FAYE
I was almost to the church when Constantin suddenly loomed up in front of me. "Here I am," he said.
"Look, you!" I shouted into his face, grabbing the lapel of his shirt and shoving him out of my way. "Don't push me! Just don't!"
In a moment I was at the church door, but it was locked. Locked. The church door was locked. Church doors don't get locked. Church doors should never be locked. Church doors shouldn't even have locks put on them.
Not knowing where to go and feeling like a fool in front of this man, I turned in circles. Maybe I would go back and get the Jeep. Maybe I would drive into Mérida. Maybe I'd buy a plane ticket and fly fucking home. I'd buy two. I'd take Angie and fly fucking home.
I started to cry. To my shame and horror, I stood crying in front of the church until, my knees weak and trembling, I sank onto the low wall which formed the courtyard of the church, and I sat crying and crying and waiting —to my horror and shame— for Constantin to come out of the night and take me into his arms. He didn't come.
Through a prism of absurd, unconquerable womanly tears I looked up the hill and saw our house, the only electric lights for miles around, brilliant in the black of the night. Beside the house the generator putt-putted softly. For the first time it dawned on me how mysterious and alluring and grand our house must seem to the people of Santa Cruz de K'u gazing up the hill each night since the rich gringos arrived.
Crescencia's bedroom window was open and she was sitting on the sill, the light flooding out around her onto Orlando, sitting straightbacked and handsome on the boulder just below her window, strumming his guitar and serenading her with his dulcet, passionate tones. How sweet they both were, how innocent, how romantic. How I would love to be Crescencia sitting safe and beautiful in my window, wooed by my handsome lover.
"Your tears hurt me, my dear," came the soft voice in my ear. Constantin sat beside me and put his arm around me and drew me close. I put my head onto his chest and wept outright and prolonged.
"The church is locked!" I sobbed at last. I don't have any explanation why I was so preoccupied with the church. Except for the first day in Santa Cruz de K'u seeing the sights, I had never even cared to step inside this church. Since I was a child, a foster child dragged for my good into church after church after church of every denomination, I've hated them.
"Yes," he said, kissing my eyes. "It is dark of the moon. Every house in town is locked and shuttered. All the windows and doors are hung with garlic. It is dark of the moon and the undead spirits are flying. Civateteo. But you know this. Mark has told you this."
Dear God, what was he on about now? Civateteo. I tried to think where I had heard the word before. Oh, yes, Mark, in the Jeep, Bincha behind us, José Luis in my arms. Oh yes, civateteo, and all that crap. And here was Constantin kissing my eyes and licking at my tears and whispering into my ear in front of the fucking church about civateteo.
I pulled my face away from him and said, "You and my husband should get together."
"Yes," he said. "We will."
"Please," I said. "Please leave us alone!" I tried to push myself away from his chest, even though I had an insane, nearly irresistible impulse to draw him tight and reach up and kiss the skin on his beautiful throat. "You're rich and handsome and charming and clever, and so what? What do you want with me? You can have any woman you want."
"And any man."
I kept him at straight-arm distance, looking into his eyes, trying to follow his words, trying to link his words to Mark's words, trying to follow a thought to a meaning. Through his chest his heart pounded into my hand resounding through my body right down to my feet. "Please be quiet," I said. "You confuse me." I sank into his chest and put my ear to his heart, felt it beating along my cheek, my blood racing to the pulse of it. I held onto him like an anchor in a fast current.
"Only the brave or foolish," he said, "are walking in Santa Cruz de K'u tonight. Or, like your Orlando, those in love."
"Which are we?" I said, hating immediately that I would allow a stupid, flirty thought like that to escape from my head. He bent down and nibbled under my ear with his soft lips, smelling of warm coconut and cream. I could not stop him. I no longer wanted to stop him. I wanted him to do anything at all to me, everything to me. His voice came softly into my ear.
"There was once a man and a woman. There is again the man and the woman. And all the years that have separated us, heaped lonely one upon the other, are nothing more than a moment in time, and have led us here." His words made no sense, but it no longer seemed to matter. His lips, his smell, his soft, firm arms enveloping me were all that mattered. "Our souls cry out to be joined," he murmured into my ear. "You feel it, too. You know it. Yet you resist."
