Page 59 of Puck
Ivar nodded. “Ja, as he said.”
This was a larger airport, albeit a rural one. There was a gate manned by two armed, uniformed guards; Ivar, sitting in the front passenger seat, showed them some kind of ID or pass, and they waved us through. My heart was in my throat, hammering and crashing wildly as we made our way across the tarmac, zipping behind the tails of airliners angled up to jetways. We left the main terminal area and continued to the area for private aircraft, a wide square, lined with hangars, the fronts open to reveal cavernous interiors occupied by aircraft ranging from single-engine prop planes to massive private jets.
One such airplane waited off to one side, a set of moveable steps positioned at the doorway. It was truly mammoth, very nearly the size of the hangar itself.
Backlit by the setting sun, this jet was sleek and sexy and glossy black, with a crimson RTI stenciled in aggressive letters on the tail fin. The van halted near the steps, and Puck, Ivar, and the two guards—who’d sat silently and unnoticed this whole time—clambered out and positioned themselves to cover all directions. Ivar waved us out, and Layla went first, followed by Temple, Lola, Kyrie, and then me.
Kyrie grinned as we approached the staircase. “Oooh, Valentine sent the nice jet. Good boy.”
I eyed the aircraft, which looked like it cost the equivalent of a third world country’s GDP. “This is your husband’s jet?”
She nodded. “He designed this one, actually. He recently started a hyper-luxury transport manufacturing company, so making fancy jets and boats and stuff is his new hobby.”
“He designed this?”
“He helped. He’s not an engineer or anything, just a really smart businessman with good taste and better judgment. This is the prototype of an aircraft his new company is going to be selling. They have military grade jet engines, which means this thing goes insanely fast, and it also has things like antimissile defenses, and it’s designed to be low-radar reactive or something. For the richest of the rich who want to fly incognito, he says.”
I was mind boggled. “And how much is this going to cost?”
Kyrie blew a raspberry. “Shit, girl, I have no idea. Close to triple-digit millions, easily. This isn’t the kind of thing your average A-lister, like Temple’s mom, for example, would buy. This is the kind of thing the king of Saudi Arabia would own, or those Koch assholes. That kind of rich.”
We boarded and found seats near each other, both of us on the aisle. As we sat down, the flight attendant offered us warm hand towels followed by a selection of beverages and small snacks.
I glanced out the window and saw Puck shake hands with Ivar, taking a moment to clap each other on the arms and murmur macho bromance bullshit to each other, and then Puck jogged up the steps and into the plane while Ivar waited on the tarmac, watching.
Puck grabbed the window seat beside me, and as he settled himself, I turned back to Kylie. “You say transport like there’s something besides jets and boats.”
She nodded. “Yachts, jets, armored limos made out of stretched Bentleys and Rolls Royces and Maybachs, mobile command centers pulled by semitrucks—those are super cool, actually. You can choose whether you want it to be a mobile office command center thing, or a home. Think those monster RVs rich old folks retire with, but it’s got a full-size tractor-trailer. The trucks are those new Volvos that are fully electric and can go faster than most race cars. They’re really awesome, actually.”
She tapped a bubblegum-pink fingernail on the armrest. “What else has he come up with? Helicopters, of course. And when I say yacht, by the way, I’m talking something the size of a battleship, literally. So big it comes with its own smaller speedboat the size of a normal yacht, with a helicopter-landing pad and like twenty staterooms. And usually, the helicopter and powerboat are included. Oh, he’s also working on a submarine.”
I blinked at her. “A what?”
“You heard me.” She grinned. “A submarine. But instead of being all tiny and cramped and full of ICBMs, it’s a luxury retreat. Huge staterooms, a movie theater, a swimming pool, cameras installed outside and giant screens on the inside walls so it feels like you’re seeing what’s out there. I’ve been on the prototype actually, and I think I’m going to have him keep one for us. It’s really incredible. You can be down near the bottom of the ocean where only whales and stuff go, and it’s totally silent, and you can see jellyfish and weird sea creatures and . . . it’s justsocool.”
“And there’s more than, like, two people who can afford these things?” I asked.
She nodded. “You’d be surprised. There are quite a few people out there who are quietly wealthy. Never in the news or anything, but they’re out there, and they have stupid amounts of money. And in the current social and political atmosphere, Valentine is wagering on a lot of them wanting to have a hyper-luxury home that can go wherever they want, away from all the craziness.”
“I guess I can see that. If you can afford your own submarine, why would you live on land?”
“Exactly! Especially when it has a retractable sundeck on top of the conning tower and a glassed-in viewing bubble at the front end.”
“That sounds amazing.”
She nodded. “It is. I’m super proud of him.” She gestured around the interior of the jet. “I mean, this is pretty incredible, isn’t it?”
I wasn’t sure “incredible” covered it. The outside of the jet was completely opaque, without windows at all, yet when you got inside, you discovered that the entire interior, from floor to ceiling, stretching all the way up and around, was one giant screen displaying what was outside in an unbroken, 4K display. The picture was so clear I felt like I could reach out and touch the wing, or smell the jet fumes. The seats were . . . god, how did I describe them? Like the most comfortable bed you’d ever been in, the kind of bed that had a memory foam topper and a fluffy down comforter, and you were enveloped in a cloud? The seats were like that too; they just . . .huggedyou in softness. Creamy tan leather, with thick, plush crimson carpeting underfoot. This was the kind of jet on which you popped Dom Perignon and ate caviar and checked the time on a diamond-encrusted Rolex, and had a Rolls Royce waiting for you on the other end of the flight.
I felt distinctly out of place.
I didn’t usually let my past dictate my present; I didn’t hold my past against me. But when surrounded by such finery and luxury, I had a hard time forgetting that I was once the girl who dug through dumpsters for returnable cans so I could afford a single hit of smack.
Puck had been sitting quietly with his eyes closed but he let out a sigh, tracing the stitching in the leather. “I never quite get used to this kind of thing,” he said.
“You must have been reading my mind,” I murmured to him. “I was thinking the same thing.”
He took my hand. “I always feel like I’m gonna get the seat dirty, you know? Like, even if I’m all showered and wearing nice clothes, I still don’t feel like I belong. In my head, deep down, I’m still that kid from Arkansas who grew up in pool halls and poker tournaments, hanging out with strippers and cashing in stolen chips so I could I buy candy. My dad let me run wild, you know? When we weren’t on the road playing poker, I was out in the woods, fending for myself, usually barefoot in a pair of shorts. Literally, I grew up half-naked most of the time, and the rest of the time I was surrounded by hookers, strippers, cardsharps, and bikers. Shit like this”—he gestured around us—“it makes me nervous. I’ll never fit in, is how I feel.”