The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 10

"I know you feel what I do," he told me, maturely ignoring Kelsey. "It's almost like electricity, or chemistry, and it's real, and I'm pretty sure there's science behind it, frankly. But I don't think you should get in the middle of the mess that I'm in right now. It wouldn't be fair to you. We got plenty time, later. Go back to your life, Maria, and stop trying to seek me out. Let me find you, when the time is right. Or better yet, let's just not see each other at all until it's over."

I felt tears well up in my eyes. "That's really nice and really mean at the same time," I said. I groped for his hand, and found it, squeezed it. Instantly, I was met with the incredible warmth and sense of peace I'd gotten the other times we'd touched. He looked down at our hands, and looked...scared. Like a little boy.

"Whoa," he whispered, as a sort of heat energy just pulsed back and forth between us.

"Yeah," I said, feeling all melty inside. "I think that's what they mean by chemistry."

"Uhm," said Kelsey. "I think you're about to have a sickeningly touching moment. I think I'll just go look around the back of the church for a minute and think about Israel and the Moors, or something. If that's cool with you. Uhm, yeah. Well, alrighty then."

We didn't answer, because we were quite occupied looking into each other's eyes. I'd never felt this way before, and the magnetic pull toward him was overwhelming. I scooted closer, but just as he'd done last night, he braced himself, then backed away. He dropped my hand, and literally recoiled from me as though I had the plague.

"The best thing I can do for you is leave you alone," he said, struggling to believe it.

"That's not true."

"It is. Trust me. It has to be. Please trust me." He turned his attention to a small blue door at the back of the room, anxiously.

"Do you live here?" I asked him.

"Something like that. I'm safe there, because even Ulysses is afraid of The Maker."

"The Maker?"

He looked embarra.s.sed, caught, and backtracked. "G.o.d," he said. "That's what I meant to say. G.o.d and the church. The bad guys know better than to come in here, and the people here have been very kind about sheltering me and my animals."

"Why all the animals?"

"Don't you know why, mamita?" he asked me, with a knowing look. "You feel the same way about them that I do. It's love. I've seen you with Buddy. You're like I am, a big softie. It's one of the things that makes you so beautiful, Maria."

I was struck then by the incredible difference between Demetrio and Logan with regards to animals. I'd never known a man who loved them the way I did. I didn't think such males existed.

"Are you gay?" I asked him.

"What?" He seemed surprised, but not offended. "No. Why do you ask?"

"Because you love animals, always smell good, and you won't kiss me."

He laughed softly and sighed. "I'm very straight. I'm also careful. I'm not impulsive, Maria. This ain't the right time for us, me and you."

"I can help you do this, get away from those guys," I said. "My mom's really powerful, she's a city councilor and a lawyer, she's running for mayor and comes from an old powerful family in New Mexico; she can help you. She knows a lot of people. Really."

"That's really nice, mamita, but you don't understand what's at stake," he told me, and I saw tears well in his eyes. "Just trust me, please, and go."

"Don't do this," I whined.

"You have to leave here. I've - I've never known a girl like you. You're safe to leave now. Those guys are pretty much nocturnal, and they're gone on their rounds. I promise I'll see you again. Okay? But not - not like - I don't know. I'm a little confused, too. I have to go."

"No," I said, crying a little.

"I'm sorry. I have to go. Bye."

He opened the blue door, stepped through, and shut it behind him. I went back to the front door, and found Kelsey there trying to blend in with the shadows.

"That was very sad, and creepy and totally inappropriate in every way," she said.

I hugged her, and broke down crying. "I'm totally losing my mind, aren't I?" I mumbled into her shoulder.

"Maybe," she said, holding me tightly. "Yes. I mean h.e.l.l yes, you are. You are. But all that means is that it's our job to help you find it again. Let's get out of here and go home. We don't belong here and you know it."

