“Why yes, it is. I hope you don’t mind me calling you on your personal phone.”
“I don’t mind,” which was the truth. Plenty of other sane, normal women my age would mind it very much, but I’d always been the type to go against the flow. “I imagine you got my number off my press card.”
“Yes, indeed I did,” he replied. After a pause, he added, “Among other things.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing untoward, I assure you.” It was the first time I’d ever heard a man speak the word ‘untoward’ aloud in a sentence. It was the kind of word you usually only encountered in Victorian novels and stuffy news reports on the state of the stock market. Exactly the kind of word that English majors like me adored. “This may surprise you, Ms. Delaney, but I tend to check up on anyone with whom I choose to share my life.”
“What do you mean, share your life?” He sounded almost as if he were proposing marriage or something. I’d only known him for a little over twelve hours, and I didn’t think he was quite that eccentric.
“As you might have gathered, Ms. Delaney---Nancy---I’m a very, very private person. It is rare for me to engage in anything other than small talk with anyone. But I’m preparing to do quite a bit more than that with you, so it’s only fair that I make sure you’re someone I’m comfortable doing that with first.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “It’s only fair, eh? Well, if you’re going to stalk me, then it’s only fair that you give me the information I need to write my story. Or rather, stories. I have two assignments that involve you.”
“I know. I’m very flattered.”
“Flattered even though you hate reporters and the press?”
He laughed. “I’m flattered that it’s you who is responsible for the stories. If you were
anyone else, I’d be absolutely furious and attempting to shut both you and the publications you work for down.”
“You know, my roommate said something very similar to me last night.”
“Your roommate. You mean Hannah Greeley, of Art News Now?”
A slight chill overtook me. “How did you know that?”
“Oh, just a little bit of research,” he replied. “I am a regular subscriber to her publication, and I’m familiar with her byline. My sources told me she was originally supposed to cover the opening last night herself. I’m very glad she didn’t.”
“Your sources?”
“I have staff who monitor the press for me. Among other things.”
“You must have tremendous financial resources,” I remarked, hoping to wring a little bit of information out of him ahead of our alleged meeting tonight. Assuming of course that what he’d said about my cocktailing shift at Benny’s was true. “So how do you know my boss?”
“Your boss? You mean Benny Logan, owner of Benny’s Bar and Grill?”
“The same.”
“He’s a former business associate of mine. I spoke with him about an hour ago and he is more than happy to give you the evening off as a personal favor to me.”
I coughed. “I find that tremendously hard to believe.” Benny was a tightwad and a stickler for good attendance. He was known for firing cocktail waitresses for being five minutes late, plus he was occasionally known to leer at us on shift, even sometimes grab an unsuspecting ass or two----though he’d never done so with me. But he paid a decent hourly wage, and didn’t demand that we split our tips with the busboys or bartenders, so I’d kept working there despite the obvious drawbacks. “Benny doesn’t do personal favors for anyone. At least not in my experience.”
“He does when he has no other choice.”
Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that. Benny Logan was a big, beefy man with Navy tattoos and a take-no-prisoners attitude. He often acted as his own bouncer, and usually did a better job than the young ex-military types he employed as bouncers. “What do you mean?”
“I prefer not to say.”
All right, so Rostovich was back to being his usual cryptic self, the International Man of Mystery. I could accept that for the time being. But I needed to start getting some answers, pronto.
“About that meeting you wanted for tonight,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Assuming that you did in fact arrange something with Benny to get my shift covered----and I’ll independently verify it----“
“I would expect nothing less from a star reporter like you.”
“Right. Though I think calling me a star reporter is kind of stretching the truth a bit.”
“Give yourself a little credit, Ms. Delaney.”
“Nancy, please. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted”---this got a chuckle out of Peter---“after I’ve independently verified your claims about my boss, I’ll leave a message at your hotel whether or not to expect me tonight. But before I do, you have to answer me one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Why all the secrecy? Why do you encrypt your email address, and your phone number, and speak in all these riddles? And how the hell do you afford the fancy sportscar and the fancy hotel suites and the staff and God knows what else, when most struggling artists are broke, and nobody important has even heard of you?”
“Nancy, plenty of important people have heard of me. You have, obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
“You’re evading my questions.”
“I’m not evading anything. I just don’t like to talk about myself.”
“Obviously. So what makes you think I would want to come to your hotel suite to talk about you when you won’t do it in public?”
There was a noticeable pause. “That’s not an unreasonable question, Ms. Delaney.”
“Then answer it.”
“I will, tonight. In my suite. 8 pm. Assuming you arrive, which I certainly hope you will. Dress for dinner. It will be a semiformal occasion. You may wish to bring an overnight bag, it might be a late evening.”
I gasped. “Is that some sort of proposition?” I’d never been formally propositioned before, I only understood such things in theory. But it certainly sounded like it to me.
“Should you wish to stay overnight, you will be issued your own private room. At my expense, of course. Again, I’m not planning anything untoward, I assure you.”
There was that word again. “You keep saying that, but given all that’s happened so far, I’m having a very hard time believing you.”
“Why is that?”
