Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (6 page)

I mentally calculated the appr
oximate number of words. I’d make almost three hundred bucks for this piece, pretax. Not bad for a night’s work. I had some back bills to pay, so that money would be put to good use. I just hoped Hannah wouldn’t be too upset with me for cheating her out of a golden reporting opportunity. Well, to be technical she’d cheated herself out of it, but she could be petty about this sort of thing.

The editor thanked me for my story, then put me on hold. After a long moment,
Accounts Payable picked up and took down my financial information. I was surprised they had someone in the office that late in the evening, but then again news happened on a twenty-four hour cycle, so they probably had to pay people on a twenty-four hour cycle, too. They told me I could expect to get my check within a week. I was about to hang up when the Accounts Payable clerk said, “Hold for City Desk, please,” then transferred me back to the editor who had just taken down my story.

“Hey there, is this Nancy Delaney back on the line
?” It was the city desk editor again, and I could hear a lot of newsroom chatter in the background.

“Yes, it is.”

“I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you getting this scoop in. We just got the initial version up on the website and out on the wires, and the phones lit up like a Christmas tree within about thirty seconds,” he said. “By the way, I’m Eric Burgess, the weeknight editor. I was wondering, would you be willing to take an assignment?”

“Sure,” I blurted.
Never mind that I had class tomorrow or that I worked tomorrow night. You didn’t turn down a gig at a big paper like the
Plain Dealer
. I would just have to figure out a way to do both.

“Before you agree, let me just tell you what it
is first,” Eric replied. “We were wondering if you could do an investigative profile on the artist on display at the gallery that got shut down tonight.”

“You mean Peter
Rostovich?”

“Uh huh.  You’ve met him, I take it?”

I chose my words carefully. “You could say that.” I wasn’t about to mention the fact that he’d tied me up with strips of plastic, or what his presence did to my nether regions. That would have been highly unprofessional.

“Good. We’ve actually gotten some strange tips in about
Rostovich over the past few days, not to mention all the calls that have been coming in for the past few minutes since the gallery story went up. Very weird stuff. I think most of it is bogus, but there’s definitely something odd about the guy, and I’d like to have someone see what we can dig up. What’s your email address?”

I gave it to him. “Great,” Eric said. “I’ll email you some notes on what our tips have been
so far. We’ve gotten everything from suggestions he’s a pervert to some kind of high-ranking dude in the Russian Mafia. We want to know if any of it is true, or if it’s just part of some phony artistic persona he puts out for publicity purposes.”

“The truth is probably somewhere in between,” I offered, quoting one of my investigative journalis
m professor’s favorite sayings.

“Yeah, that’s usually how it is,” Eric replied with a laugh. It struck me that he spoke to me as an equal---a professional colleague---and not the squeamish, unsure college student
that I actually was. “Well, Nancy, we’ll look forward to what you come up with. Could be an interesting piece, either for the Metro section, or maybe even the Sunday magazine. Depending on what you find out, of course.”

“I’ll
see what I can do,” I said, trying hard not to get in over my head. “Are you looking for a full-length feature then?”
“Yeah, you can go up to 2000 words,” he said. “This’ll be on spec, of course. I can’t guarantee we’ll buy it if the story turns out to be nothing. But if we do buy it, you can expect a good payout, maybe even a chance to become a contributing writer. We’ve been on the lookout for new talent, and you’ve definitely got some.”

I practically salivated
at the prospect. What undergraduate journalism student wouldn’t give anything for a shot at a staff position at one of the best big-city newspapers in the Midwest? The
Plain Dealer
even had Pulitzer winners on staff. What an honor!

And yet, I couldn’t h
elp but feel conflicted. I was attracted to Peter Rostovich---yes, I could admit it now---so wouldn’t it be unethical of me to do an exposé on him? Or would my relationship with him just help me get the information I needed to write a killer story?

Relationship?
How had that word even come up? I had no relationship with Peter Rostovich. I’d only met him an hour ago, and the sum total of our interaction amounted to some small talk and a set of cable ties. Not to mention his blatant disregard for my press credentials.

Hell,
if anything I owed him payback for what he’d done to me at the opening. He’d crossed professional boundaries, and so could I. “Yes, I’m sure I could get all the information you’re looking for and more,” I said. “Mr. Rostovich and I have established quite a, ahem, rapport. He’s already shared some very personal information with me.” That last part was stretching the truth a bit, but we
had
established quite a rapport. In a manner of speaking. “What’s your deadline?”

“We’d like to keep it as close to the release of the gallery-closing story as possible, so we can play off the buzz,” Eric said. “So we’d like to see what you can put together
quickly. Can you get me something by next Wednesday?”

Wednesday?
It was already Thursday night. That gave me only about five days to do some hotshot investigative reporting and write up a killer feature. Plus I had three cocktail shifts to work, a paper to write for Victorian Literature II, and a midterm exam next week in Indian History to prepare for.

But this was a plum assignment, for potential big bucks.  I’d just have to find a way to meet th
e deadline. If the
Plain Dealer
ended up buying the story, I’d make more money than I could earn in a whole month of cocktailing. “Wednesday it is. I’ll file the story no later than six p.m. Will that work?”

“Yes, it will. Email it directly to me. My email is
[email protected]
.”

“Great! I promise, I won’t let you down. And thanks for the opportunity!”

“You’re welcome.
Gotta go, things are nuts here tonight.” With that, Eric hung up.

“So who aren’t you going to let down?” said a familiar voice just over my shoulder.

I spun around and found Peter Rostovich’s icy eyes staring back at me. He looked pissed. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there. For all I knew, he’d overheard the entire conversation.

