Crimson Footprints (3 page)

The doors of Emmanuel Rises
opened and he looked up. Just then, his reason for staying stepped
in and made her way down the aisle. Automatically, Takumi stood up
straighter.

She didn’t so much walk as
flow, the black silk of her dress like a caress against curves.
Ample in that perfect way only a woman could be, the undulations of
her body reminded him of the Salween, the last free-flowing river
in South Asia.

“
It’s you,” she
whispered.

She looked up at him with
eyes flecked in gold, a shimmering sliver of melted bronze under
long, thick lashes. They stole his words momentarily.

“
I was thinking the same
thing,” he said eventually.

She hesitated.

“
What are you doing
here?”

Takumi looked away. He
couldn’t tell this woman whose name he knew only from a funeral
program that he’d not come to pay his respects but because he knew,
she’d be there.

“
I don’t know,” he said. “I
saw what happened in the paper and—and—and I’m sorry.”

They fell silent. She gave a
rough nod and blinked back obvious tears. When they fell anyway,
she dashed them away in impatience. He felt helpless,
impotent.

Suddenly, she looked up at
him.

“
Why were you there? In
Liberty City that night?”

He hesitated, not sure why
he felt embarrassed. His work had never embarrassed him
before.

“
I was um, looking for
inspiration.”

She raised a
brow.

“
Inspiration?”

“
Yeah.”

He shifted his
weight.

“
I’m an artist. I
paint.”

“
Paint what?”

Takumi shrugged. “Oh, I
don’t know. Hope. Happiness. Regret. Stuff like that.”

An almost smile crept to her
lips, lips that were fuller than he remembered, like strawberries
ripe to bursting. Her eyes widened.

“
Fascinating,” she
whispered.

He couldn’t have said it
better himself, though their thoughts were far apart, he would
bet.

“
So…Did you find it? Did
you find your inspiration?”

And there it was—a twinkle,
a twinkle behind weary hazel eyes. She was teasing him. And he
liked it.

Takumi grinned.

“
Like you wouldn’t
believe.”

He caught a glimpse of a
cross behind her and his smile faltered with the memory of why a
Buddhist stood in the middle of a Baptist church. He shot a look at
the double doors.

“
Sweetheart, if you—if you
stay any longer you’ll miss the burial.”

He wanted the words back
instantly; the words that stole the twinkle and almost-smile she’d
given him so willingly.

But they were
gone.

With a heavy sigh, she took
a seat on the front pew.

“
I’m not going,” she
admitted heavily. “I—I can’t watch.”

Deena dropped her head, as
if ashamed, and stared at the slender, manicured hands that rested
in her lap.

Takumi sat down next to
her.

When his
ojiichan,
or
grandfather, had died, he’d taken it hard. Had, in fact, sobbed
like a broken-hearted baby, despite the full year a diagnosis of
colon cancer gave him to prepare for it. It was only his father
who—

He looked up, roused with
the memory of an earlier point in the service.

“
You uh, know Daichi
Tanaka?”

She looked up in
surprise.

“
Know him? The asshole’s my
boss.”

Takumi grinned.

“
Well, I’m Takumi Tanaka.
The asshole’s my father.”

Deena’s eyes widened with
the sort of white-hot horror you only got from imminent danger. She
searched and searched, registering with pain each of the physical
similarities this stranger shared with her boss. And there were
many.

He extended a
hand.

“
You can call me
Tak.”

“
Oh my God.” Deena
breathed. Her hand found her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I—I just—I’m
stressed and—oh my God.”

He held up a
hand.

“
Really. It’s alright. I’ve
called him a lot worse.”

She smiled weakly, lowered
her hand just a tad.

“
Yeah? Like
what?”

He shrugged, nonchalant, the
way only rich kids can.

“
Oh, I don’t know.
Nosferatu, Pinhead, Skeletor—”

“
Skeletor!”

“
Yeah.”

He raised a brow. “Come on.
You know the cartoon. He-man? She-ra?”

“
You’re insane!” Deena
hooted.

“
Yeah. By the power of
Grayskull.”

She clamped a hand over her
mouth to stifle a laugh, the first in a long time. But when he
proceeded to prattle off a never-ending list of cartoonish villains
he likened to his father, Deena found she could hold back the
laughter no more. Not even there, with the foliage of her brother’s
demise all around her, could she hold back that unaccustomed
sound.

CHAPTER THREE

Deena hated the awkwardness
of grief. As a girl, she’d experienced it with the death of her
father. The staring, the avoidance, the uncomfortable ramblings of
people who felt obligated to speak, yet wanted nothing more than to
put distance between them and you.

Though a decade had lapsed
between the death of her father and that of her brother, she found
that people hadn’t changed all that much. So when Deena entered her
office on the third floor of the Tanaka Firm Monday morning, she
was relieved to put a slab of wood between them and her. She didn’t
want their damned condolences or sickening sympathy—constant
reminders that her brother was dead. What she wanted to be reminded
of, was that she wasn’t.

She couldn’t say for sure
how long she stood there, eyes shut, back pressed to mahogany. But
when she opened them, a bouquet on her desk took her by surprise.
Peek-a-boo pink plumerias, golden stargazers, jutting purple
larkspur and mango calla lilies seemed to dance on her desk,
overshadowing her little bonsai with their beauty. And could she
really smell their sweetness from the door? Certainly
not.

Briefcase aside, she took a
seat in her leather swivel and brought the flowers in for a sniff.
Deena froze mid-smile at the sound of the office
intercom.

“
Ms. Hammond, Mr. Tanaka’s
here to see you.”

