The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 6

As I said the words, I knew I was lying. Logan would not like this at all. In the 11 months we'd been dating, Logan had shown himself to be very jealous of every guy who came near me, even Victoria's boyfriend Thomas.

"Logan," he said, narrowing his eyes. "I don't think I like that dude very much."

"I'm sorry for how he acted. I know Logan tried to make you feel small, with the money and everything. He shouldn't have done that. He's actually a nice guy. I think he was just, I don't know. I'm sorry, though."

Demetrio laughed out loud again. "Listen to me, mami. Ain't a man on earth can make me feel small. Right? Not even mister hotshot Logan. Money don't mean nothin' to me now."

"Well, good," I said, awkwardly. "I'm glad. You deserve to feel big."

He laughed at me again. "Yeah, okay. Cool. It's all good. Listen, mamita, it's getting late. I gotta jet."

"Oh, right. The can't-be-out-after-dark thing."

He pointed at me to confirm I was right, somewhat ironically. "Good memory."

"Can I give you a ride somewhere?"

"Nah. I live nearby. Right up the hill here."

"I don't mind taking you to your house," I said.

"I know, mamita, but my folks." He got a worried look again. He looked ashamed. "They're kind of weird."

"Weirder than your grandpa?" I joked.

He chuffed a small sc.r.a.p of laugh. "The old man is a little loco, huh? G.o.d love him."

We looked at each other in silence. The world instantly grew very, very quiet. The sky had mottled over into a dark gray, the setting sun lost behind the mountains. I wanted him to touch me again, and hated myself for it. Good girls didn't cheat on their boyfriends. Especially not their perfect, impressive, outstanding boyfriends, academic and athletic stars at Coronado Prep and beloved by their parents. What was wrong with me?

"You're a beautiful girl," he told me. "I knew you'd clean up good."

I felt myself blush, even as his poor grammar rankled me. "Thank you."

"Inside and out. You're a very good person, Maria."

"You don't know me."

"I know more than you think. I know things." He almost sounded boastful.

"No you don't," I insisted, even though I believed that he did know things. I could tell by the unnerving, magnetic look in his eyes. He didn't say a word. Rather, he watched me, his eyes moving slowly across every inch of my face, and resting for a moment on my lips, and seemingly quite happy there. He took his free hand and used the finger to touch the side of my face lightly.

"Pretty as a painting," he said, softly, taking his hand away. I was covered with goose b.u.mps from just that one, light touch. I'd never felt this way with Logan, or any other boy.

The s.p.a.ce around us grew silent once more. I entertained all manner of unsavory thought about him, and hoped he couldn't read my mind. I knew it was wrong, so very wrong, to want this guy so badly. I held my breath, and didn't know what to do.

"This is awkward," I said, finally, looking at his mouth and - to my great surprise - moving closer to him almost as though I couldn't stop myself. He responded, to my great surprise, by backing away.

"No, mamita," he said, crushing my spirit. "Let's not do anything we'll regret, huh?" He glanced around in that paranoid way he got sometimes, at the darkening sky.

"But I thought you liked me," I whined.

"C'mon. Stop looking at me like that, mamita. It ain't you. I'd love to kiss you. I would. But I can't, Maria. I just can't. It ain't you, okay? Listen to me. I - I gotta go. The dark."

"What are you, a werewolf?" I joked, stupidly.

His nostrils flared with frustration, as he tried to calm himself down. "Nah, man. I ain't a pinche werewolf. It's bad enough shaving a face every day, but can you imagine shaving everything? Dang."

In spite of my sense of rejection, I cracked a grin.

"That's better," he said, perking up. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

"When?" I asked.

"I'll find you. Be well."

With a tormented look on his face, almost as though he were fighting with himself internally, he trotted up the dirt road on the hill, without looking back. I got back in the Land Rover and felt tears flood my eyes - tears of frustration and confusion. What the heck was I doing? What was happening to me? And why did this gangster guy just reject me?

