Christopher Moore: Coyote Blue

She said, "Mr. Aaron is very anxious to talk to you, Mr. Hunter. He requested that you go right into his office as soon as you arrived."

"Gabriella, you've been here three years. You can call me Sam." Sam was still thinking about poetry. Salmonella?

"Thank you, Mr. Hunter, but I prefer to keep things businesslike. Mr. Aaron was quite adamant about seeing you immediately."

Gabriella paused and checked a notepad on her desk, then read, "'Tell him to get his ass in my office as soon as he hits the door or I'll have him rat-fucked with a tire iron. "

"What does that mean?" Sam asked.

"I would assume that he would like to see you right away, sir."

"I guessed that." Sam said. "I'm a little vague on the rat-fucked part. What do you think, Gabriella?"

Gabriella, Gabriella,

As fair as salmonella.

"I'm sure I don't know. You might ask him."

"Right," Sam said.

He walked down the hall to Aaron Aaron's outer office, composing the next line of his poem along the way.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least

If you were mistaken for a beast.

Aaron Aaron wasn't Aaron's real name: he had changed it so his insurance firm would be the first listed in the yellow pages. Sam didn't know Aaron's real name and he had never asked. Who was he to judge? Samuel Hunter wasn't his real name either, and it was certainly less desirable alphabetically.

Aaron's secretary, Julia, a willowy actress/model/dancer who typed, answered phones, and referred to hairdressers as geniuses, greeted Sam with a smile that evinced thousands in orthodontia and bonding. "Hi, Sam, he's really pissed. What did you do?"

"Do?"

"Yeah, on that Motion Marine deal. They called a few minutes ago and Aaron went off."

"I didn't do anything," Sam said. He started into Aaron's office, then turned to Julia. "Julia, do you know what rat-fuck means?"

"No, Aaron just said that he was going to do it to you for sucking the joy out of his new head."

"He got a new head? What's this one?"

"A wild boar he shot last year. The taxidermist delivered it this morning."

"Thanks Julia, I'll be sure to notice it."

"Good luck." Julia smiled, then held the smile while she checked herself in the makeup mirror on her desk.

Walking into Aaron's office was like stepping into a nineteenth-century British hunt club: walnut paneling adorned with the stuffed heads of a score of game animals, numbered prints of ducks on the wing, leather wing-back chairs, a cherry-wood desk clear of anything that might indicate that a business was being conducted. Sam immediately spotted the boar's head.

"Aaron, it's beautiful." Sam stood in front of the head with his arms outstretched. "It's a masterpiece." He considered genuflecting to appeal to the latent Irish Catholic in Aaron, but decided that the insincerity would be spotted.

Aaron, short, fifty, balding, face shot with veins from drink, swiveled in his high-backed leather chair and put down the Vogue magazine he had been leafing through. Aaron had no interest in fashion; it was the models that interested him. Sam had spent many an afternoon listening to Aaron's forlorn daydreams of having a showpiece wife. "How was I to know that Katie would get fat and I would get successful? I was only twenty when we got married. I thought the idea of getting laid steadily was worth it. I need a woman that goes with my Jag. Not Katie. She's pure Rambler." Here he would point to an ad in Vogue . "Now, if I could only have a woman like that on my arm…"

"She'd have you surgically removed," Sam would say.

"Sure, be that way, Sam. You don't know what it's like to think that getting a little strange could cost you half of what you own. You single guys have it all."

"Stop romanticizing, Aaron. Haven't you heard? Sex kills."

"Sure, suck the joy out of my fantasies. You know, I used to look forward to sex because it was fifteen minutes when I didn't have to think about death and taxes."

"If you do think about death and taxes it lasts half an hour."

"That's what I mean, I can't even get distracted with Katie anymore. Do you know what someone with my income has to pay in taxes?" The question came up in every one of their conversations. They had worked together for almost twenty years and Aaron always treated Sam as if he were still fifteen years old.

"I know exactly what someone with your income is supposed to pay in taxes, about ten times what you actually pay."

"And you don't think that that weighs on me? The IRS could take all this."

Sam rather liked the vision of a team of IRS agents loading large dead animal heads into Aaron's Jag and driving off with antlers out every window while Katie stood by shouting, "Hey, half of those are mine!" No matter how much Aaron attained, he would never let go of his fear of losing it long enough to enjoy it. In his mind's eye, Sam imagined Aaron mournfully watching as they carried the wild boar head out by the tusks.

"This thing is gorgeous," Sam said. "I think I'm getting a woody just looking at it."

"I named it Gabriella," Aaron said proudly, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be angry. Then he remembered. "What the fuck did you just pull over at Motion Marine? Frank Cochran is talking lawsuit."

"Over a little subliminal advertising? I don't think so."

"Subliminal advertising! Jim Cable fainted after that stunt you pulled. They don't even know what happened yet. It could be a heart attack. Are you out of your fucking mind? I could lose the agency over this."

Sam could see Aaron's blood pressure rising red on his scalp. "You thought it was a great idea last week when I showed it to you."

"Don't drag me into this, Sam, you're on your own with this one. I've pulled some shit in my time to push the fear factor, but I never had a client attacked by an Indian, for Christ's sake."

"Indian?" Sam almost choked. He lowered himself very gently into one of the leather wing-backs. "What Indian?"

"Don't bullshit me, Sam. I taught you everything you know about bullshitting. Right after you left his office Jim Cable walked out of the Motion Marine building and was attacked by a guy dressed up as an Indian. With a tomahawk. If they catch the guy and he tells that you hired him, it's over for both of us."

Sam tried to speak but could find no breath to drive his voice. Aaron had been his teacher, and in a twisted, competitive way, Aaron was his friend and confidant, but he had never trusted Aaron with his fears. He had two: Indians and cops. Indians because he was one, and if anyone found out it it would lead to policemen, one of whom he had killed. Here they were, after twenty years, paralyzing him.

Aaron came around the desk and took Sam by the shoulders. "You're smarter than this, kid," he said, softening at Sam's obvious confusion. "I know this was a big deal, but you know better than to do something desperate like that. You can't let them see that you're hungry. That's the first rule I taught you, isn't it?"

Sam didn't answer. He was looking at the mule deer head mounted over Aaron's desk, but he was seeing the Indian sitting in the cafe grinning at him.

Aaron shook him. "Look, we're not totally screwed here. We can draw up an agreement signing all your interest in the agency over to me and backdate it to last week. Then you would be working as an independent contractor like the other guys. I could give you, say, thirty cents on the dollar for your shares under the table. You'd have enough to fight the good fight in court, and if they let you keep your license you'll always have a job to come back to. What do you say?"

Sam stared at the deer head, hearing Aaron's voice only as a distant murmur. Sam was twenty-six years and twelve hundred miles away on a hill outside of Crow Agency, Montana. The voice he was hearing was that of his first teacher, his mentor, his father's brother, his clan uncle: a single-toothed, self-proclaimed shaman named Pokey Medicine Wing.