Page 26 of Salt Kiss
I shouldn’t be surprised that he noticed me looking at him, but I am. I have an abrupt and unhinged vision of me blurting out that I’ll take Strassburg’s place, and then panic. I’m not ready, I don’t even know if I—
Mark has taken a drink and is now studying me calmly. “Would you like me to start guessing? We do have fifteen and a half hours left of our trip. I’m sure I’ll land on the right answer before we reach Singapore.”
I desperately cast around for something, anything, to say that isn’t the only thing I’ve been thinking of for the last week. Because I’m not ready, not here in an airplane, no matter how private the suite is.
“I...”
Think. Think.
“I was wondering why you made Lyonesse,” I say quickly, grabbing onto the first thing that swirls to the top of my mind. “Why not a regular job after you left the CIA?”
Mark gives a small laugh. “Do I seem like the regular job sort to you?”
I can’t say that he does. “Well...no. Sir.”
He sets his glass down and looks at it for a minute, as if considering. And then says, “Do you know the legend of Lyonesse, Tristan?”
“I saw snippets online when you first offered me the job. A sunken kingdom.”
“A drowned kingdom. The legends say the sea took it after King Arthur’s time; archeology suggests it’s a folk memory from Neolithic times, when sea levels around Cornwall rose and submerged fertile fields and forests.” Mark looks up at me. “The legends also say Lyonesse was drowned for its sins. Similar to a kingdom in a Breton legend—Ys. Eat, Tristan, before it gets cold.”
I pick up my spoon and start on the soup. Sweet corn and crab, with a bite of whiskey and lime. It’s delicious with the white wine they served with it, and even after weeks of eating at the city’s finest restaurants with Mark, eating the club’s culinary masterpieces, I have another moment of dizzy appreciation for how strangely beautiful life can be outside of a war.
“Ys was also drowned for its wickedness,” Mark goes on. “Celtic Christians saw both legends, Ys and Lyonesse, as analogies for Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“And is that why you named a club after it? A tribute to wickedness and all that?”
Mark gives me a real laugh. “No, no, I wasn’t that clever. My grandfather was Cornish and would tell me and my sisters tales of Lyonesse at bedtime. I loved them. The idea of a place unbearably lovely and also unable to last, maybe even in part because of that same loveliness. And the story is a warning, I think, for those who need to listen. Power can be lost, the ground under your feet can founder, and only the just will survive. An important reminder for anyone delving into the world of pain and pleasure.”
He pauses a moment, long fingers twirling the stem of his glass, slowly, slowly, the wine rippling faintly from the plane’s vibrations. “When I left the CIA, I left very disillusioned. I’d lost—something. Getting it back was impossible. I had to find another way to live, and I couldn’t live in the world as it was.”
“So you built your own?”
His eyes dip down, the long lashes resting briefly on his cheeks. “Something like that.” He looks back up to me. “Do you like it? The world I built?”
Answers crowd on my tongue.
I hate it and I love it. It’s all I think about.
I want to kneel for you.
“It’s still very new to me,” I reply diplomatically.
“Hmm,” Mark says, looking down at his soup, and the conversation lapses into silence as we eat.
Ten
Two attendants comeand make the double bed.
“Tristan,” Mark says, standing and unbuttoning his shirt after they leave. I realize he’s about to change into the provided pajamasright then, and my heart flips. “Stop looking at the bed as if it will bite. I promise I won’t kick you in my sleep.”
“I don’t think it’s big enough for both of us,” I hedge, although it’s true that the bed does seem a little narrow for two former soldiers. “I can sleep in my seat—”
Having unbuttoned his shirt, Mark strips it off and then opens his belt. I stand and turn to give him privacy, the stretch of tan, muscle-etched stomach burned into my mind.
“Tristan,” Mark says again, this time in an amused voice. “You’ve seen me put on a condom. Surely me changing into pajamas is tame stuff by now.”
“I didn’t want to intrude, sir.”
