The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (15 page)

“Let’s just get out of here.”

“Well, think about this. That guy,
he’s obviously a liar,” I said. “Because we’ve
seen
Demetrio, and unless that guy
killed him in the last few hours, he’s very much alive and
well.”

“I know. But still. It’s not every day a guy looks
you in the eye and tells you he wants to kill someone, and then
shows you his gun.”

“Maybe he was just trying to scare you.”

“Probably,” she said. “And guess what? He did a
really good job. I think we need to get as far from here as quickly
as we can.”

We hurried on, and soon arrived back at the Land
Rover. I was about to get in when I noticed a piece of paper
underneath one of the windshield wiper blades. I grabbed it, and
unfolded it.

Maria. Come in the church.
D.V.

“Hey,” I called to Kelsey, as she waited for me to
unlock her door. “Look at this.”

Still shaken, she hurried over, looking around
nervously. She read the note, and looked at me briefly before we
both turned our eyes to the church. The gate, which had been
padlocked before, stood open now.

“This is freakin’ weird,” she said, hugging
herself.

“Do you believe me now?” I asked. “You and my mom
think I’m going crazy, but I’m not. I am telling you. There’s
something really weird going on here.”

“I believe you,” she said. “But I think we should go
home. If he’s one of them, this could be a setup.”

I realized, depressingly, that she was probably
right.

“Let’s go, then,” I said.

But when I turned to open the door to the Land
Rover, Demetrio was standing in front of it, blocking my way. I
hadn’t heard him approach, or seen him, and all I could do was gasp
before he grabbed me by the wrists, and pushed me up against the
car.

♦

“Hey, mamita,” he said, smooth as silk, as
though we often ran into each other in the church parking lot.
“‘sup?”

“What are you doing?”

“How did he get there?” asked
Kelsey, and I could see in her eyes the same panic that now washed
through me head to toe. She looked as though she was weighing her
odds if she attacked him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he told us in a hushed voice, his
eyes looking around wildly in a paranoid way. “I’m not going to
hurt you, but you have to stay quiet.”

He put a finger to his lips, and pulled me over to
Kelsey, grabbing her hard by the wrist, too. He wore a black
long-sleeved t-shirt, with the name of the old band Led Zeppelin on
it, with a chain that appeared to have dog tags on it, around his
neck. The shirt wasn’t overly tight or anything, but you could tell
how nicely shaped he was beneath it - a strong young man, not
overly so in a stupid, grunty kind of way, but rather perfectly so.
He glowed with good health. He wore jeans, too.

“Hey!” Kelsey shouted. “Let go of me!”

“I will, don’t worry, but in there.” He jutted his
chin toward the church.

At that moment, we heard the sound of a car rumbling
up the dirt road we’d just been on, and when we looked toward the
noise we saw that it was the low-rider Bronco from the trailer,
still a good ways off, but barreling down on us, fast. Demetrio saw
it, too, and his face registered alarm and worry.

“I was afraid of that. Come with
me.
Now
.”

His grip on us was nonnegotiable as he yanked us
away from the car, across the cemetery and through the open door of
the church. I was astonished by his strength, which overrode our
protests and struggling with ease. It almost felt like we flew
behind him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kelsey shrieked,
while I was too afraid to utter a peep. “Help! Help!”

Once inside the earthen chapel, he closed the
enormous wooden door behind us with a dark, incontrovertible thud,
locking it with an old-fashioned enormous metal key that hung from
a hook in the wall.

“Shh,” he said, putting his finger to his lips.
Kelsey and I looked at each other, utterly terrified, as we
listened to the sound of the Bronco pulling up next to the Land
Rover outside.

“Help!” screamed Kelsey, once more.

Demetrio clamped his hand over her mouth, and
steadied her with his other arm. He spoke with his face very close
to hers. “You need to stop that, if you hope to live,” he told her
in a harsh whisper.

“Omigod, we’re going to die,” whispered Kelsey.

“Not if you can control your outbursts,” said
Demetrio. “Don’t let them hear you.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The guys from the trailer,” he said as he regarded
me with disgruntlement. “You shouldn’t of gone there, mamita.”

