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He takes another sip of his beer now, recalling this incident on the Metro with a shake of his head.
Banks turned forty-three this year, and it’s left him feeling pensive. Well, that and the divorce have essentially turned him into a man who feels like his skin has been rubbed off with sandpaper. On more than one occasion he’s totaled everything up and realized that, barring some amazing twist of genetics that he’s unaware of, he’s already more than halfway done with his time on Earth. And what does he have to show for it? A failed marriage. A crappy cardboard apartment furnished with online purchases. A box filled with books that most people wouldn’t believe he’d actually read. And, furthermore, the inability to open the doors to his heart and truly let anyone in--at least according to Denise.
Banks turns off the television, pours the rest of the beer down the inexpensive-looking stainless steel sink, and sets the empty bottle on his Formica counter. The view through his kitchen is of a small balcony that looks down at a parking lot. Momentarily, he wonders how many men in his exact position have decided that it’s just not worth it to keep going forward anymore. How many of them go to thankless, soul-crushing jobs all day and then come home to watch sports alone before climbing onto a cold, stiff mattress and sleeping fitfully while the neighbors overhead walk around loudly until two in the morning, then decide that the future is so bleak that they just can't take another day.
Banks turns off the kitchen light and walks to the single bedroom down a darkened hallway.
Mercifully, his job is his life. He’s been a Secret Service agent since leaving the Marines at twenty-eight, and it truly is the core of his being. He loves the heightened awareness, the adrenaline, the travel, the feelings of purpose that a mission brings. And, most importantly, he loves the First Family, who he’s been protecting now for nearly five years. He’s been with them since the current President decided to run for office.
People always wonder what it’s like to risk your life every single day at work, but for Banks, that’s the only kind of job he’s ever known: military, then Secret Service. It’s as natural to him as brushing his teeth, which he prepares to do now, standing there in his tiny, beige, functional bathroom. He squeezes a line of Crest onto a red toothbrush and runs it under the tap while he looks at his lined face in the mirror. The light is unflattering. Thank god he’s not a woman trying to put on makeup for work in here every morning. Instead, he showers, shaves, and leaves this place for ten to twelve hours a day.
While he brushes, Banks thinks of the people who count on him every day. He thinks about how imperative it is to keep his personal life and internal struggles separate from the work he does at the White House. If he slips at all--for any reason--it could be a matter of life and death. There's a legend that drifts around amongst the other agents about a man who had served under the first President Bush, and when the agent's mother had been killed in a plane crash, he'd lost it so entirely that he could no longer focus at work. But the worst part was how well he hid it; no one had known how badly he was suffering until he took a bullet at a rally in Detroit because he'd been unable to stay focused and to accurately judge the threat potential of the crowd. That bullet could have gone anywhere, and of course it was his job to take it, but they all knew that his altered state of mind had potentially put the President at risk. There was no way a personal drama like a divorce was going to derail Banks and cause a calamity of that magnitude.
Guns at a rally, Banks thinks, shaking his head.Not on my watch.
Banks spits into the sink and rinses his toothbrush, setting it in the holder next to no other toothbrushes. It’s these little things that get him: the reminders of aloneness. The way a single plate and fork look just sitting there in the dishwasher. The fact that only one side of the bed ever gets mussed. He hates opening the closet and seeing nothing but his own starched shirts, crisply hung pants, and shined shoes. The lack of floaty female fabrics, perfume clinging to the folds of sweaters, and pretty colored shoes lined up expectantly, like they’re waiting for a woman to step into them and then go out and conquer the world, depresses him.
He’s about to turn out the bathroom light and get into bed when the sight of his bare hands reflected in the mirror catches his eye. It’s been a while since he wore a wedding ring, but it never fails to surprise him for some reason when he spots his naked fingers. Banks holds out his hands and looks at them, fingers splayed. And this is when it hits him: he’s truly alone. Parents both gone, older brother living in Los Angeles with a family of his own. No wife. No children. No framed photos on the wall. No imminent plans for anything.
He looks back at his own reflection in the mirror, letting his hands fall to the counter.This is it, he thinks.This is my life. If only I knew how to do things right, how to feel things and share them with a woman, my shoes wouldn’t be alone in the closet.
It almost strikes him as funny that the stupid shoes are the thing that pushes him over the edge, but they are. His throat closes like he’s going into anaphylactic shock, and maybe he is: maybe he’s allergic to emotion—to tears. He closes his eyes tightly and wills himself to calm down, to find a sense of inner peace.
But he can’t, and he can no longer hold his feelings in.
For the first time in a long, long time, Henry Banks begins to cry. He smothers his face in a hand towel and muffles the sound of his own sobbing, trying in vain one last time to keep it all in. He simply can’t.
But Banks doesn’t care; he lets himself cry.
Chapter1
Banks
Working with the First Family is a job that Henry Banks takes seriously. He's served under two Presidents, and most recently, he’s been assigned to former First Lady Ruby Hudson following her husband’s untimely death in a small plane crash off the coast of France.
