Generation of Liars by Camilla Marks

in Tokyo, during which he taught me a mastery of Martial Arts
moves.
    “It’s superb to see you, Alice,”
David said through his roseate lips. He helped me inside the house and led me
into the kitchen. He turned on the stove for tea and set out two small oriental
mugs. The crinkly lines in his forehead pushed together in concern as he
announced, “I heard about the little snafu on the Eiffel Tower.”
    “Ah, my reputation precedes me
again.” I leaned over the gas burner to light a cigarette.
    “A reputation is not a terrible
thing to have, but it is said that the reputation of a thousand years may be
determined by the conduct of one hour.”
    “I guess screwing up the Eiffel
Tower job wasn’t my finest hour then, huh?”
    “Alice, why would you say that? You
did survive, after all. Even a bullet could not destroy your ambition. You have
certainly grown in strength and skill since the last time I saw you.”
    “Well, geez, David, when Motley
sent me off for my training with you in Tokyo I had only been working for him,
for what? Two weeks? I was a baby.”
    “Your survival speaks to your
acquired maturity.”
    “I owe a lot of my survival to you.
I’ve gotten myself into some pretty stupid jams, but I’ve always been able to
rely on the moves you taught me to save my skin.”
    David kneeled onto a cushion on the
floor and lit incense beside a small statue of Buddha, and in the background
the sound of a small Zen fountain trickled serenely. There was a deck of Fool’s
Luck playing cards splayed out on the table into a half-built game of
Solitaire. The inside of the house felt like a small oasis despite being an
absolute crap hole. I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to David and
smoked my cigarette. My pinwheel stockings and mini skirt struck a peculiar
contrast alongside his yeast-colored tunic and bare feet.
    “And the mantra helps you too,
doesn’t it, Alice?” he asked.
    “ Kitto Katsu ,” I said,
grinning like the Cheshire cat. “ I will surely win .” I turned my scarred
hands palm up and spread them over my folded knees. “You taught me that motto
as I climbed down the Tokyo Sky Tree during my training. I remember the feeling
of the wind battering all around me and my cheeks burning with tears with each
trembling step my feet took. I pictured myself there again when I crawled down
from the Eiffel Tower after being shot at. That’s how I survived.”
    David adoringly studied my hands.
“I brought you up on the Tokyo Sky Tree because sometimes our adversaries are
not other people, but merely ourselves. We can only realize that as we come up
against manmade adversaries of pillar and steel.”
    “You know, David,” I spoke with my
eyes surveying the water spots on the wall and the shag rug that had been
chewed by mice, “when you taught me about Kitto Katsu , we stayed at your
mansion near Mount Takao, which was, well, to be honest, exactly where I would
expect a guru ninja assassin to live.”
    “A man wastes many miles stepping
around his point, Alice. So tell me, is that a statement on my current living
arrangement?”
    “No offense, but what are you doing
living in this rundown hovel?” The incense was doing little to mask the stench
from the chicken coop that was wafting inside with the breeze. “Plus, I thought
you had that little villa high up in the Alps in addition to the house I stayed
in during my time in Japan.”
    The tea kettle whistled and David
glided over to the stove. “I came down here to do some thinking.” He poured
steaming water into each cup and sank two teabags. “Thinking which can only be
done away from such lavish accommodations. What about you?” He transferred one
of the mugs into my hand. “Are you down here to hide from something, or do you
have a job to complete for Motley in Rio?”
    “A job,” I answered, and then I
shot him a playful look of accusation. “Is Rio the kind of place people usually
come to hide? Is that why you’re here,