“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 Ta
k 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.
“My apologies, Mrs. Tanaka, but professionalism dictates that I not dally.” He gave a curt nod. “Expect to hear more from me regarding our disagreement.”
Daichi headed for the door.
“Conference meeting in an hour,” he reminded her, as if she suddenly needed such reminders, and disappeared from sight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Deena entered the conference room, a massive and windowless space with an elongated table for twenty-four at its center. Around it were black leather swivel chairs, each occupied by the senior-most members of the firm. There was no board of directors at the Tanaka firm, no board for one of the largest architectural firms in the world, because, despite its size, Daichi considered it a family company. Only a Tanaka would sit at the helm of the company, and when one was no longer available, its doors would close. Such was the belief of Daichi Tanaka.
Deena took a seat at the far end, on what would be Daichi’s right side, where he preferred her. The seat to his left and across from her was empty. It was where Kenji sat, and it would remain glaringly empty until his arrival. Despite the earliness of the hour, all partners were present and only two seats sat vacant. However, Daichi stood over his, surveying his partners with an always critical eye.
“Deena, I’ve been meaning to tell you. Your work on Kansas City National Bank was stellar. Guaranteed to win an award, I think,” Jennifer Swallows said carefully.
As with any words she spoke, Deena took them in, turning and inspecting for the true meaning beneath. Given that there were but two women in the highest ranks of a near-exclusively male firm, it would’ve been natural to assume that Jennifer, the older woman, and Deena, would’ve bonded instantly. But from the moment of Deena’s hire, the senior architect made it clear that she was a threat. Instead of the support Deena anticipated receiving, Jennifer criticized her loudly and often on issues both great and small, making a point of masking advice with obvious challenges to her intelligence. When Daichi first sought to mold Deena and prop her up, Jennifer and her flunky, Walter Smith, gossiped religiously and worked covertly to undermine her efforts. Finally, when it became apparent that Deena had surpassed her both in reputation and prestige, Jennifer sought out a more demure, though no less hostile, stance, despite her increasingly advanced age.
Seventy.
It seemed to Deena that seventy brought a maturity with it that should’ve admonished against malicious gossip, distasteful jokes, relentless criticism, and pointless insults. But Mia had been two years old before even the jabs about the inherent benefits in screwing a Tanaka finally wore off. At the height of it all, an openly gay Walter Smith approached Deena at the annual winter cocktail party and inquired as to whether Daichi’s younger son happened to be homosexual. When she indicated that he wasn’t, Walter insisted that Deena hurry up and get married so that the men of the firm would have means to screw their way to the top of the Tanaka firm too. Though Deena hadn’t shared their exchange with another, Walter had been fired by Monday morning just the same.
Already, her thoughts were with the prison designs upstairs and all she needed to do. With a sigh, Deena skimmed the meeting’s itinerary in an effort to gauge the amount of time she’d be forced to sit and wallow. Attendance, a call to order—as if anyone dared be out of order with Daichi Tanaka present—and a CEO/Principal Architect report by Daichi. There would be no way of estimating how long such a report could take. Deena did know, however, that any report by Daichi would be weighted with numbers, figures, percentages, and performance measures not just of architects at their principal location, but at Rio, Tokyo, Mumbai, and more. Each time Deena considered the twenty-six locations with the Tanaka logo at its helm, she remembered the meeting so many years ago, when her inattentiveness had caused her to inadvertently make the case for laying off fifteen percent of the architects, engineers, planners, interior designers, graphic designers, and administrative staff throughout the world—a number that totaled nearly fourteen hundred people. Both the guilt and hate mail she subsequently received served as catalyst for many a sleepless night.
With Deena’s marriage to Tak, Daichi awarded her partnership as a wedding gift of sorts. The gesture was unmistakably clear. Tanakas did not, as a rule, believe in divorce. And Deena’s marriage to Tak was as much a merger of her interests to that of the Tanakas, in so far as his father was concerned. Her career goals became Daichi’s and vice versa. As a Tanaka, he could only benefit from any strides she made in the field.
Both Deena’s expanded role at the firm and her marriage were still new when the economy finally began to turn up from its drastic decline. When Daichi sought to expand into new territory, t
his time Shanghai, Deena insisted on coming along. Her father-in-law took it as a sign of unshakeable ambition. A blushing bride with her career still in sight? It seemed to make him love her all the more. And so it was that the newlywed couple packed, halted work on the construction of their new house, and moved to Shanghai for two months. Now, as Daichi stood before her, he undoubtedly toyed with the idea of expansion once more.
Kenji stormed in, whirlwind that he was, adjusting his tie with fumbling fingers. Deena rushed to meet him, thereby blocking the board’s view of the Tanaka they swore would be the end of the firm.
“Where’s your briefcase?” she demanded, adjusting his knot with practiced fingers. “How will you take notes? And did you remember the research you were supposed to do on aggressive minority recruitment?”
“No time.”
There was nothing he could have been doing more important. Nothing.
“Kenji—”
“Deena, would you move so I can sit down? I mean, seriously. You—”
She had a thousand questions for him, each more exasperated than the last, but his cheeks were scorched, and his father was glaring, so she scrambled back to her seat. A last look at the poorly adjusted fabric about his neck reminded Deena that it had been she who’d tied his tie the night of his prom, for his high school graduation, and for graduation from college.
Daichi rounded the room to Deena, slammed a hand on the hardwood table hard enough to make Deena jump, and leaned in, expression severe.
“I would recommend that you take your own advice, Mrs. Tanaka, regarding professionalism, and curtail your behavior so that it complies with standard decorum in my conference room. Any further distractions from you or Mr. Tanaka will result in both of you receiving a standard reprimand under Article III, Section 2.15 of the Effective Code of Conduct Policy. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes—yes, Daichi,” Deena murmured.
She glanced at a wide-eyed Kenji, who looked from father to sister, as if waiting for further explanation.
Daichi stalked to the front of the room.
“What?” Kenji whispered.
Deena shot him an exasperated look.
Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings Page 11
