But the man continues to watch as Chloe and I and our son and daughter get off of our boat. When he still stares as we make our way down the dock, I glare back at his long, oval face. He surprises me by not looking away. Instead, he smiles as if he were watching a buddy approach.
Chloe notices him too and says, “Who is that?”
“I have no idea,” I say, wondering what the man has in mind, whether he’s a salesman waiting to pitch a product or a con man hoping to score off a mark. Dressed as he is, in a tan silk shirt, brown linen pants, and pointed leather loafers, he might belong up at Monty’s Restaurant, but he certainly isn’t waiting to go boating for the day.
I sigh. Months have passed since the last time Chloe wanted to go anywhere on a family outing. Last night, after all that time, after all the days that she’s spent silent and withdrawn from me, she suggested we go to Calle Ocho—all of us. I smiled and agreed, even though I had little desire to spend a day surrounded by thousands of people.
This morning when Chloe woke and grinned at me, I knew my choice was the right one. She joked and laughed with the children and me as we were all getting ready, even hugging me twice. I want nothing to happen today that might dim her mood.
Though the stranger has given no offense and made no threatening move, something about him makes my muscles tense. I know the man probably can’t pose any threat that either I or Chloe or even our nine-year-old son or four-year-old daughter can’t overcome. Still, when we near him, I move slightly in front of my family, my pulse quickening, my senses alert. “Always trust your instincts,” my father taught me. “It’s better to be wrong than sorry.”
I stop in front of the man. “Is there something you want from me?” I say, looking at him.
He uncrosses his arms and stands straight, the change in posture emphasizing his height advantage—a few inches over my own six feet, two inches. His long, dark, slicked-back hair barely moves as he shakes his head. “Nein,” he says, “I was just admiring your family. They’re very handsome, especially the little girl. She’s liebenswert . . . how you say . . . adorable?”
The man speaks with a fairly thick but understandable German accent. I look back at my daughter and nod. “Yes, she is. Thank you,” I say, and we walk on to the parking lot.
I take no great pride from the man’s compliment. People often stop to admire the children. Just as I often catch men staring at my wife and women glancing at me. We are no ordinary family. For creatures like us, beauty and youth are simple things to achieve. We can change anything about our appearances that we wish, whenever we wish—except for our emerald green eyes.
When I was younger, I modeled my own features, including my white skin, blond hair, and cleft chin, after popular movie stars. My wife, Chloe, who grew up in inland Jamaica without exposure to either movies or television, chose to look like an islander, her chocolate brown skin offering a striking contrast to her brilliant eyes.
The children have made divergent choices. Henri has so far copied my looks while Lizzie has taken what she prefers from both of our features, giving herself Chloe’s more rounded face, but with my cleft chin, and adopting my blond hair, but making it wiry like her mother’s. Even her mocha skin color is a blend, darker than mine and many shades lighter than Chloe’s.
We stop by our two cars, Chloe’s new red Porsche Boxster and my new dark green Porsche Cayenne SUV. I smile just looking at the two cars, remembering the good time we had shopping for a new car for her. By the time Chloe and I finished test driving every model the dealer had, we were laughing and hugging like we had in the old days.
So when she couldn’t make her mind up between the Boxster and the Cayenne I couldn’t resist saying, “We’re rich. We can afford it. Let’s get both.” I’m not sure who was more delighted, the salesman or Chloe, but I know, for an evening, it was like I had my wife back. She didn’t turn distant again until the next morning.
I hope today will be at least as good for us. We haven’t had many good days since I returned from Andros Island almost two years ago.
“Pops, he’s still looking,” my son Henri says.
I resist the urge to tell him to call me Papa—like he used to. The boy has only a few months to go before his tenth birthday. As much as I’d like him not to act older, I know it’s inevitable. Turning, I glance back at the marina. The German has a cellphone to his ear but just as Henri said, he has his eyes on us.
“There’s no law against staring,” I say shrugging and opening the door to the Cayenne. “Come on, get in. We’re going to a street festival. Your mom says it’s going to be fun.”
We leave the car at the Coconut Grove station and ride Metrorail uptown to Brickell. The smells and sounds of Calle Ocho reach us as soon as we walk north two blocks from the station and turn onto Southwest Eighth Street. Even though we’re still three blocks from the beginning of the festival, too many people already crowd the sidewalks and spill over onto the street.