Deena frowned. So much for
indulgences. Her boss Daichi was many things, but indulgent was
definitely not one of them. So, it was back to business as usual.
Could she really expect something else?

Deena met Daichi Tanaka
while in her final year at M.I.T. She could still recall the thick
and cramped feel in Kresge Auditorium as faculty, students and the
community piled in, in mouth-foaming anticipation of the
avant-garde
of
architecture. She arrived early, though not early enough, as she
had to step and stumble her way to a seat. Despite the darkness of
the auditorium, she noted that scores of people clutched a recent
copy of
Time Magazine
. Daichi Tanaka was on the cover.

“
May I?” Deena whispered,
nudging the old hawk-eyed woman she’d settled in next to. With a
nod, she handed it over, dark eyes wary and watchful.

Deena turned her attention
to the magazine.

Behind a Hitchcock-style
silhouette of Daichi was a collage of a dozen major city
skylines—New York, Mumbai, Moscow, Miami, Hong Kong, Karachi,
Cairo, L.A. and more. Underneath was probably the boldest
declaration ever attributed to a single architect:
Daichi Tanaka: Architectural
God
.

Though bold, the phrase was
apropos. His was the biggest firm in the world, the most
influential, and by far the most daring and cutting edge. Tanaka
tempted fate with his designs, implored homemade theories and
thumbed his nose at the very laws of science and society. As a
junior, Deena read about the power of a single architect to
reinvent a nation. Daichi Tanaka and his project Cityscape was the
example, a miniature world unto itself made of glittering,
twisting, turning buildings that seemed to cut into thin air and
defeat the laws of gravity. Part beauty, part resort, part fantasy,
the lush acreage of Cityscape was suddenly a status symbol
throughout the world, a
tour de
force
for an impoverished Guatemala. As
the privileged world rushed in for the opportunity to eat
four-hundred-dollar plates of
carne
adobada
while hovering over the Pacific,
Hollywood elite built mansions along the coastal mountainside. But
Daichi’s greatest triumph came not from single-handedly creating a
tourism vacuum in a once unappealing place, but from doing what no
one else dared dream. In a country little more than a decade
removed from Civil War, Daichi shifted power to the masses—to the
rural Mayan farmers who’d been victims of state-sponsored
terrorism. He paid them fair prices for the land he used and
negotiated so that the influx of hotels and restaurants used
locally farmed foods. And suddenly, with the rising of the sun, the
Guatemalan people had a voice. Daichi, with his vision, blurred the
line between architect and statesman, statesman and ideologue,
demonstrating to the world the limitless power of an architect. So
it came as no surprise that the people of Kresge Auditorium looked
around as though a god would soon be among them. An architectural
god.

After wilting under the
professor’s prolonged glare, Deena slipped the magazine back to its
owner. A thunderous applause startled her as the room rocked with
the approval of a clamoring crowd, a crowd enamored by the pop icon
of architecture now before them.

Daichi took to the podium
with a scowl. He bypassed preamble and dove directly into the
lecture, accusing and verbally accosting them.

He ridiculed his colleagues
for their ignorance, for traveling to far flung locales without
studying the correlating history and culture—without respecting it.
He called them presumptuous, privileged, narrow-minded.

“
You all look the same and
think the same and pick people of the same vein to attend your
illustrious universities. Why? Because you need validation. Because
you serve yourself. But an architect is a selfless being,
reflecting the client and society that seeks his services. And in
this regard, you’ve failed.”

He should’ve been shouted
down, run off, or at the very least challenged. It was a rant more
than a speech, hurled at them by the most privileged architect of
them all. But he was met with a boom of approval, a roar of
allegiance from an otherwise sane and brilliant bunch. They were
the choir to his sermon, amen-ing his every utterance. And Deena
understood. It was hard not to feel dazzled by his presence. After
all, when was the last time an architect had changed the world with
his vision? Ancient Rome? They had every right to be at least a
little star struck. And they were. Even Deena.

Daichi took questions for
half an hour.

Deena stood in line among
the hopeful, waiting for an opportunity to ask something, though
what she had no idea. The questions from fellow students were
predictable: What drew him to architecture? What were his
inspirations? How did he handle criticism? When a professor Deena
recognized as an architectural one-man think tank rose, she knew a
challenge was coming. Not everyone wanted to admire Daichi Tanaka.
A few wanted to unseat him.

“
In
Time Magazine
you credited your
success in Guatemala to Architectural Determinism, a theory that
has largely been disproven. Given that, isn’t it fair to say that
you have no idea why you’ve been so successful?”

Dr. Cook was met with a
forbidden sort of silence. In it, Deena could practically hear his
celebratory smile. When Daichi looked up at him, it was with a look
of expectancy.

“
Michael, if you can recall
from our days at Harvard, architectural determinism simply espouses
that the built environment is the chief determinant for social
behavior.”

“
I know what architectural
determinism means!” Dr. Cook sputtered.

“
Good,” Daichi said
brightly. “Then perhaps I can influence the learned with a bit of
common sense. Consider this, if you will. If you build beautiful
things and charge high prices, then beautiful people with deep
pockets will pay for them. No need to consult a thick text on that
trinket. There’s a charming little boy in Nassau that carves wooden
figurines on request, just about anything you can imagine, and
charges a pretty penny for them, too. No doubt he could counsel you
more on this matter.”

The room erupted with
laughter and the professor’s face turned red. Deena was glad to see
the professor get his come-uppance. After all, he was the sort of
teacher that couldn’t be bothered with learning students’ names, or
helping them for that matter, the kind who sneered down at his own
breakfast as though not even it were worthy.