Crimson Footprints (7 page)

His first artistic triumph
came as an undergraduate at UCLA after winning a citywide
collegiate competition. The grand prize was an art gallery showing
with major press. From it, he was able to segue a short-lived fame
into a full-fledged gallery deal, first in Miami, and then
eventually in Manhattan.

He should’ve considered
himself successful. Last year, he’d been commissioned to do an oil
painting for the Miami Museum of Art and the earnings for it alone
were stellar. Better still, his gallery showings were always well
attended and always profitable. But his scale for weighing success
was tilted and broken—after all, he was the son of Daichi Tanaka.
Short of morphing into Picasso, Van Gogh, or his father, his
version of success was all but unattainable.

CHAPTER SIX

Deena arrived at her
grandmother’s house in time for breakfast. There were grits on the
stove alongside sausage links, eggs, bacon and flapjacks. Coffee
brewed in the percolator while orange juice waited on the table.
But Deena could stomach no food. Not before what she had to
do.

She stared at the flimsy
slab of door that stood between her and Anthony’s room. White and
peeling, he’d slammed it in her face in a thousand variations of
exasperation, anger, annoyance.

What she wouldn’t give for
him to slam that door once more.

Deena brought a hand to the
brass knob and hesitated. Never had she walked into Anthony’s room
unannounced. There was something so final about presuming to do so,
so irreversible, that her body seemed unwilling to do it. She
turned the brass knob and the door slipped open.

There.

It’s done.

The room was stale; the
white curtains drawn and already gathering dust. Air Jordans were
strewn about—an orange and red one near the entrance, its match
near the window, a purple one at her feet, the other absent. Deena
stared at those shoes, her brother’s pride, and a bitter sort of
amusement washed over her. How many times had Anthony declared that
his shoes were off limits, that they would be touched only over his
dead body? How right had he been?

Deena moved to open the lone
window. The heat and smell of old sneakers threatening to smother
her. His window caught, refusing to open; and she abandoned it.
Looking around, Deena realized she’d neglected to bring a box or
bag for mementos. She headed for the kitchen and returned with a
fistful of Glad bags.

Deena worked slowly,
gathering and folding his shirts and pants, paying them the
attention that he never did. Her mind was on autopilot, processing
data and giving orders through the ripest pain she’d ever known.
She bagged shirts, shoes and sneakers for Goodwill, before digging
out a pair of Jordans for herself. They were his first pair, as
gleaming as the day he’d bought them. Varsity red and white, the
sneakers were a vintage tribute to originals released two decades
earlier. Deena set them aside. They would join a fitted Miami Heat
cap and a bracelet he used to wear, now in her closet at
home.

She moved on to his dresser,
an old oak hand-me down with five drawers and froze at the sight of
his keys.

Air eluded her.

Silver and unassuming, the
keys sat, forgotten.

Deena lifted them with
trembling fingers and closed the keys in her fist.

He’d forgotten them that
night, left there on the dresser as he went to his death. Would he
have returned had he remembered? Would he have lived had he
remembered?

She brought the keys to her
heart. Choked on a sob. Never would they be used again. Not at her
house or her grandmother’s or anywhere.

Ever.

In the end, it was the keys
and that single, unforgiving word that brought her to her knees.
Never would she see her brother again.

Ever.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Deena reached underneath the
leather bucket seat and felt for a lever. When she found it, she
adjusted her chair so that the back was bone straight and knees
brushed the steering wheel. With a deep breath, she turned and
looked at Tak.

“
You can’t drive like
that,” he said.

Deena frowned. “But, I want
to be sure I can reach—”

He leaned over and yanked
the handle. Her seat shot back.

“
I said you can’t drive
like that. It’s too close. Plus, you look ridiculous.”

She pursed her lips. “Fine.
But can I at least get close enough to reach the steering
wheel?”

“
Steering wheel, yes,
headlights no.”

She rolled her eyes. “You
exaggerate, as always.”

“
Probably. Now come on.
Hands at ten and two.”

Deena swallowed. For a
much-welcomed twenty-fifth birthday present, these driving lessons
were causing her a fair amount of stress.

“
Can you give me a sec? I
mean, I’m wrestling with nerves here. You’re teaching me to drive
in a Ferrari.”

She stared at the instrument
panel. The car had six speedometers.

“
We’ll go slow. I promise.
But we’ve got to start to go at all.”

She nodded.

“
Ok. What first? I’m all
yours.”

Tak grinned as if tempted
beyond reason.

“
Don’t, Deena Hammond. I’m
but a man.”

He smiled at her
blush.

“
Tell you what. Let’s
practice changing gears. Foot on the clutch. As you push in shift
from first to second.”

Deena nodded; her left foot
sliding to the clutch as her right hand found the
gearshift.

“
Do that up to six, then
back down to one a couple of times.”

“
But this feels
silly.”

“
Good. Let me know when it
feels natural.”

Deena sighed.

After absentmindedly
whistling
Sakura, Sakura
for a few moments,
a
song he’d told her was from his childhood, he turned to her once
more.

“
Put the car in
neutral.”

“
Am I going to drive
now?”

“
That’s the
plan.”

He sat up straighter. “Now
push the clutch in, start the car, then slowly take your foot off
the clutch.”

