Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale

by Pugh, Shewanda

  “How long do you think we have?” Deena said.

  Tak bit into a sliver of fruit, running a thin stream of juice down his hand.

  “Two minutes, maybe three.”

  “We could bolt the door.” Deena smiled. “Prop some furniture against it.”

  “Three for sure, in that case.”

  Footsteps thundered in the hall. Squealing children tornadoed past, close enough to rattle the exit.

  “And you wanted six children,” Deena said with a snort.

  “Wanted? Past tense?” His brows did a little jig.

  “Not from my body,” Deena said. “Not at this age.”

  “What? Just a minute ago you had all this need…”

  Deena sucked in a mouthful of red-faced horror and swatted him in the chest.

  “In case it wasn’t clear enough earlier, you don’t get to quote what I say in bed.”

  “How about reenact it? It’s not every day that you need someone.”

  Deena drifted in a fog of almost-comprehension, reaching and not quite grasping what he was really trying to say. She decided to go for the obvious.

  “Tak,” she said softly. “You can’t possibly be ready again already.”

  He took the fruit from her hand and set it to one side.

  “In all these years, there’s been no one I’ve felt more awe or admiration for. Everything you have, you got with these hands and this head.” Tak brushed curls from her cheek and ran a thumb along the curve of her face. “It’s been a long time since I felt like you needed me. For anything. So yeah, I could stand hearing that again.”

  It occurred to Deena that his words were meant to be a compliment. That this was his interpretation of her was his understanding of her life. But how had her own husband got it so wrong?

  “I need you,” Deena said. “Of course, I need you. How could you even say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “That!” She hit him. “What you just said.”

  He withdrew, skepticism knitting his face.

  “You love me. It’s not the same.”

  “Try losing someone you love and telling me that. Tell me it’s not the same then.”

  Her father. Her brother. Him. Which one hadn’t she needed?

  Tak gathered her to him absentmindedly and they fell into a time-worn embrace. Caresses found her before kisses, each one gentle, restrained. Years of urgency, stolen moments, and heat had steamrolled into quickies as their norm.

  “I think,” Tak said and kissed her, “that you can do without the clothes today, love.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Simple square molding ran along the base of the elongated white hall, chain-like and interrupted only by doors. Of all the entryways in sight, the one Mike stared at loomed larger than the others, more prodigious in a way he couldn’t understand. It blocked out sound well, and allowed only the occasional flicker of movement through the crevice beneath, an indicator that those inside still roamed. When the door cracked unexpectedly, Mike started, only to see that it was his Deena. She stepped out, shot a wayward glance back, and shut the door behind her.

  “Mike.”

  “Deena,” he resisted the urge to smile and failed.

  He’d gone all day without seeing her, without breathing, it seemed. Now that he’d heard her voice, he felt sated. Nourished even.

  “You and I need to talk,” she said in a clipped, business manner. “In private.”

  She called for a maid to bring her something to drink and she strode off, confident he’d follow.

  As if yearning gave him a choice.

  Downstairs, a DJ cranked out mindless pop hits. Laughter ferreted upward, interspersed with the occasional splash of pool water. Mike shot a look back at Deena’s bedroom. Tak must’ve been asleep.

  He scurried after her, eager.

  In the sitting room, a runty, dish-faced girl brought them wine. Mike watched her go, surprised she had an ass worth admiring. But when Deena spoke, he was all hers once again.

  “It gets stuffy in here.” She fanned herself, scowling, and sent aflutter the delicate ribbon at her neck. A simple shell top tied at the throat, a quick skirt, and she was stunning. “There are some ventilation flaws though. Guess that’s why no one uses it.”

  She looked at him as if unsure how he got there, before pouring herself a glass of wine. Mike followed her lead.

  “How would you describe your feelings for me?” Deena said.

  Mike froze with the wine at his lips.

  “Wow,” he said and set his glass down. “Are we really starting there?”

  “I think we should.”

  He swallowed. Steadied his pulse. Swallowed again.

