The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (10 page)

“Yeah, I’m fine actually.” I awkwardly returned the
half-embrace, shivering a little under his touch, in a good way. It
felt like his hand left a faint electrical charge wherever it
landed, just as it had a week ago. Something in my chest unfurled
its wings when he touched me. It was the strangest thing, the
charged, vibrating sensation. I felt instantly calmer, and happier,
less anxious around him, and this scared me. A lot.

He let go of me and backed off,
watched at me for a long moment, sizing me up somehow, and asked,
“So what you doing out here,
exactly
?”

“Well, you know, it’s Friday. I’m on my way to my
dad’s, like always.”

“Is that all?” His confident, nearly triumphant grin
made me want to punch him playfully in the arm.

“Okay, fine. Maybe I was sort of looking for you,
too.” Might as well face it head-on, I thought.

His brows popped up, revealing the good-natured,
compassionate intelligence in his eyes -so utterly out of character
with his manner of dressing that I was completely confused by
it.

“I guess I just didn’t feel like I
properly thanked you for all you’ve done for me,” I blathered, only
to find a flirtatious and suggestive look on his face that I didn’t
expect or want. Mercifully, he didn’t say anything, though. I
probably would have passed out if he did, from nerves. “I just
wanted to say thanks, and give you a present.”

He licked his lips indecently and my heart leapt
nervously. “A present, huh? That could be interesting.”

“I actually just came from your
grandpa’s house. I
think
it was your grandpa. Some old guy who said he had
a grandson with your name. It’s a small town, so I just
figured...”

At this news, Demetrio’s cocky
grin fell, and was replaced by a tight-mouthed look of intense
distress. “You
what
? You were
where
?” He did not look happy with me. At all.

I repeated myself about his grandfather.

“Oh, mamita. Please tell me you didn’t do that.” He
dropped his head in a sort of defeat and looked at the ground,
disappointment in his eyes.

“Did I do something
bad
?” I
asked.

“Depends. What did you tell him, exactly?” His anger
gave way to an expression that mostly closely resembled fear now.
His eyes darted around, as though we might be watched.

“Just that I was your friend and I had something for
you.”

He gulped, and sighed heavily,
wearily, closing his eyes slowly, and opening them again to look
plaintively at the sky. “And what did he tell
you
?”

“Nothing. Just that you didn’t live there
anymore.”

“That’s it?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Should he have told me something
else?”

“Man, Diego’s right. I’m stupid sometimes.” He
seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Who’s Diego?”

“Huh?” He looked surprised, as though he hadn’t
meant to say that last part out loud. “Uhm, nothing. No one. A
friend.”

“I’m sorry to upset you. I was trying to be
nice.”

He looked at me again, softening around the eyes a
little. “I know, mamita. You didn’t do nothing wrong, not
consciously.”

Again, I felt the goose bumps as his words mimicked
thoughts I’d had only moments before about finding him
attractive.

“Don’t be doing that again. Ever. Promise me.”

“Why are you mad at me? You seemed happy to see me a
minute ago.”

“I’m not
mad
. I’m more worried. Listen to me.
That old man? You can’t go see him no more. Me and him, we don’t
talk no more. Don’t go around here asking about me. Please? You
gotta promise me. This is a small town, mamita.”

“Fine. I left some things with him for you.”

He seemed to calm down a little, and smiled a bit.
“Oh yeah? What kind of things?”

“My phone number,” I said, my cheeks flaming with
the inappropriateness of it, “and a gift card for iTunes.”

He laughed softly. “A gift card for iTunes. Nice,
mami. That’s real nice. Thank you.”

“Well, you know, I felt like after how everyone
acted toward you today, it was the least I could do. You’ve been
very kind to me.”

“A gift card for iTunes and your phone number,” he
mused, looking me over in a hungry, cocksure way that made me very
uncomfortable. “Your man know you gave me your number, mami?”

“His name’s Logan, but it’s not like that,” I
insisted. “He doesn’t care.”

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 scrap of laugh.
“The old man is a little
loco
, huh? God 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 bumps from just that one, light
touch. I’d never felt this way with Logan, or any other boy.

The space 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 passenger 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
glasses, 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.