The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 5

"You what, now?" came the gruff, wispy old voice.

I repeated myself, and he opened the door a bit more again, and this time stepped halfway out, sizing me up with a look of guarded mistrust.

"Demetrio Vigil, eh?" he asked.

"Yes. I've only recently met him."

"No, no," he shook his head and jabbing his own thumb into his chest. "I'm Demetrio Vigil. I don't know you."

His jaws worked convulsively, as jaws will do in the absence of teeth. I could see now that he wore dark jeans, cowboy boots, and a red flannel s.h.i.+rt with a bolo tie.

"Oh," I said. "Then I'm terribly sorry. I've made a mistake. I met a young man from Golden last week, who said his name was Demetrio Vigil, and you're the only such person listed in the white pages."

"Los white pages," he repeated, running an antique hand across his scruff of white beard.

"I'm sorry to bother you."

"Ni modo, hita."

"Sorry?"

"Are you Hispanic?" he asked me. "You look Hispanic."

"Does it matter?" I asked, defensively, annoyed that older people always seemed to ask me this while people my own age didn't care.

He shrugged. "If people think it matters, it matters," he said. "It didn't used to matter, now it matters."

My spine tingled with the words, so similar to the ones Yazzie had spoken earlier. Another coincidence. Or was it? Maybe I'd baited him into saying it. Maybe I was losing my mind. I wondered if perhaps I'd hit my head in the crash, because the world seemed slightly tilted now, emotionally. I'd never been anxious before, but now anxiety seemed to define me.

"I'm Hispanic, yes," I told him, shaking myself out of the chill. "But I don't speak Spanish, and I don't think it matters."

"This other Demetrio," he said, his eyes narrowing a tiny bit. "When did you meet him?"

"Just last week. I saw him this morning, too. I wanted to thank him for helping me. I had a crash. It's a long story. I've made a mistake, sir, so sorry. I'll just go now."

"No, no," he said, touching my arm. As he got closer, I smelled alcohol on his breath, and pungent, unpleasant body odor. "I have a grandson who carries my name. Demetrio."

I gasped a little, and my eyes widened. "Oh? Does he live here?"

The old man shook his head solemnly. "No. Not no more, jovencita. Ya se fue."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"Se fue. Se fue," he repeated, gesticulating angrily, as though saying words I didn't know, over and over, would somehow make me understand them. "He ain't here no more. He's gone. I don't want no trouble. Don't be asking me no more questions."

"Oh, okay. Well, do you know where I might be able to find him?"

The old man frowned, and shook his head solemnly. He took a raw, homemade-looking cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with a match ignited - to my horror - on the zipper of his jeans. He took a long drag, then jabbed the cigarette into the air to punctuate his thoughts.

"My late wife, la loca esa que Dios la bendiga, with all her rosaries and todo eso, she thought good of everybody, she'd tell you exactly where he is. She'd know. But me? I don't know nothing. I don't tell you nothing, I don't tell the police nothing, I don't tell no one nothing, that's how I am, I don't tell nothing because I don't know nothing. You understand?"

I nodded, realizing now that he probably did know where Demetrio was, but thought he was protecting him from something by refraining from sharing the information with me. I thought of mafia movies, for some reason, and the idea of loyalty to the family. I wondered if this old man were also a gang member.

"Okay," I said, realizing this was going nowhere. I took the iTunes card out of my pocket, and ripped a little piece off the edge of the photocopy of the folk tale Yazzie gave me earlier. "You wouldn't happen to have a pen, would you?"

"What for?" He eyed me mistrustfully again.

"I just want to give you my phone number, in case your grandson shows up after I leave."

"He ain't showing up no more," he said wistfully, blowing smoke at me. "But I take your number for me, if I ever get lonely, you come see me."

I heard him laughing uncleanly as he disappeared back into the house and shut the door. I stood stupidly for a moment, wondering if he were coming back. Just as I was about to leave, however, he returned, with a dull, thick pencil, the kind a child might use in the early years of school. I could hear canned laughter coming from a television inside the house. My mom had told me about how huge numbers of people in New Mexico were illiterate, and I wondered if this was one of them. I'd never known any illiterate adults.

I scribbled my cell number on the sc.r.a.p of paper, along with a note thanking Demetrio for all his help, wrapped it around the gift card, and handed them to the old man.

"Please give this to him, if you see him," I said.

"I won't see him," he said. "But I think taking this is the only way I'm going to get you to go away so I can get back to watching my stories."

I stood in shock at his rudeness, and watched his smile spread slowly across his face.

