“Point taken,” he replied, but he didn’t offer up any new information. Instead he ate in silence for a few minutes. I watched him intently, trying to glean something---anything---from his motions, his manners, even the patterns etched into the crinkled skin around his eyes. I came away with nothing.
“Look, if you want me to fall flat on my face and fail as a journalist before I’ve even had a chance to start, just say so.” My tone was icy and it startled him; he almost choked on a mouthful of asparagus.
“I’ll find you a couple of past clients who can talk to you, and convince them that they have to agree to go on the record then,” he offered. “Though it will probably take me a while to do that. Does that help?”
“What if they refuse?”
He eyed me over his cup of coffee, which I noticed he took black. “They won’t. They owe me. They’ll do anything I say.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
Hmm. This line of conversation had potential. Maybe we were finally getting to the meat of things. “Are you accustomed to ordering people around everywhere you go then?”
“Yes, most of the time.”
“Is there ever a time or place where you don’t?”
He nodded. “Sevastopol. I’m not in charge there, and never will be. That’s why I need you to solve the mystery of the Sevastopol photos for me, because I can’t. I don’t have the right, shall we say, authority.”
“And why is that?”
He shrugged. “It’s complicated. Has a lot to do with who my father was, among other things. And also just because of how things are, always have been, and always will be in that part of the world.”
“You’re still being pretty skimpy on the details,” I remarked.
“You know Nancy, a good reporter wouldn’t just take my word for things. She’d take the initiative and dig up some stuff on her own. Don’t expect me to hand everything to you on a platter just because we’re fucking. Nobody else will do that, either. At least, nobody important.”
I ignored the comment about our sex life.“You seem to know a lot about my job.”
“It’s not your job yet, and it won’t be until you have a story---you said so yourself. So get cracking.”
I finished the rest of my meal in silence. By now I’d lost all motivation to continue this conversation. What was the point? Talking to Peter Rostovich was like talking to a puddle on the sidewalk. All you got was your own reflection, and if you tried to stir the waters too much, you got soaked. We communicated far better with our bodies than with words.
The first fingers of dawn began to peek out over the horizon. I glanced at the bedside clock, saw it was just after five a.m. I hadn’t slept much at all, yet I was wide awake. And I had a lot to do this weekend if I was going to make my deadlines. As a green freelance stringer I couldn’t exactly ask for an extension, either. But I still had to cocktail tonight; Peter hadn’t gotten me out of work for the whole weekend.
“Does Benny do whatever you say, too?” I blurted between bites of club sandwich.
Peter gave me a blank look. “Benny who?”
“You know, my boss.”
“Oh, right. That Benny. Yes, of course he does.”
“Good. Then tell him that I need the rest of the weekend off to finish my stories. Plus I’ve got an exam next week and a paper due on top of it. So I’ll need the extra time.”
Peter took a moment to digest this. “Yes, of course. No problem. I can probably get you full pay, too. Or at least the equivalent of your lost tips.”
“Thank you. I just hope Benny won’t be mad.”
“Don’t worry about Benny, or your job, or anything else. I will take care of everything.” He didn’t elaborate on what that meant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
We both finished our meals in silence as the sun began to rise over the Cleveland skyline. It would be a very long day for me, I knew. And it had already been a long night. “I should really get going,” I said after polishing off the last of my Pellegrino. “It’s been, um, interesting. And nice. Really.”
Peter settled back in his chair and didn’t say anything for a long time. “Shall I call up the car for you now?”
“Give me a few minutes to dress and freshen up.”
He gave me a single nod. His demeanor had changed; he was suddenly very cold and calculated. “Of course. If you need anything else over the course of the weekend, you can always reach me here. I’ll leave a message with the front desk to forward your calls to wherever I am. Good day to you, Nancy.”
With that, he got up and walked out of the room.
Well, that settles that, I thought to myself. If I needed any more proof that I was nothing but a toy to him, a fuck-buddy with a fancy writing assignment, well, there it was.