“Umm, well,
ummm, I was just talking to an editor about a freelance gig,” I said, twirling a stray bit of hair around my index finger.  I didn’t want to blow my cover. At least, not yet.

“Oh? You mean with
Art News Now?”

“No, this was with a different. . .publication.” I wasn’t about to mention I’d just landed a plum assignment with the biggest newspaper in Ohio. Let alone that the assignment was all about
him.
“Given what occurred here this evening, my
Art News Now
review probably won’t work out,” I lied. “I didn’t get a good look at enough of the art.” I paused, took a deep breath for courage. “Though I did see quite a lot of those two models of yours. A little too much, I think.”

He pursed his lips, and his eyes flashed fire. “I would like to apologize for that,” he said. “Had I known
that part of the exhibit would end up going that direction, I never would have attempted it.”

I discreetly slid my left hand into my press bag to turn my voice-activated recorder back on. “You mean it wasn’t intentional?”

“Absolutely not. At least, the, ahem, sexual intercourse part wasn’t intentional. The bondage and positioning definitely were, though. As was the body paint.”

“What do you mean, the
positioning?”

“Having the woman in the supine prone position, with the man standing over and behind her, holding her collar chain,”
Rostovich said. “I staged that. I had nothing to do with where their genitals ended up, however. They did that part without consulting me.”

I stifled a laugh. “So it wasn’
t your plan to have your art opening shut down for public indecency then?”

“No. Though I will admit there are some artists out there who would totally pull a stunt like that on purpose.”

“Such as?”

“
Christo was known to do that sort of thing early in his career, before he got into covering whole buildings with fabric,” he remarked. “Oh, and there was Bob Flanagan, the supermasochist conceptual artist who died of cystic fibrosis. He made a successful and lucrative career out of live explicit bondage acts, even going so far as to staple his genitals to a post during  a showing. But that’s really not my style.”

“And
yet, look what happened anyway.”

He winced. “If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have done it. At least, I wouldn’t have brought the models in live. I’d have done a video installation or something.
At least then if nature took its course like it did tonight, I could edit it out, or at least have shown it in a tasteful manner. Maybe superimpose some black boxes over the offending parts. That probably would have gone over quite well. I could have found a buyer for it very fast.”

“
Yeah, well, porn sells,” I snorted, regretting it almost instantly when I saw Peter wince again. “But what’s done is done, I suppose.”

“Yes. I feel terrible for Richard, though. He’s going to lose his shirt on the show now, and he can ill afford it.
I’ve known Richard for years, and I only agreed to do the show here in Cleveland because he owed me a favor.”

That piqued my curiosity. “So showing in Cleveland is slumming it for you, then?”

He frowned. “I didn’t say that. Look, can I buy you a drink? Or at least see you home safely? I feel as if I’ve ruined your evening.”

On the contrary, you’ve made my day,
I thought to myself. But I was happy to let him think he owed me one if it helped get me my scoop. Not to mention have another hour or two in his physical presence. Because even though he’d pissed me off in the beginning, I wanted very much to be near him. I wanted even more for the chance to touch him, and for him to touch me.

He placed a gentle-yet-firm hand on my shoulder, and I felt the world spin around me. “Shall I drive? My car is right here.” He gestured towards an expensive-looking white convertible
parked right in front of Ginger.  It was an older vehicle, mint condition, with a nameplate I didn’t recognize.

“An Alfa Romeo,” he explained as if reading my thoughts. “Yo
u probably don’t see many of those around here.”

“No, you don’t,” I agreed. “But I have my own car, and I prefer to drive myself. Or walk, if you want to go someplace nearby.”
I made a point not to mention that the rusty jalopy parked behind his fancy car was mine.

“Someplace nearby,” he repeated,
then stroked his chin in thought. I noticed for the first time he had a slight cleft in his chin. I wondered if that feature became more pronounced when he was angry or frustrated, wondered how the tiny indentation would feel underneath my fingertips, maybe even the tip of my tongue. . .

Why
on earth was I having these thoughts? I should have been concentrating on one thing and one thing only----getting my story. I had to stop thinking about chin clefts and eyes the color of glaciers and the delicate pattern of pores on his forehead, a forehead that crinkled upwards as he blinked, then raised both eyebrows in an expression of concern.

“Nancy? Are you all right?” Peter’s voice cut into my thoughts. I noticed his accent got slightly thicker, sending images of Russian steppes, heavy
snows, and fur-wrapped soldiers fluttering through my brain. I was no longer in control of my own mind, and the whole evening now bordered on the absurd. Is this really what men did to women? Rendered them into slobbering, hallucinating messes who couldn’t think or even see straight?

I struggled to regain my composure.
“I’m sorry, my mind must have wandered just now,” I confessed. “That happens sometimes when I haven’t eaten enough.”
Or when I want to jump someone’s bones,
I silently added. My inner self jumped up and down in an aggressive cheerleading routine; I clamped her down, willed her to keep her feet on the ground.

“Well, how about we have a proper dinner instead of just a drink?” Peter said, his expression softening. “My treat. It’s the least I can do.”

My inner self ignored my orders to be silent and then began turning cartwheels. “There’s a good diner near here,” I said. “Just a few blocks. We can walk. They don’t serve alcohol, but they make a mean malted milkshake.”

He smiled. “That sounds lovely. Lead the way.”

I guided Peter up, down and around four city blocks until we arrived at the Salt-n-Pepper, an all-night Greek diner that Hannah and I had been frequenting for years. Layla, the much tattooed and pierced night waitress, recognized me immediately.