I leaned across the pa.s.senger seat and watched him through my tears, and the growing darkness. He sprinted past the church and up a small hill to the east. One of my contact lenses popped out from the crying, and his image blurred. There was a faint electric glow of light beyond the hills, as though there were houses down in the valley beyond them. He probably lived there, I thought, in a rundown trailer of some kind. He was probably ashamed to have me see his house. How sad that was.

He stopped at the top of the hill and glanced back toward me. Then, silhouetted by the faint golden glow from below, he began to literally soften and fray around the edges, melting the way a spoonful of honey melts when placed into a cup of hot tea. His body, a gray shadow in newly dark evening, seemed to flow into the air around it, merge with it, and ignite. Where Demetrio had been, there appeared spots of fast-fading, twinkling light, like the tiny short-lived stars that burst off the ends of sparklers on the 4th of July, like the sun on the snow this afternoon.

I rubbed my eyes, and blinked repeatedly, refusing to trust what I thought I'd seen. I couldn't trust these eyes. Or my heart. Or my mind. There was no question anymore that I was losing it, that my mom might have been right about post-traumatic stress, that the accident had somehow done something to scramble my brain. I was imagining things, and I was literally blind without my contacts.

I fished through my backpack for my spare pair of gla.s.ses, put them on my face after removing the remaining contact lens and tossing it to the floor of the car. Able to see clearly again, I looked up the hill. There was nothing. Just the church, and the small graveyard in front of it, and the hill with a few houses scattered beyond.

"See?" I told myself as I started the car and took a few deep breaths, shivering with cold and nerves. "It's nothing but your imagination."

I pulled the Land Rover off the shoulder and, through a veil of tears and confusion, began driving north, toward my dad's.

As usual, I was the only one out on this road at this hour, night coming quickly over the San Pedro mountains to the East. I wished I'd heeded my mother's advice and taken the Interstate. It was so not worth it to have spent the afternoon chasing dead ends in Golden. Now that night had fallen - at five-thirty, no less - I was creeped out and a little too shaky to manage the twisty little Highway as well as I should have. I took some deep, calming breaths, and tried to focus.

When I got to the mile 21 marker or so - near where my crash had taken place - strange shapes started to appear in the periphery of the beams from my headlamps. I couldn't blame them on the missing contact lens anymore, though I could blame them on my unwell mental state. They were dark, gray and shadowy, and loped along. Animal. Every time I'd think I saw one, it would disappear as soon as I focused my eyes on the spot where it had been - only to return moments later. I promised myself to tell my mom I was willing to see the therapist she'd suggested, after all. This wasn't normal.

I sped the Land Rover up, thinking that if it were the coyotes from my recurring dream, there'd be no way they could keep up with me at fifty or sixty miles an hour. I was mistaken. The apparitions continued, and in fact began to grow clearer, until, at last, they did not disappear for a split second when I looked directly at them. I could have sworn I actually saw them, that they ran alongside the car, on the shoulder of the road, a large pack of coyotes, and the largest of them all met my gaze with its own yellow laughing eyes. But as soon as the image registered in my mind's eye, it was gone again.

I shuddered, sick with fear. I wasn't so much afraid of the coyotes as I was afraid for my sanity. I knew, logically, that I could not possibly be seeing a large pack of animals, however wily and cunning, cantering along at such high speed alongside a Land Rover. It was absurd. And yet, as soon as I thought I'd regained control of my mind, the specters appeared in my peripheral vision again, and remained visible for a brief moment after I turned to see them. This time, the lead coyote seemed to smirk cruelly at me before dissipating. It had tremendously strong shoulders, and a thick, broad neck. Its hackles were raised menacingly, and its fanged mouth hung open, dripping saliva down the front of itself.

"This isn't happening," I mumbled.

Trembling, I reached into my pocket and extracted the laminated prayer card Demetrio had given me. I didn't know why, exactly, only that it felt rea.s.suring to hold it in my hand. As long as I held it, the animals did not appear again.

As an experiment, I set the card down on the pa.s.senger seat. Again, the coyotes loped into my peripheral vision. I tried in vain to speed past them. At 70 miles per hour, all of them dropped off expect the enormous one, the leader. It stuck with me, and seemed even to enjoy the challenge of the sprint. At eighty miles per hour, I looked at it directly. Its eyes were lit with sanguine pleasure, as though this were exactly what it wanted. Then, as before, it rippled into darkness and was gone.

