The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (4 page)

He seemed to understand that I was uncomfortable
talking about my school. He watched the moody purpling sky with a
calm expression of concern.

“It’ll be dark soon,” he said somberly. “I ain’t
supposed to be out after dark, but I can’t just leave you here
alone.”

“Wow. You must have super strict parents.” I teased
him, but he didn’t so much as crack a smile. In fact, he grew more
serious, and frowned.

“Something like that.”

The distinctive sound of helicopter blades slicing
through the air grew clearer.

“Good. They’re almost here. I, I
have to go before they land. I’m sorry, Maria.”

“Why don’t you let them give you a ride back to
town? You’re a good five miles away. It’s terrible out. You can’t
be out walking around in this mess.”

“Nah, man. That’s cool,” he said, backing away
nervously, all false bravado. “They need to get you to the city and
make sure you’re good. I got this.”

“You sure?”

Demetrio seemed to gather his courage, inched
forward, and gingerly took my hand. His was warm, in spite of the
snow and wind. As our hands touched, and as we looked at each
other, I felt a pleasant thrill pulse through me, almost a mild
snap of electricity. He looked at me reassuringly, peacefully. It
confused me to see such an expression on a gang member’s face.

“Look, mamita. Don’t worry about me, okay? I can
handle myself.”

“Okay,” I said, overcome with an urge to kiss
him.

“I bet you look amazing all cleaned up,” he said. “I
probably shouldn’t say this, but I’d like to see that sometime. You
know, I don’t know if you’re down for that, but, you know.”

“Yeah, uhm,” I said absently. My hand went
instinctively to my neck, where I usually wore the Tiffany necklace
my boyfriend Logan had given me for Valentine’s Day last year. It
had a pendant shaped like a heart, with pink diamond inlays. My
neck was bare. The necklace must have fallen off during the
accident.

Demetrio watched my hand, and seemed to understand
my hesitation.

“But only if you want,” he said, casting his eyes
downward and biting his lip for a moment. “I mean, you don’t have
to see me again. No pressure or nothin’ like that.”

“Do you have a last name?” I tried to change the
subject. My cheeks flamed with the awkwardness of the situation. I
wanted to see him again. I liked being around him. But I knew it
was inappropriate in every possible way. I wasn’t a sickeningly
good girl or anything like that, but I did tend to color inside the
lines most of the time.

Demetrio nervously peered west over his shoulder
once more as the helicopter came into view, circling the area as
the searchlight scanned the area for me.

“Vigil.” His eyes locked onto mine, and he grinned
slightly. “But, what’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any
other name would smell as sweet.”

I smiled to let him know I got the reference, and
respected him for it.

“Shakespeare. Nice.”

“I like Dickens, too,” he said. “My favorite book’s
‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ about a guy who’s been in prison and gets
out for a second chance. Returned to life, that’s the chapter.”

“I never read it,” I said. “But my last name’s
Ochoa, in case you were wondering.”

Demetrio blinked his dark eyes, slowly, once, before
focusing his gaze upon me again, tortured and impatient. I got the
feeling he didn’t have many friends.

“Well, miss Maria Ochoa. You
probably got you a man at Coronado Prep,” he said.

“Sort of. Yeah.” I cringed because I hated to make
him feel rejected, and also because Logan and I had been arguing a
lot lately, and spending less and less time together.

“Gotcha,” he said, backing up, his face fallen as
though he thought he’d made a stupid mistake. He watched the
helicopter, and pulled his cap down lower over his eyes, as though
he were hiding from view. He touched his chest just above his
heart, and used two fingers to point at me, blushing the way a
tough guy does when he lets down his guard. He looked beautiful,
and sad, and terribly alone in the storm.

“I’m sorry,” I said - and I was.

“Nah, we cool. Do me a favor,” he said, starting to
back away from me. “If anyone asks, say you don’t know who called
911. Just some guy. Cool?”

My heart raced, and I felt scared and sorry for him.
“Are you in some kind of trouble or something?”

