The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 7

"No!" I looked down and there was no floor beneath my feet. The cold had returned, and I floated for a moment in an inky darkness, then fell with the weight of a stone in an empty well. I screamed. Again, the banging. A hammer on wood? No. I fell and fell to the sound, and finally struck the bottom of something, jolted out of the dream, violently.

I opened my eyes, panting, and looked around, expecting monsters and dripping water, stones and darkness. But I wasn't in a chamber with Demetrio, or falling through s.p.a.ce, and no one was hammering anything. Rather, I was on the queen bed in the crafting/Maria room at my father's house. The morning sun was slipping in through the slats in the blinds, and someone was banging on the large wooden door, which I'd locked the night before.

"Maria! Good morning!"

"Hold on," I groaned, shivering. I was on top of the blanket and comforter, having managed to wriggle out of them sometime in the night.

A dream. It had only been a dream. Of course it had. It was part of the whole Maria-is-going-bonkers thing.

"Egg white omelet is ready!" called Missy's voice - Missy's horribly cheerful, horribly childish, horribly clueless voice. My stepmother was a fitness instructor and cheerleading coach, and very into egg whites, makeup and designer jeans that showed off the flat belly my dad once said he'd married her for.

"I'd like the yolks please. Whatever yolks you have, they're mine," I said, just to bug her. "Mix them up with some b.u.t.ter."

I hope this would flummox her, and it worked. I was met with confused silence for a moment as Missy gathered together what few functioning neurons she had in that pretty little head of hers.

"Uhm. Well, I only buy the whites, in a carton. A jar. And we don't do b.u.t.ter in this house. Missy doesn't eat b.u.t.ter."

"Got donuts?" I asked.

Another long, confused silence. "Of course not. Missy doesn't eat donuts."

Missy tended to talk about herself in the third person for some reason when she was discussing her diet or exercise habits. She had her own fitness company, Fit Missy, with videos and a web site and a couple of D-list celebrity clients who summered in Santa Fe.

"Well, Maria does. Maria eats donuts and egg yolks and b.u.t.ter."

I heard Missy cough. "Your heart attack, Miss Sunshine. Breakfast is ready and your dad told me to get you up so that we could leave the girls with you while we go to he gym and the spa. Your dad and I need some quality alone time anyway."

I stuck my finger down my throat at this information. I didn't want to imagine what that might mean. I also didn't know why my dad and Missy always seemed to think of my weekend visits as little more than the chance to have a free babysitter for their twin toddlers, Moet and Chandon, both four years old and named for a brand of French champagne that I imagine Missy must need in order to be around my father. The twins were sort of tragic - coiffed and puffy as little French poodles, and dressed up for showing off like show ponies with ribbons in their tails.

Every weekend I ended up trying to get my younger half-sisters to play in mud, to jump on beds, to eat candy. Basically, I did all I could to help them realize that life was about more than tiny Coach handbags (yes, they already had three each), dieting (yes, they were four and on a diet!) and acting cute for male approval - the three areas in which their mother had tremendous experience and expertise. And while I tried to introduce the tiny clones of Missy to things like, oh, you know, books, my dad and stepmom went off in dad's Porsche, to soak in a hot springs somewhere in the mountains or get their couple's mud ma.s.sages or have their chakras balanced by a scam artist pretending to be a yogi from India, or whatever other garbage they did that made me and my mom sick.

"Your dad called a plumber. He'll be here in an hour. We need you up."

"Fine. Give me a few minutes to get dressed," I griped.

It was probably better that Missy and my dad left me alone. At least I could relax a little. I also remembered that Kelsey would be driving up to hang out with me (and, apparently, the twins) today, and to spend the night.

"Yay!" cried Missy. I could almost see her jumping up and down for joy. "Missy will be downstairs with the egg whites and the wheat gra.s.s juice. You're a doll, even if you poison yourself with donuts and too much sleep, and could stand to lose five pounds - and I say this because I love you."

"Wonderful," I groused with quiet sarcasm. To myself, I added softly, "Perhaps Missy can jump off a bridge and die."

I rolled out of bed, and stumbled across the hardwood floor toward the bathroom attached to the guest room. As I got closer, I heard the sound of water dripping, drop by drop, into the sink drain. Right. The faucet leaked here. Thus, the plumber. I remembered it all now. The drops of water in the dungeon, Demetrio's paralyzing stare - it hadn't been real, any of it.

I'd dreamed it all.

I brushed my teeth absently, looking in the mirror through my grogginess. I wore pink and white striped pajama pants with a pink camisole top, which meant my shoulders were exposed. Something on the left shoulder caught my eye. It was faint, a smudge. I looked down directly at the shoulder now, and stopped brushing.

What I saw made me gasp with dizzy fear.

There, on my left shoulder, I saw the faint but very real outline of a triangle, red, as though I'd been burned or maybe scratched, inverted 180 degrees. Yep, that's right. It was upside-down. An empty bucket, or cup.

