“You don’t have to tell me this,” Tak said. “You don’t have to—”
“I think about her,” Mike said. “I have, every day since college. She magnified in my mind, until no other woman could compare. Deena couldn’t compare to the woman I made her out to be.”
“Mike—”
“You feel sorry for me,” Mike said. “I hear it in your voice. But if you knew how much I fantasized about—”
“Shut up,” Tak said. “Stop trying to make me push you.”
Mike fell silent, chest rising and falling as if dragged.
“You said you wanted to know.” He paused, as if giving Tak the opportunity to refute this.
“After she left your bedroom,” Mike went on, “she asked me if we could talk. We went into the sitting room, for privacy, and shared a bottle of vintage wine. She only loves you, was what she wanted to tell me, as if I hadn’t gathered that for myself. She fell asleep as we talked after drinking too much.”
Tak’s breathing suspended mid-inhale, giving him a floating, buoyed sensation. He saw Mike before him, but didn’t see him, staring through and numbed by his words.
“I would have done it,” Mike said, gaze level on Tak. “I didn’t do it, but God knows I wanted to. I touched her—a little—and kissed her—and then…”
Nothing moved for Tak. Not the air in his lungs. Not the blood in his veins. Everything, cemented still.
“I stopped myself,” Mike said. “I saw myself and I stopped. But then this girl came along, this maid, and I took it all out on her. I hurt her, Tak, and I liked it. I liked not caring what she felt. I hurt her and hurt her and hurt her and God help me, I couldn’t even stop.”
“Where is she?” Tak said. “Who is she? Tell me something so I can get her some help.”
Mike didn’t bother to wipe the tears, snorting instead with derision.
“She liked it, too,” he said. “If you can believe that. She liked me treating her like shit. Turns out, I can’t even get being a monster right. I belong right here on this roof.”
She liked it. That gave Tak one reason to exhale, even as he backpedaled to another thought.
“My wife, Mike…”
Every inch of Tak’s body felt vice tight. His fingers curled into hammers. He had flung himself onto the roof; he could easily fling Mike off.
“I caressed her face as she slept. I kissed her. I ran a hand up and down her body. I—”
Tak shoved him. A rocket of a move not even he anticipated had Mike pitching back. A plummet on his ass. A fistful of tile. A wide-eyed realization of truth. He’d almost fallen off the roof and he hadn’t wanted to.
Tak stormed for the ladder.
Mike screamed after him. First his name, then the begging, and finally, the pleas for forgiveness. Not just for Deena, but for candy, marbles, old lies.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Deena sat at an Oceanside café, twisting a napkin until her hands turned red. Furtive glances at the window revealed nothing. Her waitress returned with a fourth refill of coffee.
Women like the one she waited for were used to an anticipating audience. They made fashionable entrances and were forgiven, though Deena didn’t feel so forgiving.
White. Of course she showed up in all white. Tall, tanned, and with a body so narrow, so slender, that the wisps of white she wore did nothing but flatter, emphasizing flawlessness. At the swell of pert breasts, at the flat of a perfect stomach, at the width of hips that were barely there. Aubree Daniels was perfect. Damn her for knowing it.
Aubree sat down across from her and smiled. A piteous thing, really, heaped on Deena in a flash of common courtesy. A wave of a hand brought a once disinterested waitress, who took her order with alacrity.
She wore the ring.
The Tanaka ring.
And smiled when Deena noticed it.
Deena looked down at her own hand and noted she wore it as well.
Her cappuccino arrived, but she ignored it.
“Deena,” she said in a voice that mocked sympathy. “You must find a way to cope. After years of letting him…drift, you mourn now that your husband’s lost at sea.”
“I did not let him drift,” she hissed, only to have Aubree smile small. “Our problems are no worse than any other couple’s. I don’t see why you’re here.”
Aubree began to fiddle with the Tanaka ring, spinning it round and round her finger as she admired it.
