Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (12 page)

That night
I dreamed about black-and-white photography, milkshakes, and cable ties. Lots and lots of cable ties.

And I came in my sleep. For the first time ever. And a second time, and a third.

In my dreams, it was Peter Rostovich who was responsible for those three orgasms. And now that I’d come in my dreams, I wanted the real thing.

I was sitting in the student union reading another chapter in
Bleak House
at around eleven the next morning when my iPhone buzzed with a text message.

I glanced at the screen. There was no name on the message, but I knew right away who it was from:
 

R U COMING 2NITE?
 

Rostovich
. Texting me on my phone even though I hadn’t given him my number. He had to have gotten it where he’d gotten all of his other information----off my press credential, of course. I stared at my phone for a moment, wondering whether I wanted to respond. Before I could make up my mind, though, another message came through:

TOOK CARE OF UR SHIFT. NO WRYS.

It took me a moment to translate the text-speak to plain English.
Took care of your shift, no worries.
Well, it was quite a change from the old-fashioned eloquence of his emails last night. But there was only so much you could do with the buttons on your phone.

And yet, the message threw me for a loop. What did he mean,
he’d taken care of my shift?
It almost sounded like something a mob boss would say to describe a hit.

My phone buzzed again.

I KNOW BENNY. NO WRK 4 U 2NITE

Oh man. He knew my boss? What else did he know?
Just as I was mulling over the possibilities, my Led Zeppelin ringtone rang out across the student union hall. My iPhone screen said “INCOMING CALL: UNKNOWN,” but I already knew who it was. Rostovich, of course, likely demanding an answer. Acting against every shred of common sense I had left, I pressed the “TALK” button.

“Hello?”

“Miss Delaney.”

I recognized his smooth, slightly accented voice immediately, but I still couldn’t quite believe he was actually calling me---incognito with no caller ID, of course. I wondered how he managed that. “Peter
Rostovich? Is this you?”

“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 waitresse
s 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.