DESMODUS or a story about vampire bats

I woke up and my boyfriend laughed at the pillow creases in my face.

I said, my face is always like this when i wake up. It never changes.

He smiled and held my face. Smush face, he said, and he pressed my cheeks toward my mouth.

I stared out the window. I blinked. I smoothed my face with my hands, contemplating what it would be like to have thin cheeks. I’d probably still wake up with creases. The thought sent me hurtling back toward the pillow. Yesterday I’d read about El Salvador. I’d learned Dios Mio! Dios Mio. I’d learned about their massacres. I’d been reminded what people do to one another besides the killing, small betrayals and deaths- like affairs and lies and bitterness. Vida. I didn’t want to dream about them so I told Alessandro to tell me about the good things in the world- to tell me about mangos, the juice running down your face and all over your fingers and how you want to-, and he could see that I was sad about life and wanted me to think of other things so he told me to close my eyes and in an instant I felt his lips on my big toe. I jerked my foot away and laughed as he jumped in bed beside me.

He said, Have I told you about vampire bats, Desmodus rotundus.

No, I said, It’s sexy when you speak latin.

Once, when I was working as an archeology student a professor of mine told me a story about a-

And then, I said, he got eaten by a swarm of bats and there was nothing left. A story of a story of a-

Do you want me to finish or not, he said.

I suppressed a laugh and nodded my head.

Well, one night the old man had become very ill and his fever was very high, and it didn’t seem as if he would survive the night. So they left him and as it turned out, his toes were left exposed. It’s said that a vampire bat came and-

Ate his toes?

I can’t tell you anything can I?

Silence.

So a bat had come and fed on the mans toe and it had let enough blood and released the fever, he said.

So the man was cured, he said.

How much blood did the bat take?

He licked it up with his tongue. 2 tablespoons full, that’s all they need. Every two days, he said.

I shook my head and rolled away from him and when I ignore him he tells me more than i want to know.

So then he said, my professors friend woke up to a nick in his nose and it was still bleeding and he realized he’d been a meal for a vampire bat.

From his nose?

Yes, his nose, he said.

I wouldn’t let him tell me anymore.

I rubbed my nose. I dreamed about bats eating mangos. Small massacres of fruit and blood. But there was enough for everybody, and the fruit kept growing and falling from the trees. I was numbed by bat saliva so I couldn’t feel them feeding for their two tablespoons. And all at once the bats launched four feet into the air and i could see the mangos disappearing in the distance and the heat of life flowing in me, but only for a moment.