Page 2 of Salt Kiss
I have no job. No direction. No point.
The email gave me an address, clear as day, but when I pull my father’s modest, American-made hybrid into the parking garage, I see the building I’m meant to go to is on an island in the Potomac. I park and get out of the car, buttoning my suit jacket with one hand while I get my bearings. There is a bridge—narrow, pedestrian only—arcing from the shore to a flat stretch of land. On the island is a building, five stories tall, its exterior clad in glass and its shape like something between a castle and a ship with a sharply angled roof and a prow-shaped front.
The sun glitters off the glass as I finish my survey of the parking lot—five cars, none of them nice enough to belong to my would-be employer, security cameras mounted to the light poles—and then I take the bridge over the water to where my new uncle-in-law works.
Lyonesse.
That’s what this place is called.
An island kingdom that sunk beneath the waves, according to Wikipedia. The ultra-exclusive home for the elite sinners of the world according to internet chatter. With the kind of guests Mark is rumored to entertain here, it’s no surprise this place is impressively secure.
A woman greets me from behind a low desk. I stride forward, reminding myself to smile, because for so long smiling hasn’t been part of the job. I used to smile a lot, I think, before I went over there the first time.
I can’t remember anymore.
As I walk to the desk, I clock the pertinent details of the space, the narrow doors set into the light-wood-paneled wall behind the desk—one leading to something mundane, like a coat closet, the other probably connected to a security office or something similar—and the metal stairs leading up to a glass-walled walkway. There is an elevator and some low, leather-clad benches.
The woman is wearing something almost like normal receptionist’s clothes, but there’s a latex collar wrapped just above the tie-neck of her purple blouse. My step hitches, my pulse gives a thready surge. Her throat is long and slender, and the gleaming latex is so smooth around it, and she’s wearing it so naturally, so casually. Like it’s something utterly normal.
Maybe it is here.
“I’m here for an interview,” I say, recovering. It’s not only the collar—it’s that she’spretty, with soft hair and high cheeks and a silk blouse that would slip frictionlessly from her shoulders, and I’m still not used to anything silky or soft or tailored. I’m not used to lovely things, expensive things, indulgent things.
Carpathia was cold and muddy, our uniforms rough, everyone in helmets and MCEP glasses, our world shrunk down to dirt, plastic, and metal. When I’d walked down the aisle to join my father at the front of the sanctuary last week, I’d nearly fallen over at the scent of incense lingering in the air. At the reception, I stared at my slice of cake like I thought it was a lie, fairy food to trick the mortal boy into staying in fairyland.
I’m embarrassed at how easily my deployments broke me. Even if I’d never fired a gun, never trembled on freezing pine needles waiting for the shot that would kill me, I’d still have been broken by the sheer fucking monotony of it all. The boredom. The deprivation.
And they call me a hero.
“Of course,” the woman says, coming to her feet and leading me to the elevator in heels a mile high. I keep my eyes on those heels as we go, refusing to leer. We take the elevator up to the topmost floor, pass through a set of glass doors into what seems to be a waiting room. One wall is glass; the rest are pale wood. The floor is polished concrete. I catch reflections of myself all over, and I don’t recognize the tall, suited man as me.
“He’s ready for you.” The woman gestures toward a cracked door in one of the wooden walls. “And I’ll be in the lobby if you need anything. My name is Ms. Lim.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I reply, and she smiles, like I’ve said something funny. Then she’s pushing her way through the glass doors, and I’m left alone to enter Mark Trevena’s office for my interview.
I smooth my jacket, take a breath. My father would hate my being here, but he’s on his honeymoon and can’t stop me. My mother would have hated it too if she were still alive—before she died, she’d been a respectable suburbanite with a city council seat and plenty of pet causes she volunteered for. No way would she have wanted her son tarnishing his heroic medals with something as tawdry as working for the owner of a kink club.
I don’t know how I feel about it either, honestly. When the email came from Mark a few days ago, inviting me to interview for the position of his new bodyguard, I nearly deleted it. I didn’t know much about him other than what my father had told me, that he was a murderer and a liar and a deviant on top of it. Not to mention that even the idea of a kink club made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
But I didn’t delete it.
I reread it. I wandered around my father’s empty farmhouse much as I had wandered around it for the past few weeks—aimless, hungry, a shadow—and I wondered how many more aimless weeks were ahead of me. I couldn’t stand to be in the army anymore—not deployed, not behind a desk, not somewhere in between—but the shapelessness of civilian life was a slow-dawning horror. Not since before West Point had there been days upon days of nothing, with no routine, no discipline, no structure.
I needed...something. And something more than ajob. Something more than hours of boredom followed by slack, empty nothing at the end of the day. Something more than a compressed vessel of civilian life with its small horrors and even smaller stakes. I needed something that would swallow up my time and my thoughts, keep me busy, give shape to my now shapeless life.
And everything in Mark’s email promised that.
Long hours, little autonomy. I’d be a shadow with a gun.
I decided to take the interview. I could always say no after, and I probably would. I didn’t care much for men like Mark, men who killed without facing their enemies.
Agent. Spy.
Assassin.
There were soldiers who cheered them on, soldiers whobecamethem even, but I couldn’t respect anyone who killed without a fair fight, who deceived to get what they wanted, even if what they wanted was to serve the same country I served.
Where was the loyalty in that? How could you trust the fidelity or allegiance of someone without integrity, decency?
