"...I want you to take him out there and scare the shit out of him." Coyote said to Rain, the girl who brought me to this house show. We had been sitting on the lawn when Coyote came up to me and started talking about some of his latest paintings, a rainbow he had seen, and correspondence after I leave town.
"Do you want to go somewhere else? Just us?" I had asked Rain.
"Sure, where?"
"You guys should go down by the River to where those shrines are. Have you been there and checked those out yet?" Coyote asked me through his bushy mustache. "Nah, I haven't had the chance yet." I answered back.
Coyote looked at Rain and then said to me, "Looks like you have the perfect chance now." and then to Rain,"I want you to take him out there and scare the shit out of him." He adjusted his cowboy hat with with one hand and pulled out his smartphone with the other to show me directions. "...down the road here and you see where this big grey area on the map, this dead area is? Right there. This whole area, that means something."
Coyote and I parted ways with a few words and an embrace then Rain and I were off to find this graveyard, to find this meaning. Later that evening we walked the paths of that empty cemetery, making up stories for those who rested beneath us, we never did find the path to the shrines by the river. "Hey lemme see those." Rain said, gesturing to my car keys. The second I handed them to her they left her hand, arcing tremendously into the darkness. Like She had thrown a grenade to save her life.
"If I didn't know any better I'd say you were flirting with me." I carefully said to her, "But I'm not that guy."
I'm not that guy.