"Ay, hita, that's the problem with you fancy people, you don't got no humor." He reached out and squeezed my arm before examining the sky with his milky eyes. "The weather lady, she said more snow coming. Be careful. They're no good, these roads up here."

"I realize that," I said with a shudder, but decided against going into details about my crash with a crazy, drunk old man who clearly enjoyed playing mind games with me. I turned to walk back to the Land Rover.

"Thank you, sir," I said over my shoulder. "Take care."

The old man did not return my goodbye before slamming his door shut.

I hurried back to the Land Rover, disappointed and trembling with cold. The sun was low behind the mountains now, and darkness would set in soon. I realized then that I'd allowed myself to become a little hopeful about seeing Demetrio again, and it disturbed me because the hope felt the way it does when you like a guy. Like like him, like that. After talking to Kelsey the attraction I'd felt for Demetrio had surfaced. I was generally pretty good at controlling my emotions, but not now. Now I felt a bubbling in my gut, b.u.t.terflies, at the thought of seeing him again. It was subtle, of course. This desire hadn't been conscious, and I'd never betray Logan in any way. Not consciously. Not in real life.

I sat in the car for a couple of minutes, letting it warm up a little before I began driving. To pa.s.s the time, I took out the paper Yazzie had given me, and began to read it. I got no further than the first lines before my entire skin had risen up in goose b.u.mps, and a sick sort of thrill pierced my gut.

In Cochiti, the cacique had an only boy ("grandson probably"). He never went out. He didn't know the country, nor how to hunt. He only knew how to sing.

I stopped reading because it was only a coincidence, that's all. Nothing more than that. I stuffed the story back into my pack, cranked up the stereo, and put it all out of my mind. I drove along the dirt roads, toward Highway 14, and tried to forget about Demetrio Vigil, and the crash, and Saint Anthony, and the Cochiti boy - all of it. I was making mountains out of proverbial molehills. It was ridiculous to let my imagination run wild like this! I had to get hold of myself.

I was doomed, however, to failure because as soon as I got to the hill with the small adobe church on it on Highway 14, I saw the younger Demetrio Vigil after all. He was walking casually through the snow on the shoulder of the roadway, as though impervious to the biting cold. My heart raced at the sight of him, and my cheeks blazed because, quite simply, he looked great. Very handsome, in that dangerous, forbidden way of his. Carefree, peaceful, serene, boyish and almost innocent, because he didn't realize he was being watched. He had a black bandana tied beneath his baseball cap. His neck tattoos exposed to the elements. His toolbox swung from one hand, and with the other he pressed some sort of animal - a cat, maybe? - to his body, carrying it like a baby. He appeared to be...singing.

At least he was singing, until he spotted me behind the wheel of the slowing Land Rover, pulling over next to him on the shoulder of the road. At that point he stopped singing, and smiled in an amused sort of way. He strolled toward the car with great confidence, and waved - as though seeing me here were the most natural thing in the world.

As though he expected me.

I got out of the car to walk toward him. He stood grinning and waiting for me.

"Hey!" I said, stupidly, waving like a moron.

"Hey, mamita," he said, c.o.c.king his head a little to one side and checking me out. "What a coincidence."

I gasped a little. Mentioning coincidences counted as a coincidence, didn't it?

"Do you believe in coincidences?" I asked him, blurting the words before I even realized they'd tumbled from my mouth.

"You ever heard this one quote, that coincidences are G.o.d's way of staying anonymous?" he asked casually.

"No. Who said that."

He shrugged. "Anonymous, of course."

I cracked a smile, loving the way he put me instantly at ease. "You know, we really have to stop meeting like this," I joked, mostly because I didn't know what else to say.

"I'd say this is a lot better than the first time," he countered. "We made big improvements. Nice ride, by the way." His eyes flickered over the Land Rover.

"It's huge."

"That it is."

By then, Demetrio and I stood about two feet apart, he grinning at me and checking out my new car in an impressed and incredulous sort of way, me smiling at him and looking at the floppy, sleeping beast in his arms with growing trepidation. It was bigger than I'd at first a.s.sumed, and it wasn't a regular cat. It looked like a small lion, with long hairs sticking out of its ears.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Baby bobcat. Poachers got the mom. I'm taking her home, gonna fix her right up."

He set the toolbox down, and turned away from me a little so that the bobcat was on the opposite side of him.

"C'mere," he told me. Then he reached out to give me a half-hug with his free arm. As before, I felt a jolt of excitement under his touch. "It's good to see you. You doing okay? You look good, mami. You healing?"

"Yeah, I'm fine actually." I awkwardly returned the half-embrace, s.h.i.+vering 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, compa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ky 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 b.u.mps 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, c.o.c.ksure 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."