Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale

by Pugh, Shewanda

  Chapter Seven

  Tony sat on one side of his bed, back arched, feet planted to the floor. Facing him and mounted to the wall was an army of autographed guitars. A sleek, white glossed bass one tipped in candy red had been autographed by soca legend Peppers Montane. Next to it was the shimmering electric blue instrument that once belonged to one-man-reggae machine, Drew Jeffrey. Adjacent to that was a golden god of a guitar, complete with flawless sound. It had been autographed by a master of calypso, dead before his time. This wall, not unlike the one at home with memorabilia from two dozen American icons, held more flash than the much more substantial collage of autographed drumheads painting the wall above his headboard. He had living legends and dead ones in a collection that spanned three continents. Each bedroom he called his, whether in Miami, Aruba, London, or Tokyo, paid homage to international legends. In a glass case back home, he had a shimmering white glove from The King himself, bedazzled in Swarovski crystal. His adoptive mother’s eyes had crossed when Tak had it shipped in from an auction for him.

  Tony dialed Wendy’s number and gnawed on his lip when the phone rang. It was only sort of late, closing in on midnight, but if her parents happened to be around, there’d be no way she could answer.

  The sound of her voice told him they were working third shift at the hospital.

  “Dude,” she blasted. “You were supposed to call hours ago.”

  A smile found its way to his lips.

  “I had an emergency, Wend. The satellite’s out. Even prison has cable.”

  He could imagine her rolling her eyes. Wendy never needed more than a channel willing to air reruns of M*A*S*H for happiness. All else was drivel.

  “What did you get into tonight?” Tony said. “And don’t say anything that starts with Gage Sawyers.”

  Gage Sawyers was the newest edition to Edinburgh Academy, the sort of school where status was measured not by designer brands—after all, everyone had those—but by a weird amalgamation of legacy status, familial prestige, and exoticism for extra points. Tony, who had once been a pariah at the same school, had risen in standing alongside a rise in his parents’ wealth and prestige—matters other students seemed better versed about than him. The Porsche in his drive had given him extra oomph, it was the best thing going and a strong frontrunner to the Audis, Infinitis, and Benzes that peppered student parking.

  Gage Sawyers had none of that. A drop-in from a netherworld, he was the indifferent, angst ridden boy who played basketball on scholarship and shirked all company. Well, all, except for Wendy’s. In the lunchroom at school, in the hallway, he had a lazy half smile on standby for her alone. The light in his eyes faded the second she left. It reminded Tony of his early days at school and how Wendy had been his first friend, his best friend, until Lizard came along. What Tony had taken to be some real connection between them seemed to be some variation of Wendy’s pity. She gravitated to the new lonely boy, whoever that was, it turned out.

  The thought filled him with a bitter sort of ache.

  “We had pizza,” Wendy said.

  “Hope that was all he had,” Tony bit, without knowing he would.

  All he did know, in fact, was that Gage Sawyers made him want to thrash something, preferably the smile on his face.

  “He’s nice, Tony. If you’d only get to know him. You have so much in common—”

  “Like what? Being black?”

  “That’s stupid,” Wendy said. “I’m black, too. Why would I say that?”

  Tony squinted at the Peppers Montane guitar before him. Was that a smudge? Had Noah been here fingering things again? If he had—

  “You’re going to see her tonight, aren’t you?” Wendy said.

  Tony sighed.

  “So, she doesn’t even have a name anymore?”

  Silence met him on the other end. He used it to switch the phone from his right ear to the left.

  “I don’t like her,” Wendy said. “I wish you wouldn’t…chase her so.”

  His breath came in subtle drafts, his rising annoyance battling with the fact that this was Wendy. Silly Wendy, as he sometimes called her. Whatever she said, however she said it, it was never meant for harm.

  “You know it’s not like that,” Tony said. “There’s chemistry between us. That’s all.”

  He didn’t know why he felt pressed to explain, but a glance at his watch said that it would have to wait.

  A quarter after midnight and the house stood quiet. Everyone should have been asleep.

  “I have to go,” Tony said.

