Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (3 page)

“You don’t say much, do you?” she suddenly asked.

I lifted my head and gave her a smile. In her high heels she looked tall, but still small compared to me. I had that Scandinavian big, tall and strong look. Along with my blue eyes and blond hair, I always reminded people of our ancestors the Vikings.

“I guess I am the quiet type,” I answered.

It was the truth. I was known to be a dreamer who never spoke much. It wasn’t like something that I had decided to be. And it wasn’t because I was too shy or had low self-esteem or something. It just happened as I grew older and especially after my mother’s death. I never had much to say, mainly I think it was because I wasn’t that interested in what people normally talked about. I would say my opinion if I felt like it, but most of the times I simply didn’t have one. Not on the subjects people discussed. If someone started talking about music, books or surfing, then it was a completely different matter. You could say that I just didn’t do small-talk. I simply wasn’t good at it. It felt so meaningless to be talking about something so inconsequential. Some people thought I was just trying to be this mysterious guy, but it really was just who I was.

An awkward silence fell upon us and made me feel a little uncomfortable. “Well, then I will just have to do the talking,” she finally said breaking the silence.

I forced another smile in order to try and break the awkwardness. As I looked at her I noticed that she didn’t seem to sense it at all. She was probably used to people being a little intimidated by her. By both her looks and her name.

I hadn’t given much thought about the houses surrounding the Kirk residence before that moment, but as I looked at Heather my eyes felt strangely drawn towards their neighbor’s house behind her. It was a much older mansion than the rest of the neighborhood, set on a corner lot and built in a classic style you could find in places like Spain or southern France. It had rows of white fluted columns on the front, a majestic staircase leading to the front door in oak and enormous windows. The garden had topiaries, deep wells of flowers, a smooth and perfect lawn, jets of water, grapes hanging from the trees and several statues of beautiful mythological women that looked like they were dancing in a circle of some sort. I don’t know what it was about it that drew my interest so deeply, if it was that low almost humming music coming from it, but it felt like my very soul knew this place from somewhere.

I tried to shake the feeling because it seemed so weird and I didn’t believe in things like that. Yet the place seemed still familiar like something from a dream that suddenly appeared in front of me.

“Who lives in the house on the corner?” I asked.

“That’s nobody. At least not anyone you’d want to be seen with,” she said.

Still with my eyes fixed on the mansion, I kept wondering why it felt like I knew the house. Could I have seen it in a movie or a TV show or something? “Why? Why wouldn’t I like to be seen with them?”

Heather scoffed. “They are strange people. Only women live in that house. Three generations of women, but no husbands.”

“Has there never been a husband?”

“The girl’s dad used to live there until some years ago. Then suddenly he disappeared. One day he just wasn’t there anymore. No one knew where he was. People say that he ran away in the middle of the night. That their witchcraft drove him away, that he couldn’t stand to live with that deviltry and black magic in the house. I say they killed him. Murdered him in the middle of the night or with some kind of poison in his food. They probably buried him somewhere in that garden or fed him to their cats.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because strange things happen in there, I tell you. Strange people come to their door and they take them in. They live with them for weeks and even months.”

“What kind of people?” I asked still without taking my eyes of the house.

“All kinds of people. Musicians, poets people who call themselves spiritual, weird people like that. They are a disgrace to the entire neighborhood. Turning this place into some sort of hippie-camp like we are still in the sixties. Mother and Papa sure aren’t happy about them. But what can you do? They own the house. It has been with them for generations. I think they are witches who kill their husbands after they have given them their children, so they can go and have sex with other people. They probably have orgies in there,” she laughed.

“I don’t believe in stuff like that,” I said.

“What? That they might have killed their husbands?”

“No. The part about the witches, supernatural stuff and being all spiritual and that. I think it is ridiculous. Superstitious, really.”

“Oh. Me, too. Growing up in a family where science is king will kill all of that, right? I bet your dad never believed in anything either.”

“That’s right.”

He didn’t. But not for the same reasons as Heather's dad. Not because he had studied the human body and science for years and concluded that there was nothing spiritual or supernatural in our world. It was because he had chosen not to believe in anything. Because he simply couldn’t believe that there could be more to this world when he had lost his wife in this meaningless way. And I had quickly adapted this way of thinking. There was nothing more to life and death than what we could see with our own eyes. Life had no higher meaning and death was just the end of the road. 

I turned my head and looked at Heather. I didn’t want to stare at the house any longer. I didn’t want to feel drawn towards it. It was haunting and I didn’t like that feeling to take root inside of me. I was afraid I might lose control over it. Over myself. Though I didn’t seem to be, I was in fact a very controlling person. Especially with my emotions. I liked to be in charge of them. I never allowed myself to get caught up in them. I had learned that they were deceitful and not to be trusted. In that way I had sort of a split personality. I could get really emotional when it came to my guitar and the music, but never at other times. I simply wouldn’t let it happen. If I ever came close to feeling anything for another person, especially a girl, I would run in the opposite direction as fast as I could and never look back. I was scared, and all I knew was if I was in control, if I didn’t lose my power, then I was alright.  Of course I was heading for disaster trying to keep myself and my feelings in a cage like that, but I didn’t know that back then. How could I? How could I have foreseen what was about to happen to me? What an emotional wreck I was about to become feeling for the first time like I was completely lost to the greatest emotion of them all?

“There is Mother,” Heather said and started walking while the black Mercedes approached us. I opened the door for her and she got in. As we drove away I took one last glimpse of the house on the corner. It was almost dark now and in the lights from the street I could have sworn I saw a little girl in the garden in front of the house. She was wearing a long white dress and was staring at me.

