Page 108 of Honey Cut
“The rings in your bedside table,” I admit. “I found them while I was looking for your watch.”
A long sigh. “The distance between sentimental and sloppy is a very short one. Of all people, I should know that.”
“And I found his picture at Morois House,” I add. “So I guessed that he was the owner of the other ring.”
“Snooping, Tristan? Not very noble, although I would have done the same thing in your shoes.”
“He was handsome,” I offer.
“You have no idea,” says Mark, and awful talons of jealousy dig into my chest.
It is a waste of feeling to be jealous of a dead man—of a dead man who makes Mark this miserable. And yet.
“People are correct when they say I’ve never been married, by the way,” Mark says, after he’s come back from wherever his thoughts just went. “Until this summer, Mark Trevena had never been married.Michael Sinclair, however, had been.”
I understand immediately. “You did it for an assignment.”
“Eliot and I were tasked with cozying up to the beau monde lolling around Monte Carlo, and it made for the perfect cover.” A small smile. “But we did the whole thing for real. Married in the chapel at Morois House, had ourselves a little honeymoon. We told our bosses it was so we could build up the provenance of the marriage, of course, pictures and social media posts, but for us, it was the real thing. We picked a date when the magnolias would be in bloom, chose the rings together, went to all the premarital counseling sessions with a minister who agreed to do the ceremony. Pretended to her that we didn’t know what each other’s blood tasted like. And so for the next two years, Eliot was as mine as he ever would’ve been, and we were as happy as we ever would’ve been.”
He doesn’t sound happy describing it. He sounds wretched.
“What happened?” I ask quietly, almost not wanting to know. There had been no happy ending for him and Eliot, according to Isolde.
He doesn’t answer at first. He stares into the wet autumn dark like it will answer for him.
Then he drains the rest of his glass. “Want to see him?” he asks suddenly.
I don’t say that this doesn’t answer my question and that I’ve already seen him. Because truthfully, Idowant to see him. I want to see more than just one picture; I want to see everything and anything connected with him because Mark loved him. Mark loved him, and I’m jealous, and maybe if I see enough pictures of Eliot, it’ll cure my jealousy.
We leave the roof and the ghostly fog behind and go downstairs. We walk past the apartment door, which surprises me a little, and straight to his office, which is lit by a single floor lamp in the far corner. He sets his glass down on his desk and walks over to a wall where a black-and-white picture of a magnolia tree hangs. I haven’t looked at it closely before now, but I realize I know that tree. Or rather the blurry outline of the chapel and cemetery behind it.
“Is that from Morois House?” I ask.
“Eliot took it,” Mark says as he swings the picture open on concealed hinges to reveal a safe set into the wall. “He was a gifted photographer. For the same reasons he could make anyone fall in love with him—he saw things other people didn’t. Details, negative space, colors and light. He could see inside a person’s heart as quickly as he could see the way a flower was catching raindrops.”
“Did he see inside your heart?” I ask. It’s nosy of me, but I’m curious, and I think he’s just drunk enough that he might tell me.
Mark holds his wrist up to the front of the safe, and a light flashes green. His watch is some kind of key. “I believe he did. Yes.”
“And you still don’t think he loved you like you loved him?”
“I think he regretted that he didn’t, if that’s worth anything,” says Mark as he pops the safe open and reaches inside. He pulls out a slim wooden box and walks over to his desk. “But what could be done? I would have asked the world of him; in fact, I tried. It wasn’t in his nature to give himself like that or even to receive that kind of oblation from someone else. So you see that some Dominants are normal, reasonable people, Tristan. Just not me.”
He hands me the box and then goes to get his glass, refilling it from a decanter in his credenza. I rarely see him drink whiskey, and I think it’s hitting him harder than the gin normally does—the crystal lip of the decanter clinks loudly against the rim of his glass.
It’s a reflex to glance in the direction of the apartment, even though I know sound doesn’t really travel in or out of those soundproofed walls. Even if she’s still awake, it’s unlikely that Isolde would hear us in Mark’s office, which maybe I prefer.
I want to have this open, talkative version of Mark all to myself.
God, what a selfish man I am.
I go to the desk too and set the box on its surface, opening the lid to see a shallow velvet-lined interior. It is without question a lover’s box, keepsakes that make no sense without the context of devotion. What is striking about it is how…ordinaryit is. Two spies, both of them kinky as hell, and I’m looking at a ticket stub for a concert, a receipt for two ice cream cones, and a hotel key card. A stray button tucked to the side. A scribbled sticky note that looked like it was stuck to a mirror or a door before someone left town. A handful of pictures.
Of course, the concert was a symphony in Vienna, and the hotel key card is for a hotel in Macau—and the button is probably some expensive Savile Row button that I wouldn’t appreciate—but still. It makes a strange, tender feeling unfurl in my chest. The jealousy is still there, but so is love. Love for this past Mark, who saved another man’s button, even when the other man couldn’t requite the consuming crush of Mark’s love for him.
Mark finishes pouring his drink and then turns to face me with the glass to his lips. He takes a drink right as I discover a newspaper clipping under the other mementos.
CIA Agent Given a Star on the Memorial Wall as Langley Closes Death Investigation, reads the headline.
