Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (13 page)

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, m
y 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 s
o-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.

I called Mom’s cell phone and she picked up on the first ring, just as she always did. (Mom was known to interrupt her class lectures to speak to me, which I’m sure her overworked graduate students didn’t mind.). “Nancy, dear,” she sang in her thick upper-Massachusetts drawl. “I was wondering when I would hear from you. You’ve ignored my messages for days.” She was exaggerating, as per usual.

“Mom, chill out. You just emailed me last night. And I just now picked up your voicemail
from this morning. I do have a life, you know.”

“Bullshit. You’re a college student with zero responsibilities.”

I cast my eyes skyward. Already cursing in her second sentence. Mom was in rare form today. “For your information, Mom, I have term papers due, a midterm to study for, and two freelance journalism assignments. Plus work. I do pay my own rent and utilities, you know. And I have to study hard enough to keep my scholarship since you and Dad can’t afford to pay my full tuition here.”

I heard Mom suck in her breath, which meant my last remark had hit exactly where I’d wanted it to. It bothered Mom to no end that I didn’t live the life of privilege she had at my age. “If you’d just gone to Beverly, where your father and I have faculty tuition benefits, you wouldn’t have that problem,” she said for at
least the eighty-fifth time this year. “You could have stayed home and lived with us, and focused entirely on your studies. You wouldn’t have to take all that goddamned
sidework
and spend your weekends slinging cheap beers at people.”

“Mom, these are important writing gigs. I just got a gig with the
Cleveland Plain Dealer.
A feature-length investigative piece. On spec, of course, but---
”

“
On spec
? You mean that you might research and write the damn thing, and then not get paid a dime? Oh, Nancy, you know better than to do that sort of thing. That’s basically slave labor. If they want you to write for them, they can offer you a regular job, with salary and benefits.”

“Mom, we’ve been through this a million times. I’m going to be a journalist, and I need to have a lot of freelance clips if I want to ever get a full-time staff writer job. It’s just how the industry works.”

“We won’t discuss that right now, dear. Let’s just get down to business. Are you coming home for Columbus Day or not? The Connors were asking about you just the other day. You remember their son, Robert. He’s still single, you know. I really think you should consider dating him when you move back home after graduation.”

I thought about blurting out that Robert
was gay, but he hadn’t gone public with that information yet, and I wasn’t comfortable outing him to my mom even though anyone who wasn’t blind, deaf and dumb had probably figured it out about him a long time ago. Robert had his right ear pierced, talked like a Fire Island waiter, loved Judy Garland, plus he was majoring in drama at Yale.

“Mom, first of all, Robert and I are just friends. Second of all, I’m not moving back home after graduation. I’m planning on getting a job and living on my own, just like you and Dad
always said you wanted me to. Third of all---”

“We
do
want you to get a job and live on your own, Nancy. We would just prefer you do it back home in Boston instead of some Godforsaken uncivilized place like Cleveland, Ohio.”

Oh, not this again
, I thought, biting my tongue against the first snide remark that came to mind. “
Third
of all, I’m not coming home for Columbus Day weekend this year. You see, I’ve met someone, and---“

Mom shrieked like an adolescent.
“You’ve
met
someone? You mean, you’re
dating?”

“Well, it’s still in the very early stages, but---“

Mom wasn’t about to let me get a word in edgewise. “Oh Nancy, that’s just
wonderful.
Your father and I, we were getting very worried about you. We were beginning to wonder if perhaps you preferred women. Which would have been totally fine with us, mind you----wait a minute. You aren’t dating a
woman,
are you?
”

“No, Mom, I’m not. This person I’ve met is definitely male.” And also definitely much older than I, and kind of weird,
and possibly involved in shady international activities, and probably would not be the type I would feel comfortable bringing home to meet my parents. But we didn’t have to discuss any of that right now. The important part was I’d gotten my mom to shut up. Everything else was just details. “I’m really not sure where this relationship will go, but I’m just trying to keep my options open at this point. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course I understand, dear. I’m just so glad you’ve finally gotten enough sense to realize that it’s perfectly normal for a young woman your age to be dating. Honestly, your father and I were talking just the other day about how you work yourself practically to death and never take time out to have any fun.”

“Mom, I have
plenty
of fun,” I retorted. “My idea of fun is just different from most peoples’, that’s all.” Most people didn’t find lying around the apartment on weekends reading Victorian novels and watching endless
Downton Abbey
and
Upstairs, Downstairs
DVD marathons fun. But I did, and what on earth was wrong with that?

What, indeed. Even I was having a hard time justifying my lifestyle to myself these days. It was high time for a ch
ange. “Anyhoo, Mom, I’ve gotta go. I need to go meet with my boss for a bit, and then I’m um, I’m scheduled to have dinner with the, ahh,
gentleman
that I’ve met recently.” There. I’d let the cat out of the bag. Though I used the term “gentleman” loosely. Peter Rostovich could only be called a gentleman in the nineteenth-century European aristocratic sense. You know, the gentlemen who got to call themselves as such while living essentially above the law and without moral consequences for such things as, say, knocking up one of their housemaids or keeping a secret bondage dungeon in their manor houses. . . .