Page 5 of Salt in the Wound
Mercifully, my father refrained from any more complaints about my future plans, and the university truce between us held. I would still go to Columbia, and there was no mention of whatever it was he’d discussed with my uncle over Christmas.
At night, I dreamed of pain, of suffering, and when I woke up, I was unsettled and strange-feeling. Ishouldnot lust.I did not lust.And yet when I dreamed, I woke up panting and wet between the legs. It shamed me, because my craving for corporal penance was pure and good,I knew it, I knew it beyond a doubt when I was awake. But when I was asleep, my cravings for pain became dark and strange to me. As if my body were no longer under my control.
Bryn and I graduated from high school, and as always, I dedicated the summer after to training, giving little thought to Columbia and the change that lay ahead. School was nothing but a concession for me, a necessary pretense until I could convince my father that my future lay with the Church and my uncle, and so it merited little of my attention.
What could be more important than a life dedicated to God?
* * *
It wasa warm July evening when I met my devil again.
We were on a rooftop in Manhattan, the verdant scar of Central Park to one side, a nest of skyscrapers everywhere else. I was playing two parts in my black silk gown tonight: the dutiful daughter on her father’s arm, looking lovely and gracious and expensive, and more invisibly, that of my uncle’s little mouse, gathering whatever crumbs I could find. So far from Rome, so removed from the world of ecclesiastical politics, it was hard to imagine that I’d hear anything relevant to him, and yet my uncle was always interested in what I’d acquired, even if it was only the party talk of bankers and businessmen.
It’s like panning for gold, he’d told me more than once before.Sometimes you have to sift through a whole river of silt.
At some point, my father and I danced, much to the delight of the crowd. We played the role well, of doting father and loving daughter, of a family buffeted by grief but still holding steadfast to one another, and it only added to the venerable reputation of Laurence Bank. Other banks were conglomerates, were faceless entities with no soul, but here was Geoffrey Laurence, handsome and silvered at the temples looking fondly at his daughter; here was Geoffrey Laurence putting his only child first, above all else. A Laurence would be loyal, steady, about values and tradition. You could trust a Laurence with your money, our little performance said. You could trust a Laurence with your life.
It was, of course, only a performance. My father was warm to me when people were watching, and no other time, and I was privately repulsed by Laurence Bank.
You cannot serve both God and money, we are told.And I didn’t intend to.
When we finished dancing, I felt someone approach. I knew to turn gradually, to give the appearance of slow reflexes and even slower perception—a trick Mortimer had taught me when I was a girl.
Always give the people around you a reason to underestimate you. Do it the minute you meet them, if you can.
But even years of tutelage from Mortimer couldn’t make me school my face when I turned. It was the stranger from the dojo.
And he was holding out his hand to me.
He wore a tux tonight, a dark, dark navy, and that giant watch again. His hair was styled back, and despite the shadow on his square jaw, he looked crisp and polished. His dark blue eyes glinted in a shade lighter than the night sky as he said, “May I have this dance?”
My father pushed me forward, so gently that it looked like a pat on the shoulder, but his meaning was unmistakable. “Go on,” he said in a friendly, fatherly tone.
Not that I would have refused anyway. I had so many questions for this stranger, so many things about him I wanted to know. They frothed inside me like foam on the sea as I took his hand and he led me out to the dance floor, and I had to consciously remember everything my uncle had taught me about finding answers, about sifting through people so subtly that they wouldn’t know you’d been sifting at all.
The band began a song, some slow old standard, and we faced each other, my hand in his larger one, his other coming to rest against the bare skin of my back. My gown was fairly conservative—bankers didn’t dress provocatively or with any kind of flash—but its one concession to sensuality was its back, which dropped all the way to the bottom of my spine.
I put my hand on his shoulder, which was just as firm and broad as it had looked under his tuxedo jacket, and we began to dance, moving effortlessly across the floor.
But when I looked up and met his eyes, I saw nothing of the polite man asking me to dance, nothing even of the unreadable stranger with a fake knife in his hand, ready to pin me to the floor.
He was looking at me with an expression so intense that I nearly recoiled in his arms. His mouth—fuller than I remembered, although I hadn’t made up how strikingly shaped it was—was set in a sharp line, and his dark eyes glittered in a way that made alarm flare up my spine. It took every bit of my control not to react to his change in demeanor.
“Isolde Laurence,” he said softly. “At last we meet for real.”
“I’m sorry,” I said carefully. “I think you have the better of me, Mister…?”
“Mark Trevena.” He moved us easily in the dance, leading our steps with such surety and grace that I could almost forget that there were steps at all.
“Do you know my father, sir?”
There was the slightest hitch in his movement just then, barely noticeable to anyone else. I doubt even another dance partner would have noticed it. But I felt it like an earthquake.
My question had surprised him, maybe?
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “We’re business associates. When the business is mutually beneficial.”
His words were clipped, short. They betrayed nothing, which was something in and of itself. Actual business associates rarely had to be so cryptic.
