Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale

by Pugh, Shewanda

  Tak, who had taken over her home office for the planning of their trip, didn’t even bother to look up from his scribbles.

  “Well maybe, Dee, it’s time for that to change.”

  Time for change, said the artist, said the man who spent days mulling over life’s intangibles and losing himself in them for days at a time. Time for change, said the man who set emotions to music, stretched heart and soul on canvas for all. How raw it must be, how rewarding, to dig deep and find beauty, to find light even in the shadows. But a week of Hammonds was what he wanted. She couldn’t wait to see what he painted, what he sang, what he thought after that.

  Chapter Four

  On a Tuesday morning, Deena’s immediate family prepared for departure. Tony, slim, long-bodied with shoulders hunched in that perpetual state of adolescent angst, gutted out the mailbox thoroughly, before dragging his suitcases out to the car. He made two phone calls by the trunk, the first undoubtedly to his best friend, Lizard, an Irish-Jewish skateboarder who lived next door with his mother, a feminist and sex therapist of notoriety who traversed the daytime talk show circuits whenever her new drivel released. His father, an archeologist, spent most of his days in places where the people weren’t, returning for endless over-the-hedge conversations about flint tools and plant life in the Paleolithic era. Deena figured he must have been a behemoth in bed, to hold the interest of a woman who sold sexual freedom for a living. God knows it couldn’t have been the conversation she clung to.

  Tony called Wendy next, his best and oldest friend, held onto from his earliest days in Miami. Unlike with Lizard, there were no eye rolls and snorts on his end this time, no guffaws of laughter rupturing the air. He did, however, turn his back to Deena. That was something new.

  Mia nearly toppled her on her fly out the door, a slam of her skateboard to pavement, a jump and jerk later, had her careening for the idling taxi van at high speed, one duffle bag in hand.

  Mia, with her flannel in the summer and ripped jeans, whose hair, never quite tamed or washed clean. Mia, who knew Latin, Japanese, Spanish and more poetry than her mother could ever hope for, but also knew every horror icon sprang from Nosferatu to Jigsaw. She took solitude over girls, her skate and surfboard over nail polish, and had an appetite both massive and bizarre: Iguana in Trinidad, brain curry in India, river eel in Japan. Mia lived for adventure; she was all Tak and no Deena.

  Tony jammed the off button on his cell and scowled before shoving it into his pockets. While she’d heard nothing of his conversation with Wendy, Deena could imagine its gist. After all, he spent most days gnawing away his lips over what music school would undoubtedly have to reject him. After all, he reasoned, he hadn’t been introduced to the study of music until eleven—other kids saw it at three or four. He seemed to forget his sister Mia, who had begun piano lessons at three, but was much more adept at managing an epic flip on that godforsaken skateboard than she was at conjuring up a decent version of London Bridge.

  Tony, on the other hand, had taken to music in desperation. He had more than an ear for music, more even than his perfect pitch. Obsession made him think in notes and dream music. His early college admission applications, long sent to five of the best programs in the country, included, Fini, a symphony he wrote himself. It also included a segment of him performing the fugue in Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 106 at a school recital the year before. It also included, by his mother’s force of hand, an essay detailing how his symphony had been inspired by his life of homelessness and the search to find his family. Deena had to stand over him to make sure he included as much in what he mailed to every school. Take embarrassment, she’d told him, take weakness, and make it your strength. Sometimes, it’s the only weapon available.

  Music had started out as a parental hope to conjure discipline and expand their son’s view of the world. It succeeded tenfold. It didn’t need Tak’s bribe of any car of Tony’s choosing in exchange for the mastering of three instruments. Nonetheless, the Porsche sat in their garage, a bold bribe paid out in full. It was the Tanaka way, not the Hammonds’. Deena couldn’t imagine what they’d give him for his high school graduation, his college one, or when he married one day.

  Noah burst by, bubbling, humming and pausing only to thrust in time with his own rendition of the Batman theme song, before powering onward with his luggage. It seemed not to matter that he wore a green and massively obnoxious Incredible Hulk fist on one hand and the cape of Superman on his back.