“I know that. I didn’t want to go there. She
did.”

“Don’t blame me!” hissed Kelsey. “You’re the one who
fell in love with him.” She pointed at Demetrio. “Now we’re going
to die.

Demetrio registered what she had just said, and he
seemed momentarily pleased by the news of my adoration of him. I,
on the other hand, was horrified, until he kept talking as though
she hadn’t confessed my crush for me.

“Shh,” said Demetrio. “No hysterics, please. They
can’t get in here. They won’t come in here. Trust me. Just
chill.”

We stood still, all of us, and I think I held my
breath for a long moment, listening as the Bronco’s engine revved
like a dragon outside the castle. After a minute or two, the
obnoxious revving stopped, and we heard the Bronco peel out of the
parking lot, the rumble of its overly-loud engine growing more and
more distant until the air around us became completely silent.

“They’re gone,” said Demetrio.

“Who are they?” I asked him. “They have the same
tattoos you do.”

He nodded grimly. “Let’s just say they’re old
coworkers. The one with the long hair used to be my boss. His
name’s Ulysses.”

“You’re kidding me. ‘Ulysses’?”

He cracked a grin. “I wish. Nah, mamita. Ulysses.
Variant of the name Odysseus, from the Greek verb odussomai, which
means wrathful and hated. Suits him, right?”

I stared open-mouthed at him as I realized he was
speaking proper English, just as he did in the dream.

“You were there,” I whispered, unable to find my
voice.

“Where, mamita? Greece? Nah. Lived in Golden all my
life.”

“The dream. The triangle. It was you, wasn’t
it?”

He blinked a few times and it seemed like he was
deciding how to answer me, before looking away, embarrassed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” he said. “You always just say these weird things, Maria.
It’s kind of cute, but we should sit down and talk for a minute
right now, before you guys get yourselves hurt. C’mon.”

He led us deeper into the empty church now, and it
took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. To my
astonishment, the interior of the old earthen church was simple,
cold, rectangular, ancient, and smelled of wet plaster, very much
like the room had been in my dream the night before. I shuddered,
and wrapped my arms tightly across my chest. I was not going crazy,
I told myself. I wasn’t. I couldn’t be.

Demetrio stopped at the front pew,
and knelt down to make the sign of the cross over himself before
taking a seat and motioning for us to join him on the wooden bench.
Kelsey looked completely confused and afraid, so I tried to
reassure her with a smile. I knew something was amiss, but I didn’t
think we were in
danger
, exactly. I sat next to Demetrio, and Kelsey sat on the
other side of me. The room was more visible now that my eyes had
adjusted, and I saw the simple altar, with the images of saints
painted on the walls behind it.

“Is this where you live?” I asked Demetrio, though
as I asked it, I knew it to be true for some reason. Maybe because
he had smelled just like this place the day he called 911 for
me.

“I’ll answer your questions after you answer mine,”
he said, matter-of-fact, turning to look me steadily, almost
incriminatingly, in the eye. “What are you doing here, and why did
you go to Ulysses house?”

I explained that we had decided to come looking for
Demetrio on a “girlish whim, because we’re stupid like that.”

“Why?” he asked, clearly irritated
with me. “I specifically
told
you not to come asking questions about me around
here. I told you it wasn’t safe, Maria. I said I’d find
you
. But you did it
anyway. I thought Coronado Prep kids was supposed to be
smart?”

I could tell Kelsey was about to go off on her
tirade about money and intelligence, so I shot her a look to shut
her down.

“I wanted to ask you about something,” I said. “I’m
pretty sure I saw you disappear in a twinkle of lights the other
night, when you just left me there and ran away, and I want to know
what’s going on. When I drove home that night, I got attacked by a
coyote, but after I showed it your prayer card, it dried up like
beef jerky and flew away like a bat.”

“She isn’t always this preposterous,” Kelsey told
him. “I’m actually starting to get a little worried about her.”