The Yacht Club where we were meeting Dr. Kirk was located below the lighthouse on Anastasia Island.  The clubhouse, on the shore of Salt Run, was only minutes away from the beauty of historical downtown St. Augustine that we passed through on our way.  I only got a small sense of it, since it had gotten almost dark outside, but Heather promised me that she would take me to see everything the area had to offer in the coming days.

“Don’t forget, Chris has to be in Jacksonville for registration on Thursday,” Mrs. Kirk said. “After that he will be very busy with school work. Med school is tough and requires all his attention. You’ll have to leave all your sightseeing to the weekends and holidays.”

From inside the club were beautiful views of the inlet and the Conch Island dunes. Even in the dark you could sense the views and the lights. As we arrived, two waiters jumped in front of us as had they expected us and they showed us to our table located at a huge window from where I imagined that the view during daytime had to be spectacular. We sat and started to look at the menus when someone approached the table and everybody got to their feet. It was Dr. Kirk, a strong-looking and handsome man who didn’t look the age of almost fifty that I had been told he was. He was slim and well built, like a man who works out a lot. On our way there Heather had told me that her father had just started training for double triathlons. I had heard of people doing a normal triathlon, the completion of three continuous and sequential endurance events, involving swimming, running and cycling in immediate succession over various distances. But double triathlons meant he ran, bicycled and swam twice as long. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed. I really was. And he was in an excellent shape. You could tell just by looking at him. He had a fierce face that was intimidating and made everybody seem insignificant next to him.

“Dr. Kirk,” his wife saluted him while he kissed her on the cheek. “This is Chris, the young man that will be staying with us.”

His steel eyes turned and looked at me. I felt like I shrunk a few inches. Then he reached out and shook my hand in a firm grip. “Nice to meet you, son.”

“Nice to meet you too, sir.”

“Let’s eat,” he said and everybody sat down.

As the dinner progressed I couldn’t help but notice how no one seemed to look at the doctor or seemed to even dare speak to him. All the waiters bowed and talked with hoarse almost whispering voices as if they didn’t have the courage to speak loudly when near him. Even his wife sat in silence as she ate elegantly and sipped her wine, closing her eyes. No one spoke but the doctor. He talked non-stop about everything and nothing. About the politicians in Florida that had made stupid decisions, about doctors that didn’t know what they were doing, about the Orly airport attack in Paris last month that had left eight dead and fifty-five injured, about hurricane Alicia that had hit the
 
Texas
 
coast. About how the world was going mad and nobody seemed to care. I soon realized this was the way they were together, that this was a normal family dinner. The doctor spoke and the rest of the family listened. No one ever said anything because they couldn’t get a word in and even if they did he wouldn’t hear it. They seemed almost afraid of interrupting him in the midst of his important messages. He had gotten so used to talking without ever being interrupted that sometimes he didn’t even make any sense. But no one stopped him or told him, because they no longer listened to his words. And it wasn’t just his family who did this. Dr. Kirk was such a respected man that no one ever dared to talk in his presence. They only listened and only spoke if spoken to.

“So what’s your sport, young man?” he all of a sudden said directing his question to me.

It came so unexpectedly I almost dropped my fork. “I like windsurfing,” I virtually whispered in the horrifying silence surrounding me. Sitting across from me at the table, Heather was smiling like she enjoyed seeing me all perplex and shy.

“What is he saying?” the doctor asked Mrs. Kirk, sounding irritated. “He does speak English, right?”

“He does,” she answered with grace.

The doctor hit his fist in the table and made me jump. Mrs. Kirk and Heather both remained calm and hardly reacted. They were so used to the doctor’s tantrums and outbursts that nothing surprised them any longer.

“Well speak up for yourself, boy. You won’t get far in life if you don’t learn to speak up when asked a question,” he said with a big fierce voice that made me crumble in my seat.

“Windsurfing,” I said with slightly more confidence. “I used to windsurf.”

A small smile spread on the doctor’s face. “Very well, then. I will make sure that you will have a brand new windsurfer waiting for you tomorrow at the dock.”

My eyes became big and wide. I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“A man should do his sports,” the doctor continued. “It keeps him young, healthy and sane. Women will drive you crazy, so you’ll need something to keep you from losing it. Trust me on that.”

“I will. Thank you,” I said.

The doctor drank of his sparkling water and swallowed loudly before he put the glass back on the table. “And then we need to get you some wheels.”

I felt like I was in a movie and had to pinch myself in the arm to make sure I wasn’t asleep. Did he mean he was going to give me a car? I could hardly believe it. In Denmark you didn’t get your driver’s license until you were eighteen and since there were enormous taxes on cars, they were so expensive that young people couldn’t afford them until they were in their mid-twenties or beginning of their thirties. Most of the time people had to take loans in the bank to afford a car. Only extremely rich people gave their kids cars. “You … you’re giving me a car?” I stuttered.

Heather was still smiling while she ate. Whether it was me or my stuttering she found amusing, I never knew.

“Wasn’t that what I just said? Do you have problems hearing? Yes, son. You need some wheels. How else are you going to go to Jacksonville every day?”

I hadn’t thought about that yet. I guess I figured I was going to take a train or a bus or something, like most people did where I came from. I really didn’t know anything about how things worked in the States.

“Well, thank you very much, sir.”

“You’re welcome. I promised your dad I would take good care of you. I never had a son of my own, so here is my chance to see what it is like.”

I was surprised at this statement coming from him. Speechless, even. It was amazing to me to realize that behind his tough exterior he seemed to be much gentler than I had given him credit for. I was expecting to meet a great man and that was exactly what I had done.