Coyote Dreams

“It’s ten to eight,” Mark said. “I’m early. Sorry.” He stayed in his crouch, still grinning at me while I scrambled to my feet and pushed oily hands through my hair, then swore and rubbed them on my jeans. “Looks like you’re not quite ready.”

I stared at him wide-eyed, then turned to stare at my Mustang. Concrete wasn’t my favorite place to sleep, but concrete beneath a jacked-up vehicle was just asking to get dead. I couldn’t place the blame on Petite, but somehow I wanted to, as if she’d lulled me into a potentially deadly nap. “It’s eight o’clock?” The location of the sun and the coloring of the sky suggested Mark was not, in fact, lying to me. “Uh. Jesus.” I was never at my best right after I’d woken up, but waking up after an all-day snooze in a parking lot was high on a list of Ways to Discombobulate Joanne. I was astonished no one’d called the police or dropped the car on me or stolen my tools. I swung back around to stare at Mark some more, as if doing so would provide some sort of explanation for my behavior.

“You okay?” He looked up at me with the amusement still there, but dampened by genuine concern. “How long’ve you been out here?”

“Since…like, God, noon. Somewhere like that.” I pushed my hand through my hair again, then rubbed the scar on my cheek and felt grease slick across my face. Mark put his hands on his thighs and pushed out of his crouch, grinning again. He wore a maroon button-down that played up the red in his hair and looked soft. I curled my fingers against my face to keep myself from smearing oil all over his clothes, too, and transferred my attention to taking tools out from under my car so I could remove the jack. That was safer than feeling up Mark’s shirt.

“I came home to do some work on the car and to think, and…” My heart had started hammering too hard, making a wash of fright climb up my throat. I could believe I might fall asleep under Petite for a few minutes, maybe even an hour or two. But with the sun traveling through the sky and heating up both the day and the car, not to mention leaking light around the mask my elbow’d made, and with people in and out of the parking lot all day—that just wasn’t normal. I knotted my hands around the jack and held on, trusting it to not give out and crush me now when it hadn’t bothered to all day. “I can’t believe I slept out here.” My thoughts were still running down those tracks, wash, rinse, repeat. “That hard, all day. It’s not…”

“Natural?” There wasn’t any teasing in Mark’s voice, though he sounded wry. I looked up from the jack, then ratcheted it down, mouth pressed thin. “It’ll be okay,” he said, sounding a great deal like I had trying to reassure myself within the context of my dream. “Look. I’ve got reservations for eight-thirty at the Ponti Seafood Grill. You’re going to need some food, and I know you don’t have anything in your apartment.” I heard a smile come into his voice and looked up to see it reflected on his face. “I’m guessing you’re not the kind of woman who takes two hours to primp and get ready to go out. Why don’t we go up to your apartment, you can clean up and we can go to dinner? I won’t keep you long, I swear, but you’re going to have to eat one way or another, right?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t have anything to wear to Ponti’s.” Not that there was much dress code anywhere in Seattle—casual wear, hallmark of the Northwest, was accepted anywhere I ever ate—but Mark looked nice, and I didn’t have anything between jeans and sweaters and my dress uniform.

A car door banged shut somewhere in the parking lot and Phoebe’s voice sailed toward me: “Are you avoiding me, Joanne? You didn’t answer your pho—ooh. Hello.” The last, I guessed, wasn’t directed at me, as she appeared from down the lot and looked Mark up and down. “Hi. I’m Phoebe.” She offered a hand, seizing Mark’s forearm in a traditional warrior’s grip when he took it. Her expression was delicious, trying to watch both of us at once. “What’s up, Joanne?”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. I had managed to double-book the single evening I’d had plans for in months. “Uh. I, uh.”

“You have a date,” Phoebe surmised, laughter glinting in her eyes. “Is that why you said you couldn’t go out tonight? You’re not going out in that, are you?” She eyed my jeans and T-shirt with dismay, which didn’t seem fair. I’d barely gotten them grease-stained.

“I, uh.”

Phoebe turned a very bright grin on Mark and grabbed my upper arm as solidly as she’d taken Mark’s. “Twenty minutes,” she said. “Give me twenty minutes and you won’t recognize her. Joanne, come with me.”

“I, uh,” I managed one more time, and Phoebe dragged me off to my apartment.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Start talking,” she hissed as soon as we were inside the building door, though it didn’t stop her from pulling me up the stairs. “Who is he? Why didn’t you say something? He’s really cute, Joanne! What were you doing working on your car if you’ve got a date? What were you doing working on your car if you were supposed to go out with me? My God, it’s a good thing I came along. You’d have just worn that, wouldn’t you?” The barrage of questions and comments got us up five flights of stairs and into my apartment, where Phoebe let me go and flung her giant black purse onto my couch. “Talk,” she repeated. “I want the dirt! No, wait. Go get in the shower.” She shed her denim jacket as she spoke, revealing worn hip-hugging jeans and a black sleeveless spandex shirt that said “Hottie” in rhinestones across her breasts.