“Deena. Let’s be reasonable here, shall we? You were so inexperienced. Your virginity must have been an enticement, I suppose. But after that? You can’t think a man as skillful as Tak would be…pleasured by your fumbling?”
Deena’s cheeks caught fire.
“If you know what’s good for you—”
“Oh, but I do know what’s good for me. See?
Aubree held up the hand with the ring.
“You’re inattentive, angst-ridden, self-involved and…”a critical gaze swept over Deena. “Only moderately attractive. You couldn’t have expected to keep your husband forever.”
Deena stared at her blankly, certain that her every pimple, blemish and scar had magnified one hundredfold. Her oversized breasts sagged, her stomach softened to pudding.
“You’re talking about my career,” Deena said. “You’re alluding to some backwoods misogyny that criticizes female work ethic and aspirations.”
Aubree blew a raspberry with plump, Marilyn Monroe lips. “I’m talking about you sucking at being a wife. I’m talking about you sucking at everything but your husband’s—”
“Shut up,” Deena said. “Shut up before I slap you. Who are you, anyway? Some tramp my husband’s forgotten?”
Aubree smiled as if delighted at finally being asked.
“Who am I? Why, I’m your better, Deena Hammond. You should always note your betters.”
Deena woke to a twist of sheets. Mummified, her limbs flailed until she found a suitable escape. She was in her own bed, in yesterday’s clothes, though the thing last she remembered was wine with Mike.
Tak sat in a chair drawn up to her nightstand. Fatigue made shadows of his face. In his lap was a tattered copy of Architecture Digest, face up, unopened.
“What did you dream?” he said.
She sat up.
“Nothing.”
He looked at her, expression revealing nothing except fatigue.
“Your phone rang,” he said and tossed it to her. “First thing in the morning, non-stop.”
Deena caught in mid-air and turned it up right before swiping through to the missed call screen.
A Miami number. Unrecognizable.
“Well?” Tak said.
“Nothing. It’s no one.”
She tossed the phone aside.
“They left messages.”
“OK.”
“Check them.”
“Later,” Deena said.
“Check them now,” Tak said.
She stared at him.
“No,” she said quietly.
Tak tossed aside the magazine and walked out the room.
Chapter Thirty-Three
John woke to the sight of a gutted room. Mike’s side had been stripped of all luggage. His bedding lay folded in a corner. It was Christmas Eve and thunder boomed like the prelude to a B-List horror flick. With the window cracked, a single sheet of paper took flight, gliding from the writing desk to the floor.
John clamored to his feet, picked it up, and went over to Mike’s open closet.
Emptied out. The nightstand clock next to the stripped bed said 9 a.m., though outside it looked closer to midnight.
With the note in hand, John took a seat on the edge of Mike’s bed.
John,
By the time you read this, I’ll be on the first flight out. My plans are to travel until something feels like me. For so long, I’ve chased what others wanted and what it seemed like I should have. I no idea who I am. I have no idea what I like. It like Shakespeare once said, “God has given you one face, and y
ou make yourself another.”
I don’t know when you’ll hear from me again. I don’t know what I’ll say when you do. Convince the family that I love them and that it is best for me to be away. I am sorry. There’s more on the dresser. Read it. Burn it. Forgive me.
Mike
John went over and pulled a wad of papers from the nightstand. On it were a laundry list of deeds, listed in Mike’s tight and orderly script. Toys purposely broken. Mean words said. Lies told. And at the bottom were the things he’d done to Deena in her sleep and what he’d done to the maid.
John sat with the papers as lightening illuminated the room. John sat with the papers as thunder quaked and windows rattled. He read them once more. Afterward, he ventured down to the kitchen and lit the sheets one by one on the stove.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Tony rose in the morning to the sight of his bedroom door wide open. In the adjacent bathroom, running water and Lloyd’s nasally falsetto, meant that his temporary roommate was up and ready to start his day. Maybe the open door was a sign that he had made amends with his father. After all, he had saved Mike’s life. Or alerted others to do it. Same thing, he figured.
