The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil

by Alisa Valdes

  “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 class - 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 massive hug.

  “Uhm, hello?” 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 assumed 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 pla
id 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 prickling with goose bumps. “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. God 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.”

  I didn’t mean to, but I guffawed. The juxtaposition of scary mysteries with the mundane penance of a clogged septic system was funny to my mind, which, as we know, was always in search of irony and was not above the occasional fart joke, even when I’d lost it.

  The plumber left. I closed the door after him, and went back to the great room-kitchen area, where the princess movie was ending, and my previously motionless little sisters were starting to move around, agitated now that the fairy tale romantic spell was broken and cold, hard reality began to set in. At the kitchen island, Kelsey sat on a stool, her worry trained on me.

  “Told you,” I bragged. “I do not have a concussion. At least he believes me.”

  Her mouth twisted in doubt. “The old man plumber who thinks God in in your spleen.”

  “Yes. The superstitious elderly septic guru who thinks God is in my liver. He believes me.” I knew it sounded ridiculous. “Fine. This is idiotic. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”

  “I do. I think you have a case of feeling incredibly guilty from being in love with a guy who’s not your chump of a boyfriend and who your parents and everyone we know would hate because they’ve only ever seen guys like him on episodes of that prison show on MSNBC. That, and maybe some head trauma and stress thrown in.”

  “You’re probably right.” I dropped my head into my hands in defeat, realizing I had fallen for Demetrio.

  “For what it’s worth, Maria, I like Demetrio better than Logan.”

  “But why?”

  “Same reason you do. He’s genuine. And he seems smarter than Logan. I got a good feeling about him.”

  “But Logan’s from a good family. He’s one of the top students at Coronado Prep, for crying out loud.”

  “You dork,” said Kelsey. “So what? Since when did you buy into the prep school mythology that money and power make you smarter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think the smartest kids in Albuquerque are at Coronado Prep? C’mon. There are smart people everywhere. Most of them don’t have the kind of access you and I have. It’s not their fault. I’m sorry to tell you, we’re not actually the intellectual cream of the crop. We’re the richest and best connected. We’re the lucky ones. That’s all.”

  “I never thought about it like that.”

  “That’s because your mom isn’t a closet socialist and she doesn’t make you read Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich like mine does.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. Maybe we should go visit him later,” she suggested, with a wiggling of her eyebrows. “See about that dream.”

  “Who, the plumber?” I deadpanned, blushing with rebellious excitement at the thought of seeing Demetrio again - and having Kelsey in on my bu
rning secret.

  “You are such a moron,” Kelsey said with a grin, shoving me lightly. “You know exactly who I’m talking about. Here’s a hint: You want to stick your tongue down his cholo throat.”

  “Ugh! Do not!”

  She ignored my outburst and continued her train of thought: “And unless you just developed a sudden crush on the old dude who was just here, it ain’t the plumber.”

  “My mom would kill me if I ended up with a guy like that,” I said, miserably.

  “Uhm, hello? Your mom married your dad,” said Kelsey, with a face of disgust. “So with all due respect, because she spawned you and you are the best person I know, I do not think the honorable Councilwoman Romero has any room to judge anybody.”

  I laughed at this, because I’d never thought of my mother in this way before. I loved Kelsey tremendously in that moment, because she always helped me see the world from a new perspective - one that had room in it for imperfection, and me, just the way I was.

  ♦

  Kelsey and I needed a break after a morning spent with the terrifying and tiny tiara twins, so we managed to convince my dad to let us go to the movies that afternoon.

  “You can go,” said my father with as much authority as he could muster - as he was being ordered around in the fat-free, organic kitchen by his fit, albeit dictatorial, young wife. “But you better not be meeting any boys.”

  Kelsey, being in so many ways braver than I - at least at the start of this particular day - replied with typical intellectual vigor and obnoxiousness.

  “Good advice, Mr. Ochoa. Maybe we could meet grown men old enough to be our fathers, preferably in the balding throes of existential crisis, and bully them when they tried to do something nice for our pretty, perky selves.”

  This caused Missy to nearly choke on a slimy bit of kombucha, and that particularly unappealing noise inspired the twins to panic and cry. All in all, it was instant chaos thanks to my brilliant best friend who, in spite of her tender 17 years, had more self-awareness than any of the adults in the room.