  Three children and she recognized not a one as being of her own design, not even when the eldest was technically her brother’s child.

  Others would travel with them to Oranjestad. Mrs. Jimenez, their maid; Antonina, their au pair; and Mario Saunders, the resident chef, who busied himself daily with threats about finding work elsewhere, never mind his incomparable salary.

  Finally, they were on their way. First, to pick up Deena’s grandmother, then onward to Miami International where they would board an early evening flight, first class, to the island. No one in the car had much enthusiasm for the trip, as all of them, except Grandma Emma, had just summered there. Meanwhile, she was too busy with anticlimactic sleeping to bother with excitement.

  On the flight the children busied themselves with iPads and groans of boredom, long past the enraptured face-to-window presses typical of majestic destinations. But Grandma Emma was a different story. Seated next to Tony with a blanket in her lap, she gazed out on open blue waters, eyes steady, gaze clear. Deena wondered what she thought, remembered, considered. She wondered what it must have felt like to face definitive lasts. Last vacations, last gazes of open water, last plane ride perhaps? Deena wondered if, when her time came, she would be as graceful and accommodating of death.

  Aruba eventually came into view. A dot of honed in green, nestled into shimmering blue waters, it burst into calypso colors and sharp-edged countryside as they grew near.

  Oh, did it stand alive, ushering Deena back to sweltering nights, sweat, and soca skin-to-skin on the dance floor. There’d been no children then. Only Tak and Deena and all the touches they could stand. She could drown with that, Deena realized. She could drown, content, so long as his fingers touched her body and her arms wrapped him in the end.

  Once landed and with luggage in hand, they were driven from the airport to their chateau on Malmok Beach. They weaved away from the city along L.G. Smith, straddling the sea as delicate raindrops fell. A tiny island was all Aruba was, no bigger than D.C., though pulsing with flavor.

  In a few minutes time, they arrived at their summer home.

  Two floors of pretentious estate stretched to the ocean’s edge in unhurried grandeur. It was the sort of pompous residence celebrities bought to assert their wealth. Two dozen bedrooms, ten bathrooms, in addition to indoor and outdoor pools. There was more, of course, much more. And all of it was Deena’s.

  It never got old for her: wealth, deference, power. She’d shattered the glass ceiling with her own two fists. Wealthiest architect under 50. No preludes, no preamble. While she was far from the iconic figure that Tak’s father was, hers was a name worth knowing and knowing well.

  Deena stood in the entrance hall of her vacation home, one of three they owned. Her chef pushed past her muttering, while the au pair struggled with an armful of bags, each donned with surfer waves.

  “Really, Mia,” Tak snapped as Antonina dropped a fistful of bags. “Think you could trouble yourself with more than a skateboard for once? She’s not your valet, you know.”

  Mia’s gray eyes flitted up to her father, painted with what her mouth wouldn’t say, before snatching two suitcases from the floor and barging up the stairs.

  Tak sighed.

  “Is it time for this already?”

  “She’s thirteen, so yeah,” Deena said.

  “Well,” Tony said and gave his parents a one-sided smile on entering. “This should be fun. Like a rollercoaster with no brakes kind of fun.” He picked up his guitar case, balanced his horn case atop it and grabbed
the handle of his rolling luggage for the journey. “Tell Mario I’ll find something in the fridge later.” He too started off.

  As soon as he’d left, a shout of outrage pierced the night.

  “The satellite isn’t working!” Mia cried. “No one can live like this. Call someone. Please.”

  Deena and Tak exchanged a look. In 24 hours, a handful of attitudes would transform into a hurricane of the same.

  “You get your grandmother settled in. I’ll take care of everyone else,” he said and disappeared just as the driver helped Grandma Emma over the threshold.

  Chapter Five

  Rain.

  Despite the vast swaths of ocean enclosing Aruba, rain almost never happened. Twenty inches a year, they said. That made it ideal to visit, impractical to live in, yet gorgeous to look at.