“I’m in over my head, aren’t I?” That was easier than trying to answer any of her zillions of questions.

“You dress fine for slouching off to Bethlehem.” Phoebe knocked the front door closed with a toe and leaned on the couch, arms folded. “But for dating you have less dress sense than my dog. Of course you’re in over your head. Shower.” She pointed imperiously at my bedroom. “Never fear. Phoebe is here. I’ll turn you into a heartbreaker.”

“I don’t want to be a heartbreaker,” I said somewhat dizzily, and went to take a shower. Somebody was in control, even if it wasn’t me. For the moment I just went with it. My brain didn’t seem to have quite woken up yet.

Four minutes of hot water later I felt slightly less fuzzy. The best thing about hair as short as I wore mine was the absolute minimal time frame it took to wash it. Phoebe was in my bedroom when I exited the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hands on her hips and her expression dismayed as she studied my closet. “I was right,” she said dourly. I stuck my jaw out defensively.

“Right about what?”

Phoebe turned on me, thick eyebrows lifted. She very nearly had an eyebrow, rather than eyebrows. It kind of went along with the compact, muscular build she’d gotten from years of fencing. In car terms, she was a Porsche: small, sleek, fast and powerful. In people terms, I was afraid to mention a pair of tweezers in her presence, for fear she’d kick my ass. “You have nothing at all to wear. It’s okay.” She’d moved her purse to my bed, and now she upended its contents onto the comforter. A glimmering gold thing fell out, then a pair of jeans and a tri-fold leather wallet that had taken a lot of beating. A compact bag fell on top of all of it. Phoebe pushed the wallet into her back pocket and shook the jeans out. “Put these on.”

I clutched my towel and squinted at the jeans. There was something wrong with them. “Are those yours? They’re short.”

“No, they’re not. Either. Not mine and not short. Put them on.” She thrust them at me. I edged by her and got some undies out of my dresser first, squirming into them before taking the jeans. I had the distinct impression I was being bulldozed and I’d somehow given tacit permission for that to happen. “What’s the gold thing?”

“Get the jeans on first.”

“I’m trying. They don’t fit. They’re too short.”

Phoebe inspected my ankles. The jeans hit right where they were supposed to, boot-cut and swinging against my anklebones. “They are not.”

“Up here!” I pulled the towel up to show her, trying desperately to pull the jeans up. The waistband wouldn’t go past my hipbones. My bellybutton was yards above the waistband.

“That’s where they’re supposed to hit, Joanne.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I yanked again, which was certainly uncomfortable, if not in the least productive. I was giving myself an all-around wedgie. Phoebe slapped my hands away from the waistband, zipped the zipper and buttoned the button, then stood back and nodded approvingly.

“Okay, that’s good. Shirt now.” She handed over the gold glimmery thing. I held it up in dismay.

“This isn’t a shirt. It’s a piece of gold lamé. With strings.”

“Wow. I wouldn’t have put money on you knowing what lamé was. It’s a shirt.” She took it away from me and tied two of the strings around my neck. “See?”

“I am not wearing this in public.”

“Yes, you are. C’mon, lose the towel.” She tugged it. I squawked and clutched it against my chest.

“Phoebe!”

“Trust me, Joanne. Would I lead you astray?”

“Yes.” I sighed and unwrapped the towel, feeling put-upon. Phoebe tied another series of strings behind my back, then clucked her tongue.

“Okay. Got any hair gel?”

“Will you have a heart attack if I say yes?”

“No.” She sounded far too cheerful, and went into my bathroom to root around. “You don’t own any makeup?”

“What would I do with it?” I sat on the bed, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Phoebe clucked again and came back out with a palmful of mousse that she rifled through my hair.

“Close your eyes. And tell me about this guy while I do your makeup.” She unzipped the compact bag and dumped its content onto my bed, too: foundation, blush, lipstick, little jars of loose makeup and about fourteen makeup brushes of various sizes. The rest of it I didn’t recognize, which made me nervous. “Close your eyes,” she ordered again. I did. “Does he have a brother?”

“No,” I muttered, “he’s got a sister.” Wretched petite curvy redheaded Barbara. I could remember her name easily enough. It didn’t make sense that it’d taken numerous repetitions for me to remember Mark’s.

“That’ll do,” Phoebe said saucily enough as I opened my eyes. She nearly poked me with a brush and scowled. I closed my eyes again. “Where’d you meet him? How long’ve you been dating?”

“I just met him last night, Phoebe.”

“Ooh, first date. Good thing I’m here. What about Gary?”

My eyes popped open again. “What about him?”

“Does he know you’re seeing a younger man, too?”

“I’m not dating Gary! He’s seventy-three years old, Phoebe!”

“Uh-huh,” she said, full of polite disbelief. “Sure. So’s Sean Connery.”