Demetrio chuckled at us as though we were both very
young and utterly pitiful, and shook his head wearily. He used the
tips of his fingers to rub his temples for a moment, as though we
gave him an awful headache, and groaned in frustration.

“Maria. I think you might have a
bit of trauma from the accident,” he said.

“You see?” Kelsey said, punching me in the arm. “I
told you! Even he thinks so.”

“What?” I asked her, incredulous.
“A second ago you believed me, and now you’re on his side?
Not
fair!”

“Well, yeah, there’s a logical explanation for
everything, if you think about it,” she said. “I have to stop
listening to your superstitious stuff.”

“Ladies,” said Demetrio, turning my head so that I
was looking at him again. “I need you to understand what I’m about
to tell you, and understand it good mamita. Can you do that?”

I didn’t like his condescending attitude, but I
nodded.

“I told you I’m in a gang. I
didn’t front about it, I didn’t lie. You asked about these,” he
indicated his tattoos, “and I told you the truth because I felt
like I could trust you. What you didn’t know, and I didn’t want you
to ever
have
to
know, is that I did some things when I was part of the gang that
were really bad, and now I’m trying to get myself right with God.
I’m trying to leave the gang. It’s not an easy thing to do. They
don’t like you to leave. They don’t let you leave easy. It’s a
battle I don’t want you in the middle of, because you seem like a
great girl.”

“That drowned-rat gang leader guy
with meth breath said you were dead,” blurted Kelsey. “What does
that even
mean
?”

Demetrio paused for a moment to look over at her,
something furious flashing in his eyes. It scared me and I felt a
brief dizziness and nausea course through me.

“It means I’m in deep,” he said.
“Let’s just say he was speaking metaphorically, for now, that I’m
dead to
him
, but
that he has every intention of making it true in a permanent sense.
You don’t leave these situations without being punished. And these
guys won’t hesitate to punish anyone I love - or care about.” He
looked at me nervously, like he’d revealed too much. “Or anyone who
cares about
me
.
That’s how they roll. That’s why the nicest thing I can do for you
is tell you to stay away from here. From me.”

We sat quietly for a moment, and then I asked him,
“Why don’t you just move? Go to another town? Another state?
Somewhere they can’t find you?”

He laughed openly at me. “You don’t get it, do you?
They’ll always be able to find me. I can’t leave. Plus I got
responsibilities here. It’s hard to explain, mamita.”

He regarded me with a sorrowful smile now, and took
a deep breath. “There’s so much I’d love to tell you, but for your
own safety, and for mine, I can’t. I don’t doubt for a second that
you both be smart enough to understand what I’m telling you. The
men you spoke to today ain’t good men.”

“I saw that guy’s eyes, the rat guy. I agree he’s a
bad man, a very bad man.”

“Ulysses,” I said. “Penelope’s husband.”

“I
know
, but I refuse to say that name
without laughing,” she replied, “and I’m not really in a laughing
mood right now, thank you very much.”

“Now that they know you’re looking for me, and
you’re my friends - I’m assuming that’s what you told them?”

Kelsey nodded, guiltily.

He sighed again and briefly buried his face in his
hands before sighing deeply.

“Okay. Now that you’ve done this, you’re marked,
too. It’s all my fault. The last thing I expected was that I’d
develop feelings for you in the middle of all this garbage, and I’m
sorry for dragging you into it.”

I stared at him, my mouth just a
tiny bit open. “You have
feelings
for me?” I asked, butterflies rioting in my
belly.

“Yeah, mami. You can’t tell?”

“She has feelings for you, too,” Kelsey told him, to
my horror. “But she’s too goody-goody to admit it. She’s too
delusional about her boyfriend, who’s an ass. Tell him about the
dream.” She shoved me playfully.

“Kelsey, please,” I said, blushing and annoyed.

Kelsey steamrolled on, her eyes alight with
pleasure, hands flying wildly. “She was practically naked, in this
underground room, and you were dressed like a monk but you were
going to seduce her but then her stepmom woke her up.” She blinked
at me. “It sounded better when you told it, honestly.”