TAKUMI TANAKA WAS possessed. Only days had passed since he’d last seen her, but in that time, he’d been consumed. She was everywhere. Pages and pages of his sketchpad were devoted to her, so too was the canvas on his easel, the canvas in his mind. She’d haunted him that first night, that first moment really, so much so that he’d rushed home and put pencil to paper like a madman.
There was something about her eyes. He couldn’t convey what he saw under those heavy lashes—pain, sadness, defeat? Whatever it was, he’d wanted to smooth it away with his hands, his lips and his heart.
He stared at the floor of his studio, littered with sheets of ruined canvas, and knew he had to see her again. With a groan, Takumi abandoned his work for the morning paper. He had a love-hate relationship with the Arts Section of The Herald, where he could laud their brilliance one minute and curse their convoluted conclusions the next. He ventured out into the hall and grabbed the paper from the corner it rested in. ‘I need coffee,’ were the words on his mind as he opened the paper. There, below the fold, was a common South Florida headline: ‘Liberty City Teen Found Slain’. And beneath it, a picture of his would-be assailant, the six-foot hooligan who put a .32 to his face. Anthony Hammond’s funeral was in three days.
ANTHONY’S SERVICE WAS held at Emmanuel Rises Baptist Church. It rained the day they buried Deena’s brother, and according to Grandma Emma, it meant the devil had come for his soul.
The windows of the limo that housed the Hammond family were tinted, making a dark sky even darker. Deena’s gaze fell from the heavens to a puddle in the street and watched it swell with each gray and acidic raindrop.
“Honestly, I don’t know what we expected,” Aunt Caroline said. She paused long enough to rummage through an oversized black purse, before coming away with a lighter and a pack of Newports. “We shoulda expected this. Especially after Man Man got killed.”
“But he didn’t even do that!” Lizzie cried. She was Deena’s last sibling, fifteen, but an ancient fifteen.
“Mhm,” Caroline said. She balanced her cigarette between fat and rouged lips before lighting up. The drag she took was long and indulgent. “We shoulda got ready for this,” she said with a nod.
“Girl, will you shut your ass up?” Grandma Emma shouted. “And put that goddamned cigarette out.” Never one to wait she snatched it from her daughter’s fingers, let the window down and heaved it out. “Got a mouth like diarrhea. You keep on and somebody’ll stop it for you.”
Silence filled the limousine again. Silence save for Lizzie’s sobs, soft and gut wrenching. Deena went back to her puddle and soon a tap on the window interrupted them.
It was time.
They were escorted into the sanctuary by twos, an usher flanked on either end by a Hammond. They took their seats on the front left pew, under the watchful gazes of a full house. Standing sprays of white roses, larkspur and gladiolus surrounded a solid copper casket at the front. But no one would see the beauty of the cream, quilted interior that cradled Anthony’s body—four gunshots and Miami heat prevented that. But Deena had seen it, seen him, before the lid of a coffin closed between them forever. And the blood of her brother had painted her nightmares ever since.
Floor arrangements of lilies, statice and caspia flanked each end of Anthony’s coffin, brilliant in sunburst orange, lilac and ivory. A poster-sized portrait of him in a button-up and tie stood at the back of the casket, facing an audience with standing room only. Walter Haines, an old and weathered black man who’d played at her father’s and grandfather’s funeral, stroked out gentle gospel from an organ onstage. Deena wondered if he’d play at hers too.
Seven years had passed since the last Hammond burial, when they laid to rest Deena’s grandfather. Were he still alive, she knew what he’d say. Justice. Anthony’s fate was justice, as sin begot sin.
Deena blinked in surprise at the program in her hand. Looking down at the picture of her brother, even now she couldn’t help but smile back. It was a portrait of Anthony in the 10th grade, his grin wide-mouthed and toothy—silly in that contrary way that was his alone. He was love one moment and fire the next, never able to find rest in his mind. She only prayed now that he had.
Late mourners poured in, an army of them, as if to make a show of it. Each wore a black tee with white letters that read “R.I.P. Tony Hammond,” and beneath them was a picture of Deena’s brother. In it, his hair was a cascade of toffee coils that fell to his shoulders, so heavy that it parted down the center from its weight. And there was no smile here—just a Budweiser in one hand and a .32 in the other. The picture looked recent. Very recent.
“Deena?” Lizzie whispered.
Deena turned to face her. “Yeah?”
“I don’t want them here.”
Deena nodded. She didn’t want them there either.
TAKUMI SLIPPED INTO the church and stood at the back of the sanctuary, heart ricocheting with the power of a cannonball. Settling on a place near a cluster of ushers in navy vests, he let his gaze sweep the pews. Then he saw her, saw the hair first—coils of honey, cinnamon and chocolate, cascading like a waterfall. A moment passed and he remembered to breathe again.
A black woman with short and plastered curls stood from her place on the front pew and approached the microphone. She introduced herself as Rhonda Hammond, aunt of the late Anthony Hammond. Her voice was soft and therapeutic, the way only an aunt’s can be. With lips too close to the microphone, she presented an assortment of sympathy gifts, but there weren’t very many. A basket of fruit, a vase of Peruvian lilies, a prayer plant from the church. Three dozen red roses from Daichi Tanaka and the Tanaka firm.
