Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel Page B

lines along the scallops of its face, eyes slanted and cold, charging toward a smaller, milder sea horse. There was a whale shark stalking something off the page, zombie eyes cold as marbles. There was a sea snake flashing its fangs, its oily body suspended in midslither.
    The last, which Charlie lingered over before setting it down with the others, was of a fish lying in a puddle of water on a dock, its mouth and eyes gaping. The scales of the fish—it was a bonefish, I think—were delicate and pretty, laid out in a pattern that reminded me of a nautical stencil. The scales were art in themselves.
    â€œDrawn from life?” I said.
    â€œFrom death.” He pulled a stubby pencil from the table, turned over the drawings, and scribbled on the back of each. I gathered these were notes regarding color. “Take them to Henry Gale,” he said.
    I went into the office and found a file folder for them, then put it in my tote. When I returned, Frankie was pulling the last chunk of banana from a bowl. I bent to gather the dishes.
    Charlie’s eyes rested on my neck. “Can you stay awhile?” he said.
    Please , signed Frankie to me.
    â€œA little while,” I said to them both, signing and speaking at the same time.
    They went downstairs while I washed the dishes and wiped down the kitchen counter. The dish soap was running low, and I made a note to pick some up. When I came out onto the porch to check on Frankie, they were standing on the far square of the dock below. Frankie was watching as Charlie cast a fishing line and reeled it in. He handed it over and Frankie braced himself and took it, and together they reeled, Charlie’s hand over Frankie’s. Finally the lure, an iridescent plastic thing, burst out of the water. Charlie showed Frankie again how to cast the line, and when Frankie tried it by himself, the unwieldy pole got away from him and shot into the bay. In a flash, without removing his clothes, Charlie dove in after it, and when he emerged he had the pole over his head. He was grinning. He grabbed at the dock with his free hand and said something to Frankie—I didn’t catch it—then hauled himself powerfully out of the water. He stood there dripping, breathing hard. He peeled off his wet shirt and dropped it to the dock, then started squeezing out the hems of his shorts. I felt the rare pleasure of watching an attractive man without being seen doing so, and I actually felt myself blush, standing there in the hot wind. I heard Charlie say, “That’s quite an arm you’ve got, kiddo.”
    They went back to copiloting the fishing rod, Charlie in his soaked shorts and bare chest and Frankie in a mode of fierce concentration. I started to return to the piles and the boxes, and was facing away from them when the sound—that unfamiliar, bright beam of sound—reached me.
    My son, laughing.

6
    ON SUNDAYS, MY FATHER PLAYED a late afternoon show on the back patio at Tobacco Road, the oldest bar in Miami. The place was downtown on the river, locked inside a labyrinth of one-way streets and empty warehouses, and though I’d been there a dozen times, the band had already started playing by the time I was able to locate the entrance to the parking lot. It was full; I parked on the street. When finally we wound our way to the table Lidia had saved, we were disheveled and harried. I tried to brush Frankie’s hair with my fingers but he pushed me away and scrambled onto Lidia’s lap, reaching for her water glass. She pushed a sweaty margarita toward me.
    â€œYou made it!” she said.
    â€œBarely,” said Graham.
    I shot him a look. He threw up his hands. I believed firmly that as long as he refused to drive, he had no voice in these matters.
    I’d watched my father play music in fifty venues in my lifetime, everything from a soulless hotel bar to a gay dance club to a tiki bar in the Keys, where he’d played the ukulele. Now and again