  From the moment Deena slipped into her hot tub, drink in hand, she faced the shoreline—unable to look away. What was it about that vast expanse of nothingness that drew her in irrevocably? Timeless, was what those still waters were. Unconquerable, even.

  People used to believe that monsters roamed the seas. But what were monsters but those that which people were unwilling or unable to understand? There’d been a philosophy teacher back at M.I.T., Dr. Grossman, who’d said that philosophy was but the questions science had yet to answer, a recognition of man’s limitless ignorance.

  Deena spent a semester in Philosophy pondering how and why she believed everything she did and whether her beliefs could withstand philosophical inquiry. She didn’t leave with a feeling of certainty, either. While she’d never been fool enough to embrace the stink of her grandfather’s theological convictions, she nonetheless could smell their stench. Interracial marriage was unnatural, according to him, a slight against God, a sign of self-hate. Never mind the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth vitriol he passed off as sermons of love. No no, the world came to an end when folks forgot themselves and started mixing.

  How lame. How positively weak in the face of reality. Of all the evils in the world, all the greed, hatred, starvation, oppression, genocide, her grandfather’s lone issue had been which adults other adults were sleeping with.

  Deena set aside her shimmering pink drink and dipped low in the hot tub. Once, that rancid old man’s voice barked into her brain, hijacking her dreams, piercing her waking hours. She’d been so fearful of loving Tak because to love him wasn’t the easiest choice. But if regrets were billion dollar bills, then she’d go to bed a pauper.

  She could have laughed at her old self. Her grandfather, Edward Hammond, the man with all the answers. The man with one hate-filled daughter, another who flinched at his name, and a son who sold drugs until he was murdered. Of course, a man like that would have all the answers.

  All the wrong answers.

  Joy burst through her like rays of the sun, warm, illuminating, stretching. She had love, loads of love, family, friends, security. Hell, she had a husband with a gorgeous face, the stamina of a racehorse, and a body made for snug fitting jeans. Life was so delicious; she could have sent word to the kitchen for seconds and thirds.

  Life was too delicious, perhaps.

  Too delicious to last, that is.

  Chapter Six

  The moon hung like a sliver on invisible thread, yellow-tinged and ominous in a star-lit sky. Tak stood under the hooded covering of the back terrace, eyes fixated on his wife. He could watch her, he thought, with those thick rivulets of hair in every shade of brown, already saturated to dripping in the water. Even, creamy skin with a smattering of freckles across the cheeks and full lips that turned up with a pout. He had traced those lips with a thumb, with a tongue, with lips of his own. Most every inch of him knew what those sweet beauties felt like and most every inch of him wanted reacquainting. Their last few days had been so busy, their moments together too brief. He could watch her, he knew, or he could do more.

  How he had gone without touching her, he couldn’t know. How had he gone without tasting her, he couldn’t know. Not when she stood before him, a lexicon of sweet curves, a blueprint for all others.

  Two hints of wet white fabric cut low at cleavage and high at the hips. Deena filled them with supple softness. He knew those curves with his fingers and had memorized the feel of them under his lips. Somewhere in South Beach was a woman desperate to purchase the same--full breasts and the same sleek hips and rounded backside, the same smooth, heat inducing body. Enough for two kids and a few false alarms. Maybe enough for a third.

  The kids were asleep. He’d put Noah down himself and checked in on the other two, plus Deena’s grandmother. But it didn’t mean that no one else was around.

  Some part of him wondered if he cared. After all, he had that feeling. That superhero feeling that made him think he could tear through reinforced steel to get to her.

  Deena’s eyes closed and her head tipped back, arms resting on the edges of the hot tub with a pink cocktail in hand. In that moment, Tak envied the drink under her touch, firm against her hand.

  He’d been a little tired…and consumed lately. Work, family responsibilities, and all the little things, had a way of wedging between husband and wife. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know all the ways he’d been unfair either. Unfair in that he made love to her in that tired way husband’s love their wives—quick, cursory, with satisfaction as the primary goal. She’d known pleasure, yes, but only because pleasure was the inevitable outcome in a series of well-tried steps.

