PART 1
These days are beautiful. Notah can see that. The days before might have been exciting but it’s not then anymore.
Working at the spa is really nice. He thought it was going to be awful at first, having to pamper rich tourists’ every need all hours of the day, a constant barrage coming in and out of the only spa in the middle of the desert, but that turned out to be so far from the truth.
In reality, there are no customers at all. Of course that isn’t quite the truth, but except for the weekends he isn’t scheduled for, nobody comes through except for a select few locals. The Thrasher Springs spa is officially listed as culturally significant to the town of Thrasher Springs, New Mexico, so the town won’t let it go out of business no matter what. There wouldn’t be a town here if not for the spa.
Notah mostly does cleaning and reception. They have a coyote his age who does massages – the son of the owner, Douglas– and his jackrabbit friend Wes who does mechanical stuff. The owners of the spa are around sometimes. He might technically be the only person on payroll.
These days are peaceful. He waits at the front desk for customers to come in, his eyes unfocusing as he stares at little waves in the indoor pool. When people aren’t coming in, he’s in the locker rooms scrubbing, around the pool deck fishing leaves and bugs out of the water, or standing outside looking at the natural hot springs. The clientele – mostly older men and women he’s seen at the grocery store before – stare at him and try to figure out where they know him from, but he’s used to that.
Today, he’s standing at the receptionist counter, re-sorting the ice pops they have in a cooler for sale. They stick to his feathers with how cold they are.
“Hey, kid,” a hearty voice says. Notah looks up. There’s a big coyote standing there. “You’re new here.”
That’s not a line he’s used to. Notah responds in customer service speak. “I am, sir.”
“No need to call me sir.” He grins. “I’m Jack. You’ll be seeing me around a lot.”
This guy is maybe 20 or 25 years his senior. He’s a brown and white coyote with a black ring around his eyes and a sly smile on his face. His yellow eyes are striking. Notah looks right back down so he doesn’t have to look Jack in the eyes.
“I’m Notah.”
“Okay,” he says with a scruffy approval. He nods and pushes his bottom lip up. “Nice to meet you, son.”
The rest of the time they talk is purely business – he gets a clip on his membership card and he goes in for access to the locker room, sauna, hot springs, and indoor pool. And when Notah hands him a towel and he walks away, Jack gives a toothy smile. “See you around, Notah.”
And it’s the briefest of interactions, but Notah can’t help but play it in his head over and over again. It makes his heart thump just thinking about it. He tries not to let it get into his head – just nervous thoughts, he rationalizes to himself, because of the new job – but he has all the time in the world to think about it and so he does.
He folds towels and thinks about the words that Jack used. “Kid” and “son” and his name at the end. That’s just how older guys talk, especially since Notah’s just some 20-year-old he’s never met before, but that doesn’t explain why he said Notah’s name like that clear as day at the end. So respectfully. So intentionally. That isn’t even mentioning the “sir” thing. What was that supposed to mean?
His shift ends before he catches Jack leaving but he thinks about him the whole drive home.
“Hey, kid!” Jack says, the next day at work, waving a hand in the air. “Hey, come over here.”
Notah complies. Jack is sitting on the edge of the pool, legs and tail dangling into the water. He’s wearing an unbuttoned shirt with a boho print – his big tummy and his chest are entirely visible, a light countershading all over his front. He’s leaning back on his paw which only accentuates his tummy. He’s definitely a heavier guy but he doesn’t look unhealthy by any means – plus, anyone would look heavy next to Notah. He looks so relaxed and so happy. Maybe living in the desert isn’t so bad after all.
He’s also wearing a Speedo. Notah normally wouldn’t even notice – the women here are wearing even skimpier bikinis and no one even looks. For some reason, he does. The strings of the Speedo rest over his crotch area, which is… Notah gulps and looks up.
“How’re you doing, Notah?” he asks with a warm expression on his face.
“Good. It’s a beautiful day out.”
“Sure is.” He grins and looks out at the sky, a hand shielding his eyes from the sun. “Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but I feel like I recognize you from somewhere.”
“Front desk?”
He practically guffaws at that. “No, not that. Somewhere else.”
Okay, Notah thinks. They’re talking about this. “Are you from Thrasher Springs?”
“I am.”
“You might have seen me around. Not a big town.”
“No,” he says, “I know you from somewhere specific.”
Notah sighs. “Um. I was friends with Al Doherty.”
“Ohhh.”
It’s quiet. The rush of the hot springs and the ambient noises of the desert and the flow of wind all stop so the two of them can appreciate this awkward moment.
“Whatever happened to that kid? He hop on a train out of here?”
Notah takes in a sharp breath. “Yup.”
