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Not long after, he balanced four plates into the corner space with a wooden table and chairs which served for a dining area.
“Breakfast’s ready, ladies,” he called out, and his sisters scrambled in, each pushing back a chair and getting seated. He smiled at them as he set the plates in front of their beaming faces and golden forelocks. To him, they looked like angels, as if any moment they would spread sparkling white wings and fly off.
“Hope yougher’ve made your beds? You know the law,” he said with a warm smile.
The girls nodded in an almost-perfect synchronized manner. Christian watched them dig into their breakfast of eggs and sausages, then he turned to see his mother wheeling in. He glanced at the wheelchair, something she only used on days she felt too weak to walk.She is having a bad day again, he thought. She was such a beauty once and always full of energy. Her hair had been golden as the sun, her face elegant and fine. What he saw in front of him now could not be further from that bright memory. Her hair looked oily and unwashed, the pink lipstick on her lips uneven from her shaking hands. But she hated it when he made a big deal about her health, so he pretended everything was fine, looking almost as sharp as before.
“You’re looking bright this morning,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. She smiled faintly and looked at him. She’d developed multiple sclerosis not long after his father had passed away. They almost lost her too. It had been a dark time that still haunted him at night sometimes.
Her bright blue eyes still gazing at him, his mother moved her lips slowly. “Have you had anything for breakfast yet?” she asked, her words coming out slowly, breathlessly. He smiled and held her hand.
“Of course I have, right before the girls woke up,” he lied. “Your majesty,” he added, and straightened his spine when he heard his sisters laugh, mumbling to each other with mouths full.
“Ah-ah, what did I say about talking with full mouths? What are you going to do if a prince invited you to dine at this golden table? Spit all over his crystal dishes?”
His sisters giggled some more, then focused on their breakfast.
Christian watched his mother eat for a few minutes before excusing himself.
“Are you sure you don’t need more food?” his mother hollered after him in a shaky voice as he made his way down the dark corridor of cracked walls littered with sun-bleached family portraits.
“I’m stuffed, mother,” he answered and stepped into his room to grab his suit jacket, the nice dark blue one. His stomach was growling, but what was the use of making them feel guilty? He would grab a piece of dry bread and an apple on his way to work, content that he had food at all.
Being the man of the house meant a lot of things, and making sure that the little they had wouldn’t vanish was one of them. His job paid for the electric and the medical bills, for the heat and the girls’ school materials.
Christian prided himself in his job. He worked as a private tour guide, using the English it had taken him years to learn. The competition had been fierce, but he’d managed to get the job with his charm and language skills—and he loved it. Listening to the tourists and their tales from faraway places was the most exciting thing in the world to him.Someday I will see them all with my own eyes,he’d tell himself, almost believing it at times.
He stood outside the house as the sun reflected off the chipped white paint of his rusty, old minibus. He ran his hand over the dented body, carefully peeling off dirt and strands of grass from his last bumpy tour. The words ‘DISCOVERYROMANIA’ were painted on the bus, the Y crossed out with red paint. He’d tried painting over it, but it always seemed to surface again, making it look even worse. He’d gotten the bus from a neighbor who’d used to it sell chickens. And his neighbor had gotten it from someone else. He wasn’t sure how many hands the bus had been through, but he was sure it had been well loved.
“Today is a good day,” he said and patted the side of the bus, moving over to the driver’s side. The door creaked open; at this point, he didn’t have to use a key to open it, just a simple tap would do the trick.
Business had been slow for a while now; actually, it had never picked up in the first place, to be honest. This had nothing to do with his charisma or English skills, or charming looks, as his mom insisted. Looking at his bus, Christian knew what the culprit was.
“Christian, your bus smokes and is as rusty as Alexandru’s crazy old widow,” his rivals in the tourist business always mocked him.
Holding the creaking door, ready to heave himself in, Christian knew that they were right. This bus needed to go if he wanted business to get better—but business had to get better for the bus to go.
“Off to work,” he said to himself and was about to close the door when he heard Sofia, the youngest of his little sisters.
“Don’t go,” she said.
He turned around to see her skipping toward him. She leaped onto the door and clung to the open window.
“Stay and play.” She looked up at him with a grin, showing her missing front tooth. She had just turned four and acted not a day older.
He chuckled and picked her up to heave her into the bus and onto his lap. “I have to go to work, sweetie, but I’ll be back soon.”
He spotted another of his sisters, Daria, running up to him and sighed. “You ladies are like ants, huh? Where there’s one . . .”
“Is it true that vampires live in Dracula’s castle?” Sofia asked as she helped Daria, who was one year older, climb into the van and squeeze herself onto the seat next to Christian.
“You’re going to see Dracula again without us?” Daria shouted, almost mad. Suddenly he saw the other two storm out, Ana and Gabriele. His sisters were about a year apart, ranging from four to eight-years-old, with Sofia being the youngest and Ana the oldest.
“He’s going to Dracula’s ghost with the rich foreigners again?” Ana’s high-pitched voice piped accusingly. She waited for Gabriele to open the back passenger door of the van for her. Christian sighed and looked behind him to see Ana and Gabriele already sitting in the back.
“Why do you never take us with you? We want to meet Dracula too.” Gabriele crossed her arms.
Christian made a serious face and spoke in a low voice. “Have you forgotten? I have to feed him the rich tourists before you can meet him. Otherwise, he’ll eat you too.” The older girls, Sofia and Daria, giggled, but Gabriele and Ana’s eyes widened.
