Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (27 page)

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 twen
ty-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 about 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 the
n 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.

“Well, Nancy, I just want to say that it’s high time you joined the sisterhood of fully mature, sexually active women. I was beginning to get worried about you. At the rate you were going, you were either going to end up a creepy virgin bride or an old cat lady who lives in a trailer down by the river.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Coming from anyone else it would have been insulting, but from Hannah it was sweet. “Thanks,” I said, tapping my beer bottle against hers. “Here’s to getting laid.”

“I’ll drink to that.
God, it’s only been a couple of days for me, and it already feels like a dry spell. Do you know if Rostovich has a younger brother? I could use some good sex right now, and I’d also like an orgasm that doesn’t involve using batteries. If it was so easy for you with Peter, maybe the soft touch runs in that family.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s an only child. At least, he didn’t refer to any brothers or sisters.”

“Oh well. I guess that would have to be too good to be true.” She guzzled the rest of her beer and set the empty on the counter. “But if you run across anything when you’re working on your stories, let me know. I could settle for a cousin, or maybe even a nephew. By the way, when do you think you’ll be finished? My editor is practically frothing at the mouth to get her hands on your review after what happened at the gallery. It’s all over the news, you know. They even did a lead story on Channel 3 about it.”

That piqued my interes
t. “Any juicy info on Rostovich? What about footage?” I didn’t remember seeing any TV cameras at the opening, but figured somebody had probably managed to sell their cell-phone footage to the local news by now.

“No, just exterior shots of the shuttered gallery, and a two-minute interview of the owner. Who doesn’t seem to like
Rostovich much, by the way. His comments were vicious. I saved it on the DVR for you if you want to watch.”

“That would be Richard Darling, right? Funny, Peter says they’re old friends.”

“You’d never know it from the interview. He looked mad enough to split nails. Might be something for you to dig deeper on.”

“All right, I’ll look at it later. I think right now I just need a nap.” Fatigue was fast creeping into my limbs, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. The past twenty-four hours was finally catching up on me, I needed to rest. Still, I’d have to keep it short; I had way too much to do. I made a mental note to call the assignment editor at Channel 3 news
when I woke up to see if there was any more to the interview they’d be willing to share, reporter to reporter.

Hannah grabbed her empty from the counter
and stood up. “All right babe, I’ll leave you alone. Need me to wake you up at your usual time for cocktailing?”

“No, I’m not actually cocktailing tonight. I’m taking the night off to work on the stories.
”

Hannah’s eyebrows raised. “Taking off two cocktailing nights in a row? Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that. Won’t Benny be mad? And how will you make the rent?”

I shrugged. “I’m really not worried about it.”

“Oh-kay.” Hannah gave me a skeptical look, but she didn’t question me further. “Have a nice nap, then.”

“Thanks. 
Wake me up at around one if I’m not up already. Set an alarm for yourself at that time if you want to go back to your usual Saturday schedule.”

Hannah stretched and yawned.
“Will do. Believe it or not, I’ll be up working most of the day on the next issue of the magazine. This whole page redesign is giving me grief, and my editors have sunk a lot of money into it. Which is why your story needs to be super-good---we need to sell as many copies of the Rostovich issue as we can, otherwise we’ll go out of business.”
“The Rostovich
issue?
I thought I was just doing a capsule review, not a whole issue.”

“Well, I was meaning to tell you about that. After this whole incident hit the news, our editor decided to take things in a different direction. They’re going to want a full feature from you, and more photos, and possibly an interview transcript if you can provide one. I didn’t promise them anything other than that I’d ask you---nicely---to come up with a bit more than we’d originally planned. I told them you also had the
Plain Dealer
gig and the two things couldn’t overlap, but they seem to think that you can still do both. We’re doing an extra print run since we think the demand will be there. You’ll get paid more, of course. Three hundred dollars instead of fifty.”

“Oh, wow. Same deadline?”

“Yep. Tuesday afternoon at the latest.:

My head began to spin. I had no idea how I was going to deliver
two
feature-length articles by Tuesday to two different publications, especially when I already had so little to go on. “Oh Hannah, I don’t know whether to hug you or punch you right now.”
“Just do the best you can with it. I’ve already got some calls out to other freelancers to pick up some of the slack if you can’t do all of it.”
That eased the blow a bit. Hannah could be a total pain in the ass sometimes, but she was also really thoughtful and fast on her feet when it came to handling last-minute publishing crises. “Thanks, Hannah, I appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome
. By the way, Nancy, your mom called late last night. She said to call her back right away, that it was important.”
“What? But I just talked to her yesterday afternoon.”

“She did mention that, but she also mentioned that this is an absolute emergency and that she expects you to call her back no later than noon today. I tried to ask why, but she wouldn’t tell me. Granted, I understand your mom’s idea of an emergency usually isn’t a life-or-death thing, but she sounded pretty freaked out.”

“She probably just ran out of ketchup or something and wants to vent about it. I’ll call her back after my nap.”

Hannah nodded. “
Good plan. Sweet dreams, Nancy. I hope you come hard in your sleep. That’s always nice during a nap!” With that, she retired to her room.

Leave it to Hannah to end
the conversation in the gutter
, I thought. I dashed off to my own room, sank back into my pillows and fell asleep fully clothed, still wearing Hannah’s expensive---and torn---bolero jacket and cocktail dress. If she’d noticed that Rostovich had ruined her designer duds in a fit of passion, she’d made no indication.

****

I was awakened an hour later by the phone.

This better be good,
I thought, cursing myself for forgetting to silence the ringer before falling asleep. “Hello?”

“Nancy, it’s your mother.”

I groaned. She was the absolute last person I wanted to deal with right now. “Wha? We just talked yesterday.”
“Ahem. As I informed your roommate yesterday, this is an absolute emergency. Did Hannah even bother to tell you I called? She usually doesn’t.”

That’s because she knows you call all the time for completely stupid reasons.
I knew better than to say this aloud, of course. I’d never hear the end of that. “She told me, but I was taking a nap just now. I was planning to call you back when I woke up.”

Mom ignored this. “Nancy, what sort of trouble have you gotten yourself mixed up in? Moreover, what sort of trouble have you gotten
me
mixed up in?”

I sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. There was something very strange about Mom’s tone---to say nothing of what she’d just said. This was not one of her ordinary guilt trips or mountain-
out-of-molehill overreactions---what I heard was genuine alarm and fear in her voice. “What do you mean?”

“Nancy, shortly after I hung up the phone with you yesterday afternoon, several goons----I don’t know what else to call them---showed up at my office demanding all kinds of information about you. I wouldn’t talk to them, but they refused to leave and I eventually had to call the police.”

“Goons?”

“Yes,
goons.
Big, tall, and Russian. Mostly with shaved heads. They wore expensive suits and looked like mob enforcers. They showed up in a Mercedes Benz limousine and wore earpieces. You know, like the Secret Service types and the folks at the UN wear.”

Oh my.
“What did they ask you?”

“All sorts of things. They wanted to know when you were born, where you were born, how you had done in school, what your likes and dislikes were. One of them wanted to know the name of your first-grade teacher
, another asked if I could provide a list of past boyfriends. It was creepy as hell. I’m glad I was on campus picking up some books and papers from my office library instead of at home. Campus security intervened and got them out of the building, but the police refused to make any arrests. The cops said there’s nothing illegal about showing up to a professor’s office and asking questions. Can you believe that? It was absolutely horrendous. I had a panic attack on the spot and I started hyperventilating. I had to go to the ER for oxygen and a Valium.”