Beautiful Sacrifice

TOLD HERSELF that she was a fool. A few months of on-again, off-again shared coffee and conversation didn’t equal anything that should lift her pulse.
    The reporter was talking again, his tone impatient.
    “I’m sorry,” she said to the reporter, “what was the question?”
    “The Santa Muerte shrines and the offerings of food and bullets and—some say—blood? How do they tie into the Maya and the end of time in three days?”
    “You’re assuming that they do.”
    “Are you saying they don’t?” the reporter shot back.
    “You’ll have to ask the people who visit the shrines.”
    Hunter quietly took a seat at one side of the room, close to the front. He put a heavy manila envelope on the seat next to him.
    “But the shrines began appearing along with talk of the Maya millennium,” the reporter said.
    “There have been shrines as long as there have been indigenous people,” Lina said. “It’s simply their way of communicating with their gods. As for the Maya in particular, when they move away from their homelands, their need for shrines goes with them.”
    “What of three days from now—December twenty-first, 2012?” he insisted.
    “It will be followed by December twenty-second, 2012.”
    The reporter gave up trying to get a headline from her. “Ah, yeah. But a lot of people don’t believe that.”
    “A surprising number of people believe that the earth is flat,” Lina said neutrally. “To my knowledge, that belief hasn’t affected the shape of the planet.”
    Hunter snickered.
    “So you think this Maya millennial belief is garbage?” the reporter persisted.
    “Hale-Bopp was a real comet,” Lina said. “It came and went. People who believed it was the Mother Ship come to take them home were disappointed. Another group of people believed in the Y2K frenzy. Our European millennium calendar turned to January first, year 2000. Computers kept on working and the world kept on turning.” She smiled. “Think about that on the twenty-second of December.”
    Lina turned to the rest of class. “I’ll see everyone in a few weeks for the exam. I won’t be in my office until after New Year’s Day. If you have any questions, the line forms after Mr. Sotomayor of the Houston News .”
    The reporter laughed and shook his head. “I’m done.”
    As the students rustled and murmured on their way out of the room, Lina turned to the two people who hadn’t left. One was the woman whose clothes didn’t match her age.
    Hunter was the other.
    “If you have any questions, please come forward and we’ll talk informally,” Lina said.
    Hunter unfolded his long frame and started walking toward the lectern. As he approached, he was again struck by the difference between Lina’s starkly simple clothes and the lush mystery of her golden-brown skin. Up close her eyes were very dark. When the light caught them a certain way, there were surprising shards of gold radiating out from the pupils.
    “I’m sorry about running out on coffee a few weeks ago,” Hunter began.
    The hurried clacking of high heels on the tile floor accompanied by an equally sharp voice drowned out anything else he might have said.
    “Dr. Taylor, I’m simply breaking out with questions.”
    Lina’s lips tightened as she turned to the student rushing toward her. She wore carefully distressed black jeans, very tight, and a black sequined shirt, equally tight. The designs on the shirt were meant to be edgy, like jailhouse tattoos. She was as thin as a famine victim, her face all sharp angles and points, with the telltale deer-in-headlights look of too much plastic surgery.
    And they call the Maya barbaric, Lina thought.
    “But first,” the woman said, “I just wanted to thank you for your really interesting take on the whole subject.”
    Perfume hit in a wave.
    Hunter tried not to breathe.
    “You’re more than welcome,” Lina said.
    “Call me Melodee.”
    Lina vaguely remembered having been told that before. “Of course, Melodee. How can I—”
    “So I wanted to ask about the whole 2012 thing, you know, the Turning of the Great Wheel for the last time,” her new best friend cut in without pause. “I mean, if the world is going to end, I really want to know about it and go out having a good time.”
    She aimed the last words squarely at Hunter, who’d been doing his best to be invisible. He’d run across some of the millennial types while on various trips to the Yucatan and had been forced to make polite conversation by