Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings (11 page)

C
HAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Kenji stood at the window of his office. Up seven floors in a carving arc of view that swept the building on two sides, he looked down at the bay, stripped of its sailboats. Clouds of steel painted the sky, swelling and threatening, yet again.

The morning after Lizzie checked into the drug treatment facility in Palm Springs, it began to rain. There was but little of it at first, liquid sunshine for a dry and thirsty landscape. But the days passed, and as they did, quiet showers fluctuated in intensity, as if mimicking the ambivalent beat of his heart. As he stared out at dark and brewing waters of the bay, a torrent rained down from the sky in an instant, as impassioned and unrelenting as the emotions awakened within him.

Was this how it had been for his brother? Sensing the folly of his heart but unable to resist just the same? Knowing the path, its likelihood of success, yet seeing every alternative, every morsel of reasoning as impotent against the strength of his yearnings?

It didn’t happen all at once, like a fairy tale, where one touch did him in. He could point to half-a-dozen nights and see that no one had any more sway than the other. Were he truthful, he’d admit that he’d been attracted to her in the first second of the first time they met and had been secretly pulling for her triumph ever since. But this was about more than cheerleading from the sidelines. He’d sunk seventeen thousand of his own money into her rehab treatment the first month, and now that they sought to extend her stay, he wrote a second check for more without hesitation. Yes, he was rich, and no, he wouldn’t miss it. But it was too much to spend and still call himself an innocent bystander in the tale of Lizzie Hammond.

She called him every day. After the first two weeks moratorium on outside communication, she was allowed to make a single ten-minute phone call every day at 2 o’clock. He never missed one.

Try as he might, Kenji couldn’t equate whatever this was to what had happened between his brother and sister-in-law. Their only concern had been the reaction others might have. Back then, a racist Hammond family couldn’t reconcile with the idea of Deena loving an Asian guy. Likewise, their father, while he loved Deena for her potential in the field, wanted to preserve their name, their culture, their history, by wedding his sons to Japanese girls. That was the long and short of their dilemma. But this wasn’t exactly an equivalent. Kenji had gone, not just for a girl with a bigoted family, but a girl just as likely to relapse, rob, and leave him on the side of the road, dead. 

Kenji smiled. He remembered his days in high school, angry about the lack of excitement in the undulating line that was a rich kid’s life. Despite living in one of the most dangerous cities in the country, he’d yet to so much as see a purse snatched by his eighteenth birthday. And while so many years later, he’d yet to witness as much, he figured escaping with a prostitute from a murderous pimp pretty much fed that need, anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Never in Tony’s life had he been kept to such a rigid schedule. Monday through Friday, he rose and had a heavy meal that appeared to be neither here nor there. Ham croquettes and grits alongside oversized sausages alongside fresh fruit alongside half-a-dozen other shit he could hardly be pressed to name. It was all prepared by an old Mexican who fussed at Deena when she took only coffee and toast, praised Tak for his heavy appetite, and pinched Tony’s cheeks endlessly, promising
hacer que la grasa
, which, according to Tak, meant something about making Tony fat. 

After breakfast, the old woman, who’d once been Tak’s childhood maid, piled the children into a black sedan and shuttled them to school, where he was expected to keep up a steady stream of classes until afternoon. Every single day after school he had homework to get done, homework that got checked by Tak or Deena faithfully. Monday evenings meant family counseling, where they crowded into a white lady’s office and told her what she wanted to hear. Tuesdays and Thursdays meant drum lessons from Tak. Wednesday he had free time for the pool or basketball court after he did his homework, which always took forever. During the week he was only allowed two hours in front of the tube a night—an obscene allowance he was certain constituted a violation of his basic civil liberties, though he had to admit the game room and pool with volcano slide made for a pretty all right substitute in any case.

Tony ventured down the hall of Edinburgh Academy, stretched a head above other sixth graders, Jordans big and slapping like clown feet on tile. Halfway between art and literature, he kept his gaze down, never veering left or right for a glimpse of the polished, glittering, and scrubbed clean kids all around.

A porky one with flaming red hair pulled up alongside him.

“Hammond, isn’t it?”

Tony shot him a hateful look. Back at the group home, it would’ve been enough to run a kid off. But this one only frowned.

“You did say your father was in architecture, right?”

Had he?

“Yeah, sure,” Tony said blandly.

The fat kid rushed to keep pace, shouldering a tall black kid whom he shouted an apology to, before turning back to Tony. 

“So they brought him in for construction on the Exchange Towers?”  

He couldn’t have said that. He had no idea what the Exchange Towers were.

“What makes you think that?” Tony said.

“Well, you said that your father was handling the skyscrapers under construction downtown. Those are the Exchange Towers. Ergo, your father is working on the Exchange Towers.”