My knees buckled and nearly gave out. Toothpaste foam dribbled down my chin. I began to hyperventilate in a woozy panic. I caught my balance with my hands, against the cold granite counter, spit in the sink, rinsed my mouth, splashed cold water across my face to snap myself out of it. But when I looked again, the triangle was still there. I found myself making a strange sound that was a cross between a laugh, and a stifled scream. It couldn't be. Yet it was. Wasn't it? Yes, it was true.

He'd been here.

Either that, or I was crazier than I thought.

An hour later, I'd calmed down. I'd convinced myself I'd scratched the triangle with my own fingernail, in my sleep. I was attempting to ground myself in reality by caring for my younger sisters in my dad's and Missy's absence. I had already grown tired of trying to get them to learn to play air guitar. I'd given up interesting them in Frisbee or football, kickball or climbing trees. I didn't have the energy for both freak occurrences and annoying unwanted siblings, so I gave up.

At risk of losing my temper or crying with frustration at their constant requests for me to make sure they were "hydrated" with spring water, or to put makeup on them, I'd handed them over them to a sickly sweet princess DVD of some kind in the great room, and left them sitting prettily on the big leather sofa.

Moet and Chandon were both wearing little princess outfits from the toy store, both of them with blonde hair extension things pinned to their dark brown locks with barrettes, and tiny high-heeled shoes with pink sparkles all over them. The hair thing made me unspeakably sad. What, the toy companies couldn't sell princess outfits with brunette extensions? Oh, the lessons we learned, as girls, early in life. It peeved me, especially given the fact that I'd studied cultural appropriation and racial self-loathing in my applied psychology cla.s.s - but I also realized there was only so much I could do to help, and by "so much" I essentially mean "nothing". Sometimes, a girl just felt helpless - and not in a good way. I suspected there were times that a girl might feel helpless in a naughty way, but I wasn't there yet. Had never been there. Didn't know when I'd get there, but hoped that when I did it might be with someone who looked a little bit like Demetrio Vigil.

When the doorbell rang, I was messing around on the Internet at the kitchen computer, Googling "Golden, New Mexico," "Highway 14," "healers," "evil coyotes," and "triangles and Buddhism," to see if anything came up. There were some strange things, including the fact that everything Demetrio had told me in the dream, about the symbolic significance of triangles in various cultures, was true. Maybe, I reasoned, I'd learned all of it somewhere along the way and simply forgotten.

It was also strange to learn that Golden, New Mexico, was for many years a literal ghost town, essentially abandoned. It had been a boomtown during the gold rush at the end of the 1800s, but by 1928 was officially declared a ghost town. Since then, a few people had moved back, but not many. Artists, bandits hiding out, that kind of person. The most famous building in town, the piece on the Internet said, was the church. Apparently it, too, had been abandoned for a long time, but was restored in 1960 by a priest and historian named Fray Angelico Chavez.

I left the article up on the screen, and went to answer the front door of my dad's sprawling new adobe house. On the front porch stood Kelsey, in jeans and a black fleece sweatshirt with a ski parka and hiking boots. Her light blue RAV-4 was parked at the curb. The sky blazed bright cobalt, without a cloud in sight, and the air was bitingly cold. It was the sort of winter day that made you feel sorry for wild birds, whose feet were surely frozen solid to the branches upon which they perched. I always wanted to invite those birds inside. They never wanted to come in, though.

The sight of my best friend in such sensible, comfortable clothes made me unfathomably happy; I lunged toward her and gave her a ma.s.sive hug.

"Uhm, h.e.l.lo?" she said with a laugh, giving me the Maria-is-a-dork look, which I completely deserved. "What's going on with you?"

"Princesses," I hissed with a shudder. "Tiny princesses all in pink and sparkles, with fake blonde hair and spray-on tans. Little tiny clones of Missy."

Kelsey rolled her eyes knowingly, and patted me on the back. "Ah," she said. We walked into the house. "You know, it's their destiny to be stars of a future 'housewives of Santa Fe' reality show. Leave them to it, my friend. They might be happy as they are. You should probably release your need for control, Maria. We should probably talk about why you always want everyone to be just like you."

"I know," I said miserably as I closed the door behind us. I smiled, because Kelsey always had a way of pointing out my flaws that simultaneously made me laugh. It was a rare gift, that ability to poke fun at people without making them defensive.

Kelsey and I settled into the kitchen, and began looking through the refrigerator and pantry for something halfway decent to eat. The closest thing we could find to palatable food was a nice Italian coffee blend, which Kelsey set to work making in the fancy coffeemaker, and some bagels with organic marmalade. We talked for a bit about various things, and then Kelsey noticed the article on Golden.

"Reading up on the state's best spots to total your car?" she asked.

I laughed. "Nah. Just, trying to understand a few things."

I averted my gaze from her eyes and tried to look innocent. Kelsey instantly picked up on my nervous tone. Honestly, I was dying to tell her about Demetrio, and the dream, and the triangle on my shoulder - everything.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked as she popped a bit of toasted bagel into her mouth.

"Yes," I answered truthfully. "Very much. But I can't. I'd feel like an idiot."

Most people would be surprised or annoyed by an answer like this. But Kelsey was the daughter of not one but two psychotherapists. She had a long, calm reaction time to most things people said, even the weird things (of which I am most certain my comments at the time were).

