Page 7 of Salt in the Wound
But I was realizing just then that I had a young person’s understanding of sex, that my notions of it were smooth and shallow and unshaded.
A sex club. A fetish club.
His eyes had been so piercing, had missed nothing. And that same gaze fell over the people at this club of his. Maybe while they were naked. Maybe while they were fornicating.
I didn’t know why it all made me feel so shaky, disturbed. It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter.
“The real question is why he was at a Laurence Bank party to begin with,” Bryn said. “Do you think sex club owners make investments?”
I came to a stop near a railing overlooking the river and laced my hands above my head to help me breathe. “I don’t know,” I said. My words were ragged; sweat dripped down my chin. “I don’t know.”
“You know who would know.” Bryn gave me a look, and if I’d had any breath left in me, I would have sighed.
“Yeah.”
But Uncle Mortimer, the man who knew everything and everyone, didn’t answer my messages when I sent them.
Do you know a man named Mark Trevena? He was at the Laurence Bank party last night.
I paused and then added:
He came to the dojo once last fall too.
He knew my name.
There was no response.
For a day and a half, there was no response, and I tried not to let it preoccupy me. My uncle was a busy man, and Rome was a busy place, and as much as he loved crumbs, the work of his life was moving boulders. A stranger on a rooftop half a world away wouldn’t be the first of his concerns.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about Mark Trevena, about his club in DC. About the way he’d looked at me.
I disliked it, I decided. I was certain that was what I could call the tangle of confusion, fascination, and restlessness.Dislike.
And I wasn’t naive. I knew very few banks did business with exclusively ethical people. I knew that money was king in my father’s world.
But there was one thing more important to him than money, and that was reputation, and surely…surely my father didn’t know what Mark Trevena actually did. Surely he wouldn’t want Laurence Bank anywhere near even theideaof a sex club.
At dinner that night, I broached the subject, careful to wait until my father had finished his first glass of wine but before he started his second. Receptive but not so loose that he became dismissive. My father appreciated manners, and so I made sure to frame my question in the polite tones of dinner chat.
“Lavender Flores-King mentioned something to Bryn about a guest at the party last night. The one who danced with me?”
My father, who’d been in the middle of cutting a piece of chicken, stopped. Looked up at me. “Mark Trevena,” he said flatly.
“Yes.”
His fingers tightened on his fork and knife for an instant. I saw how he made them relax before he resumed cutting his meat. “And what is it that Ms. Flores-King said?”
I summoned up my dislike, my instinctive disgust, the residual fear left behind by Mark Trevena’s cutting stare, but I still kept my voice polite. “That Mark Trevena owns a sex club. A fetish club.”
“Ah,” my father said. “Is that all?”
Wasn’t that enough? “I thought we were doing our utmost to keep Laurence Bank’s image pristine. It would be one thing to take his money, but to allow him at our events? Allow him to dance with me?”
“Do you find what he does offensive?”
I stared at him. “Don’t you? My entire life—and especially since Mum died—all I’ve heard is how appearances matter, how we must be above reproach always. It’s what sets us apart from other banks. It’s why people trust us.”
