The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (32 page)

“A duel?”

“A test of skill and talent, probably dance and
soccer combined.”

“Why don’t you?” I asked, though I was unsure what a
final duel was, or the coliseum. I’d ask him later.

“Because he saved my life that night. I’m in debt to
him.”

I began to sob for the child Hilario had been. I ran
to him, wanting to scoop the little boy with the quivering lower
lip, bruised face, and false bravery up into my arms, to kiss him,
to tell him it was all going to be okay, but the child had no
awareness of me.

“It has already happened,” Demetrio reminded me.
“There’s nothing to be done from here. We should go.”

“But we can’t just
leave
him there!” I
wailed. “Both of them. What if the man comes out?”

“He did come out. My mom’s boyfriend broke Hilario’s
leg that night. The neighbors found me wandering in the road the
next morning. My mother was unconscious, beaten nearly to
death.”

“Oh, God! No!”

“Mamita,” he said, patiently. “The man went to
prison for a while. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do.”

I collapsed to the earth, and Demetrio lifted me
easily into his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and buried
my head in his shoulder.

“I am so sorry,” I cried. “I had no idea.”

“There are millions just like me,”
he said. “We can’t help the boys we see here now, but you can go
back to your world and help the ones living this human hell right
now. That’s what I do all day long, Maria, when I can’t see you. We
should leave here.”

I knew the child in the doghouse was him, that he
was also here now, solid, grown, and holding me, that somehow he
had survived this horror and gone on to graduate from high school,
to have learned to sing and dance in spite of all this, and to have
been accepted to college. But I also knew that Hilario had escaped
into drugs and alcohol, and that, in the end, both of them had died
for the sins of their parents. If this scene I’d just witnessed had
never happened, what might have changed? What might have been
different for those children? Might they still have been alive?

“I’m so sorry,” I cried, heavy and weak with
misery.

“Don’t be,” he said. “Just love me now, as I am,
accept me.”

I clung harder to him now. “I do. I do! I love you.
I accept you.”

His chin turned up, toward the moon.

“I need you to trust me, Maria,”
he said.

“I will. I do.”

“I can’t visit you anymore. Not in human form.”

“What?” I asked, shocked and horrified. “But
why?”

“Look what’s happening. It’s too risky. Your life,
your mom. It’s going to ruin you.”

“No, it won’t!”

“Maria, I’ve seen what Logan did
to you online, and how the kids at school turned against you. And
now this, with your mom. Our time will come, but it cannot be
now.”

“It can!” I insisted. “I can’t lose you! I’ll die
without you.”

“Delectation, mamita.”

“What does that even mean?”

“The pleasure that comes from surviving something,
or from getting what you want after a noble and necessary wait.
It’s why the pain of unrequited love is different from all other
pain.”

“I don’t want to wait. I don’t want pain of any
kind.”

“And I won’t do this to you anymore, not without a
protection ceremony for you. We’ll do that in the spring. Three
months. When the time comes, I’ll find you.”

He kissed the top of my head, ever so gently; I
marveled that anyone who had witnessed such brutality could be so
gentle. Revenant, yes, but I also began to believe him more than
that. I began to believe him to be a sort of angel.

“I love you,” he said as his feet lifted off the
ground, and we floated back through time and space, to Rancho la
Curación. He became light and warmth once more, and released me
with a promise, unspoken but known to me as much as a breath is
known to the lungs, deep down in my gut, that he would be by my
side every free moment, even if I couldn’t see him.

Then I was on the ceiling again, looking down at
myself where I snored and drooled, and falling back into my own
sleeping body, older than I’d ever felt, disgusted with what
horrors the world unleashed on some children, and determined, with
a ferocious conviction unlike anything I’d ever felt, to do
something about it.