I wrinkle my nose at the odors filling the air—the scents of countless humans intermixed with the aromas of grilled meat, chicken, pork, sausage, onions, and all types of Latin delicacies—and wish my kind had never been blessed with such an acute sense of smell.
Lizzie, seated on my shoulders, her hands on my head for balance, says, “It smells funny here.”
“Supposed to. We’re around a bunch of humans,” Henri, walking to my right, says with all the authority of an older brother.
I take in another breath, frown at the smell and the growing crowd, and turn to Chloe on my left. “Are you sure we want to do this?”
She looks at me, studies my expression and laughs. “It’s Carnaval, Peter. Of course I’m sure. They say this is the largest Hispanic festival in the country.”
“They also say more than a million people are going to cram themselves into just twenty-three blocks,” I say and glance up at the clear, blue March sky. “It’s beautiful today. We could go to Fairchild Gardens or Metrozoo.”
Chloe’s smile fades and her voice turns brittle. “I want to go to Calle Ocho. I think it will be fun for the kids.”
I ignore her harsh tone and resist the urge to snap back at her. We’ve argued too much, for too long.
The crowd on the sidewalk picks up speed as we walk under I-95 and cross into Little Havana. People begin to stream onto the street. It’s as if we’ve left Miami and traveled to another country. Most buildings look as if they were built in the fifties or before. None top over two stories. Storefront signs are in Spanish, and loudspeakers blare Latin music everywhere, filling the air with the pulsing rhythms of salsa, meringue, mambo. Cubans, Puerto Ricans, South and Central Americans chatter in Spanish, laughing and dancing as they push their way through the crowd.
A large Latina woman lurches toward me and I sidestep just before she dances into me. “Excusa,” she says and dances on. Lizzie laughs, points to a magician on a nearby stage and says, “Over there, Papa, please!”
I look at Chloe. “Don’t you think she should have something to eat before she does anything else? I know she’s good at controlling herself but she’s never been in the middle of so much temptation.”
“Lizzie, honey, are you hungry?” Chloe says.
Lizzie shakes her head and points at the stage. “I want to get down and go watch,” she says.
Chloe smiles at her and turns to me. “Why don’t I take the kids to the stage and you go get burgers for everybody?”
I nod and lift Lizzie off my shoulders. I marvel at how well she behaves. At this age, Henri had just begun to be able to control his hunger. It takes only a moment for the crowd to swallow my wife and children and I walk off to find a food concession where I can get four very rare hamburgers.
Food concessions line both sides of the street and it only takes me a few minutes of pushing through the crowd to find one cooking hamburgers. Ordinarily just being in the middle of so many people, enduring their jostles and bumps, would make me want to lash out. But all their smiles and laughter
soon have me smiling with them.
Though it’s not even noon yet, the line at the hamburger stand already juts a quarter of the way into the street.
A young woman, not more than twenty, pauses near me, undulating her hips to the rhythm. I study her as she dances, examine the lines and shape of her body, and she flashes me a grin and thrusts her hips suggestively.
I smile back and look away before I grow too hungry. The woman misunderstands my interest. True, at another time in my life, I might have been willing to take her as a bedmate, but she stirs another hunger in me today.
My stomach growls and I smile even wider. How shocked she’d be if she knew my interest was in how she’d taste, how horrified she’d be if I showed her my true form.
A drunken man dances into me and I stop smiling. He begins to dance with the young woman, loses his balance and slams into me again. I stifle a growl and shove him away, suddenly tired of all of them, of their music and food, and their dancing and their laughter. At best my family and I can come and watch them but we can never truly be part of them.
If only these humans prancing around me, feeding so happily on meat from cows and pigs and sheep, could know that they are not the lords of the planet they think themselves to be, that another species sits atop the food chain. I wish I could tell them that there are others who feed on them, others who can speak with thoughts alone and change shapes at will—that dragons do exist.
“Peter!” Chloe mindspeaks to me. “I don’t know where Lizzie is!”
About the Author
Alan F. Troop’s poems, essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in Miami’s Tropic magazine, Fort Lauderdale’s Sunshine magazine, and a number of national publications. A lifelong resident of South Florida, Troop lives near Fort Lauderdale with his wife, Susan, and manages a hardware-wholesale business in Miami. He often spends his leisure time sailing his catamaran around the islands off the coast of South Miami. You can visit him on the Web at www.DragonNovels.com.
The Seadragon's Daughter (Dragon de la Sangre) Page 30