She smiled weakly, but
stayed planted. There’d been no driver’s ed, no uncle with an old
jalopy, and certainly no dad to teach her to drive. In fact, at
twenty-five, this was her first time behind the wheel of a car. She
just wished it wasn’t a Ferrari.

“
It’s okay. I promise, I’ve
paid the insurance,” he said.

She knew it wasn’t okay if
she wrecked it, and that he was just making her feel better. She
appreciated the effort.

“
Okay,” she
whispered.

He placed a hand over hers,
warm and strong.

“
Foot on the
clutch?”

“
That’s the one on the
left, right?”

“
That would be
it.”

“
Then, yes.”

Palm over hers, he turned
the key in the ignition. She glanced at the hand, larger and
lighter, and exhaled at the slight pressure he applied. They were
the hands of a painter—nimble, skilled, practiced. His livelihood
depended on the preciseness of his touch, the softness or hardness
of the pressure he applied, the stroke that he used.

Deena exhaled noisily.
There. That was enough of that kind of thinking.

“
Okay now, shift to first,
then off the clutch. Easy does it.”

She inhaled and her foot
inched until it pained with the careful, creaking way she moved
it.

“
It’s moving! What do I
do?”

There was wide-open parking
lot before her and beyond that, a fence.

“
Give me a little to the
left.”

He covered her hand on the
steering wheel and used it to turn.

She gripped the ten and two
o’clock positions and attempted to turn the wheel. The result was
an awkward twist of the body that made Tak laugh.

“
What?” Deena said. But she
was smiling. He didn’t laugh at her wasn’t the way Aunt Caroline or
Keisha did, when he laughed at her, it made her smile
instinctively.

“
You can’t keep your hands
there, Dee. It’s just a starting place.”

Dee.
He’d begun to call her that lately, and she liked it. She’d
never had a nickname before.

She glanced at
him.

“
I knew that.”

“
Liar.”

He turned his attention to
the parking lot. “Start turning left. We’re just going to circle
this thing until you get the hang of it.”

“
And until I can go
straight?”

He grinned. “Yeah. That
too.”

There was driver’s ed at her
high school, but with one teacher and 3600 students, enrollment was
near impossible. Likewise, when she was a teenager, there’d been no
one in her family with money enough for a car, let alone private
instruction. Hence, her first lesson so late.

After stalling the car three
times in a hasty abandonment of the clutch, Deena now inched around
the near-empty parking lot of a Miami Beach retirement home to the
backdrop of a setting sun. A slung-low chain fence circled the
property, accented by a series of low and manicured hedges. Three
cars were parked at the front—an old white Chevrolet, a green Ford
pickup and a red Toyota Camry. Behind them were six rows of empty
spaces, spaces that Deena weaved through pitifully.

“
You’re doing great,” Tak
said.

She grinned. It wasn’t true
of course, but she couldn’t remember the last time someone had lied
to spare her feelings.

“
Thank you for that,” she
said. “And by ‘that’ I mean the lie.”

“
Well, progress is great in
my book. And moving is progress.” He patted her knee. “Besides,
you’re way too hard on yourself.”

She concentrated on the
asphalt between the front row and the empty spaces. He was right,
of course, but his intuition with her was unnerving.

“
You can’t possibly know
that. You don’t even know me.”

He glanced at her. “You
don’t believe that. At least not the way you’re saying
it.”

He was right again, of
course, but he needn’t be so damned confident about it.

“
You want to say
something.”

He grabbed the wheel and
sharpened her turn to avoid a slow collision with the fence. She
snatched her foot from the clutch and again, the Ferrari shut
down.

“
Sorry,” she
said.

“
Relax. No harm done. And
anyway, it’s just a possession.”

She grew up in a carless
family. She knew what it was to need a ride, miss a bus, find a
place inaccessible because of the public transportation route. A
car was not just a possession.

“
Spoken like a rich kid,”
she said and started the car again, foot on the clutch.

“
I wasn’t always rich,” he
said. “But you’re right, I’ve never been poor. Not even close.
Unless you count the time I called my
otosan
an asshole and he emptied my
bank account.”

“
Otosan
?” Deena echoed.

“
Dad.”

“
You called Daichi an
asshole?” She’d seen his father fire someone for accidentally
calling him Mr. Tanala, she couldn’t imagine he’d have much
threshold for profanity.

“
Yeah, he took it about as
well as you’d expect. Told me he’d show me what an asshole was, and
yeah, he did.”

Tak grinned.

“
I can’t believe you have
your teeth. Boy, my grandma doesn’t even allow backtalk, let alone
cursing at her.”

He glanced at her. She was
circling the parking lot again.

“
What?”

He shook his head. “I
thought you told me your family was kind of rough. Jail, teen
pregnancies, that kind of thing.”

Deena nodded. “Yeah?
So?”

“
So, I’m thinking, maybe
back talk is the least of her worries.”

Deena burst out laughing.
Her sentiments exactly.

PART TWO

CHAPTER EIGHT

Grandpa Eddie used to say
that everything had a beginning, middle and end. Lizzie’s beginning
was in the sixth grade when her math teacher offered to pass her if
she showed him her tits.

Mr. Carson was his name, and
he was a pudgy and pale-faced guy who sweat all the time. He’d
locked the door to his classroom that day and pulled down the
shades, before turning to an eleven-year-old Lizzie.