♦

The next day after I’d worked out at the
luxurious gym and had lunch in my room (grilled salmon Cesar salad
and a Diet Coke), I had a two-hour session with Dr. Bergant in my
suite. As before, the fire burned brightly as a light snow fell
outside. As before, she wore jeans and a sweater, with the same
jewelry, and seemed very fashionably casual and fun. As before, she
listened, and asked a lot of questions. This time, she got me to
talk about my parents and my early life. I told her about the
divorce, too, and it felt incredibly good to get al of my anger out
in the open.

“My parents never divorced,” she told me as she
munched on some of the peanut brittle she’d brought for us, along
with hot chocolate, “but they should have. Sometimes it’s for the
best.”

“I guess you’re right.” I remembered my mom and dad
fighting, and supposed it was a relief not to have to endure that
anymore.

Eventually, the conversation turned back to
Demetrio. I was still a bit shaken from the dream the night before,
but reluctant to tell her about it.

“You know,” she said, out of the blue. “Some of the
girls who come here believe this place is haunted. How do you feel
about that?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Why?”

“Because, I think they’re right,” she said
matter-of-fact. “I’ve seen them.”

“Who?”

“The ghosts here. In fact, I’ve seen one in this
very room.”

“Really?” I felt goose bumps coming, and folded my
arms over my chest.

“Before this was a hospital, it used to be an artist
colony. A woman lived here, a painter. She was married to a man who
was unfaithful to her, and used to flaunt it in her face.”

“That’s sad,” I said.

“He used to bring his different girlfriends home for
dinner, and expect her to cook for them.”

“What?”

“It’s amazing what some men will do.” Dr. Bergant
shook her head. “But, yes, that’s what her life was like. She put
it with it for many years, but they say that one day, when he
brought home her very own niece, she’d had enough, and went
upstairs, to this very room, and hanged herself from that viga
right there.” She pointed to the third viga from the outside wall;
the one directly over my bed.

“Tragic,” I said.

“Does it scare you when I talk about ghosts?” she
asked.

“Why are you asking me this?” I replied, suddenly
suspicious of her.

She smiled. “I’ll be honest,
Maria. Your mother mentioned that you had told your friends that
you were seeing ghosts. You haven’t mentioned that, so I was trying
to let you know it’s okay to talk about that sort of thing
here.”

I sat with this information, unsure what to do with
it.

“So, do you?” she asked.

“Do I what?”

“Do you see ghosts, like I do?”

I remembered what Demetrio had told me, about
telling no one, and I shook my head. “Sorry, but no.”

“You do understand that whatever we discuss here
will remain strictly confidential,” she replied, as though she had
read my mind.

“I know.”

“So let me ask you again. Do you
see ghosts, Maria?”

I met her gaze, and felt its sincerity. She was a
kind woman. She was trying to help me. Plus, everything else I’d
told her, she had sympathized with.

“Yes,” I said, finally. “Sometimes, I see
ghosts.”

Dr. Bergant smiled. “That’s fine,
Maria. I don’t think you’re unstable because of that. I believe
there’s a scientific explanation for the reasons some of us see
these things sometimes. I’m glad you opened up about
it.”

“Can I tell you something?” I asked her now, feeling
a complete sense of relief at having told someone about the ghost
thing.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m out of my mind,” I
said. “Because I’m not.”

“I have already figured that part out, don’t worry,”
she said.

“The boy I told you about? Demetrio? He’s - he’s not
exactly alive anymore.”

Dr. Bergant smiled. “I figured as much.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well, after you told me his name, I thought to
Google it. What an unusual name, I told myself. I was actually just
hoping to do a background check on him, to make sure I wasn’t
encouraging you to become involved with an actual criminal, which
is what your mother thinks. Anyway, sure enough, the name came up
in a few news stories, but they were all about a boy who’d died in
a car crash exactly where you had your crash. I put two and two
together.”

“You don’t think I’m insane?”

“Sweetie, no. If I hadn’t had some of the same
experiences, I probably would have, though. Which is why I want to
spend the next part of our session talking about things you should
and shouldn’t say to people who might harm you. Ghosts, for
instance. That’s not something you should go around telling people.
Especially not people like your mother.”

“I know.”