Ruby Hudson. Without ever telling her so, Banks has tucked her into a spot close to his heart. There is nothing even remotely romantic in his feelings towards Ruby, but he loves, respects, and admires her. He's watched her protect her children from the press, and she stood by her husband's memory even when the facts of his affair with a French woman named Etienne Boucher and the son he'd fathered with her became public. Banks had held his tongue through the entire debacle, of course (and he would have even if Ruby had been his friend and not his professional responsibility, because he is a man who knows the value of silence) but he'd been quietly impressed nonetheless.
From Banks's vantage point, Ruby is a woman who understands duty and friendship. He has observed her on many occasions just sitting down and giving someone her full attention, patiently explaining things, and giving nothing but wise counsel whether she's talking to a White House maid or to one of her own daughters. If there is anyone on the planet with whom Banks would like to sit down and talk person-to-person, it’s Ruby. But he can’t. Or rather, he never has. The occasion has not arisen.
So not only was Ruby a stellar wife to Jack, a man Banks had vowed to protect but didn’t always entirely respect, but he also deeply admires her friendship with Sunday Bond, wife to the former Vice President, and the woman Banks is currently seeing.
Does that make things complicated? Yes and no. Sunday and Peter Bond have just finalized their very public divorce, but Banks knows enough from observing and from stitching together Washington D.C. rumors with the things Sunday has told him in confidence to know that Peter Bond was no amazing husband. First of all, he's been openly gay in Washington for decades, working his way through aides, young politicians, male models, and any other handsome, willing man. But he'd also given Sunday a bitter run for her money when she finally made good on her promise to divorce him, and Banks finds that hard to respect. Having been on the receiving end of divorce papers himself, he knows that it can be a huge blow to a man's ego to find out that his wife wants to be legally done with him, but he felt that he himself had handled the same situation in a very different way than Peter Bond had.
But that's just one of the things that's endeared him to Sunday, and he knows that. She loves that he's quiet rather than blustery, and she also appreciates the way he takes time to think things through before speaking. Both of those traits were things that drove Denise mad, but Sunday seems to see the value in them, and so Banks considers himself lucky so far to be in a relationship with a woman who is able to see him for who he is and to appreciate the very things that drove his ex-wife to leave him.
Of course it was more than that with him and Denise; it's always more than one thing. She'd wanted him to be spontaneous and effusive and to laugh quickly and show his emotions, but that's never been his nature. Banks is wry and appreciates a well-placed joke, and his sense of humor runs dark. He wanted to be the things that she wanted him to be, but how does a person simply become someone they're not in order to please another? At least so far, Sunday has been perfectly happy to adapt to and appreciate the very things that make him Henry Banks, and as he stops to think about his response to any given situation, she waits patiently, watching his face with open interest and admiration. To say that things are going well is an understatement.
This breezy March morning Ruby is bustling around inside the bookstore while Banks sits outside on a bench that she's set against the front of the shop so that he can comfortably keep watch there without standing sentry, and he's sitting there now, back ramrod straight against the wooden slats of the bench as he watches people drive up and down Seadog Lane in their golf carts. He sips a cup of lukewarm coffee from The Scuttlebutt, giving a tiny quirk of a smile to Heather Charleton-Bicks as she drives by and parks down the street in front of Fed Men Tell No Tales to do her grocery shopping. An older man that he recognizes from their New Year's Eve trip to Christmas Key sits in the passenger seat of Heather's cart as she gets out, and she's laughing about something that he's saying. He gestures in the direction of Marooned With a Book, where Banks is stationed, and Heather nods.
Things have gotten fairly loosey-goosey on Shipwreck Key as far as Banks and his official security detail go, and he has to admit that he's enjoying it. It's been a full year this month that he and Ruby have been down on Shipwreck Key, and now that he knows the locals and pretty much knows what to expect each day, his life there has taken on a pattern and an ease that hardly makes it feel like work at all. They do get visitors to the island on a fairly regular basis, but even though the whole world seems to know that Ruby Hudson is living there, most people just pop into the bookstore and have surprisingly normal and casual conversations with her that result in very few requests for photos or autographs.
As Banks sips his coffee, the man from Heather's golf cart crosses Seadog Lane, looking both ways as he does. He's tall and rangy and has a shock of white hair like the mad professor fromBack to the Future, but he's got the high cheekbones and confidence that come with strong genes and an expensive education. He lifts a hand in Banks's direction and pauses at the edge of the bench.
"Morning," the man says. "Dave Hutchens--I believe we saw one another on Christmas Key," he adds.
Banks stands and pulls himself to his full height, which is still about four inches shorter than Dave Hutchens, who must be six-foot-four. He's got the build of a long-distance runner and the tan to match, and he looks at Banks openly, as if he has nothing to hide.
"Quite the charming locale," Dave says. He glances up at the sign over the bookstore and then back at Banks. "Heather's been to Providence to visit me a few times since we met over the holidays, but I thought I'd come down here and check things out."
