return to planet Earth.”
Next: Chapter 3