Honestly, what had I expected? Wine, roses, and Mr. Darcy? A marriage proposal? The deed to a palace in the Berkshires? In the context of all that had happened, those ideas were patently ridiculous. Even I knew that, and I’d been a virgin until just a few short hours ago. This was Cleveland, not an enchanted isle in a fairy story. Happy endings did not happen here.
NINE
I was chauffeured home in the Ritz-Carlton limo. My press bag and Peter’s framed photographs were safely tucked in the trunk; Peter had also promised to send over some relevant digital files on an iPad by early afternoon----an iPad he planned to gift to me permanently. I’d tried to refuse on ethical grounds, but he’d insisted. “You’ll need all of these materials for your stories,” he said. “And it’s far easier for me to just load them onto an iPad that’s yours to keep than deal with file transfers to an unknown computer, or shuffling a tablet back and forth between us.”
Julian the concierge greeted me in the hotel lobby on my way out, to make sure I was comfortable---to the extend he could, anyway. He couldn’t exactly do anything about my guilty conscience, or my deep state of emotional confusion, or my lack of sleep.
As he tucked me into the limousine at around six-thirty a.m., Julian handed me his card. “If you ever need anything, Miss Delaney---anything at all, no matter how small---I am at your disposal,” he said. “Call me any time, day or night. I live at the hotel, and I am always available to my private clients.”
I stared at the card, raised copperplate lettering printed on expensive-looking vellum. “But I’m not your private client,” I protested.
“As long as you’re affiliated with Peter Rostovich you are,” Julian replied. He gave me a friendly nod and patted me lightly on the shoulder with one white-gloved hand. Even at this early hour, he was impeccably dressed in an Italian wool suit that bore the Ritz-Carlton crest in gold thread on the lapel. “And remember, if you ever need anything, I am at your service. Have a safe ride home and a pleasant weekend.” He shut the door and signaled the driver, who pulled out onto the deserted early Saturday morning streets. I saw him wave in the rear-view mirror just as the driver pushed the button that triggered the passenger divider, which rolled up on its hydraulics and shut me out.
I appreciated the chauffeur’s discretion, but truth be told, I wanted someone to talk to. I knew Hannah would still be fast asleep when I got home---she usually slept until at least noon on Saturdays, and went out with Ted on Saturday nights. Of course, she and Ted had broken up, so that meant she’d probably go out with one of her girlfriends instead. If she followed her usual post-breakup pattern, she’d pick up a one-night stand at one of the downtown dance clubs and bring him home around the same time I came home from cocktailing. They’d go off to her end of the apartment to have sex, and I’d go off to my end and collapse until my alarm woke me the next morning around ten. I’d spend the rest of the day either at my study desk in my room or at the campus library, reading and completing class assignments until around four, when I’d take a nap before showing up to my evening cocktail shift around nine-thirty. Thus had been my routine for over three years now. But thanks to Peter Rostovich, that had all changed.
I had no doubt that Rostovich would pull the necessary strings to get me off work tonight, but I had plenty of doubts about other things. What exactly had I gotten myself into over the past few days? Everything had happened so quickly, and I was beginning to think I was in way over my head. What good did two potentially lucrative freelance assignments do me if I couldn’t keep up with my classes? What kind of journalism career would I have if I flunked out of college in my senior year?
The limo pulled up in front of my apartment building. I stepped out and went inside, not bothering to wait for the driver follow me in with my bags. But just as I keyed into my front door, another thought stopped me dead in my tracks. I’d had sex last night, not once but twice---what if I got pregnant? Sure, we’d used condoms, but I knew they weren’t foolproof. What if I got some horrible sexually transmitted disease and died, like so many of the fallen women in Victorian literature did? What if----
“Nancy?” Hannah’s voice cut into my reverie. She was standing in the hallway, dressed in her threadbare plaid footie pajamas, wide awake but with red-rimmed eyes and a drawn, wan look on her face. It was just after seven; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Hannah up this early on a Saturday morning. “When did you get back?”