  “I love you. I’m in love with you. I have been since college.”

  “Mike, please. You don’t even know me.”

  “I know you! Aren’t you listening? I’ve known you since college.”

  Deena stared. Stared until certainty melted from his face. Stared until hesitation found him.

  “You may have seen me,” she said. “You may have spoken to me. But I don’t remember you. You are my husband’s cousin. In my mind, you’re my cousin.”

  “Deena, please—”

  “I don’t know what you hope to accomplish, other than hurting your own blood. But I love Tak. You’d do well to never to forget it.”

  He watched her drink more wine, his eyes on the red liquid as it retreated.

  Mike wondered what made her think he sometimes forgot where her love lived. Every smile passed between her and his cousin, every thoughtless kiss, ran like a knife blade through and through.

  “He loves you,” Deena said. “Even now. Even now that you’d sit here and…covet his wife.”

  Mike snatched up his wine glass and busied himself drinking, lest he say something he’d regret. Had she really round him up just to mock him, just to make plain what he already knew? He couldn’t help himself. How else could he be? He loved her just as Tak did, neither needed to apologize.

  “I want to love you,” Deena said. “As a cousin loves another cousin. But please, put a stop to this. I will never give up Tak for you.”

  Escargot for roadkill was how she made the trade sound.

  Mike finished his wine and refilled, hands shaking as he poured to brimming. Cracked ice and mistakes was what his life felt like, broken glass and sharp stabs of confusion. He poured more wine for Deena, splashing her hands even when she told him to stop.

  Swallowing made sense. Liquid in his mouth, down his throat, belly warmed, repeat. He wanted words, smart, funny words, Tak-isms on tap. They could knit together fragments of a friendship with them, born in the bathroom but already dead it seemed.

  “Mike, please don’t—”

  Dampness splashed his cheeks, surprising him. He dashed it off and left his seat. The fresh air of a window would clear his mind, reset his thoughts.

  Downstairs, the music blared on.

  “Tell me what you’re working on. What’s in that pad you carry around?”

  “Oh,” she said and hesitated, going on only after he insisted on hearing. She fed him nonsense about skyscrapers, design theories, construction. With his gaze on the pool house, he imagined her there, nude. Mirrored images of him warred with the rage of conflicting feelings. The romantic him stood unapologetic, righteous about his love. Opposed to that was the boy who clung to his responsibility as the eldest grandchild and therefore one day expected to lead, as ojichan did, as Daichi does, as Mike one day looked forward to doing.

  But who would follow him? Who would follow Mike Tanaka?

  Weighted with his own thoughts, he turned to see Deena. Slumped, a miniscule snore ferreted from her pink parted lips.

  Wine stains, he realized. Wine stained her lips. He stirred at the thought.

  He looked at her, the door, then her again.

  She’d said that the room never got used. That no one ever came; no one ever used it.

  Mike threw back the last of his d
rink to steady the nerves and turned to face her once more.

  She sat on the couch, legs crossed on the cushions, with her head on an arm. Her empty wine glass rolled across the floor.

  “Deena,” Mike said. “Deena, wake up. Do you realize that you’re sleeping?”

  Nothing.

  He took a step toward her, chest heaving, and drank in her every slope. Even this, this unrestricted view of her had been denied for so long. Now he stood, eyes thirsting, devouring her figure.

  Alone. Where he could do anything. With no reason not to.

  Except that she laid unconscious, unwilling, and married to his cousin.

  Do it.

  Nerves. Nerves. Damn him where were his nerves? If he’d had any, he would have asked her out in college instead of—waiting for Casanova to show him how.

  “Deena,” Mike announced, loud as he dared. “I’m going to touch you. Tell me “no,” if you don’t want it.”

  He edged to the end of the couch. Swallowed. Took her face into his hands. Delicate, carved, with a pouting little mouth, her beauty framed by tri-colored curls. He could have contented himself to watch her sleep if their love were ever possible. Instead, he had but stolen moments, furtive glances, throbbing need.