Realizing how foolish I was being, driving like a maniac, I stepped on the brakes, and slowed back down to 45 miles per hour. I picked the prayer card up again - and, again, nothing chased me. I set the card down once more, and again the lone coyote cantered alongside me in shadow, its posture suggestive of patient disappointment. I refused to look at it, though I felt it wanted me to. Within moments, the thing gave up trotting alongside me, and began to smash its body into the side of the Land Rover. Thump after sickening thump. I felt it, and I heard it.

"OmiG.o.d, omiG.o.d, omiG.o.d," I chanted. I could understand visual hallucinations, but physical and audible ones?

I looked at it, and this time the coyote did not disappear. The act of hurling its body against a moving Land Rover had no obvious physical repercussions on the coyote. In fact, it seemed to grow larger with each furious leap against my car. Before I knew it, the coyote had leapt onto the hood of the Land Rover, and was standing in my line of vision, blocking the road.

I scrambled to find the card on the seat with my hand again, and held it up between myself and the animal. The coyote seemed to lose strength instantly, as soon as its eyes made out what was on the card, but did not leave the hood. Rather, it crouched there, unsteady, almost pitifully holding on to the metal as well as it could with its paws and claws, and shaking its head the way dogs do when they've b.u.mped them on something. I was astonished. I turned the card toward me now, and began to read the words out, in as loud a voice as I could manage. I would read a few, then flash the card back at the animal, read some more, on and on - all the while trying to concentrate on the road before me. Cars pa.s.sed, and the coyote disappeared, only to reappear in the exact same spot as soon as we were alone on the road once more. I read the card again. Louder this time, though in a quivering, terrified voice. The animal seemed provoked by this, but also crippled by it. The anger apparent in its eyes no longer served to strengthen it.

By the time I finished reciting the prayer, which, it turned out, was for protection from evil - surprise, surprise - the coyote was small, tiny, the size of a dog not much bigger than Buddy. I stared at it in astonishment. It seemed so pitiful now, I almost felt sorry for it. I had to force myself to remember that moments before, it had been trying to run me off the road. I had to fight the impulse to rescue and cuddle it. It shivered on the hood, against the wind, and seemed to be slipping every few seconds. Its eyes entreated me to help it. I had to remind myself that this was all just my mind, playing tricks on me. The coyote represented insanity, and I refused to sink into that abyss.

Looking into the eyes of a tiny, helpless animal that was now somehow smaller than my beloved Chihuahua back home, I felt a meanness come over me. I would not be made crazy by a car accident. I would not relinquish who I'd been.

"To h.e.l.l with you," I said, looking directly at the creature. I said the prayer again, and pressed the pedal to the metal, speeding along a straight stretch of road with all my might. When the speedometer hit 75, the coyote seemed to dry up like a sc.r.a.p of road kill or mangy wolf jerky. Unable to hold on to the hood any longer, it flew away into the night, like a bat. I was almost to Santa Fe by then, with only 12 miles to go to the upscale enclave known as El Dorado.

I had never been so happy to be that close to my father's house. I couldn't wait to get home. All I wanted was to crawl into bed, and sleep.

When I finally pulled into my father's driveway, I called my mother as she'd requested I do. I was trembling, my voice quaking with fear and worry.

"Are you okay?" my mother asked me.

"I don't think so." My voice broke, and I began to sob. "I think I need to see that doctor after all, mom. I think I'm losing it."

My mother didn't ask me why; rather, she sighed at the inconvenience of having an imperfect daughter to contend with. Ever the expert on everything under the sun, she a.s.sured me, without conviction, that "this kind of thing is normal after a traumatic event," and promised to make an appointment for me with a child psychologist she knew. She told me she loved me, that I was going to be fine, and said she'd come get me if I needed her to. But I didn't need her to. What I needed, I decided, was sleep. I went inside, asked to be excused from dinner because I wasn't feeling well, and locked myself in the bedroom that during the week was Missy's crafting room and on weekends was reserved for me. I got into my pajamas, crawled beneath the goose down comforter, and hardly able to remember the way life felt before my crash - before I'd begun this slide into insanity - I fell into a deep slumber.