He looked at me without speaking for a long moment,
swallowed hard and said, in a calmer voice now, “Yeah. You could
say that.” He backed up a little more.

“Did you
kill
someone?” I blurted. Sometimes
I failed to think before I spoke. Actually, I often failed to think
before I spoke. It came from rebellion; my mother was a politician
who planned every word like a battle map.

He watched me, and gulped. I’d said it as a joke,
but something in his eyes told me I had come very close to the
truth about him. Too close. Not good.

“I gotta jet, Maria. Catch you
later. Good luck with your dance thing. You’ll be alright. I
promise.”

With a tortured look on his face, Demetrio Vigil
pulled up his collar, turned his back, and stalked off into the
gloomy emptiness, as quietly as he had come.

♦

By the following Friday, my life
was essentially back to normal - at least on the surface of things.
All my medical tests had come back clean, meaning I didn’t have any
lasting or serious injuries – much to everyone’s surprise, given
how grandly smashed beyond repair the car was. I had walked away
with only cuts and bruises - albeit pretty bad cuts and bruises -
and a sprained ankle. Buddy, however, had a couple of fractured
ribs and a broken ankle, but was expected to recover just fine.
Because he insisted on licking the sore bits of himself, we’d
corralled his head in a hideous white plastic cone, tied up
indecorously about his neck with a strip of gauze fashioned into a
decidedly un-macho bow.

My mom was back at work downtown,
after recalcitrantly taking a couple of days off to both nurse
me
and
to hold a
tearful press conference about my accident – because, hey, every
life event is a chance for publicity when you’re hoping to be the
next mayor and, eventually, congresswoman and, eventually after
that, something important at a national level in a cabinet and
perhaps even President. Best of all, my dad had gotten me a new car
– not all that hard to do, considering that he had five years ago
given up on being married to my ambitious mother and now relaxedly
owned a luxury car dealership in Santa Fe. The new car I drove
around was a big black Land Rover with a creamy beige interior and
all the bells and whistles. I didn’t love Land Rovers, as a rule; I
thought they looked like narrow, square-headed men with large
foreheads. But after being masticated and regurgitated by Highway
14 and narrowly surviving, the Land Rover felt like a
big and strong
narrow
headed man with a large forehead - and big and strong felt just
right.

So it was that I found myself, on a blustery, gloomy
morning exactly seven days after my accident, driving the new Land
Rover from my mom’s house at the base of the mountain, to the
Einstein Bros. Bagels near my school, feeling very high up off the
road, almost as though I were perched atop a stagecoach, and
somewhat invincible. I couldn’t wait to show my boyfriend Logan
Torero the car. He was a car kind of guy, grunty and manly, and I
knew he’d love it. Maybe the car would inspire him to start
spending more time with me again, because, let’s face it, we’d seen
very little of each other since he got way too drunk at a Halloween
party couple months back, and sort of embarrassed himself and me
with some off-color comments about female body parts that shall not
be repeated here. But that was another story for another time, and,
as my mother often told me, grudges never hurt the people you held
them against, but took precious minutes off one’s own life from
stress. My mother also often reminded me that boys will be boys,
and to keep one, you pretty much had to accept the male norms of
behavior that were so often unpleasant to be around. As such, I
forgave him. We were moving forward. He was a great guy, who acted
stupid when he drank. What man wasn’t?

It was snowing again. A cold wind whipped the
valley, agitating the skeletal arms of leafless trees along the
median of Academy Boulevard. Large snowflakes spun toward the
asphalt, and stuck. To its credit, the Land Rover infiltrated the
storm, churning solidly – almost calmly – over the road.

If the storm had begun any earlier in the day,
school would probably have been canceled, or at least delayed. I
was glad classes were still on, and not just because we were
reviewing for our final exams next week - and Lord knows I needed
that review. I was also far too anxious to sit at home with Buddy,
cute though he was, bumping about in his little plastic cone and
miniature leg cast. No, it was more than that; ever since the
crash, I’d felt unsettled, on edge, as though any little thing
could flip my adrenaline switch. It was completely beyond my
control, as though someone else were driving the machinery of my
nervous system. I stupidly felt that something, or someone, was
watching me, every time I left the house - even though of course I
knew this was not the case. Maybe it was because we lived in the
foothills, where coyotes were abundant; I had never really thought
much about them before. Now I had a fear of them. I didn’t tell my
mom about this new fear. She worried a lot if anything was
imperfect - especially me - and had a tendency to overreact in her
efforts to fix everything. I didn’t want her to send me back for
more tests at the hospital. I just wanted to return to my regular
life and forget about the crash altogether.