  It was impossible to want a woman more.

  She smiled a secret smile left to a dream he yearned to join. To find her heart, to hold her mind, to be the one that made her smile there—that would be happiness. But happiness wasn’t his.

  “Tak. Move closer,” she murmured. “Don’t go to sleep mad again.”

  At first, he caught the sense of triumph welded to the word “again” and found comfort in the instability of his cousin’s flailing marriage. A closer examination of her words, however, had his heart launching into his throat. Did she…did she think he was Tak? Was it the feel of Mike that she truly asked for?

  Mike stood and stared at her lips. He bent low, then retreated. Clear across to the far side of the room, where a bead of sweat parted his brow.

  God, she was so beautiful.

  He returned to her, feet moving double time, only to halt a fraction of an inch from her face.

  He exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled.

  Pressed a whisper of a kiss.

  And jerked away.

  He couldn’t stand this. His nerves couldn’t stand this violent somersault of emotions, this straining need in his pants. If only he could…walk away.

  She’d tasted like wine. Wine and desire and stillness and Oh God if he couldn’t have more.

  He couldn’t bear the want, couldn’t possibly not nurse this need.

  He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t dare. Not to his cousin’s wife. Not to the boy he’d run and jumped and wrestled with. Not to a cousin he loved.

  He did love Tak. Only, he’d loved Deena more.

  Mike drifted to her. Put a hand to her face. His thumb, content to trace her cheek, her smile, the swell of her lip, drifted lower, to her chin, then the pulse of her neck. Air came in great drenches, vast drags for him. Fire scorched his belly. His gaze caught downward at the opening of her collar.

  He teased at the skin of her collarbone. Deena stirred and he froze. Cold seconds of fear ticked. Finally, he clamped his mouth down on hers.

  His hand found her leg, bare with the slight rise of her skirt. Mike lingered at her knee, teetered at her thigh, traced fingers round to her ass.

  She was drunk enough, he realized. Drunk enough to not wake up if he touched her in the right way, if he did things without too much jerking. He’d seen drunk girls black out in college; he’d seen other guys have their way.

  Thrill and disgust shot through him.

  He thought back to the holiday vacation where Daichi introduced her as a colleague. One night, Mike happened upon her and Tak making love. He’d seen the fullness of her curves and the power of her want; he’d seen her take desire out on his cousin. To have that, to have the illusion of that—Mike ignited at the thought.

  He could fuck her, whether she liked it or not, and no one—no one, would know the truth.

  Except he would. He would know that he raped the woman he’d been in love with for years, that he had raped his cousin’s wife.

  Rape.

  That’s what it was, wasn’t it? While he’d been seducing himself with thoughts of love and lovemaking, he’d been grooming her for rape.

  Rape didn’t seem like the outcome of love at all.

  Over the years, Mike had begged, cried, screamed, and blackmailed for anything and everything Tak ever had. Money, cars, vacations—his parents had nearly lost their home to a second mortgage because he had to summer in Paris—like Tak. And on the rare occasion when no one would give him what Tak had, Mike took it anyway and made it his.

  It. Deena had become their it. An object, a thing. One more glittering thingamajig that dulled the moment he seized it.

  Except she hadn’t dulled yet and he wanted it still. In fact, he could see it through the peek of panties under her skirt. He could put his hand there, his mouth even, and make her moan. But when she did—when she did moan—she’d think of Tak, she’d be with Tak. She was the thing Mike couldn’t own. She was the line he couldn’t get cross.

  Mike straightened first her skirt, then her blouse, breaths escaping him in raged fashion.

  Rape Tak’s wife. Tears of shame pricked his eyes and choked his throat. Ojiichan, their grandfather, looked down on him with shame.

  Mike stood and the door opened.

  It was the dish faced girl. She sauntered in, bent to pick up Deena’s glass and gave him a view of her ass.

  “What?” Mike barked when she faced him, questioning plain in her eyes.

  “N—nothing,” she said and went for the wine bottle.