“You tied me up within thirty seconds of meeting me. That alone is rather odd.”
“And yet, you seemed to enjoy it.”
We barely knew one another, and yet he understood me so well. “It was---interesting,” I stammered. Which was true. But just like in the diner yesterday, I was afraid to speak the words of how it had actually felt aloud. I was frightened of what might happen to me if I did. I was not accustomed to losing control of myself, and I knew that losing control was exactly what my body wanted more of. But what would that mean? And was I willing to let Peter Rostovich be the one doing the controlling? Then again, in a way he already was controlling me. Was I really prepared to hand the reins over to him completely? Could such a thing even be done?
“I look forward to discussing the matter further this evening, Ms. Delaney. Until then, I bid you good day.” With that, he ended the call, leaving me gasping for breath as I searched for a response that came too late.
“So do I,” I said to empty air. “So do I.”
****
After my strange call with Rostovich, I switched off my phone entirely. I didn’t want any more surprises for the rest of the afternoon. I decided to go talk to my boss Benny Logan in person. A face-to-face meeting seemed like the best course of action given the decidedly odd circumstances. And I knew I could glean a lot more information from Benny’s facial expressions than anything else. If there really was something to Rostovich’s assertion that Benny owed him a big favor (or worse), I knew it would show in Benny’s face. He was
a mostly fair employer and a savvy businessman, but suffice to say that the man would never win a game of poker.
Friday was my light class day. I only had a study section for Indian History and an hour-long economics lecture, both in the morning, so I was finished with everything by one. I usually grabbed lunch at the cafeteria in the basement of the student union before heading back home for a nap before work. But today I felt like a change of pace was in order, so I walked the three blocks off campus to Mama Santa’s, a local pizza place. I hadn’t splurged on a sit-down lunch off campus in quite a while, but given this week’s events I figured I deserved it. And I’d been craving one of Mama Santa’s pizza margheritas for a while now. Benny’s was just a couple doors down from there, so I could get my lunch and skip over to talk to him about Rostovich and their alleged relationship. Something told me it would probably be a good idea to have my digital recorder switched on during that conversation.
Such a small world, I thought. Six degrees of separation, and all that. What did Peter Rostovich and my boss have to do with each other? And what did that have to do with me? Did I even want to know?
I seated myself at one of Mama Santa’s red-checkered cloth-covered tables. The waitress appeared and I ordered a personal-sized pizza margherita with feta and basil without bothering to look at the menu, and a Diet Coke. She scuttled off to the kitchen to put in the order and I picked up my dog-eared copy of Bleak House to read a few more pages. I really should have been studying for my midterms, or writing my Victorian Lit paper, or preparing for tonight’s as-yet-unconfirmed interview, but truth be told, I just couldn’t put Bleak House down. The farther I got into the massive book, the more I enjoyed it, and the more I felt guilty about not finishing it when it was assigned. I’d just finished the part where Krook dies of spontaneous human combustion. I vaguely remembered the lively discussion my Intro to Victorian Lit had gotten into on the topic last year, and whether spontaneous human combustion was possible. Dickens had believed in it strongly, but of course modern scientists had a different idea. Still, the past twenty-four hours made me think that it was indeed possible. I’d almost spontaneously combusted myself yesterday at the gallery, and for all I knew, almost would again tonight when (and if) I sat down across from Peter Rostovich to speak with him.
Maybe Krook caught on fire because he was sexually frustrated. That sort of thing didn’t get referred to explicitly in Victorian literature, but I bet it would make a great term paper. I filed the idea away for future use, maybe as a footnote in my senior thesis.
I finally set the book aside, crossing and uncrossing my legs, no longer able to concentrate. I turned the concept of a private sit-down dinner at the Ritz-Carlton with Rostovich over and over in my mind. It was already an ethical gray area as far as journalistic standards went, but that might not be such a big deal if I made the appropriate disclosures. After all, with what I already knew about Rostovich’s eccentricities, it was probably the only way for me to get my story. But what about the other factors? Like our obvious mutual attraction? I’d never wanted to jump the bones of an interview subject before. Hell, I’d never wanted to jump anyone’s bones before. Until last night, I’d essentially been asexual. What exactly was it about this man that I found so titillating? And what would I do once I was alone with him? That idea alone frightened me to the core.
The waitress arrived with my meal. I stared at it for a bit, suddenly feeling my appetite disappear. I was too preoccupied to eat. Hoping for a distraction, I switched my iPhone back on to check my messages.
None from Rostovich. That was a relief. Or rather, a disappointment. Still, it made me a lot less edgy. There were two text messages from Hannah, one apologizing for not being able to drive me to campus that morning (she’d overslept, of course; I’d ended up hoofing it to campus instead) and another wanting to know how the Rostovich exhibit gallery review was going, saying I should call her at home because she’d decided to work remotely that day. No surprises there---I figured she was wallowing around the apartment in post-Ted misery in her tattered footie pajamas and eating Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey out of the tub. I deleted both texts. I could deal with Hannah later.