“Oh. Well. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“You seem like a very nice kid,” Jack says, lumbering out of the water. Standing up, he’s the same six feet as Notah is and maybe a hundred pounds larger. Their faces are aligned. Jack looks right into his eyes. “Don’t let anyone tell you off, okay, kid?”
“Okay. Thank you, sir.”
Jack chuckles. “I’m gonna hit the sauna. See you later, son.”
Everything about Jack is stuck in Notah’s head. The little bits of darker fur on the tip of his tail and his legs. The build of his thighs. The boho fashion. The Speedo. As he’s checking out of work he gives a half-hearted goodbye to Douglas and walks out to his truck, thinking about Jack the whole time. Maybe it’s a reverse of the usual situation and he instead knows Jack from somewhere. One of his dad’s old friends or something. Maybe he looks like a guy from a TV show or something. Maybe he looks like a guy who actually enjoys living in the desert and Notah’s jealous of that. Maybe he wants Jack to be his dad, for all he knows.
Of course he forgot to roll down the windows so his car is boiling hot. And of course when he puts the key in the ignition and turns it nothing happens. He tries a few times but Notah knows it’s not going to work – he bought this car after everything happened for dirt cheap and this was bound to happen. He goes to the front of the car and lifts the hood but he doesn’t know anything about how cars work.
Wes might know, but he wasn’t at work today and when Notah looks up Douglas is already biking away. He raises a hand and caws Douglas’s name into the air but Douglas doesn’t look back.
Notah slams the hood of his car shut. “Fuck. Fuck me. Fucking fucking fuck fuck fuck.”
He’s going to have to walk home to his shitty apartment. In the desert. And die of dehydration. Or heat stroke. Or frostbite when it becomes night. Shit shit shit shit shit.
And then he feels a paw on his shoulder. He turns around and Jack is standing right there. “Oh. Hello, sir,” he says, blushing. He wants to fucking run away. “I’m sorry, I–”
“It’s alright,” Jack says. “You’re off-shift. No need to censor yourself. Men swear.”
“Okay. Okay.”
He only now pulls his paw off. Jack’s buttoned up the shirt, although not all the way so a bunch of fluff still pokes out the top. It looks like he just threw a pair of cargo shorts over the Speedo. “Can I give you a drive home, son?”
Notah smiles. “You’d do that?”
“Of course.”
And as Jack leads him to his old box truck, fuzzy dice hanging off the rear-view mirror and a discarded Big Gulp cup sitting in the passenger’s seat, Notah realizes exactly what it is that so enraptures him about Jack. And he doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t even want to think it.
PART 2
His car smells like a cigarette smoked a cigarette. Notah sits in the passenger’s seat with his legs shut, awkwardly to the side because he doesn’t want to move anything of the CDs sitting on the floor of the passenger’s seat. Jack pops a Beach Boys CD into the car’s radio and turns it on. It rumbles into action.
Notah asks him about his life as Jack drives the two of them through the desert. Jack was born and raised in Thrasher Springs, went out to UNM, got his degree in business management and administration, and went into the wider New Mexico-Arizona area and made a shit-ton of money over 20 years. No wife, no kids, no family.
Notah stares at his teeth as he talks. Jack looks ahead on the road, not that there’s anything to look at, occasionally looking over to punctuate his points with a smile. Notah plays with his feathers. “You haven’t met anyone in Thrasher Springs?”
Jack chuckles. “Oh, you’re serious.”
“As I can be.”
“The women of Thrasher Springs aren’t, ah, the ones I’m looking for.”
“Oh.”
“I’m gay, to clarify,” he says. Notah stares at the road ahead of him. He doesn’t want to think about how that news makes him feel at all. “Not many gay men around these parts.”
“What do you…” Notah mumbles. You can see everything from everywhere in Thrasher Springs. He can make out the road he lives on from a mile away. Cactuses fly past the car. “Why are you back here then?”
“I love it here. I love it. I’ve spent so much time on the roads, so much time seeing bigger towns and cities, so much time seeing the world… there’s no place like home. She was right! No place like home. I love this place.” He punctuates that with a smile. “What about you, kid. Got any girlfriends?”
“No,” Notah says. It looks like he’s just sulking now, so he straightens himself out and puts an arm on the shoulder of the seat behind him. “No, uh. No. I haven’t really been out a lot. I got a job working from home uh, two years ago, so I haven’t… yeah. And I haven’t really wanted to get out anyway.” He swallows. “Yeah.”
“I’m glad you got out. There’s lots to see,” he says. “You got any big plans?”
Notah stares at the pile of CDs on the floor of the car. They shift around as the car moves. He wouldn’t notice if one of these went missing. He slips a different Beach Boys CD into his pocket without raising any suspicion at all.
“Uh,” he says. “I dunno. Get out of here someday, you know. I don’t really know what I’d do, uh, out there, but be somewhere else.”