“Just now,” I said, tossing my purse onto the floor. The driver had left my press bag and Rostovich’s framed photos leaning against the wall in the front hallway. I noticed then that they’d been moved. Hannah must have been looking at them while I stood lost in my own thoughts.
“What are all these pictures?” she asked. “Are they from the Rostovich exhibit?”
“They’re Rostovich pictures, but they’re not from the exhibit.” I flopped down into a nearby chair and kicked off my shoes----or rather, Hannah’s shoes. “They’re from his, um, personal collection.”
“Personal collection?” Hannah gasped and came to sit beside me. “He actually showed you something from his personal collection? Do you realize how incredible that is?”
“Not really.”
“Nancy, this is totally unprecedented. Rostovich’s personal collection of works is legendary. As in, Sasquatch-style legendary. Everyone talks about it and knows it exists, but nobody has actually seen it. Until now, of course.” She took my hand. “What did you do to make this happen? Give him great head or something?”
I thought about blurting out the whole story of my deflowering in all its lurid detail, but decided against it. Instead, I pivoted. “He technically did those works as part of a commission, but the person who commissioned them never wanted to see them. It’s really weird.”
She took a moment to process this information. “Hmm. Very odd, and yet totally in character for him. What about the gallery exhibit? Are you not writing about that now? Are you changing the angle on your review without telling me? Because if you are, I’ll have to discuss it with the managing editor. They’re very picky about sticking to the original assignment.”
“No. It’s kind of a long story. By the way, Hannah, you look terrible.”
She made a vain attempt to smooth out her rumpled hair. Up close, I saw her complexion looked dry and sallow, and there were heavy bags under her eyes. “I know. I feel like total crap.”
“Are you sick?”
She shook her head. “No. I just can’t believe how things turned out between Ted and me. It’s really got me down.”
“Hannah, you break up with a guy almost every month, and you always bounce right back. This is not new territory for you.”
“Maybe not, but things were different with Ted. At least, I thought they were. I guess I was wrong.”
I enveloped her into a hug, and she whimpered onto my shoulder for a bit. The irony that I was embarking on a new romantic adventure just as Hannah was crashing and burning from her love life’s latest catastrophe wasn’t lost on me. “It’ll all turn out fine, don’t worry,” I soothed, patting her softly on the back. “It always does. You’ll be back out there swinging in a week or two.”
She pulled away from me and wiped her tears. “You seem especially chipper this morning.”
That surprised me. “I do?”
“Yeah. And you look fantastic, almost like you’re glowing. What else happened last night?”
“Nothing, really. I just went to Peter Rostovich’s hotel, and we----talked.”
She gave me a sidelong glance. “Are you sure it was just talk?”
I shrugged my shoulders, but said nothing more.
Hannah stared hard at me. “You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t exactly describe it in those terms.”
She gasped and clapped both hands over her mouth. “Ohmigod. Are you saying that as of today, you are no longer a virgin?”
I hesitated, then determined there was really no reason to keep what had happened a secret from her. Hannah was my best friend, after all. I might not give her all the gory details, but she at least deserved to know the basics. “You are correct, madam,” I said, and giggled.
That perked her right up. Her eyes brightened, she leapt to her feet and literally danced around the room. “Well, I think this calls for a celebration! I’d open a bottle of champagne, but we don’t have any.”
“It is sort of early. And I already drank a mimosa back at the hotel.”
“A mimosa at the Ritz. I bet that was good.”
“It was. Especially at four-thirty in the morning. Made with Moet, no less.”
“How about an early-morning beer? We’ve still got some Michelob in the fridge.” I nodded and Hannah returned a moment later with two sweating tallboy bottles. “So you go off to the best hotel in Cleveland in search of a killer story, and you get laid instead. Plus you get a free limo ride and luxury-grade champagne. What’s not to like?”