Tony stopped. What the hell kind of kid said “ergo”?

His fat hand shot out. “I’m Brian Swallows,” he said. “My grandmother’s Jennifer Swallows. You might’ve heard of her.”

Tony looked down at the hand. Eventually, the kid retracted it. He was dressed in the worst sort of way: navy blue sweater vest, short-sleeved banana button-up, white slacks. What was the point of being rich if you had to dress like that?

“We better get going,” Brian said. “We’ll be late for art.”

Tony, who’d already turned to leave, shot him a look.

“You’re in art, too?”

Brian nodded. “Grandmother thought it’d be good.”

“Grandmother?” What a dick.

“The Exchange is a major project,” Brian said. “Your family must be pretty excited. Was your father part of the design phase, as well?”

“Um, yeah. Sure.”

“Is your father independent or partner in a firm?”

“Inde—firm,” Tony said. A firm sounded far more anonymous.

“You’re not sure?”

Tony rounded the corner. “I just told you, didn’t I? What are you, a narc?”

Brian slowed. “A . . . narc?”

“Go away,” Tony snapped and shoved open the door to art class.

He didn’t know why he couldn’t go to a regular kid’s school. Why he couldn’t sit in the back and sleep like he’d done in Bismarck, Lincoln, Louisville, and Tulsa. No. He had to go to a place where the dads golfed, the moms had plastic tits, and the kids summered in Versailles.

No amount of forced acclimation could make him part of their world. When Matthew Tolbert volunteered to introduce him around as the new kid, Tony told him he hadn’t planned on staying. And when Brett Moore asked him over for video games on Sunday, Tony asked him if he didn’t think black folks had video games of their own. When Frankie Spencer offered to help him with math after an embarrassing episode at the blackboard, Tony told him that he knew of a guy’s asshole in need of more attention than him. Eventually, the buzzards slowed in their circling, and the students of Edinburgh Academy began to put distance between Tony and them. All except the fat kid, Brian, that is.

“We should hang out sometime,” Brian said as he dropped into the seat next to where Tony always sat.

“No, we shouldn’t,” Tony said and slumped down in his seat.

The man with the Jew-fro walked in. He wanted them to pull out their journals for a writing exercise. Good. Brian wouldn’t have occasion to talk.

“I’d like for each of you to reflect on your readings of
Tower in the City.
In particular, I’d like you to discuss the relationship between Efran, our protagonist, and the adults in his life. Relate them if you will to the adults in your life, or the experiences you’ve had with adults.”

Tony stared at the Jew-fro. There was no way in hell he was doing that assignment. As it was, he’d spent the first few weeks of school nodding off to Nazi death camps and murderous Germans. Twice, he dreamt the old man whose nuts he’d busted on I-75 had ordered his capture as head of the Gestapo. Each time, he woke drenched in sweat and trembling. If the Jew-fro thought that Tony would relate
Tower in the City
to his life any more than his dreams had done, then he’d be the second one to catch a pair of busted nuts.

All around Tony, students began to write. Heads bent, pencils working furiously. To his right, Brian Swallows sketched an outline. To his left, the dark girl with thick black hair, whom he’d noticed on the first day, flipped through the pages of her book with a frown. Tony wondered what she’d be writing.

“Mr. Hammond? Are you having trouble with the assignment?”

Tony looked up. “No, sir.”

“Then you’ll need to begin.”

He picked up his pencil. And hesitated.

“Mr. Hammond?”

“What?” Tony barked.

The room gasped.

The lit teacher took a step back and looked from one student to the next. Each stared at him in unadulterated shock.

“You will address me as Mr. Applebaum.”

Tony snorted. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” He would make a point of doing just the opposite.

Applebaum stood frozen, as if wavering in indecisiveness. “Get to work,” he snapped.

Tony dropped his head and began to draw. A huge fist was what appeared on the page, a surprise even to him. Sketched in and scarred, Tony busied himself shadowing in the edges when Brian leaned over, wide-eyed.

“Tony, you’ll upset Mr. Applebaum.”

A jagged tattoo shaded the knuckles of his fist. Slowly, the word “thug” came into view.

“It isn’t appropriate for you to sit there and draw,” Brian continued. “If you’re having trouble with the reading selection—”

“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Tony demanded.

Brian gasped. Again Tony had the stares of the classroom.

“Why, you little piece of trash! I—”

Tony tossed his pencil and lunged, flipping his seat and hurling both fat Brian and himself into the wall.

He would kill him. He would maul him, make him deaf, dumb, blind, and leave him lying in a pool of his own blood. Fists to mouth like a jackhammer—fist to mouth like a jackhammer; “trash” was going to make trash taste trash. Misery had a sweetness all its own. It was a lesson he was willing to share with Brian.