Jack chuckles. “Well, look at that.” He turns his blinker on. “Aspinwall, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright alright.”
It’s just the harmonies of the Beach Boys as they drive a mile down to his house. He can see it the whole time, his ramshackle house he now lives all alone in. It doesn’t look too different from the rest of the houses in Thrasher Springs – homely, you might say if you’re kind, rundown, you would say if you weren’t. The wire fence is not in shape enough where he could consider the lot enclosed. It’s just that house and nothing else for miles.
“Oh,” Jack says to himself as he pulls in. There’s not much of a driveway to pull into, actually, but he more or less gets it right. “You live here, kid?”
“I do.”
“Alright.” He stops the car. Notah undoes his seatbelt and puts his hand on the handle. “Ah, Notah?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a plan for getting to work tomorrow?”
“No, I– walk, maybe?”
“Collapse in 110 degree heat?”
“Yeah, good idea.”
Jack snickers. “Can I drive you tomorrow?”
“Oh, that’s very kind of you, but–”
“I’m gonna be there if I pick you up or not.”
Notah tries to not show his grin. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah. That would be nice.”
“What time does your shift start?”
“11.”
“I’ll be here at 10:40.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
Notah steps out of the car and leans on the frame of the car. “Thank you so much, Jack.”
“Yeah. You’re a good kid, okay?”
Notah nods.
“Yeah.”
It’s weird being in the house alone, because tonight it doesn’t feel like he is.
Notah puts the Beach Boys CD he snatched on and sings along while he reheats a microwave dinner. He goes into the backyard and throws rocks out into the desert. He thinks about Jack.
And in the morning, where he climbs out of bed at 10:25 and he puts a slice of ham on two slices of bread and brushes his teeth during his two minute shower and puts on the same spa outfit he put on yesterday, when he steps out his front door, Jack is parked right there. He rolls his window down and waves.
“Good morning, kid,” he says, opening the passenger’s side door. “Coffee?” He motions to two to-go coffee cups in the cupholders of the seat. They smell great.
“Oh! Coffee! Thank you!”
“Of course.” Notah climbs in and Jack reverses out, his hand on Notah’s headrest and an inch away from his face. “You like my Beach Boys CD?”
Notah blushes. “What?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
It’s silent as they pull onto the main road. Rocks crackle under the wheels of the car.
“I’m sorry–”
“It’s alright, kid. I hope you like it.”
“I do. I do.”
Notah and Jack talk about the desert the rest of the time – how silent it is, how still it is, and yet how full of life it is. Jack clocks into work on time for the first time ever and Notah heads out to the pool with a novel in his paws.
The whole day, Notah looks for a way to repay Jack. He doesn’t charge Jack for his stay today, although considering his membership that might be doing more to lose Notah his job then be a thank you to Jack. He walks by and asks Jack if he needs anything multiple times and Jack always waves him away with a smile or makes a comment about the part of the book he’s on. He slips Jack a strawberry lemonade. He likes that.
And staring at Jack from the other side of the water, desert pooling on infinitely beyond the coyote, looking at his chest rising and falling and that Speedo he wears to the pool, looking at his manhood down there that he isn’t hiding, Notah knows what this feeling is. It’s attraction. It’s desire.
He wants Jack to hold him.
He wants Jack to feel him.
He wants Jack to envelop him.
PART 3
One of the perks of the job is full access to the facilities. The Thrasher Springs Hot Springs and Spa is really open to everyone always, really, considering how understaffed it is. Notah’s sure someone could park their car in the lot, walk around back, climb in through the natural hot springs, and get a massage for free without anyone noticing. He knows that because he used to do it back in his teenage days. Him and Al would come here and raid the fridge and go skinny dipping and the Siyuja family would be none the wiser. Now that he works here, he knows that there are no security cameras and no locks, but he didn’t even know that then!
Regardless, he gets full, legal access to the spa now. That includes the locker rooms, the sauna, the indoor pool, the hot springs, and even the massages at a reduced price. As much as he’d love Douglas Siyuja’s big paws pressing into his back, there’s no way he would ever do that. Everything else is enough.
The day is winding down. The hawk takes a deep breath.
It’s amazing the way a low level of anxiety underlies his every action, even in the middle of the desert that has nothing in it and in a genuinely very beautiful and relaxing spa. Before this, his life was so chaotic. With Al, there was new shit to deal with every day. New girlfriends and drugs to pick up and endlessly menial fights to have. Now there’s nothing at all, and he’s still anxious.
He stands at the counter all day waiting for new customers to arrive, which they never do, tapping his feathered fingers to his head and trying to stay calm. Every time someone does come in, they always know who he is. Even here he’s done something wrong.
