Page 4 of Salt Kiss
“You can learn a lot about someone from the way they eat,” observes Mark as he lifts his own fork. With the side of a silver tine, he presses into one of the butterfly wings until there’s the crisp sound of it breaking in half. Something bright red oozes out. A sauce made with beets, I think. “Something I learned as a soldier.”
“You were a soldier?” This surprises me. My father had talked about Mark like Mark had sprung from the low-piled carpet of Langley fully formed. I know sometimes soldiers are recruited directly into the CIA’s paramilitary arm, but it hadn’t occurred to me that Mark might have been one of them once upon a time.
“I was.”
“And what were you after that?” I think I’m asking to make a point, or to separate us maybe. Make it clear that we are not the same.
Mark’s mouth moves as if he can guess what I’m thinking. It’s almost like a smile. “Something worse.”
It’s the honesty that unnerves me. And him, he unnerves me. Sitting across from him is like walking through the trees in Carpathia, my rifle at the ready.
I look down at my plate for something to do and readjust my grip on my fork. The butterfly wing crunches as I cut into it. I take a bite and bright flavor explodes on my tongue. The salad is crisp, tender, well dressed. The edible flowers mixed in are sweet.
I look up to see Mark watching me.
“I told you,” he says. He sounds satisfied.
“It’s very good,” I admit.
“Tell me about your duties in the army,” Mark says. He leans back to take a drink, his eyes never leaving my face. He’s watching me chew and swallow. I swipe a knuckle over my lower lip.
It suddenly feels like something more charged than a job interview, but I can’t say why. His face is neutral, his voice contained, polite.
But itisan interview. I have to answer, and so I do. I outline my four deployments as objectively as I can, their locations, their purposes. I don’t talk about the ARCOM from the second deployment or the Bronze Star that they’ve nominated me for from the last. Surely Mark knows all that. And anyway, it doesn’t mean I’m better at a job.
It just means I lived while others died.
Our salads are replaced with charred duck breast and pickled celeriac. Crescents of pureed parsnips and potatoes, creamy and tender. It’s the best food I’ve ever eaten, and it’s on top of a glass palace built on debauchery. Maybe anything tastes good after so many months of DFAC food or MREs in a grubby outpost, but I don’t think that’s it.
Mark sips his drink as I finish telling him about my duties and assignments. He’s on his third and is remarkably steady. I get the sense that he must drink often, and I log that away for the conditional future.IfI take this job, I’ll need to know his habits, his mental state. It’s easier to keep sober men alive—something I learned the hard way while on diplomatic escort duty.
After I stop talking and put down my fork, Mark assesses me. And then he sets down his drink.
“I’ll be brief. You are the only candidate. I need a new primary bodyguard, someone who can be with me almost constantly. There will be relief shifts, of course, and time off, but not as much as would be ideal. It will necessitate travel and living proximate to me.”
The server comes and removes our plates, but instead of presenting us with dessert, he sets a slim leather folio in front of me, and then hands a thicker one to Mark. A pen comes with mine. Expensive, gleaming, nothing like the pens I carried with me on deployment, which were cheap and plastic and came in boxes of twenty.
I open the folio as Mark speaks.
“This is a nondisclosure agreement before our conversation goes any further. It’s not an agreement to anything other than your silence; you’ll see the usual niceties there.”
Niceties. It is five pages of thinly veiled legal threats. On the other hand, being in the United States military has inured me to threats. When the stakes are being court-martialed, you get good at keeping your mouth shut as a matter of course.
I uncap the pen and sign, watching the ink bleed into the paper.
“Wonderful,” says Mark. He takes the folio from me, hands it to the server without looking at him. The thicker portfolio takes its place. I open it up and then I cough.
I’m greeted with words likeanal hookandcock and ball torture.
I look up to Mark, who returns my gaze with a mild one of his own.
“I see why you had me sign the NDA first.”
“Surely, you’re not shocked by what happens in a kink club,” says Mark. “But either way, it’s best you acquaint yourself with the possibilities before you take this job. Being on my security team means you’ll be inside Lyonesse and my own...habits. I’ll need to know what limits you have when it comes to witnessing kink. I’ll also need to know how much flexibility there is to those limits. I cannot always predict, for example, what might be happening in the private rooms when we walk down a hallway. What you might hear or see through the windows. What might be happening in the booths around the dance floor.”
“And your...habits? Sir?”
“You would be my personal bodyguard,” says Mark, as if the problem is obvious. “There would be no one closer to me.”