I looked around, and tried to believe her, but honestly, I felt like I did belong there. I felt like an acorn fallen to the base of its tree, like a Monarch b.u.t.terfly following its instincts to the natal land of its grandparents. I was supposed to be here. But I knew better than to tell her this. Even with the best of friends, there were limits to disclosures.

"Let's go," I said.

And we did.

We didn't make it far, however. As soon as we left the town limits, at Mile Marker 21, the road was suddenly coated in shrapnel, bits of sharp metal that seemed to have fallen from a junkyard truck. I saw it too late to swerve away, and b.u.mpingly ran the Land Rover over it all. The large pieces of debris were too much even for the tank I was driving. I felt a small explosion beneath the car, and then heard the telltale flap and thud of a flat tire.

"Great," said Kelsey. "Just when you think your day can't suck any worse than it already does, what with your life being threatened by a trailer trash gang leader named Ulysses, this happens."

I hobbled the car to the shoulder of the highway, and turned to look at her with worry in my eyes. "This is where I crashed," I told her, scarcely able to believe it myself.

"I know. Golden, Highway 14. Yadda yadda yadda."

"No. It's exactly where I crashed, Kelsey. Exactly. This is the same exact spot."

Kelsey gulped, but pretended to shrug it off. "So, it's a coincidence."

"If you believe in coincidences."

We sat in silence for a moment. A coyote call pierced the evening air. It was close, and the animal seemed to yip for joy that the sun was going down, opening up the bunny buffet.

"Do you believe in coincidences?" she asked me.

"I used to. But, no. I don't think so. Not anymore."

"Yeah. Well, me neither," Kelsey pouted. "And I'm pretty much blaming you for that, provided we survive to a.s.sign blame at all."

I fumbled through the glove box for the roadside a.s.sistance number, and called it. I gave the dispatcher the coordinates from the GPS map. Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and we still waited for help. Twenty minutes later, and we still waited. By then, Kelsey was wiggling and bouncing around in her seat, her legs tightly crossed.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"I really have to pee," she said. "All that water I drank."

"You have to hold it."

"I can't. You saw all that water I drank. I really have to go, Maria. I mean really."

"You can't."

"There's no one around. I'm going out there."

"Don't."

"Why not?"

"Coyotes," I said.

"I'm sure they won't hurt me."

"They might."

"In your dream world, sure. But here in reality, where I live, and where coyotes are actually smaller than many overfed housecats, I will be fine," she said, opening her door and bolting out before I had a chance to stop her. I began to tremble.

"Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d," I said over and over. I couldn't see where she'd gone. I turned my head and looked out of every window, trying to find her.

Nothing.

After ten more minutes pa.s.sed, without Kelsey returning to the car, I realized I was going to have to go out after her. I took the flashlight from the glove box, for protection, and stepped out of the car, cursing under my breath.

"Kelsey!" I called out.

Nothing.

"Oh, G.o.d," I mumbled to myself. Then I called her again. "Kelsey! Where are you?"

A moment later, her voice answered back. "Over here."

"Get back here!" I screamed, furious with her.

"You better come over here," came the reply.

"What? Why?"

"Just come," she called back.

I walked toward the sound of her voice, and found her. Mercifully, she wasn't squatting and making yellow snow. Terribly, however, she stood next to the two descansos that I'd noticed the day of my crash, when I'd joked to Demetrio about having been lucky not to be one of them.

"What are you doing?" I yelled at her. "Let's go!"

Kelsey motioned me over with her hand. "Just come here!"

Reluctantly, I did as she bade.

"What is your problem?" I griped when I arrived next to her.

"That," she said, pointing to one of the crosses.

"It's a descanso. We have them all over the state. People put them up whenever someone dies in a car crash in a place. It's not a big deal."

"I realize that, dork. That's not what I meant. Look at the name." Kelsey fell to her knees in the snow.

I moved closer to the cross, and read the black old-English style lettering across the horizontal plank of white wood. It took me a moment to register what I was seeing, so enormous was my shock.

