Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (12 page)

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.

The sounds coming from her mouth grated him, so he clamped a hand over her lips when it came time to thrust.

She was dry and he told her. She was ugly and he told her. He hated this and he told her that, too.

He hated this girl.

Eyes clamped tight, he said it was Deena, and that she didn’t want him, that he’d shoved into Deena anyway.

She-had-no-choice.

Mike gave a single savage thrust. Her back arched, neck corded, she whimpered behind his hand. Glistening, wide eyes stared back at him. Accusing. And ojiichan called from the end of a tunnel, from a place to far to reach him. Mike’s lungs couldn’t find enough air.

Fire shot through his veins, unrelenting. He bathed in the ragged up and down of her chest, thrilled at the unchecked fright in her eyes.

“I’m hurting you,” he said and slammed in.

She screamed into his palm, back like a bow, raising up as if to meet his assault.

He took away his hand and kissed her hard on the mouth. He yanked down her shirt and kneaded one triangle of a breast clear down to the ribs. He repeated with the other, twisting both until they reddened. Tears painted her cheeks.

Mike asked her if he should stop.

“No,” she said firmly.

Nothing about her said that she enjoyed being used. Not the tears in her eyes, not the trembling lip. Still, she told him not to stop.

He hated this girl.

Mike gripped her waist and rammed, then held with insistent pressure. A gasp escaped her and she shoved at his abdomen; he dug until fresh tears sprang.

Deena, he thought, unable to stop him from having her. A thrill shot up his spine. One brutal stroke followed another, before a savage rhythm found him. She sobbed, filling the hand that covered her mouth with saliva.

Deena beneath him, legs open, he told himself, and ignited on a hammer of vicious pumps.

He didn’t care what she wanted. He didn’t care who she loved. She had no choice but to make him come.

Mike erupted on a tide of brutal strokes.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Punishment. That’s what his father called this. Chained to a room all day and all night with a narcissist who found his own voice captivating. No satellite meant no television, though Tony did still have his phone. Trading insults via text with Lizard did nothing to lift his mood. He wanted to call Wendy—she could always cheer him—except calling her meant explaining what he’d done.

He couldn’t do that.

Tony stared out his bedroom window. For awhile, he’d tried to content himself with the sounds of family having fun. But when that fun came at his expense...

Lloyd cleared his throat. Standing in the vanity mirror, he straightened the collar of his button shirt and grinned at his reflection.

“Aren’t you going to ask me where I’m going, roomie?”

Tony shot him a look.

“No. Because it’s obvious you want me to.”

Lloyd turned to face him. With one hand on the vanity stand, he leaned into it, and took in his younger cousin.

They weren’t so many years apart, Tony, Lloyd and the other two brothers that flanked him most days, Remy and Damien. The oldest of them, Damien, was but 22 to Lloyd’s 21 and Remy’s 20. But they aged like Benjamin Button. Why he hadn’t thought of them when the clothes went missing Tony couldn’t know.

“I’ve got a date tonight,” Lloyd said. “And I’m prettying myself up for a pretty little girl.”

“Who could you be seeing? You don’t even know anyone.”

Lloyd’s eyes danced as if delighted he’d finally asked. “I know one girl. A bare-breasted in the gardens kind of gal.”

“Lloyd—”

A grin played across the older boy’s lips.

Lloyd turned back to the mirror. “You’re not her boyfriend, are you?”

He smiled at Tony’s sheepish expression. “Exactly.”

He went back to adjusting the shirt. On squinting, Tony realized it was his.

He stood.

“I swear to God, I’m gonna pound you. If you don’t quit playing, I’ll—”

Lloyd sauntered for the door, arms swinging, pep in his every step.

“How are you gonna do all that from there, little cuz? Lord knows you wouldn’t try daddy.”

Tony’s nostrils flared. But as Lloyd said, he rooted into his spot. Not daring to cross the threshold.

“Night, night, little one.” He shut the door behind him.

Tony kicked it, then cursed.

Lila. His Lila.

No, she wasn’t his girlfriend, but he had a claim on her nonetheless.

Didn’t he?

Tony turned in a circle. He needed out of that room. He needed to see where Lloyd was going, what he was doing, and for how long. He needed to know if Lila had turned to his cousin and away from him.

He wasn’t fool enough to think that she was his alone, especially when his visits were sporadic. Still, he held on to the notion that Tony in Aruba meant only Tony with Lila.

He ventured to the window. A jump straight down could chuck him onto a terrace table, shattering it and ending his chance for answers. He’d have to slither down the wall for results. Which, of course, was stupid.

There was only the door.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Tony’s door swung open with deceptive simplicity. He stood there, Adam’s apple mobile, and contemplated retreating. His father’s punishments were notorious, brutal in their creativity all the while delivering an unequivocal message. On the day that he got his Porsche, he’d stayed out two hours past curfew. The next night, he did the same. On coming home that time, he found a note attached to the door. In his father’s large, lazy script were instructions he never forgot: Step One: Open the box on the porch. Step Two: Remove blankets and pillow. Step Three: Sleep in the hammock out back. Next time, there’ll be no box.