There’s plenty not to like, actually, I thought to myself. Like my frustration with Peter and his obfuscating attitude. Like my confusion at just what kind of woman I really was now that I slept with strange men in expensive hotel suites at the drop of a hat despite a whole host of journalistic ethics to the contrary. Like my strange (and possibly sick) desire to be tied up and beaten. None of what had happened over the past forty-eight hours made any sense whatsoever, and the whole situation was fast spinning out of control. I felt like I was chained to the tracks in front of a runaway train.
Hannah picked up on this. “What’s the matter?”
I shrugged my shoulders again. I didn’t want to go into it. I wouldn’t even know how to begin. “I’m just tired,” I said, which was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “I was up pretty much all night. I got maybe an hour or two of sleep, that was it.”
She flashed a smile. “Wow, must have been pretty good then.”
“I suppose. But I don’t have a lot to compare it to.”
“If you enjoyed your first time at all, then you’re ahead of most of us,” she said, chugging her beer. “Sex usually sucks for women the first dozen times or so. At least, that’s the general consensus.”
“On the contrary, I enjoyed it a lot.”
“Wow. You mean it didn’t hurt or anything?”
“Not really. Just for a tiny bit, then it was good.”
Hannah sighed and gazed dreamily off into space for a moment. “Probably because you were with an older guy. I’ve heard that it’s worth dating the old dudes for the sex. Maybe I should try it.”
“Peter’s not old.” He was older than me for sure, but even I had no idea by how much. It was all part of his mystery.
Hannah rolled her eyes. “I’d say he’s at least middle-aged. That’s old in my book.”
“You’ve never dated anyone older than twenty-four.”
“True,” she conceded. “But I require a man with stamina. That point is non-negotiable with me. So anyhoo, give me the deets. I want to know everything.”
I nursed my beer. “Oh, well, you know,” I stammered, stalling for time. “The usual.”
“What do you mean, the usual? What would you know ab
out that if you’ve only done it the one time?”
You have no idea. “Twice, actually.”
“Okay, twice then. That’s a bonus for your first time out. I was way too sore to try it again the night I first did it.”
I shrugged and sipped more of my beer. I’d been plenty sore too, but not for the same reasons Hannah was, I was sure. There probably weren’t many virginity-loss experiences out there that involved getting spread-eagled and tied with leather straps to a bed at the Ritz-Carlton. But I’d never exactly been the type do things the usual way. As my mother frequently liked to tell anyone who’d listen, it had taken me forty-seven hours of excruciating labor to be born, and I’d come out purple and sideways.
Hannah pressed right on, not about to be satisfied with so little information.“So it was good? You enjoyed it? I’m not going to ask if you came, because I’m sure you didn’t---nobody does their first time. But it can still be good when you don’t.”
“I came,” I said aloud without thinking. “I came more than once. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.”
Hannah stared at me, gape-mouthed. “Are you sure?”
“Almost positive.”
“Having a dick come in you isn’t the same as coming yourself, Nancy. I hope you understand that.” She paused, lowered her voice. “Not every woman does.”
“Oh, I’m almost positive this was the real thing,” I said as casually as possible. In truth I was more than positive. How could you not be when your whole body throbs and pulses and then the world splits apart? That sort of thing just did not happen every day. I couldn’t explain it to Hannah in so many words----and even if I could, I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep this as a special secret all to myself, to hoard it like you would jewels or a cache of gold. I still didn’t fully understand how it had happened, and so easily. I was sure if my secret got out, thousands of women would beat a path to my door, demanding answers and perhaps a magic potion of some kind. Orgasms like that were a rare and precious thing. I might not know much about sex, but I knew that.
Hannah wasn’t buying it, though, so I decided to just throw in a convenient lie to shut her up. “Besides, I’ve had orgasms, um, you know, by myself, so it’s not like I’d never felt one before.” I wasn’t about to admit to her that I’d never actually masturbated before. If I did, she’d probably call in a commitment crew from the psych ward at Cleveland Clinic and have them straitjacket me and take me away in a padded truck.
Domino (The Domino Trilogy) Page 19