A rustling in the dry undergrowth and the crackling of twigs indicated a large-ish animal. It spotted me before I spotted it, but even with its camouflage, it couldn’t hide in the sparse surroundings. The iguana slithered up the embankment to higher ground with its long black and tan striped tail fanning back and forth to aid its escape. It climbed a tree and moved out on a branch that hung over the sidewalk in front of me.

I stopped. It stopped. I took a step forward. It crawled out a little further on the branch as if it was a gatekeeper. I had never been that close to an iguana, just ten feet above me, looking fierce with a torso about three feet long and a dewlap of variegated skin fluttering under its throat. A row of spikes ran down the spine, getting shorter as they reached the long tail. I’d been told they were harmless as long as they weren’t threatened. Some people even took them on as unlikely pets, putting them on leashes and charging tourists to take a picture with them.

But there was something about the way it stared at me that kept me frozen there on the pavement, wondering if it was safe to walk under its perch on the branch. I stared back. For what seemed a long time, we stared at each other. And then, its scaly eyebrow closed over the black marble pupil in a bed of yellow iris. If we had been playing a game of who blinks first, I had won. I didn’t feel like a winner, though, and the iguana didn’t seem to care as it continued to observe me, blinking as if bored with the relative newcomer on the planet. I nodded, acknowledging I was an invader in its land. Not just as a foreigner but as a human carving into the jungle habitat of the animal.

I was in Mexico for a new beginning, walking down the hill to do my shopping, if this beast would let me. Sweat began pooling in the middle of my chest, and I needed to move on. As I passed under the branch, I swear the iguana shrugged and looked away as if it was done with me. I felt dismissed. And then I began to laugh, a laughter of relief and surprise, thrilled with this new experience, one more in a long list that seemed a daily occurrence since I had moved here.

The day had begun with clear skies broadcasting hope, the balcony slightly cooler than inside the house as I lingered over my breakfast, feeling the view of the Bay of Banderas from Punta de Mita to Los Arcos like a physical thing that coddled me. We were in the dog days of summer, with the dog-star, Sirius, rising and setting about the same time as the sun. It was the hottest time of the year, and relief only came, I was told by my neighbors, when afternoon showers again pelted the corrugated roofs of the neighborhood down below. Everyone talked of the rains coming late this year.

Before the heat and humidity became too oppressive, I planned to walk down the hill to the market and buy food for the next few days when the forecasters insisted the heavy rains would come, ushered in by thunder and lightning. I would get back up the hill before the church bells struck ten in the plaza below.

I stepped out of the apartment into the stuffy hall, which smelled of fried onions and spices I couldn’t identify from the apartment across the hall. I summoned the elevator and watched the short countdown from the rooftop to my floor. When the doors opened, Ivan in his company logo polo shirt and jeans stood chewing on one of his fingernails. He dropped his hands and folded them in front of his crotch as he stepped aside and made room. “Buenos días, señor Dawson.”

“Hola, Ivan.” I leaned against the back wall and watched his blurry reflection in the shiny metal of the doors.

On the next floor, he got off, and as the doors closed, I let out the breath I didn’t know I had been holding. The tension I felt when near him made no sense. Ivan had been hired a few months before as the day manager who oversaw daily operations in the twelve-unit building curiously named Paradiso, which sounded both presumptuous and unsettling. He handled everything from delivering packages to residents’ doors to coordinating cleanups to keeping the place secure. Everyone found him friendly and efficient. Everyone loved him. Why did I often see him joking and bantering in English and Spanish with other residents when he was all business and cold with me? Why did my packages sometimes go undelivered when everyone else got theirs the same day?

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