Demetrio stood across the room with his chin up and his eyes blazing through me. I didn't know where we were, only that it was a large, dim chamber that smelled of damp earth; cold, with thick adobe walls and a high ceiling girded by crooked vigas that looked like the roots of a ma.s.sive tree. It could have been an ancient church, maybe, or a medieval dungeon, except that it appeared to be perfectly circular. It was hard to tell where I was, or what it was. It was something old and echoing, cold, damp and mysterious, and if not for the flickering yellow light of a few dozen lit candles, absolutely dark.

In the flickering shadows behind Demetrio were vague people in outfits I recognized as belonging to Aztec Dancers (my mother took me to the Mariachi and Mexican Folkloric Christmas Fiesta at Popejoy Hall every December, I was down with the history of my dad's peeps) - meaning feathered headdresses, no shirts, rattles lashed to their ankles, golden chest plates, and little fringed skirts. Music played somewhere, and they moved. I stood mesmerized and watched, until the music faded and the dancers, one by one, disappeared. I was alone in the chamber now with Demetrio.

He wore a strange outfit, a thick gown of some sort, brown with a wide, knotted rope about the waist, the kind of thing a monk might wear, with a long hood worn hanging down his back. He was planted next to a huge wooden table, crooked and rooty as the vigas; it was covered with burning white candles. There was very little sound here, just the soft trickle of something unwholesome dripping, dripping, dripping, somewhere in the distance. I was freezing cold. My feet and the tip of my nose were numb with cold. I shivered. I crossed my arms over my chest, and realized, to my horror, that I wore only a thin white nightgown, almost transparent, one I'd had when I was younger, only it fit me now. I might as well have been wearing nothing. I was afraid to be seen, naked beneath it, and I whirled around, looking for somewhere to hide from Demetrio's smoldering gaze. But there was nothing else in the part of the cavernous room where I stood. Just me and the frigid hard dirt of the floor, the lumpy earthen walls, and the clear, almost metallic tones of water dropping slowly into a pool somewhere out of view.

"Come here, mamita. Ven." Demetrio motioned for me with his hands, as though directing a symphony. The motion stirred up a mild breeze in the entire room. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."

"But my nightgown. I'm embarra.s.sed."

He smiled gently, and stepped forward with his head tilted to one side and one corner of his mouth held playfully in his teeth. As he did so, the brown robe he was wearing dissolved around him, melted into dark nothingness. He stood before me in just a pair of white cotton pants, the kind you might wear for a karate lesson, with a dark red sash belted at his trim waist. I gasped as something caught in my throat, and a thrill went up my spine. His body was exquisitely sculpted, formed perfectly; his skin looked smooth as a new bar of soap, and in the candlelight was the color of a soft caramel candy. I wanted to touch him so badly.

"Now you ain't alone with your shame," he said with a wink. "Come."

I hesitated. Shivered. Trembled like a stinking human Chihuahua. I liked him, I wanted to be with him, but I didn't like this place. This cold, humid, strange, suffocating place. I felt like I couldn't get enough air. This wasn't where I wanted to be when we kissed for the first time, I realized. This wasn't where I ever wanted to be at all, frankly.

"I can't," I said.

"Sure you can," he told me, as he stepped forward again. "All you gotta do is trust me. You do trust me, don't you mami?"

Shivering, I stepped toward him, brought my other foot next to the first, and stepped again, walking the way people do in weddings. Step-together. Step-together. He did likewise, until we met halfway. The dripping sound grew louder, and I felt a cold drop fall from the ceiling onto the top of my head.

I wanted to scream, but Demetrio stopped me by putting a finger to my lips and saying, "Shh, you don't want them to know you're here. You shouldn't be here. I snuck you in."

"I know! I knew that. I don't want to be here," I gabbled, frantically.

"Shh," he repeated. "Silence. Please. For me. It's okay. You're cool as long as you're with me. I'm pretty sure of that."