  Wendy drew in a sharp intake of breath.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t carry all your credit cards or a big wad of cash. Leave your passport at home. Stay away from dark streets and strangers—”

  “Wendy—”

  “Make sure not to give out directions; I don’t care how nice the people look. Stay away from locals and neighborhoods and if someone tries to mug you—”

  “Wendy—”

  “Give them whatever it is they want.”

  Tony sighed. He hadn’t really been expecting to skate past Wendy’s flood of paranoia; still, he’d managed to rush her through it. Leaving her to her monologue could have him watching the sun rise while waiting.

  “Don’t go anywhere with her,” Wendy blurted. “She’s a local.”

  “And you’re being a snob. Talk later.” Tony hung up.

  He managed to get in a quick shower before slipping into a dark tee, ripped jeans, and Jordans and riding the banister down to the first floor. A fifty dollar bill slipped from his hand to the driver they’d hired for the trip. Destination, Oranjestad. The driver already knew just where.

  Tony sat back, fingers drumming out rhythm bass on his thigh. Coastline rushed by on one side, with ocean water lapping turf as they threaded the Boulevard. One road ran the length of the island, a single thoroughfare as the artery of the island.

  The drumming of his fingers incited some never-heard whistle, something funky and shredding with flavor. Were he home, he would have filled out the sound’s nether regions with a bit of flirting winds, an incision of mocking brass, before tearing it all down with a thunder of percussion. He could hear how it should be. He could always hear that.

  Nestled between squat, square adobe fixtures in mango, pistachio, turquoise, and white, Tony’s destination came into view. A nothing from the street was what it looked like by day, but at night, neon and drumming and liquor had it pulsating with life. Tony threw open the door as the driver pulled up, sprung free, and sprinted to Lila Dahl in the swallow of a breath. He snatched her up, high and by the waist, before burying the last of her squeals in a kiss.

  When she pulled away from, her cheeks flushed from his affection.

  She stood tall before him, nearing his six feet in heels, with her brush of hazelnut skin and burst of cherry lips glistening under flash of blue light. Her dark hair fell in loose curls to her waist. Lila Dahl smoldered in tank tops and burned hot in the simplest of tees with curves melting to slimness and narrowing into nothing of a waistline.

  She kissed him again, in that way they always kissed. Never steady, never sure, but with just enough hunger to sate for an uncertain next time.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you so soon after summer,” she said. “Ronnie, Tito, and Paul will be so excited to know you’re back. Everyone will, really.”

  Tony pulled her in as snug as she could fit. She could save the guys for another day.

  For the moment, he wanted him and Lila and a little touching, maybe even a splash or two of alcohol. After all, he was of legal drinking age in Aruba.

  Chapter Eight

  Marbles. That was the word that rolled in Tak’s mind early the next day, glinting and changing direction as he squinted at the chrome wheels halting in the driveway.

  When Tak was a boy visiting family in Denver, his uncle Yoshi would always buy sacks of marbles for the boys to play. Three bags, with Tak, the guest, picking first. With the offering dangling, T
ak would look from it to his older cousin, Mike; certain that whichever one he chose would be the one Mike had to have. And when Tak grabbed it, Mike would cry out and claw for the prize.

  The size, color, or number of marbles in the bag never made any difference to Mike. Scuffed ones were desirable if Tak put a hand on them. Cracked ones even better, if that’s what Tak wanted. Eventually, Tak and Mike’s younger brother John made a game of it, eyeing out the least desirable sack and snatching at it greedily, only to trade it the second Mike opened his mouth and bawled.

  Once, when the marbles came around, Tak got a different idea. He stood there, like usual, with the dangling three bags, gaze shifting from them to Mike. He wanted to see, just once, what Mike would have wanted for himself, if he ever deigned to have his own mind. They were two pre-pubescent cowboys waiting on the draw, neither giving the slightest of signals—until a flicker of doubt sliced Mike’s features. The middle one came to Tak as a whisper. When he snatched for it, aqua boulders with lava red centers, Mike howled like a hyena. Grinning, Tak bolted with the bag, actually tearing the mesh away, and not realizing the extent of his damage until he hit the front door, where his marbles skated in a dozen different directions. Some off the stairs and some to the street, with a few into the dog house of his cousin’s only sometimes pleasant German Shepherd. There were marbles that seemed to evaporate, too, lost to foliage and mean-spiritedness Tak presumed.

