Into the Beautiful North(59)
“Mexicans?”
Matt nodded.
“Welcome to the United States,” Velma! shouted at them as if they were deaf.
Everyone smiled warmly, wondering if she was mad at them.
“You’ll have to meet El Brujo. He’s around here someplace.”
Vampi looked up: El Brujo? There was someone here named the Wizard?
“Get you some coffee?” Velma! asked.
Everyone nodded.
“Please,” Matt said.
“Five coffees. Coming right up, doll.”
They stared out the big window at the spotless USA. People lined up across the street for five-dollar gas. No dogs anywhere. Skateboarders zoomed by on their way downhill.
El Brujo appeared, carrying five waters. Vampi turned and froze. He wore an apron. He was as short as she was. His black hair was pulled back and hung in a heavy ponytail. She saw a dragon in the swirl of ink on his arms. But his T-shirt, his T-shirt! Nayeli nudged Yolo. They stared at the man as he put the glasses down, then went to retrieve five silverwear setups from his cart. The shirt was black, THE 69 EYES in red across the chest.
“Oh, no,” Yolo said.
“Vampi,” warned Nayeli.
But Vampi was deaf to them. Vampi was turned in her seat. Vampi’s mouth hung open.
El Brujo put down the napkin-wrapped forks and knives and glanced at Vampi. At the apartment, she had done her eyes in fresh death makeup. He smiled a little at her. He looked like an Aztec warrior.
“Soy una vampira,” she whispered.
El Brujo did a double take.
“?Ah, cabrón!” he said.
The other girls were out of practice. They didn’t remember how fast Mexican romances moved. By that evening, El Brujo had arrived at Matt’s duplex and swept Vampi off on a date. He drove a ’71 Chevy pickup that had a Héroes del Silencio decal in the back window. The girls were stunned and jealous. “Just like that?” they kept saying. “Just like that?”
“We didn’t come here to get boyfriends!” Nayeli said.
“We are not here to go on dates,” Yolo agreed.
“We’re on a mission!”
“We can’t fool around with boys—we came to save Tres Camarones!”
Matt came into the kitchen.
“Hola, Mateo,” Nayeli cooed.
“?Ay, Matt!” sang Yolo.
“How are you?” Nayeli asked in English. Fou va jou?
“Matt!” Yolo cried.
He looked at them and smiled and got some water and went back out to watch wrestling with Atómiko.
“Vampi,” Nayeli said, “is out of control.”
“She’d better get her priorities right,” Yolo agreed.
They sat in the pickup truck on Mount Soledad. The lights of San Diego were scattered before them. Rivers of high beams and tail-lights beneath them on I-5. The bizarre hair-thin beacon of a laser kept shooting over the mountain, some sort of urban art project. In the distance, the icy-looking white spires of a Mormon temple. And above them, the shining white cross Vampi had first seen when she’d jumped out of the smuggler’s truck. Had it been yesterday? Was that all? Every day seemed a week long to her. She watched the lights of a jet as it descended in the distance.
“It’s magic, isn’t it,” El Brujo said.
“It’s the prettiest thing I ever saw,” she replied.
“You must not have looked in the mirror this morning,” he said.
Oh, Brujo!
Lovers were parked all around them. Music and smoke snaked out of cracked, foggy windows. El Brujo—his real name was Alejandro, but everybody called him Alex—kept the radio tuned to the Mighty 690, and he sang along softly when a good song came on. Vampi sat beside him with her fingers laced through his, rubbing his knuckles with her thumb. She looked at his ferocious profile, his luxuriant hair—he had let it down for her. His hoop earring made him look like a pirate. Sometimes, she was thinking, you just know. Did he know, too?
“People don’t believe it because of the way I look,” he said, “but I don’t take drugs, and I don’t drink.”
“Me, neither.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Me, neither!”
He leaned over and smelled her hair.
“You are my drug, Vampira.”
“Oh, Alex!”
She furiously buffed his knuckles with her thumb.
“This hill,” he said, “this is where all the rich bastards live.”
“Oh?”
“Part of the hill fell down, on the other side. It swallowed a bunch of their mansions.” He smiled. “God reminded them to be humble.”
Vampi sighed. She scooted closer and put her head on his shoulder.
“Besides,” he continued, “they’ll hire a bunch of Mexicans to fix it for them.”
She raised his knuckles to her lips and rubbed them against her mouth.
“We’ll live up here one day,” he added.
She felt a jolt.
“We will?”
She fell upon his chest.
He was quiet for a moment.
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“But we can make it magic wherever we are… right?”
She was speaking into his collarbone. She wanted to nibble it.