I switched to voicemail then, and retrieved a rather desperate-sounding message from my mother, who wanted to know why I hadn’t replied to her email yet. I rolled my eyes. The email I’d archived from her last night was about what plans I had for Columbus Day weekend, and whether I was planning to come back home to Boston, like I usually did. I hadn’t decided yet---it depended on too many factors, namely school assignments, airfares, my cocktailing schedule, and even what mood I was in. I’d planned to reply in a day or two, but in her typical histrionic fashion, my mother always thought everything was an emergency. “You have to call me today,” she ranted in the message. “We’re trying to finalize plans with the Connors for the boathouse, and we need to know if you are coming. What will the Connors think if you keep giving us the runaround? By the way, their son Robert will be there. He thinks the world of you. Call me. Now. Your father is worried sick we haven’t heard back from you yet.”
I knew that last part was a lie. My dad couldn’t care less whether I came home for Columbus Day weekend or not, and he cared even less what the Connors thought about anything. The Connors were another married college-professor couple at Beverly, where my parents both taught. They were independently wealthy and came from an old Massachussetts family; my mom was forever trying to impress them, ever since she’d gotten it into her head when I was six years old that I was destined to grow up and marry their eldest son Robert. The only problem was, Robert was gay (he’d come out to me and a few close friends but not to his parents or anyone else yet), so that was never going to happen.
My dad mostly found the Connors to be snobbish and annoying, but he tolerated them for my mom’s sake. When we’d all spent Columbus Day weekend at the Connors’ boathouse last year, Dad and I had taken turns making fun of Mr. and Mrs. Connor’s hoity-toity table manners and cocktail habits on the beach while they were out sailing. Mom was not amused.
I wondered what kind of excuse I could come up with to stall Mom for a bit. I thought about using work or school, but I’d already tried them enough times to know they didn’t work. Then there was my freelance work, but that was too iffy and as a labor historian, my mom frowned on me doing “sidework” for no benefits---she just didn’t understand the fact that most journalists start out as freelancers. “If they want to hire you, then they can give you a regular salary and benefits, none of this two-bit sidework nonsense,” she’d always sneer. “Labor organizers fought and died for decent work conditions. Did I teach you nothing?” I’d just roll my eyes and ignore her. She was hardly one to talk, a trust-fund baby of old-money parents who’d never worked a real job until she became a college professor (by then, the family money had run out and she’d had no choice, otherwise I think it’s likely she would have ended up one of those overeducated “ladies who lunch” who didn’t work).
My dad taught economics, so he was a bit more understanding. “You’ve gotta pay your dues, hon,” he’d always say. “Take what your mother says with a grain of salt. She’s never had to live in the real world.” Which was the truth. My mom was also the daughter of a college professor, and had spent her trust fund to support herself through graduate school so she wouldn’t have to work a regular job and study at the same time. She’d burned through all her inheritance and then some; fortunately she’d been one of the few graduates of her doctoral program to land a tenure-track professorship right away. She’d met my dad her first year teaching and they’d married soon after.
Unlike my mom, my dad didn’t come from money; he just taught people about it. As he frequently reminded me, “Good thing, too, since when I married your mom she didn’t even know how to balance a checkbook.”
I really wasn’t in the mood to endure another Columbus Day weekend with the Connors. But what else could I do? My mom was beyond pushy when it came to this sort of thing
.
Then it struck me. Mom had been nagging me for years to date more. Constantly trying to fix me up with so-called eligible bachelors, from the uber-gay Robert Connor (“there is no one so blind and she who will not see,” as Dad always said) to the neighbor boy across the street, who still wore orthodontic headgear at age twenty-three. (“Give him a chance, Nancy,” she’d said when I flat-out refused to speak to him when he came to our door over Christmas break last year, gnarly headgear held firmly in place with flesh-covered straps. “He’s a computer genius. Who knows, maybe he’ll found a big software company and you’ll end up a millionaire,” Mom had gushed. I’d responded by slamming my bedroom door in her face and burying myself in a copy of Dickens’ Hard Times.)
Although my logic was shaky at best, I could use the dating excuse to put Mom off. I’d just tell her I’d met someone, and I wanted to see how things developed between us before making any long-range plans. Which was the truth. I had met someone---Peter Rostovich----and I wanted to see how things developed between us---the fact that he was much older, mysterious, and seemed to take an interest in things that were definitely well beyond the norm nothwithstanding.
I certainly had no intention of telling Mom that Peter Rostovich and I’s first meeting involved a bondage art exhibit and me getting restrained with cable ties. She’d completely freak out. On the other hand, the fact he seemed to have quite a bit of money would make her happy. My mom’s main goal in life was to restore her offspring to the social class she herself had fallen out of, and if marriage was the only way to accomplish that, well, so be it. Very Victorian of her, of course. And hardly in keeping with her views as a labor historian, but that was a separate issue.
I took a few bites of my pizza for courage before dialing Mom. I’d try to keep the call short, but that was always hard to do with her. She invariably turned even the most inane conversations into complex humanitarian lectures on the state of the universe. Mom had always been very dramatic, it was just her personal style.
Domino (The Domino Trilogy) Page 9