  That was the memory Tak held on to as the Tanakas ushered in.

  His grandmother was the first to arrive, on the arm of Aunt June, who was Mike and John’s mother. Their dad, Yoshi, who was the younger brother of Tak’s father, trailed behind with luggage scraping his arms and scuffing the hardwood floor. He wouldn’t waste honest earned dollars on money-begging tips for the driver, his words. Instead, he wrestled his way in then yelled for Tak and Tony to help.

  An hour and a half later, Yoshi and June’s daughter Lauren arrived on a flight in from New Orleans. Still donning the raccoon shadows of a teen Goth era they’d hoped would pass, she was only a little rounder than the last time Tak had seen her. He accepted the one-armed uncommitted hug she offered, only to have it followed by a demand to know which room she’d been stuffed in. At the news that she’d share it with Mia, she cursed and said something about vacationing in Maui with friends instead.

  “It’s never too late!” Tak called after her, before Deena squeezed his arm in warning.

  “Lauren is Lauren,” she said. “She’s always been something of a lark.”

  Funny, he thought. A harsher word came to mind.

  Tak’s brother, Kenji, arrived with his burgeoning belly of a wife and two sons in tow: Brandon, who could have doubled as Noah’s younger and slighter twin, plus Elijah, who looked more like his mom than anyone. No sooner did Tak sweep the boys into a hug than did the door slam shut behind his favorite cousin, John.

  “Where’s your wife?” Tak said, setting the little ones aside so they could tear off at freight train speed.

  Color rose to John’s cheeks, but he merely shook his head.

  “Work,” he explained. “She sends her apologies.”

  It turned out Tak had a few apologies for him too.

  “Well, since you didn’t bring her, chances are that you’ll be bunking with your brother. Unless he decided to bring, what was her name again? Michelle.”

  John sighed. “We both know that Michelle deflates and rolls into his suitcase at night.”

  Indeed. Tak grinned before pulling his cousin into a mighty embrace, not because he didn’t see him often—they were neighbors nowadays—but because he sensed heaviness about him.

  “I’ll drop in later, OK?”

  Whatever the problem, Tak sensed that Allison’s absence had less to do with work overload and much more with the smoldering brunette he’d taken on as a secretary.

  Mike burst in with a pile of luggage, and Michelle, no doubt, in the folds. He wore a smoke gray tee with four elements of the periodic table mashed on the front, so it read: “Lithium, Carbon, Potassium me.”

  Deena burst like an orangutan, red faced and guffawing, as Tak looked from her to the shirt. His older cousin, finally peaking at the hairline, beamed and stood up a little straighter. Too pleased, as far as Tak was concerned.

  “Deena,” Mike said, in that way that always curled Tak’s hands into fists. “I knew you’d get it.” He passed his cousin to embrace his cousin’s wife, held her for a beat too long, and took off for the staircase.

  Halfway down the hall, Mike realized he had no idea where he was going and turned, only to make a show of noticing Tak for the first time.

  “Upstairs, third door on the right. With John,” Tak said.

  The clench in his jaw settled the second Mike disappeared. Deena, he knew, wasn’t the only one who had to suffer through the presence of family.

  “It was elements of the periodic table,” she explained. “‘L and i’ for lithium, ‘C’ for carbon and ‘k’ for potassium. The shirt said ‘lick me’.” She looked at him as if wondering about the quality of his education. “Jeez, honey. Didn’t you pay attention at all in school?”

  Tak rolled his eyes. “Only when they were passing out the paints.”

  The driver they’d hired for the duration of the stay ambled in, overstuffed bags hanging from his limbs.

  “Which room did he go to?” The middle-aged man breathed, mouth parted with a need to pant. Tak looked from the driver to Mike and back again, before shouting up a string of rudeness after his cousin. He’d turned the man into a bellhop, and like natural, expected Tak to tip.