“It’s not that you’re denying Demetrio exists, okay?
It’s that you’re protecting yourself.”

I used this opportunity to tell her about the
disturbing dream I’d had the night before, and about how Demetrio
said he couldn’t see me anymore. She looked heartbroken, and
shaken.

“Maria, do you believe in
coincidences?” she asked me.

“No.” I shivered at the coincidental mention, once
again, of coincidences.

“Me neither. I mean, I believe they happen, but I
believe that they are a sort of divine intersection of things that
were meant to meet.”

“Yes.”

“Like us. Because, and I’ve never told anyone this
before, but my husband, his grandfather came to me as a ghost, just
as you’ve described with Demetrio, and it was he who helped me to
meet my husband in the first place.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead,” she said. “It happens.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t been disbarred,” I told
her.

Dr. Bergant laughed. “I would probably be expelled
from the profession if anyone knew I believed this stuff. That’s
why we are keeping everything said in this room in this room,
right?”

Dr. Bergant’s speech was interrupted now by a knock
on the door. It was four o’clock. Dr. Bergant opened the door to my
room and we found Debbie standing outside next to Yazzie.

“There’s a visitor here for Miss Ochoa,” she
said.

“Hello,” said Dr. Bergant to my art history teacher,
reaching out to shake her hand. Yazzie shook, but there was a
curious look upon her face as she did.

“I think we lost track of time,” said Dr. Bergant.
To me, she said “We’ll pick up where we left off, tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Now, I’ll leave you two to
visit,” she said. “Enjoy the rest of your evening. Oh, and Debbie,
can you give Maria a couple more tranquilizers?”

“I don’t need them,” I insisted. I’d thrown the ones
from the day before down the toilet, and flushed it.

“Just in case,” said Dr. Bergant.

Yazzie came in, and closed the door behind her.
After hugging me, greeting me, and giving me a wrapped gift that
felt like a small-framed painting, she got right to the point.

“I don’t like this place for you,” she said, pacing
up and down the floor of my suite. “And I don’t like your
doctor.”

“The place sucks, but Dr. Bergant is really nice,” I
said.

“You have a tail, Maria,” she
said, stopping to stare at the third viga from the outside
wall.

“What?”

“A bad thing happened here, in this spot,” she said,
pointing to the viga.

“A painter hanged herself there.”

Yazzie looked devastated. “Yes,” she said,
sorrowfully. “That’s it. That’s right. I feel that. Oh, that poor,
miserable woman.”

“It’s amazing you picked up on that,” I told
her.

“I pay attention,” she said. “As should you. You
have a tail.”

“I’m sorry?”

“A tail. That’s what the Pueblo people say to
someone who refuses to see the truth. They have a tail but they
don’t see it.”

“Nice. I hope it doesn’t make me look fat.”

Yazzie cracked a grin and took a tentative seat at
the edge of the floral sofa. “Do you remember the story from
Isleta, of the two boys whose parents told them never to go South
to hunt?” she asked.

“No.”

“I gave it to you to read, some time ago.”

“Sorry. I don’t remember it.”

“Here’s the short version. The
parents tell the boys not to go south to hunt, and do you know
why?”

“Nope.”

“Because there is a woman to the south who eats
children.”

“Ah. Good thing this hospital
is
North
,
then.”

“North of some things, perhaps. But south of
others.” She watched me for a long time, as though waiting for me
to understand something that, honestly, eluded me.

“Okay, I get it. Fine. You think Dr. Bergant wants
to eat me.”

Yazzie continued to stare
disconcertingly at me. “These things are not meant to be taken
literally, Maria.”

“Fine. I’m glad no one will eat me, then.”

“Do you know what happened when those brothers went
south to hunt, disobeying their parents warnings?”

“Let me guess. They got eaten by an old woman.”

“No. She
tried
to eat them. She sealed them
in an oven each night, when it was very hot, and every morning she
and her husband, who was also a witch, came out, drooling with
hunger and anticipation, only to find that the boys were inside,
unhurt, and the oven was cold.”