Resist? I almost laughed. Where in this coconut cream filling of a woman did he detect resistance? And as I searched through myself for the resistance he felt, I found it. What kind of fool was this, sitting out under the stars within earshot of her husband and child making ridiculous love? Love? "No!" I said, and I forced myself away from him, fought, pulled, dragged, tore myself away from him. "No!" I said and I stood. "No!" I said and I backed away. "I can't. You want too much. You want love."
"I already have your love. I want more from you than love. I'll have more than that from you, and you from me."
"Not from me, mister," I said, and I backed slowly away from him up the hill toward my house and family. "We're never going to see each other again. Do you understand?"
"You will see me always, wherever you look."
"No!" I said, and I turned and ran up the hill toward the light. Ran, hardly. It was like running in a dream, in slow motion, legs weak and exhausted taking step after step yet making no headway, the long hill stretching above me, the gravel slipping under my feet, giving me no purchase. I could feel him behind me, his coconut cream breath on the back of my neck, under my ear, in my hair. Step by step I ran away.
Just before I reached the house a figure rose up out of the dark before me. I stopped short with a gasp. It was Orlando, leaving Crescencia's window and starting home. "Oh, I am sorry to surprise you, Señora," he said, but I pushed past him through the great doors into the courtyard and bolted them behind me.
Mark was still sitting at the table fingering his glass. I caught my breath and dragged myself back to the reality of my life. I combed my hair back from my face with my fingers, the smell of coconut and cream wafting about my head, and walked toward him, exerting calm over my heart and through my blood down my trembling legs. As I neared the table, I could see that he had polished off more than a couple of drinks while I had been down the hill at the church. I didn't want to talk to him, not now. Later yes, we had to talk, yes, but not now. There was too much to say, and I couldn't think straight, and he was drinking. I veered toward our room. No, I thought, I'll sleep with Angie tonight. She probably needs me tonight. And I veered again toward her door.
"Going somewhere?" Mark said with a sneer in his voice. So he could see, then. I wasn't fooling anyone. I kept a straight line to Angie's door and opened it to find her standing at the open window.
"Angie, get back to bed," I snapped. She looked at me blankly, and I could see that she was feverish. I helped her into bed, and then closed and locked the shutters. "From now on, I don't want you opening this window again. Ever." I covered her with a blanket and stroked her neck and forehead. She was burning up.
A sound came from outside, muffled by the shutters and coming from a distance. It sounded like a man crying out or singing out, but suddenly choked off. It sounded like Orlando. Perhaps he was calling to Crescencia. It was not unusual for him to return several times a night to her window. I listened for the sound to be repeated. It was utterly still outside. No sound of crickets or cicadas. Nothing. After a long moment, another sound arose out of the silence, a sound I could neither identify nor locate. Was it animal or human? Was it just outside the window or did it come from a great distance? Was it only in my mind? Soon the sound seemed to float at me from all directions, a continuous wail.
I left Angie in bed and came out into the courtyard. Mark was on his feet, alarmed. He, too, heard the sound. Crescencia came to her door and looked out into the courtyard, her eyes wide and terrifed. She had her rosary in her hands, counting beads and murmuring prayers.
I looked up at the sky above the courtyard. The stars were fantastically bright, piercing the black with their infinity of pinpoints. The strange sound was now everywhere around us, raining down on us from the sky. It became a howling. A dog, I thought, only a dog. But the howling changed. It fragmented and became many howls mingled into one, as though every dog for miles around had joined in. Then came the sounds of other animals, the bleats of goats and the crows of roosters and the racket of hens and geese and wild cats, howls and screams.
In their cage in the courtyard, the three vampires emitted piercing shrieks. They pulled back their black lips and lapped at the air with their tongues, baring their teeth and gnashing them as they bit at the wires of the cage and tore at the wires with the claws on their wrists and beat at the wires with their bony, featherless, winglike arms until blood streamed down the wires, puddling onto the patio below.
I felt a hand grasp mine. It was Angie. She was trembling. Crescencia too came to my side. Finally Mark. We stood huddled together in the courtyard with the screams of havoc piercing our eardrums until a sudden silence sliced through the din, a silence as piercing as the screams themselves.
We waited one, two, three minutes. Then from a distance came a lone howl.