Doesn’t matter. He steps towards the locker room with a towel under his arm. At least he can take solace in this.
Notah really didn’t appreciate it back then. He wasn’t going to the spa to go to the spa, he was going to the spa to do some stupid shit that would leave him with a criminal record. It’s not as nice when you’re working and on edge the whole time, but at least now the crowd has thinned out completely and he can just be by himself. Wes might walk in to fix something but he can handle the rabbit.
He takes a second to appreciate this moment. The tiled floor, the humid air, the sound of the steam going in the sauna. It’s lovely in here, no light but the little ones facing towards the ceiling to keep the room dark. He unbuttons his work shirt as he stares dead forward at the locker, then strips his pants off. He looks at himself in the mirror in just his briefs. Lean and tall — maybe someone would want him if he wasn’t such a fuck up. He can force abs if he really tries. He has a nice dick, at least.
Notah wraps the towel around his waist and lets the underwear drop to the floor, then stuffs it all in a random locker. If the spa doesn’t believe in locks, he doesn’t either.
He opens the sauna door and lets the heat hit him. Now this is a good sauna. The room is so small that a single light tints the entire room orange. It’s all made of wood. He sits down on the first layer, then decides to take the second one when the first isn’t enough.
Notah closes his eyes and breathes. He counts to four, like his mother taught him all those years ago, holds it for four, and breathes out for four. A bit of sweat rolls off of his brow.
He keeps going like that. In for four, hold for four, out for four. Breathe in, breathe out. Peace and calm.
Then the door opens and he practically caws out in surprise.
It’s just Jack.
Oh shit. It’s Jack.
The older coyote stands there wrapped in a towel, his stomach fat bounding over. He gives Notah a quick smile and then takes a seat on the first layer below Notah.
He instantly looks down towards the floor, leaning his elbows on his knees and clasping his paws. At first Notah is relieved that they aren’t going to talk, but then it’s suddenly weirder like that. He doesn’t want to say anything but he still finds himself squawking something out.
“Hey, Jack,” he tries.
Jack looks at him like he just did something incredibly inappropriate, then does a little shush.
“Sorry.”
He smiles. “Just kidding. Ha! Imagine if I was that much of an asshole?”
“Oh,” Notah says, embarrassed now. “Yeah.”
“No, sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to scare you. If you’re fine with talking in here…”
“Right, right. Against the rules.”
Jack grins.
“It’s not my job to police!”
“Yeah, yeah. Lots of other rules too.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean. “You enjoying the sauna? Haven’t seen you in here before.”
“It’s hot.” Notah stares at the coyote’s crotch. The Speedo was certainly more revealing but the towel threatens to give way at any moment and show off his junk. And if his dick was already that big flaccid in the Speedo, he must be packing something pretty nice right now. “It’s hot.”
What the hell is he thinking? Notah grinds his teeth. He has no fucking reason to be thinking like that. Notah goes right back to staring at the floor.
“That’s for sure!” Jack responds. “I love it in here. Most of the time I’m nude, actually, since there’s no one else in here, but…” When he looks back up, he notices Jack’s paw placed in such a way on his towel that it’s opening up to more of his thigh. If he was sitting on the lower level right now, he’d probably have a pretty good view of the coyote’s dick. His dick pulses under his own towel. Clearly the heat is getting to him. When he looks at Jack’s face, it’s like he knows something. “You’re lucky to be working here.”
“It empties out near the end of the day. You’d think people would wanna stay for the sunset…” He wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Nope. Pretty consistently. I didn’t think you’d be here, either.”
“I don’t know what it was!” he says. It’s such an innocent line, but he opens his legs as he does it and Notah can definitely see his dick now. It’s hard. It’s hard and it’s large. That coyote dick is biiig. Emerging from a bush of pubic hair, there are maybe seven or eight inches between it and a thick head. “Something just drew me in, you know.” He leans back onto the seat behind him.
Notah doesn’t know what in the world compels him to do it, but he makes eye contact and opens his legs too. The coyote can for sure see all of his business.
And the two sit there, staring at each other’s dicks. They both grow harder with each passing second. And a smile creeps onto Jack’s face.
“Hey, kid,” he says.
And Notah wraps up his towel and stands up. “I gotta… go.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I gotta go. Sorry.”
Jack closes up, moving his arms back over his body so everything is hidden once again. “Alright. It was nice seeing you, kid.”
“You too, Jack.”
He hurries out of the sauna. Catching another look at himself in the mirror, he is drenched in sweat and has an obvious massive erection under his towel. He doesn’t even bother showering. He just throws his shorts on and rushes to his car.
Driving 20 over the speed limit with no one to see, Notah practices his breathing again. He will not let himself think about that again. In and out. In and out. In and out. All the way home.