  It was an expensive vintage and still half full, though she swept it into hurrying hands. Mike grabbed her by the arm.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Cleaning, sir. Unless you—”

  “That wine cost more than you make in a week,” he said, tasting cruelness and liking it.

  “Can I pour you another glass then?”

  She held out the cup from the floor. It shook.

  Her tremble coursed power through him, more power than he’d ever felt, perhaps.

  “You drink it,” Mike said.

  She looked around. “But…there are no more glasses.”

  Mike took the bottle from her and pressed it to her lips. She stared at him, eyes watery.

  “Drink.”

  She opened her mouth, sucking like a babe. He was reminded of a time in junior high. Clustered in a locker room with boys much hairier, it seemed that he alone had yet to develop. With his slight pale frame and hint of ribs, Mike was the brunt of taunting each day. “Whoa, what an ugly girl!” “Hey ugly girl, choke on this milk. It’ll help you grow.” He had choked on milk that day, as they poured and let it dribble down his chin, chastising when any spilled.

  He heard those taunts as he force fed her wine, as it dribbled on her heaving chest, as Deena snored. When Mike set the bottle aside, he saw it. Fire. Ambivalence. Intimidation.

  “My room,” he said and opened the door, taking the last of the wine with him.

  He watched her walk into the hall. Square shoulders, sausage legs, a dwarfish sort of frame. Had he thought her ass okay before? Deena, he knew, had supple round curves, each one weighted and feminine.

  In his bedroom, Mike locked the door, took the wine and drank. When he wiped his mouth, she reached for the alcohol. He handed it over and watched her drink.

  Once she’d had her fill, he set the bottle down, leaving a swallow at the bottom of the glass. Mike shed his pants, backed her to the bed, shoved up her skirt and mounted.

  He recognized the look on her face, knew it for what it was. She would have preferred the other Tanaka, it said. No matter, he could say the same.

  He’d had a hard-on since rubbing Deena’s lips, already it threatened soreness. Pressed together, crotch to crotch and padded
by clothes, Mike humped the maid, eyes closed.

  The first girl he’d ever fucked had been no Deena Tanaka. She was a pudgy little gimp with frizzed red hair and a spit pooling lisp. Freckles smeared like dirt on her face and narcolepsy plagued her. Chana McGhoul from Somerset. They’d been in the Science Fiction Club at M.I.T. together.

  On first meeting her, Mike hadn’t given her much thought, except to tell her try harder at not being a walking joke. At every meeting she made a point of detaining him. Eventually, she asked him out for pizza. When they went, she ate most of it.

  She wanted him to walk her back to her dorm, which felt laughable since she was bigger than him. Once there, Chana invited him in for coffee and served it from a pot stained with grease. Not that it mattered that grease floated in his drink. The moment he sat down, she asked to make out.

  Mike had never made out before, had never even kissed. But with a greedy, awkward, grease-drinking Chana, he felt emboldened, like he couldn’t go wrong. So, he moved in, mouth open and winced at the taste of onions he’d picked off his lone slice of pizza. Pulling back, withering in disgust, he was caught by the button of his jeans. Chana yanked it, springing him free. Never had a hand other than his own been there, and he couldn’t have anticipated the flood of sensation she’d give him. She gripped him through the boxers and jerked twice and he choked out a cry of pleasure in response.

  She’d shoved him in her mouth next. No preamble, no overtures. Just him in her for a minute. When he came free, he shoved on her back. Mike, treated to another whiff of onion, closed his eyes and concentrated on the softness, but faltered at the sound of her coarse breathing. She’d shed her clothes. A pump had him in, then a pause. Another pump, then a pause, bare skin stuck to bare skin.

  Apparently looks had little to do with how good a woman felt.

  Her breaths had been all dragon snarls and groans though, making him cringe even as he dug in. Six hard shoves were all he could manage, before spilling out and hurrying for clothes. A week later had him back with Chana, with eight pumps over last time’s six.

  This girl wasn’t much better. She didn’t smell, but she had a body like old laundry.