Lloyd emerged from the bathroom, freshly spritzed in a fragrance Tony knew. His cousin extended tree branch arms and grinned.
“Eh? Eh? Look good, don’t I?” he said.
“You’d look better in your own possessions,” Tony said.
Lloyd went for the closet.
“Hardly. Especially when yours are so much more expensive. I mean, look at all these Jordans. Half of these I’ve never even seen before.”
“They’re custom made.”
“Custom—?” Lloyd looked from him to the closet. “Wow. Just wow. Kids in my neighborhood knock off heads for a used pair off sweaty feet. Meanwhile, you’ve got Air Jordan himself knitting some for you.”
Lloyd went back to admiring the two neat rows of gym shoes. Tony wouldn’t tell him that those were his Aruba collection, only a fraction of what he kept at home.
“I tell ya,” Lloyd said. “One shift in the gene pool and it would have been me with the Jordans and you trying to figure out next semester’s tuition bill.”
“Your tuition isn’t paid?” Tony said as Lloyd disappeared into the closet. “What happened to basketball?”
His cousin attended Florida International University on a basketball scholarship. He’d been a flamboyant point guard who missed as many shots as he made, though seemed not to notice.
“Coach cut me,” he said from what sounded like a cavern. “I’ve been off the team since last spring.”
“But you can borrow money, can’t you? Enough to—”
Lloyd emerged with Jordans in fire limestone green. He held them up to his face for inspection.
“These are nice. Brings out the green in this shirt. Flashy, but I like it.” He looked over at Tony as if remembering he was there. “You can only borrow money when you make progress. And I haven’t.”
Lloyd dropped down on the edge of his bed and jammed a foot into Tony’s sneaker. They were identical in height at 6’1” and apparently identical in shoe size at 12.
“See that? We could be twins. With me being the much handsomer one, of course.”
“You should ask my mom for help,” Tony said. “Tuition can’t be much. She could write—”
“You going to open up those letters you hide in the drawer or you want us to bury you with them when you die an old man?”
Tony followed Lloyd’s gaze to the desk drawer where four envelopes sat. One from Harvard, one from Julliard, one from Yale, one from Berklee.
“You act like nobody raised you,” Tony said. “Like you haven’t got respect for property.”
Lloyd looked at him expectantly. Tony released a weighted sigh.
“I can’t bring myself to open them, okay? They’re the best schools in the world. I was dumb to apply.”
“You’re dumb for not reading them.”
Lloyd marched for the desk and snatched it open. Tony leap frogged to grab his arm.
“I’m serious! Don’t—”
They fell into wild grappling, with Lloyd reaching and Tony slapping. Slapping at arms, slapping at hands, until the two tumbled to the floor. It was Lloyd, the athlete, who found his footing first, snatched up the envelope and waved it triumphantly.
“Lloyd, please—”
“Open them or I tell everyone in the house.”
“No.”
“Remy! Damien! Come see what Tony’s hiding!”
Tony rushed for the door to lock it.
But it was the wrong move.
Now Lloyd had all the letters.
“Lloyd, please.”
How could he explain Old Tony and New? Or the difficulty of not knowing whether he belonged? All decadence and jet setting for the boy who’d once found meals in the trash. Here was the dilemma of his life. In those letters were stark truths: that he was a charlatan and pretender, an upstart waiting to fall down.
He wasn’t ready to fall just yet.
Lloyd cleared his throat, letter open.
“Dear Mr. Tanaka—”
“Don’t!”
“Dear Mr. Tanaka—”
“I won’t listen.”
Tony headed for the door, with vomit building like stacked Legos. Higher and higher it all went towering, until—
“You got in.”
He hadn’t heard that. He hadn’t heard this cruel attempt at—
“You got in, dipshit. Are you listening? Big surprise, you got in.”
It wasn’t true. Another of Lloyd’s tricks at his expense. Another game he didn’t want to play.