"Pretty sure?" I stared at him, dumbfounded. "That's not good enough!"

"It's the best we got," he told me. "No more talking. Hush."

For a split second, I heard a crinkling noise, and saw a very tall, very skinny figure of a man with very thick eyebrows slink past us in the distance, glowering.

"Hey," I called out, but the figure was gone.

Demetrio seemed not to notice or not to care, as he unfolded my hands from across my chest, and held them in his own. As had been the case before, I was filled with a deep, profound warmth. The water droplet on my head spread, and was warm. The chill and fear in me simply disappeared, as he looked into my eyes. He pulled me in closer to him, and embraced me. I relaxed in his arms, and wrapped my own around his firm, solid body.

"I'm so confused."

"Shh."

He unwrapped one arm from around me, and used the tips of his fingers to pull he nightgown down over my left shoulder, exposing it to the cold air. With the other arm he reached out across the enormous distance to the table, his arm stretching unnaturally. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a candle from the table and brought it back to us, his arm contracting now.

"How...?"

"Don't ask, mamita. Not now."

He wet his thumb and finger in his mouth, and used them to squelch the flame. Then he ground the wick between them, to make a fine ash. He used this substance and his fingertips to draw a small triangle on my skin, charging my skin with electricity as he did so.

"What are you doing?" My voice was a sc.r.a.p of a whisper.

He answered calmly, confidently, in a low, dark voice. "In Ancient Egypt the triangle symbolized intelligence and love. That's why I like it for you, Maria. You're my smart mamita. I can talk correct English in front of you and you won't front. That's cool, girl. The Cheyenne Indians use the triangle tip of an arrow to symbolize male power. That's me. I also like the triangle because in Buddhism it's a way to invoke love energy and promote union with all good things. And there's the Christian holy trinity, of course. In ancient Greece, Pythagoras believed numbers, math and all things mystical were connected, and he thought this because of the structure of the perfect right triangle, which we still call the Pythagorean triangle, where, I'm sure they taught you in your fancy school, mamita, the sum of the areas of the two sides equals the square on the hypotenuse. The universe is pretty simple, ultimately, but it is also infinitely complex. Dope, right?"

"How - how do you know all this?" I asked him. "You said you're just a simple country boy. You're a gang member. Why are you speaking so well? Your grammar - and I mean this respectfully - but it usually sort of sucks."

His mouth turned up in a delicious, almost wicked grin, and he laughed at me softly.

"Turn that triangle upside down, and it might be a country boy's bucket, or sacred cup to carry me in when I'm not with you. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems."

Next, he took the same finger and used it to tilt my chin up so that my mouth was inches, then centimeters, from his.

"You said we can't kiss," I told his lips as they moved toward me. "You didn't want me. I tried to kiss you and you didn't want me. I was so embarra.s.sed."

"Shh. That wasn't it. That was never my reason. I always wanted it. From the first time I saw you, even as messed-up-looking and b.l.o.o.d.y as you were."

He moved his face closer to mine, so close that I could feel the breath coming from his nose and mouth. He stopped, and just looked at me, from close range. I was hypnotized by his eyes, completely lost in them, and covered head to toe with goose b.u.mps. He smelled of sunshine again, not like a normal boy with normal teeth and the habit of eating food with them.

"I wasn't good enough," I whined, softly. "You didn't want me earlier."

Fury flared behind his eyes for a brief moment, and disappeared again. It was terrifying to see his potential for anger, given how pa.s.sive he'd been the other times I'd seen him, but I couldn't move. I was still paralyzed.

"Be quiet, Maria. I have wanted you since before I met you," he growled, his voice impatient, ripe with need and want, and a little wild. I was a little scared by this, but not as scared as I was strangely excited.

He moved closer, and I closed my eyes, my body flushing with warmth, waiting for the kiss. But it never came.

What did come was a horrible, insistent banging sound, like a hammer on wood. It jolted me, and Demetrio quickly disappeared, just as he had before, in a twinkling flash of lights. The room vanished, too, and I floated in a black ether.