by Alisa Valdes
Demetrio nervously peered west over his shoulder once more as the helicopter came into view, circling the area as the searchlight scanned the area for me.
“Vigil.” His eyes locked onto mine, and he grinned slightly. “But, what’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”
I smiled to let him know I got the reference, and respected him for it.
“Shakespeare. Nice.”
“I like Dickens, too,” he said. “My favorite book’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ about a guy who’s been in prison and gets out for a second chance. Returned to life, that’s the chapter.”
“I never read it,” I said. “But my last name’s Ochoa, in case you were wondering.”
Demetrio blinked his dark eyes, slowly, once, before focusing his gaze upon me again, tortured and impatient. I got the feeling he didn’t have many friends.
“Well, miss Maria Ochoa. You probably got you a man at Coronado Prep,” he said.
“Sort of. Yeah.” I cringed because I hated to make him feel rejected, and also because Logan and I had been arguing a lot lately, and spending less and less time together.
“Gotcha,” he said, backing up, his face fallen as though he thought he’d made a stupid mistake. He watched the helicopter, and pulled his cap down lower over his eyes, as though he were hiding from view. He touched his chest just above his heart, and used two fingers to point at me, blushing the way a tough guy does when he lets down his guard. He looked beautiful, and sad, and terribly alone in the storm.
“I’m sorry,” I said - and I was.
“Nah, we cool. Do me a favor,” he said, starting to back away from me. “If anyone asks, say you don’t know who called 911. Just some guy. Cool?”
My heart raced, and I felt scared and sorry for him. “Are you in some kind of trouble or something?”
He looked at me without speaking for a long moment, swallowed hard and said, in a calmer voice now, “Yeah. You could say that.” He backed up a little more.
“Did you kill someone?” I blurted. Sometimes I failed to think before I spoke. Actually, I often failed to think before I spoke. It came from rebellion; my mother was a politician who planned every word like a battle map.
He watched me, and gulped. I’d said it as a joke, but something in his eyes told me I had come very close to the truth about him. Too close. Not good.
“I gotta jet, Maria. Catch you later. Good luck with your dance thing. You’ll be alright. I promise.”
With a tortured look on his face, Demetrio Vigil pulled up his collar, turned his back, and stalked off into the gloomy emptiness, as quietly as he had come.
♦
By the following Friday, my life was essentially back to normal - at least on the surface of things. All my medical tests had come back clean, meaning I didn’t have any lasting or serious injuries – much to everyone’s surprise, given how grandly smashed beyond repair the car was. I had walked away with only cuts and bruises - albeit pretty bad cuts and bruises - and a sprained ankle. Buddy, however, had a couple of fractured ribs and a broken ankle, but was expected to recover just fine. Because he insisted on licking the sore bits of himself, we’d corralled his head in a hideous white plastic cone, tied up indecorously about his neck with a strip of gauze fashioned into a decidedly un-macho bow.
My mom was back at work downtown, after recalcitrantly taking a couple of days off to both nurse me and to hold a tearful press conference about my accident – because, hey, every life event is a chance for publicity when you’re hoping to be the next mayor and, eventually, congresswoman and, eventually after that, something important at a national level in a cabinet and perhaps even President. Best of all, my dad had gotten me a new car – not all that hard to do, considering that he had five years ago given up on being married to my ambitious mother and now relaxedly owned a luxury car dealership in Santa Fe. The new car I drove around was a big black Land Rover with a creamy beige interior and all the bells and whistles. I didn’t love Land Rovers, as a rule; I thought they looked like narrow, square-headed men with large foreheads. But after being masticated and regurgitated by Highway 14 and narrowly surviving, the Land Rover felt like a big and strong narrow headed man with a large forehead - and big and strong felt just right.