Still, Tony stepped out, a single step, and cocked his head for a concentrated listen. He frowned at the silence.

Door closed behind him, he started for the stairs. The hall stretched on in a magician’s trick that never ended. Door after door, mile after mile, until his heartbeat assaulted his ears. A moan of ecstasy drifted toward him. Tony’s mouth curled down with repulsion as a single word rattled plain in his head: gross.

He put a hand on the rail and a foot on the stair. Too many to go down, too certain to creak. A glance down showed a scurrying maid. He hissed at her. She stopped. Looked up.

“Help me,” Tony said. “I need to get out. Is anyone down there?”

She made the sign of the cross and ran.

Coward.

He started down the stairs. Music from the backyard drew near. Bass-laden old funk gave a cover that could only help, masking the sound of his descent.

He made it to the entrance hall and cast a glance left then right for his sister. She was the only one he’d trust to help him, the only one he felt sure of.

Tony slammed into Mia on turning a corner.

“Watch where you’re going,” she spat, skateboard tucked under one arm.

Then her brows knitted for the long look.

“What are you doing down here? Dad’ll murder you, you know. Turn you into kielbasa sausage or something.”

Tony’s cheeks warmed. While he’d wanted his sister’s help, now that she stood there, he couldn’t form the right words.

“Lloyd. He—he says he’s going out on a date with Lila.”

Mia’s face wrapped into a scowl, before she dropped her skateboard and mounted it. She shoved wild, jet black coils from her face, only to have them spring back in. A resonated sigh later, she shook her head.

“I’ve told you about that girl. Over the summer, I told you—”

“That was the summer, Me. Now could you keep it down? I’ve got to know what’s happening.”

“What’s happening is that you’re obsessed with some skank because her knockers are huge. You, like every other guy, use her appearance to bolster your ego.” Mia shrugged. “I don’t get it. But maybe in a year or two I’ll look like Mom, guys’ll go in heat at the sight of me, and then I’ll understand.”

Truth was, boys were already half gone over her. Truth was, his kid sister, straddling the fence of puberty, had begun a not-so-subtle shift that hadn’t escaped notice. Boys left notes in her locker; one once wrote her a poem. Tony trashed them and ran the guys off with threats of mutilation. It wasn’t that he liked or particularly wanted the stereotype of fierce older brother. It was only that in thinking of Lila, in the way he thought of Lila, he had no stomach for his baby sister in a similar role.

“Tony,” Mia said, voice softened. “Did you see if the sedan was out front? If the driver’s here, then Lloyd’s here and probably in the billiard room playing Pac Man.”

She was right.

All three brothers huddled at the Pac-Man machine, with Lloyd at the center jerking it and kicking. To the left of them was the button up he’d worn for Tony’s benefit, draped across a chair unwrinkled.

Remy saw Tony first, then nudged the others.

The laughter started. Deep, rolling guffaws that landed one boy on top of the other. Smacks of the thigh and belly clenching, they were bent over and howling with it.

He thought of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, where the brunt of joke would have his head transformed into a massive red sucker. If that weren’t bad enough, the massive lollipop would have “SUCKER” printed across it.

“Look at his face,” Damien gasped. “We need a camera. We need a picture. Lloyd said you’d be a—”

“Sucker,” Tony supplied.

“And it was true,” Lloyd said. “Only, you got here too early. I had plans for lipstick on my shirt, a bit of perfume. Anything to watch you go ape up the walls, little cousin. You’re just so good at it.”

Tony thought back to the boy who’d been desperate for a family. The old him who’d hitchhiked from Bismarck. He wanted to tell them that this wasn’t exactly what he meant.

“I should pound you,” was what he said instead.

But Lloyd only turned back to his game.

“You’ve got a temper, little cousin. Counseling might help.”

“You actually thought he’d sleep with your girl,” Remy said, smile now fading. “Your own cousin, messing with your girl? You must think so much of us.”

And the tide rushed back, shifting fault from them to him. He was the one who disappointed. He was the reason the joke worked.

Tony groped for tendrils of victimhood, sought ways to plead his own case. They were Hammonds, he wanted to say, and in their family, worse things had happened. Except none of those things involved them, so who knew how it all really went? Everything involved dead people with versions never told.  They had nothing of the anger and envy that ripped their parents’ generation. The most they felt was a scratch of annoyance when the grownups harped on old things.

He decided to leave. But not before cursing each one: to an accidental step on a rusty nail, to a growth of man boobs in their prime.

Then he started for his bedroom.

“Wait,” Lloyd said. “At least let us help you get back up.”

Tony blinked once, in surprise, before following his cousin’s lead.