Applebaum peeled Tony back by the waist, dragging, struggling, and finally heaving him out the front door. Once in the hall, Tony’s lit teacher faced him, bloodied and disheveled, the horror on his face made clear. It was then that they understood each other, for it was then that Applebaum’s face transformed from sympathy and indulgence to fear, comprehending that Tony was fury and terror, misery and menace, and a thing unlike which he’d ever known.

~*~

Tak stared at a white-faced easel and blinked as if expecting it to change by power of the mind. Only faintly amused, he flourished a charcoal pencil as if poised with the first of grand ideas . . . and then dropped it in disgust. Ten years ago, when he’d been young and sculpted like a Roman gladiator—okay, not quite but close enough—he’d had the heart of an impassioned poet to match. His painting of Deena,
Unfolded,
had netted his highest commission to date, a comfortable seven-digit figure. His second painting of her, titled
Demure,
was inspired by a glimpse of her just hours before their wedding. It hung in the Japanese American Museum of Art, ironically enough, alongside works from names he hadn’t thought himself worthy to be near. Since then, he’d produced other artwork that sold well by any standard, but greatness was the treasure that eluded him.

He had no shortage of culprits to blame. Life with a five-year-old meant that spontaneity was all but nonexistent. Add a jack-in-the-box surprise of an eleven-year-old from Bismarck and Tak had given up on the idea of whisking his wife off for romantic romps in the Caribbean, or to their bedroom, for that matter. Both had once served as inspiration for art.

But it was more than the presence of two children which ailed him. Once, Tak could put brush to canvas and find beauty, revelation, paradise, already thriving within him. Now, the emptiness of his art reflected the emptiness within.

What was happening?

Regret was too strong a word. He loved his wife, loved his family. But what had they taken; what had he given—freely given, in his role as husband and father? And whatever it was, would he ever be fully Tak without it?

He stared at the blank canvas in wonder.

But the answer never came.

~*~

Deena stared at the official Acceptance of Proposal notification from the State of Florida, resting in her inbox. She lifted it, certain of another step, another interview, another panel, between her and the project she’d sought. Her design for what she’d touted as the most forward-thinking, technologically advanced prison in the world had been accepted. Having proposed a role in the design and construction phases, Deena stood to earn a commission of thirty-six million for the firm.

She let the letter drift to the floor.

The door opened. 

It was her father-in-law.

Deena looked up guiltily.

“You heard,” she said.

Daichi Tanaka stood a full head above her, silken black hair now graying gracefully at the temples, face suddenly as hardened and intolerable as the day they’d met in a snow-covered parking lot at her alma mater MIT.

“I won’t permit you. You knew I wouldn’t permit you,” he said.

Deena’s gaze dropped to his hands, curiously clenched in a fist. He had a sheet of paper there, no doubt the duplicate notification letter, filed with him as head of the firm.

She scooped up her own copy and disappeared behind her desk.

“It’s not a matter of receiving your permission, Daichi. I’m a partner now. I don’t need it.” Deena’s gaze flitted away, bravery wavering in the face of a Goliath.

Daichi closed the door and took a step toward her, surprising her when his hostility melted to tenderness. “Deena, please. I’m hardly speaking to you as a CEO in a supervisory capacity. I come to you as a father. Can you not see how
unhealthy
this is? I mean, to actively play a part in the imprisonment of your mother—”

“I have no mother,” Deena snapped.

Daichi froze. The two looked at each other, mentor to mentee, boss to employee, father to daughter-in-law, always midway through the graceful dance from one to the other. But somewhere along the way, the advice of a father became the ultimatum of a boss.

He smoothed out his paperwork carefully.

“I would not do this. Whatever the pay, you have neither the need for it, nor for what it inevitably will bring.”

Deena’s gaze narrowed. “With all due respect, you have no idea what I need.” 

Daichi stepped closer, eyes on her, a specimen that suddenly seemed both familiar and peculiar to him.

“My
musume,
I can’t even begin—”

She shot him a pointed look at the Japanese word for “daughter” and once again, Daichi went still.

“Let’s keep things professional, shall we?” Deena said coolly.

Daichi exhaled. “If you insist.”

She dropped into her seat with the rare victory against Daichi Tanaka, gloating internally, storing it away.

“So, tell me,” Deena said enthusiastically, “how was Phuket?”

She expected him to drop down in a chair, eager to share stories that passed only between them—woeful tales of unexpected erosion, ineffective sediment control, countless delays, and the follies of construction workers who proved more pain than pleasure to work with. But Daichi Tanaka simply stood, a hand on the back of the chair she expected him to occupy, evenness in his stare, ice in his eyes.