So it was that I found myself, on a blustery, gloomy morning exactly seven days after my accident, driving the new Land Rover from my mom’s house at the base of the mountain, to the Einstein Bros. Bagels near my school, feeling very high up off the road, almost as though I were perched atop a stagecoach, and somewhat invincible. I couldn’t wait to show my boyfriend Logan Torero the car. He was a car kind of guy, grunty and manly, and I knew he’d love it. Maybe the car would inspire him to start spending more time with me again, because, let’s face it, we’d seen very little of each other since he got way too drunk at a Halloween party couple months back, and sort of embarrassed himself and me with some off-color comments about female body parts that shall not be repeated here. But that was another story for another time, and, as my mother often told me, grudges never hurt the people you held them against, but took precious minutes off one’s own life from stress. My mother also often reminded me that boys will be boys, and to keep one, you pretty much had to accept the male norms of behavior that were so often unpleasant to be around. As such, I forgave him. We were moving forward. He was a great guy, who acted stupid when he drank. What man wasn’t?
It was snowing again. A cold wind whipped the valley, agitating the skeletal arms of leafless trees along the median of Academy Boulevard. Large snowflakes spun toward the asphalt, and stuck. To its credit, the Land Rover infiltrated the storm, churning solidly – almost calmly – over the road.
If the storm had begun any earlier in the day, school would probably have been canceled, or at least delayed. I was glad classes were still on, and not just because we were reviewing for our final exams next week - and Lord knows I needed that review. I was also far too anxious to sit at home with Buddy, cute though he was, bumping about in his little plastic cone and miniature leg cast. No, it was more than that; ever since the crash, I’d felt unsettled, on edge, as though any little thing could flip my adrenaline switch. It was completely beyond my control, as though someone else were driving the machinery of my nervous system. I stupidly felt that something, or someone, was watching me, every time I left the house - even though of course I knew this was not the case. Maybe it was because we lived in the foothills, where coyotes were abundant; I had never really thought much about them before. Now I had a fear of them. I didn’t tell my mom about this new fear. She worried a lot if anything was imperfect - especially me - and had a tendency to overreact in her efforts to fix everything. I didn’t want her to send me back for more tests at the hospital. I just wanted to return to my regular life and forget about the crash altogether.
I parked the Land Rover, dropped the 1000 feet or so from the driver’s seat to the ground, and dashed through the snow toward the bagel shop, grateful as the snow pelted my face that I’d worn contacts instead of glasses, which would be better-designed, in my opinion, if they came equipped with miniature windshield wipers. My best friend Kelsey looked up as I entered the warm, balmy café. She waved, smiling from a back table where she sat with another friend, Victoria – and Victoria’s new boyfriend, Thomas. Kelsey and Victoria were both effortlessly pretty, Kelsey with wavy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, Victoria with kinky ebony hair and large, dark eyes. Kelsey wore all black, training for when she finally moved back to New York City, where she’d been born; Victoria wore jeans with a blazer and turtleneck, and riding boots that were likely native to her original hometown of Houston. Thomas, a local kid like me, was a typical, somewhat messy, hot guy who had been on Coronado Prep’s science team with me last year, and had been smitten by my pal since then.
I waved at them, and made a beeline for the counter to order my large coffee and plain power bagel. The café bustled with people – retirees who lived in
the country club area; a Bible study group from the nearby church, a few other kids from my school. The space was cozy, steeped with the toasted, dark scent of freshly brewed coffee. Everywhere should be as reassuring as a bagel shop on a snowy day, I thought. The world would be a much less frightening place that way.
Breakfast in hand, I joined my friends, draping my red pea coat over the back of the wooden chair next to Kelsey. I sat, in my jeans and striped pink and white sweater, and savored the first delicious sip of my drink. It heartened me, but only slightly. I still had the creepy sense I was being followed - and enough common sense to know I was being paranoid and ought therefore to keep such imprudent thoughts to myself.
Victoria, always a good read of body language, regarded me the way you might look at a hungry puppy scratch for crumbs. “You okay, Maria?”
“Fine,” I assured her, trying to shake it off.
“Did you have that nightmare again?” Kelsey asked me.
“Nah,” I lied.