  Tak thought of her legs wrapping him, her back arched for him. He wanted her pulling and tearing and insane with her want for him. No talk of meetings or colleges or Noah acting out in school. Just him, her, and sweat.

  He crossed the terrace to the hot tub straddling the pool. He peeled off his shirt and jeans, leaving just the boxers, before splashing in and earning a yelp from Deena. He buried that with a kiss as his hands found employment lower, gliding down her back and dropping to her backside to explore.

  They should have found calm waters there, having sailed these currents so often. They should have found the steadiness of familiarity, the evenness of rote memory. But it wasn’t meant to be.

  Maybe it was him. Maybe even the urgency of his touch. When he drew her near, she mewled for him, a soft sound of yearning he hadn’t anticipated. Fingers ran up through his hair and clutched, entangled as their mouths grew urgent.

  Moonlight fell like a spotlight on them, lighting them for whoever took notice. They counted the seconds in kisses, measured the moments in touches. They had pulling, grasping, fumbling fingers that shredded clothes leaving them floating away.

  He tasted desperation. Pressed body to body so that even water couldn’t slip between, they rocked together, fitting and molding, mouth to mouth, soft to hard. Sweat fell from his brow, streaking his face, tainting their lips. Even it emboldened her, as her nails drew fire down his back, as she rocked against him with the ledge for support.

  He pulled the string of her bikini top and let the fabric fall away. A possessive hand, then a mouth, found its way to a single hardened nipple. She groaned, back arched to overextension, hand rushing through and through his hair.

  Heart halfway to hemorrhaging, he allowed himself a cautious look back and found no one.

  He might have been gentle. He might have, if she hadn’t wrapped into him so tight, if she hadn’t said she needed him, if she hadn’t let out that ragged, quaking moan the second he slipped into her.

  With a leg still around him, Tak grabbed her by the waist and tilted, so that her hips went up, her back arched, leaving him with the sharpest of angles to explore. Tak reared back and slammed.

  The sound from her throat was guttural, primitive, spastic. Her mouth hung open as if she might shout, before a mere gasp escaped it. He gathered her up while still planted deep, still throbbing, and trailed kisses down the pulse of her neck. Ever so slightly, she trembled.

  Tak reared back, hesitated, and then slammed again, sloshing water from the tub to wet tiles. Deena bit down on her fist
and stifled a cry, just as he ran a hand down her breast, over her hip, before settling on the curve of her ass.

  “Tak—”

  It was all he allowed before a shove took him as far as her body allowed, before hunger and greed found its way in.

  He found a monstrous jackhammer of a pace, cramming her with violent, splashing thrusts—thrusts so powerful, so furious, that he could hardly find time to breathe. She pulled him in with every pound, digging into his backside with her heels, bidding him harder and deeper, wilder with every thrust. To see them would have been to believe that he had his way with her, that it was him who dominated that time. But to feel her, to feel her as he did, was to know that he had no sense of control and that she had long since mastered him.

  She let out a cry and shuddered. He could close his eyes and know what it looked like: lower lip trembling, hands gripping—gripping at him, at surface, at anything. Rolling through her in quakes, boiling water that waved to her core.

  He snatched her to him, knowing that his finish would follow, and buried a grunt of satisfaction between her lips. That was all it took—all it ever took: a look, a touch, her body, and the whole world incinerated for him.

  Tak withdrew himself and exhaled.

  “I love you,” he said and pressed his forehead to hers.

  Sweat coalesced on their faces before they pressed lips and parted.

  “You knocked over my drink,” she said.

  Tak lifted his head, still flushed and unfocused, before spying the upturned glass. Bright pink liquid pooled beneath it in a run to their tub. He grinned. He had no remorse for the drink. After all, he had been jealous of it.

  “It got in my way,” he said and tilted her chin, thoughts already with yet another kiss. A flicker of a smile passed over her, before being supplanted with a glance at a nearby deck table. On it, sat her purse.

  Odd, Tak thought, to drag a purse around at your own house. But then she kissed him, melting his wonder with her touch.