DEMETRIO ANTONIO DE LOS SANTOS VIGIL.

I put my hand on Kelsey's back, gently, and said, impotently, "It's a common name around here, Demetrio Vigil. I mean, it's a tiny town and I've already met two. Chances are there are - or were - three. Right?"

"He was eighteen when he died," she said. "One year ago, nearly to the day."

I stared at the birth and death dates, and said, "Maybe it was someone else."

"The picture." She pointed to the cross, shaking her head.

Stapled to the cross amid the plastic flowers and teddy bears was a photograph, weathered and faded, protected by a plain Ziploc baggie, barely visible anymore. I moved closer to it, and examined the photograph. It was a simple Polaroid, from a homecoming type of dance, a boy and girl. The girl was very pretty in that plucked-brow homegirl kind of way, with lipstick a couple of shades too dark. The boy, unbelievably, was the same one we'd just left in the church. The same one who called 911 for me. The same one who found me to return my locket. It was him.

"Maybe he's a twin," I whispered as goose b.u.mps crawled up my arms and down my legs.

"No one gives twins the same name."

"s.a.d.i.s.ts? A s.a.d.i.s.tic parent might do something like that. Right?"

Kelsey didn't laugh at my joke. "What was the saint on the card he gave you again?" she asked, standing up, her face ghostly pale.

"Saint Anthony of the Desert."

"Well, Maria, I'm no expert on the Spanish language or anything, but something tells me 'de los Santos' means of the saints, and I have a sinking feeling, you know, that Antonio might mean Anthony. Just wild guesses, of course."

I gulped, hard, and tried to understand, but there was nothing in my brain that could wrap itself around what I was seeing. It was insane. It didn't make any kind of sense. I just stood, for what seemed like an eternity, staring at the cross, and the photograph, remembering the magical feeling I got whenever he touched me, the way the old man had said he was gone, and Ulysses had said he was dead. I shook my head ever so slightly back and forth, hardly breathing, until the towing service arrived from Albuquerque, to help us fix the flat, and Kelsey was able to pull me, staggeringly, away.

I'm sure Kelsey and I did not make a good impression on the tow-truck guy who fixed the tire on the Land Rover, because we basically just stood there trembling. I was crying, too, though not because I was particularly sad about the dead Demetrio; rather, I cried because of the overwhelming flood of emotions that had taken over my body. I still believed, somewhere, that I was losing my sanity - and if Kelsey had not been there to witness some of the things that had happened that day, I would surely have managed to convince myself they simply had never happened.

Because she was the calmer head at the time, Kelsey took the wheel of the Land Rover for the drive back to Santa Fe. We didn't play music on the car stereo, because it seemed wrong somehow under the circ.u.mstances. Death required silence, did it not? We did talk, a lot, about what we'd seen, what it might have meant, and what could possibly be happening. I had the Saint Anthony of the Desert card out of my pocket and up on the dashboard in antic.i.p.ation of a visit from the resident coyote psychopath, but none came.

Many questions came to us, but no answers. If Demetrio is dead, how can we see and feel him as though he were alive? Is he the coyote? Is he protecting us from the coyote? Does he live in the church, or just haunt it? Can ghosts haunt churches? When his grandfather said Demetrio was gone and didn't live there anymore, did he know that the younger man was dead? If he really was dead, why was he still trying to get out of a gang? Did he know he was dead? Were the animals he carried around also dead? Did something happen to him after dark, or was that just an excuse he used to get away from us and turn into something else? Had he really been in the dream? Why did he sometimes speak ghetto and sometimes sound educated?

Then it hit me.

"Kelsey!" I screamed.

She jumped. "What? Maria! What is your problem? Don't yell like that! G.o.d!"

"I know what's going on."

"Me, too. You're yelling like an idiot and frightening the driver. That's what's going on. Please refrain from doing that again."