In truth, I’d indeed had the spine-chilling dream last night – with the gang of bloodthirsty coyotes loping out of the storm to rip into my freezing naked flesh with their fangs – just as I’d had it every night since the crash. The dream never varied, as dreams usually do. It was exactly the same, night after night, as predictable as though it were a DVD I popped into my subconscious before slumber. I had told my friends about it a couple of times now, and figured it was inconsiderate to keep talking about it. My mother had taught me that being a good friend – and a good leader, in her stellar case – wasn’t always about the things we shared with people; more often than not, it was about the things we chose not to reveal. Discretion was the handmaid of friendship, or something to that effect. For her part, my mother thought the recurring nightmares meant I had some form of traumatic stress disorder because of the accident; she wanted me to see a therapist about it, and get medicated - she swore by the anti-anxiety drug she currently downed each morning - while I just sort of hoped the weirdness I was experiencing would go away on its own, like a traveling salesman you refuse to answer the door for.
“My dad brought me my new car yesterday.” I pointed out the Land Rover through the window. My friends all looked at it, with great interest. Kelsey and Victoria agreed it was gorgeous, though sort of boat like and soccer-mom-ish, but much safer than a sedan; Thomas thought it was sort of cool, “if you’re the type to actively detest polar bears and so on.” I had to crack a grin at his words; Thomas was always thinking, and as such was perhaps the most consistently moral friend I had - which, I might add, could be a real buzz kill sometimes. Like now.
“What does Logan think?” Kelsey asked me, sipping her own hot drink. She said my boyfriend’s name derisively, in a tone dripping with resentment. She and Logan had never gotten along. She said it was because he was an outdoorsman and she was a vegetarian, which was valid, but I thought it was due to the fact that he was my first real serious boyfriend and as such was the first person to come between me and Kelsey since we’d become inseparable best friends in the third grade.
“He hasn’t seen it yet,” I said. “He’s been in Texas for that US Shotgun Junior Olympic thing. He just got back last night.” My friends met this with awkward silence, so I said, “He made the team by the way. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh, goody,” said Maria sarcastically. “Your boyfriend can shoot innocent creatures better than everyone else our age. How nice. You must feel so proud.”
“Is he joining us this morning?” asked Victoria, who often tried to smooth things over among our group - and particularly between me and my best friend.
“Yeah. He’s on his way.”
“Yay,” said Kelsey with sarcasm.
“That’s awesome he made the team,” said Victoria, with a cautionary look at Kelsey. “I know he’s been working really hard at it.”
I smiled my thanks at her, tugged my physics book out of my crowded backpack. “What are you guys studying?” I changed the subject because I noticed that Thomas, who wasn’t exactly the outdoorsy, manly type - and who probably liked Logan as little as Kelsey did - was being politely uncomfortable with my boyfriend’s shotgun success. Thomas and Logan knew each other, but were not friends other than to mutually hang out with us; on their own, they had completely different groups of friends.
“The Golden Ratio,” said Thomas, lighting up. “Pretty interesting stuff. Did you know the ratio governing the spiral of growth for a pinecone is the same as the ratio between the length of your forearm and hand? It’s like when Einstein said he believed in Spinoza’s version of a God that concerned itself with the orderly harmony of all that exists.”
“Here we go,” said Kelsey, half-jokingly. Thomas, a certified genius who was thought when he was younger to have been afflicted with a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome (but had “outgrown” it with age) was prone to lecturing us professorially. I often enjoyed the lessons, but Victoria, by virtue of hanging out with him all the time, was understandably less enthused.
“Tom, please,” groaned Victoria, cringing an apology at us on his behalf. “No tangents right now, okay? Please?”
I noticed a fly buzzing desperately against the window behind Thomas’s chair. He turned to see what I was staring at, spotted the insect, and without taking his eyes off it, grabbed his composition notebook off the table and aimed it like a swatter.
“Don’t!” I jumped up, in a girly panic, and snatched the notebook from him.
“What?” He gawked at me.
“It’s a living thing! What happened to Spinoza’s harmony and all that?”