“Listen,” Lloyd said and Tony heard the crinkling of paper. “In the real world, nobody gives a shit if you spend your nights in dumpsters. Well, your girl might, but that’s about it.”
“That’s not something I joke about.”
“Whatever.”
Lloyd sat down at the desk, where he opened more envelopes.
“Like I was saying before you forgot your manners, talent is a pretty good equalizer. Somewhere in this world is a kid with thirteen years of music lessons to your seven. That kid just got rejected to Harvard, Yale, Julliard, and Berklee.”
“Why would you say that?”
Lloyd held up the letters, grinning shamelessly.
“Because you got into all of them,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Rioting set off the morning of Christmas Eve. Shouts and the thundering of a thousand feet rocked Deena’s bedroom. She had the skull howling pain of a wine hangover, Tak had an attitude, and now this. Ingrates traipsing like a buffalo herd. No question as to who it was.
Deena jammed her feet into slippers and marched out the door.
Tariq’s children were making a racket again. Three of them rushed up and down the hall, hooting in bare-faced glee while banging every door they encountered. They dog piled one on top of the other with Tony at the bottom, toppled into the wall and repeated.
Deena stalked to the end of the hall, where they jammed like 5 o’clock traffic.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “And I’ve had enough. Enough of—”
“They’re letting dummies into Harvard!” Remy hooted. “Loons into Yale!”
“Hooray one time for Tony!” Lloyd cried. “Hooray two times for a fool!”
Deena blinked. “What?”
Tony stood with considerable effort, shoving older, bigger cousins off his body.
“They mean me,” he said. “I got in. Early decision at that.”
“You got in where? Harvard?”
“And Yale,” Remy said.
“Julliard and Berklee, too,” Lloyd supplied.
Deena stood up straighter. Frowning.
“But how do you know?”
“Pardon me, Mrs. Tanaka, but is it possible—”
Deena whirled to see a tall, slim woman with liver lips and a thin smile. She wore the black and whites of a hou
sekeeper.
“Whatever it is will have to wait,” Deena said.
“But miss—”
Deena turned back to her son.
“How do you know your admission status? I mean, you’re here.”
“That idiot’s been carrying the letters around for days,” Lloyd said, just as the maid departed with a surly look in their direction. “He’s been too afraid to open them.”
Deena shrieked and her head paid the price. Still, she shrieked some more. For Tak, for Mia, she even shrieked for Noah. Then she swept Tony up. He was his father’s height and well over Deena, but she choked him to her bosom just the same.
“Mom, don’t—don’t cry,” he said and twisted in her arms. Even that word, ‘mom,’ made the tears fall freer.
Meanwhile, he’d turned the color of rich rhubarb and stayed like that till Tak extricated him.
“Harvard,” she said. “Yale, Berklee, Julliard.”
Tak let out a low, impressed whistle.
“Top shelf,” he said and messed Tony’s hair.
They exchanged a quiet, intimate sort of smile, before Tak snatched him in, too.
Deena felt it then: the thing always between the two; the thing that had her as a perpetual third wheel, sitting in on a conversation among friends in a language she didn’t know. Words passed between them in their embrace, words that no one else heard, and once apart, Deena saw both their eyes glistening.
She headed back for their bedroom alone.
She loved that they loved each other so. She loved that they were indivisibly close. Whenever contrariness about it came to her, she reminded herself of these facts and repeated as often as necessary.
Deena dropped down at the stool of her vanity and gave herself a good hard look. Her son—and that’s who he was now—was 18 years old and on his way to college. His transgressions over the years didn’t even hint at the possibilities for wrong. Breaking curfew, too much time on his cell—those were the infractions her son had committed. And the possibilities for bad? Endless. All the wrong choices lay before him on an ever-intersecting path of realities. But her son had made his own way: the right way. She could only find joy at the thought.
Tak came in, closed the door and leaned against it. Like always, he looked at her with eyes that knew too much.
Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale Page 12