That caught his attention.
AUNT RHONDA FOUND her seat, and afterwards a short stout man named Mr. Phillips stood and ventured to the piano. His wife, a tall and thick-browed black woman with a hawk nose and long fingers, followed him. Even as a child, Deena thought the couple looked more like brothers than husband and wife. Mrs. Phillips found the microphone, cleared her throat and closed her eyes. Deena waited, knowing what would follow.
Mr. Phillips came in first, delicate and unobtrusive on the piano with a gentle melody. When his wife slipped in to join him, she pierced Deena with a voice she both loved and hated. It was beautiful and awful, smooth, rich and melancholic, all with the damned first note. They rose together, piano and woman, never relenting with their sorrow. “It’s time to be with the Lord,” that ugly woman said, and she was ready. “When our time here is through, it’s time to be with the Lord.”
There were more songs, hopeful, upbeat, rousing numbers sung by a rocking choir in white robes. They served their purpose, raising the spirits of those around Deena, until most were on their feet shouting, clapping, jumping in tune to the love-filled lyrics. But seven years of Sunday school had taught Deena that Anthony was not in the joy-filled place they promised her. And because of that, she was grateful when they shut the hell up.
People shared stories about Anthony next. Aunt Rhonda murmured in a voice too low about his silly ways and his smile, her eyes rimmed red. A cousin of Deena’s, one of Caroline’s children, talked about a time Anthony stood up and fought a bully for him. “Never a coward,” he said in quiet admiration, “never.” Others went, including Lizzie, who broke down and had to be half-carried back to the pew.
When Deena rose, she made her way to the microphone with a wad of tissues in her fist. From her place at the podium, she stared at the coffin. An eternity passed, and finally, her voice surprised her.
“I didn’t want to do this,” she said softly. Her eyes found the ceiling and she struggled to inhale. “Coming here and talking to you like this is an admission—an acceptance—and I’m not ready to accept this just yet.”
She laughed bitterly and shifted her weight.
“You know, if you knew my brother, you know he was like a train wreck. He had no problem tearing from the tracks and—and running roughshod through the forest.” Deena swallowed and shook her head. “And as crazy as this sounds, I admire that. I wish I had that kind of strength and blind courage.”
She lowered her gaze to the coffin.
“I don’t want to negate the things he’s done, or the people he’s hurt. No doubt people have stood, as heartbroken as I am now, because—” she broke off. “Because of who my brother was.”
She looked up, met her audience for the first time. “But I need you to know, to believe that there was good in him. That he was a good brother, that he had value and that people loved him.”
Deena opened her mouth to say more, closed it, and retreated to the pew. Once there, she collapsed in sobs.
When the service ended six pallbearers, all cousins, hoisted the solid copper casket onto their shoulders. They carried Anthony Hammond to the tune of an upbeat gospel about marching up to heaven on an angel’s wings. Deena stood, swayed a bit, and found Aunt Rhonda there to steady her. They walked arm in arm, with Deena’s gaze on the floor as the Hammonds made their way to the exit. God had given her so few to love, so very few, and saw fit to take even them from her. He hated Deena. And she hated Him.
She raised her gaze, though she didn’t know why. Searching, searching until she saw him, tucked away near the ushers. Their eyes locked, and stayed locked, through Deena’s slow procession, until she was out the door and could see him no more.
AT THE FRONT of an empty church, Takumi ran an appreciative hand over the brass cymbals of a drum set. It was a Tama Swingstar, good quality at a great price. When he was seven, he fell in love with the sound of a birch Yamaha, and had remained true ever since. He didn’t get to play much anymore though, as the crashing sound was counter conducive to being neighborly. These days, Takumi relied on the guitar or keyboard for a bit of melodic retrospection. But none of that had a thing to do with the price of dairy in Denver. So why the hell did he linger?
The doors of the sanctuary opened and he looked up. Just then, his reason for lingering stepped in and made her way down the aisle. 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 Takumi of the Salween, the last free-flowing river in South Asia.
“It’s you,” she whispered. She looked up at him with eyes that were blue: a shimmering shock of blue under long, thick lashes. He didn’t even see how they were possible.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
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…I’m sorry.”
They fell silent. Finally, she gave a rough nod and blinked back tears. When they fell anyway, she dashed them away in impatience. He wasn’t sure what to do.
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, uh, 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.
“So…Did you find it? Did you find your inspiration?” And there it was—a twinkle. A twinkle behind weary ocean eyes. She was teasing him. And he liked it.
Takumi grinned. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
But his smile faltered with the memory of why a Buddhist was standing 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.
But they were gone.
With a heavy sigh, she took a seat on the front pew.
“I’m not going,” she whispered. “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 had died, his grandfather, 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 that only came from imminent danger. She searched, registering with pain each of the physical similarities this stranger shared with her boss. And there were so 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.”
Deena smiled weakly and lowered her hand. “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!”
“By the power of Grayskull?”
She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh, the first in so long. 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.