The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (13 page)

“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 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 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 burning 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.

“You think you’re so smart,” Missy said to
Kelsey.

“Only idiots think they’re
smart
,” replied Kelsey.
“I am painfully aware of how little I know. This means I’m
actually
smart.”

“Thanks for the lunch,” I said, quickly clearing my
place and Kelsey’s. “We won’t be too late.”

“Curfew,” said my father, his face still pink from
embarrassment. “Be home by ten.”

“Good riddance,” muttered Missy.

“Bye,” I replied. Kelsey looped
her arm in mine, and off we skipped with great irony, as girls of a
certain age will do, to the front coat closet, suppressing giggles
all the way. In moments like these, I have found, it is always
helpful to have a best friend who understands you. With that, you
can do anything. At least you
feel
like you can do anything.

The afternoon was cold, sharp, and clear, 29 degrees
Fahrenheit, with birds that sang cheerfully in the piñóns and
junipers, in spite of what I imagined were their frozen toes and
empty bellies. I spent entirely too much time feeling sorry for
animals. It was crippling, emotionally, after a while, but it was
my nature.

“Poor things,” I told Kelsey, as I pressed the locks
of the Land Rover open with my key fob.

“Empathy will be your downfall,” she replied.
“Toughen up, girl.”

In we went. With Kelsey fiddling with the stereo,
attaching her iPod to it, I drove us to the Santa Fe Baking
company, where I got a breakfast burrito - egg yolks! cheese! fried
potatoes! food you couldn’t get at my dad’s! - and a hot cup of
flavored coffee for the drive to Golden.

That’s right.
Golden
.

It was Kelsey’s idea of an adventurous afternoon. We
had no intention of going to the movies, and every intention of
finding “the farm” where Demetrio lived, just to see what it was
like. In those days, we were young enough to think such
recklessness was innocent fun, and though I pretended to feel
annoyed by her insistence on “locating your vato soul mate,” I
found the prospect of seeing him again very energizing. It was a
gut-level reaction I had to the thought of Demetrio, and hadn’t the
plumber told me to trust my gut? And, hey, who knew guts better
than plumbers, right?

I drove through Santa Fe, then South along
Interstate 25 to the turnoff for Highway 14, with Kelsey munching
on her own breakfast of a sesame bagel with vegan cream cheese and
a hot green tea, whose diuretic effect she said she offset with the
extra-large bottle of water in her lap. Kelsey, who had been
enduring some pimple problems, swore by massive quantities of water
- for clear skin, clear mind, etc. Her beloved indie rock was
blasting, and the heater too. I felt free, adventurous, and a
little bit unlike my usual careful self.