“It’s a living disease,” He plucked his notebook back, annoyed. “I don’t think Spinoza was fond of vermin. Humans are equipped with a natural revulsion for flies and other disease-carrying animals for a reason, and that reason is self-preservation and, by default, preservation of the species.”
“Let me deal with it,” I said. I ate meat and I was a hunter’s girlfriend, but the thought of unnecessarily killing animals, even ones so common and contemptible, irked me. I understood Logan and my own dad loving to hunt and fish – it was basic biology, a guy thing, just like watching football – but I would never have gone with them when they did it.
I hurried to the counter and asked the barista for an empty paper cup with a plastic lid. I brought these to the fly, and cornered it against the cold glass. I could feel Thomas rolling his eyes in disgust.
“Be right back.” I hurried to release the trapped fly into the tempest outside. I’d forgotten my coat in the rush, and was instantly chilled to the bone by a frigid burst of wind that sucked the air out of me. I knew the fly would likely die in this weather, but at least it would be master of its own fate now. Maybe it could hijack a ride in a car, or get inside another shop. At least it wouldn’t be smashed.
I turned to go inside, but was stopped in my tracks by a bloodcurdling coyote howl. The breath caught in my throat, the hair on the nape of my neck rose, and my heart raced. I snapped my head around, squinted against the snow, searching for the animal with the laughing yellow eyes – the beast of my nightmares. All I saw, though, was a Husky in a parked Subaru, barking viciously at a man walking by. It wasn’t a coyote howl at all.
“You’re losing it,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around myself and ducking back inside the bagel shop. After washing my hands in the bathroom, I rejoined my little group.
“How can a girl who rescues flies be with a guy who shoots turkeys and deer?” griped Kelsey.
“I’m with Logan because I love him. Love doesn’t mean you have to be exactly like your partner. It means you have to respect their choices. How boring would it be if everyone in the world were all the same?”
“Would you rescue a malarial mosquito, too?” Thomas popped a scrap of frosted scone into his mouth with a smirk.
“How could I possibly know it was malarial?” I asked, still trembling a little from the cold and hallucination, wishing my friends were just a tiny bit more welcoming
and less judgmental.
“True. The likelihood of malaria in the High Desert’s quite low,” said Thomas in his robotic way. “Malaria is a tropical and subtropical disease. In fact, some say malaria is a main cause of extreme poverty in nations like Malawi.”
“You’re dating an encyclopedia,” Kelsey told Victoria.
Thomas droned on but I soon lost interest, when the door of the café jingled open beneath the very capable and athletic hand of my boyfriend, Logan Torero. Tall and broad-shouldered, with gently curly light brown hair, sparkling blue eyes and a smooth, intelligent face, he was phenomenally handsome in a preppy kind of way. Truth be told, it was his looks that first drew my attention to Logan - though now we were also bound by mutual respect, family ties, and shared interest in movies and music, not to mention nearly a year as a couple. The first time I laid eyes on him, I was sure Logan belonged on a sailboat in a Ralph Lauren ad. Today was no different; he wore his yellow ski patrol parka, dark jeans and shearling Duck boots – a safe, sensible, mountainy outfit. For me, Logan was not only handsome, he was reliable and stable looking. He seemed like the kind of guy who never made rash decisions, unlike, I suppose, my own father - though at the time I certainly wasn’t willing to go down that psychological route.
I sat up straighter, and smiled at him. Logan grinned back, revealing his excellent white teeth and cheek dimples, but was distracted by the specter of a shadow hurrying through the snow behind him. Ever the calm, considerate gentleman, Logan stood back to pleasantly hold the door for the stranger. I swooned a little at his politeness, reminded once more that Logan was the sort of guy old ladies trusted to walk them across the street.
But when the stranger pimp-walked out of the snow and into view – in baggy jeans that pooled over his beige work boots, tattoos pressed like fresh bruises around his strong, masculine neck – my swoon turned to startlement. I gasped and dropped my coffee cup on the table. The hoodlum my boyfriend held the door for was no stranger to me. I knew him. It was Demetrio, the gangster from Golden.