I glanced over at the twins. They still sat, slack-jawed, watching a princess wait for prince charming to kiss her. It hit me that I was sort of acting that same thing out in my dream from that morning - except that it wasn't a dream. Or was it?

"Okay," I told Kelsey, in a low tone. She reacted by raising one eyebrow discreetly, intrigued, but still in control. "I'll tell you."

At that moment, the doorbell rang again. My first thought was utterly irrational. I a.s.sumed that Demetrio would be at the door, angry with me for sharing our secret moment together. Then I remembered that the plumber was coming.

"Hold that thought," I told her.

"Holding," she said with a calculated disinterest, occupying herself once more with the bagel.

I found the plumber at the door. He was a short, swarthy older man, grandfatherly, maybe in his seventies. He wore high-waisted jeans, belted, and a plaid cowboy-type shirt, tucked in. He looked like he wore dentures. The tag on his plumber's jacked said "Reynaldo Roybal." I felt badly for Mr. Roybal, both for his being a plumber and thus dealing with all those things that come out of and go into pipes; and also for his having to work in his retirement years. I compensated for my guilt for my good fortune in life by being obsequious toward him, overly chatty and upbeat. He wasn't much for talking, and merely grunted his replies to my attempts to wish him a good morning.

"Problem's this way, Sir," I told him, and led him inside the house and down to the guest bathroom.

"Grunt," said Reynaldo Roybal.

"Leaks constantly."

"Grunt."

"Alrighty then."

"Grunt."

"I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything. My name's Maria."

This time, Mr. Roybal looked at me curiously before grunting, then turned his back to me and got to work.

I went back to the kitchen and found Kelsey reading the newspaper. I picked up the conversation where I'd left it, and to my delight and dismay both, told her everything - the coyotes on the road, he coincidences, and the dream about Demetrio and the triangle on my shoulder.

"Here, look," I said, pulling my collar to show her. But the mark was no longer there. It had faded away.

"So, exactly how hard did you hit your head?" she asked me.

I felt tears well in my eyes. "I don't understand. I'm not imagining this."

"Sometimes you can forget head trauma," she suggested.

"Are you saying I'm crazy?" I asked her. "My mom thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am."

"I would never use that word, no. I'm suggesting that maybe you hit your head, or you've been traumatized."

"But I'm not crazy. I swear I didn't imagine those things running next to the car last night."

"I'm worried about you," she told me.

"Why?"

"Because this all sounds monumentally implausible," she said.

"I agree," I told her. "But I really saw it. Why do you think I'm a nervous wreck?"

"I don't know what to say," she told me. "For once, you've rendered me speechless."

I took this as an invitation to repeat my entire story, moment by moment, in part because I wanted to make sure she understood what I was saying, but in part because it felt so amazingly good to finally get it out in the open.

When I finished, I heard a gravely male throat being cleared nearby. I turned to the hallway and saw the plumber standing there with his toolbox in his hand.

"Mr. Roybal!" I said, with far too much enthusiasm. "How did it work out for you?"

"It's done," he said.

"Excellent news."

He shuffled over with a yellow invoice in his hand.

"My dad said to just leave the bill and he'd send payment."

"Okay. Here's my card, too," he said, with a faint Spanish New Mexico accent.

"Thank you so much," I told him. I stood as if to walk him back to the door.

"I am sorry," he said, looking steadily at me with concern. "But I couldn't help overhear what you were telling your friend just now."

Oh, great, I thought. Now the plumber thinks I'm crazy, too.

"I know your friend is doubtful," he said with a nasty look at Kelsey, "but I want to tell you to be very careful. Maria, is it?"

"Yes," I said, my arms p.r.i.c.kling with goose b.u.mps. "Why do you say I should be careful?"

"I'm a penitente, miss," he said. "Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"Long time ago, when Mexico got independence from Spain, and this land was part of that country, they kicked out the missionaries and replaced them with secular missionaries. There was a shortage of priests, and a brotherhood of penitentes came up, lay people who could take confession on behalf of priests when a man lay dying, things like that. There's more to it than that, but know that we are a secret society of spiritual men, a brotherhood, and that we know many secrets of these parts."

Kelsey and I exchanged looks of bewilderment, and returned our attention to the plumber.

"What you're saying is serious, miss. Serious, and not unheard of. The man you say came to your rescue, and later appeared in your dream, and the animals on the road last night, we have heard of such things. Be very careful whom you tell about this, and whatever you do, avoid driving alone at night on that road until the issue of the young man has been resolved."

I shivered, while Kelsey gave me a look of cynical disbelief.

"What issue?" I asked.

"That's what you have to find out," he said.

"But how?"

"Pues, you should follow your heart. Your gut. G.o.d talks through your belly."

"Wow. And all this time I thought it was gas," said Kelsey.

"I better get going now," the plumber said with a chuckle at Kelsey's joke. "There's some septic problems out in Lamy. But if you need anything, or you want to talk to someone who won't think you're crazy, you call me or my wife. Number's on the card."