  Their reunion had officially begun.

  Deena’s family arrived like the rolling flood of a severed dam about a half hour later. Aunts and cousins once, twice, and three times removed, poured in, each clapping Tak on the back and squeezing him. Next to him, his wife took nods of acknowledgment and lukewarm hugs instead. It made him think of the days when they were young and dating, fearful that neither of their families would accept the other. Now, Tak embraced every relative of his wife’s, accepted kisses on the cheek from some, and navigated surly greetings as surely as if they’d come from his kin. But none of that overshadowed Deena’s relationship with Tak’s father, who thought of her as his own; nor her relationship with Mike, who wasn’t beyond getting on one knee with a ring for her.

  Still, the ice greeting between Deena and the Hammonds was more than the usual clipped hellos, prompting Tak to ask her what it all had been about.

  His wife treated him to a polite, board meeting smile.

  “They know this is your doing,” she said. “And that I wouldn’t occupy the same room as them on purpose.”

  Mutually preferred distance is what she always called it. Though, he sometimes wondered how mutual.

  Chapter Nine

  As a Buddhist, Tak had no business overseeing the stringing up of Christmas decorations in the ballroom. Time rushed like speed dial, bleeding the overseeing of banquet duties into the festive nostalgia of Christianity.

  Housekeepers hoisted up on ladders, running blinking lights crosswise down the hall. For whatever reason, the left side stayed low no matter what he said, just like the Christians stayed busy no matter what he shouted after them. Deena, with her faux commitments: a phone call here, a text message there, only to scurry out when he spied her nibbling on strawberries.

  His uncle Yoshi strode in next and made a line for the yakitori. Hovering over the elongated grill to the right of a gargantuan Santa, he paused only to rummage through the skewers for the fattiest pieces, before moving from chicken to beef tongues.

  “Oli—”

  “Tell me when your father’s coming,” he gruffed, then spun around in a circle. “What? No sake?” He waved a skewer in Tak’s direction and cursed when a hunk of pork belly flopped onto the marble.

  “If you’d give them a chance to finish setting the food out—” Tak said, before stopping as Lauren fluttered into the room, gliding in layers of black fab
ric. Since Tak had seen her last, she’d touched up the raccoon shadows and paired it with some lipstick that looked like a wound.

  “Ugh, you’re eating again,” Lauren groaned and swept over to the food with a critical eye. “Soba, udon, sushi, rice, yadda, yadda, yes.” She halted at a pan of braised barbecue brisket. “Good Lord, yes,” she managed before going back for a plate.

  “Listen,” Tak said with an eye on more lopsided lights. “You guys should have a better eye for these Christmas decorations since—”

  “I have to go,” Lauren said and hoisted on the candied yams before departing.

  Uncle Yoshi, who had followed her plate with his eyes, went in for the yams himself.

  Tak opened his mouth to ask his uncle if he’d look over the remaining work since seemed content with camping out in the ballroom anyway, but then he remembered a thorny and dehydrated Christmas tree from years past, decked with stringed popcorn and homemade yarn ornaments. Tak’s mouth snapped shut on the request.

  “You want say something?” Yoshi said and shoved more butabara, or pork belly, in his mouth.

  A dollop of dark tare sauce hit the front of his white polo. He didn’t seem to notice.

  Were it not for the features, Deena once told him, the subtle things that made a Tanaka a Tanaka, she would have never believed that Tak’s father and this man were brothers. But it was all there for the seeing: smooth, rich golden skin, thick tresses that ran sleek as an oil slick, and in dark almond eyes that always seemed softer on the second or third look. After there, the changes grew subtle, losing themselves to the particulars. Sharper chisels of the face for Tak and his father left them with definition and a touch of stubborn chin. Uncle Yoshi, on the other hand, buried all that in plumpness.

  “I heard your son upstairs,” Yoshi said. “On bass. Better than you, I think.”

  He gave a mutter of appreciation for the food and dropped another splat of sauce.

  Say what you will about his family, Tak thought, they’d taken to Tony as sure and certainly as they had Mia or Noah. Predictably, a change surname was all it took.