I parked the Land Rover, dropped the 1000 feet or so
from the driver’s seat to the ground, and dashed through the snow
toward the bagel shop, grateful as the snow pelted my face that I’d
worn contacts instead of glasses, which would be better-designed,
in my opinion, if they came equipped with miniature windshield
wipers. My best friend Kelsey looked up as I entered the warm,
balmy café. She waved, smiling from a back table where she sat with
another friend, Victoria – and Victoria’s new boyfriend, Thomas.
Kelsey and Victoria were both effortlessly pretty, Kelsey with wavy
blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, Victoria with kinky ebony hair
and large, dark eyes. Kelsey wore all black, training for when she
finally moved back to New York City, where she’d been born;
Victoria wore jeans with a blazer and turtleneck, and riding boots
that were likely native to her original hometown of Houston.
Thomas, a local kid like me, was a typical, somewhat messy, hot guy
who had been on Coronado Prep’s science team with me last year, and
had been smitten by my pal since then.

I waved at them, and made a beeline for the counter
to order my large coffee and plain power bagel. The café bustled
with people – retirees who lived in the country club area; a Bible
study group from the nearby church, a few other kids from my
school. The space was cozy, steeped with the toasted, dark scent of
freshly brewed coffee. Everywhere should be as reassuring as a
bagel shop on a snowy day, I thought. The world would be a much
less frightening place that way.

Breakfast in hand, I joined my friends, draping my
red pea coat over the back of the wooden chair next to Kelsey. I
sat, in my jeans and striped pink and white sweater, and savored
the first delicious sip of my drink. It heartened me, but only
slightly. I still had the creepy sense I was being followed - and
enough common sense to know I was being paranoid and ought
therefore to keep such imprudent thoughts to myself.

Victoria, always a good read of
body language, regarded me the way you might look at a hungry puppy
scratch for crumbs. “You okay, Maria?”

“Fine,” I assured her, trying to shake it off.

“Did you have that nightmare again?” Kelsey asked
me.

“Nah,” I lied.

In truth, I’d
indeed
had the spine-chilling dream
last night – with the gang of bloodthirsty coyotes loping out of
the storm to rip into my freezing naked flesh with their fangs –
just as I’d had it every night since the crash. The dream never
varied, as dreams usually do. It was exactly the same, night after
night, as predictable as though it were a DVD I popped into my
subconscious before slumber. I had told my friends about it a
couple of times now, and figured it was inconsiderate to keep
talking about it. My mother had taught me that being a good friend
– and a good leader, in her stellar case – wasn’t always about the
things we
shared
with people; more often than not, it was about the things we
chose
not
to
reveal. Discretion was the handmaid of friendship, or something to
that effect. For her part, my mother thought the recurring
nightmares meant I had some form of traumatic stress disorder
because of the accident; she wanted me to see a therapist about it,
and get medicated - she swore by the anti-anxiety drug she
currently downed each morning - while I just sort of hoped the
weirdness I was experiencing would go away on its own, like a
traveling salesman you refuse to answer the door for.

“My dad brought me my new car yesterday.” I pointed
out the Land Rover through the window. My friends all looked at it,
with great interest. Kelsey and Victoria agreed it was gorgeous,
though sort of boat like and soccer-mom-ish, but much safer than a
sedan; Thomas thought it was sort of cool, “if you’re the type to
actively detest polar bears and so on.” I had to crack a grin at
his words; Thomas was always thinking, and as such was perhaps the
most consistently moral friend I had - which, I might add, could be
a real buzz kill sometimes. Like now.