Blood

The Man at the Door

I've always hated our doorbell. It's just a ranch house. Small. Why have a bell so loud and deep it sounds like it's calling the whole town to a funeral? It never seemed appropriate. Until now...

I had no idea Great Uncle Wolfgang was still alive before he rang the doorbell. He'd apparently been dropped by an Uber car because one was just pulling away from the curb when I opened the door. He had a very old fashioned suitcase covered in destination labels (Paris, Istanbul, Casablanca), and he was wearing that dusty fedora hat he always wore.

"I'm ravenous to see you!" he announced when I opened the door. His accent was as odd as his word choice. Later on, he told me he sometimes jumbled his words because of some neurological condition I didn't catch the name of. But the oddest thing was why he said he'd come. I'll get to that in a minute.

"You're Falcon," he said, standing at the front door while I stared at him from just inside.

"Yup. That's me," I admitted. "You look like your photo," I added. "Just like it." I frowned.

Mom had a bunch of family photos that she recently got down from the attic and stuck on a bulletin board. (Her relatives. She threw away Dad's.) One of them was a faded black and white picture of a man in a fedora at the rail of an old fashioned steamship. Other than being in living color on my doorstep, he hadn't changed at all.

"You look like your photo too," he said. "From the newspaper."

God! He must've read the article from last winter in our local paper. It showed me in my hockey gear with a black eye, and it read, 'Star center and only girl in high school league thrown out for gratuitous violence.'

"It wasn't my best game," I admitted. 

"Blood on the ice?" He asked.

"Uh, yeah," I said. "I kinda punched a kid in the nose." I frowned even harder.

"And then?" He prodded.

"Ye...ah. Why are you here? Mom didn't mention you coming. And she almost threw your picture away. Bad blood between you?"

"I'm here because you're in high school," he announced. "Important time in a girl's life... " He looked me up and down and added, "Or whatever you are." (I imagine I didn't look like a girl to him, what with my stocky build, short hair, old jeans and wrinkled T-shirt.) "Anyway, I thought you could use some help," he added, still eyeing me critically.

"Help with what?" I stared at him. An old man in a fedora.

"The transition, of course." He smiled knowingly and looked me up and down. Rude!

I glared at him. "Look, I know I must seem to be dressed like a boy to someone as old, uh, fashioned as you, and obviously I keep my hair really short, but I'm not actually planning to change my gender anytime soon. Is that what you think?"

He looked startled, but just for a second. Then he laughed. "Oh no, not at all. You misunderstandish me. I'm talking about your transition to... Well, perhaps you should invite me in and we can discuss it in private."

"Transition to what?" I demanded.

"To a superior species, of course. You can keep your gender if you want." He winked. "Now, why don't you go ahead and invite me in?"

I stepped back, still staring, but he didn't budge. "Well?"

"Am I invited?" he asked, as if I needed to say it formally before he could come in. He was that old fashioned.

I rolled my eyes. "I guess, but people usually ask that before they come all the way from, uh, Casablanca or wherever you came from."

"Thank you!" He smiled toothily and strode past me, suitcase in hand. Weird.

But to really understand how weird it all was, you need to know what happened the night I got kicked off my hockey team.