Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (21 page)

Only it wasn’t. I was no closer to getting what I needed to write my articles. I was no closer to knowing who and what Peter
Rostovich really was.  I’d lost my virginity, and gained what, exactly? Other than a few fleeting moments of intense pleasure, nothing.

Not that I was complaining. I was far past due to enter into womanhood. And I’d done it with a bang. How many women out there could claim they’d lost their virginity in a Ritz-Carlton presidential suite w
ith a mysterious, filthy-rich artist with an international reputation? How many virgins agreed to be tied up with lengths of expensive silk, and had multiple orgasms the first time out? Not many, I was sure. It was all very exotic and exciting. I’m not sure I would call it romantic, though. It was more like the plot of a seamy pulp novel, or perhaps a modern twist on the Victorian “fallen woman” narrative. For some strange reason I was reminded of Daisy Miller, the title character in a Henry James novel I’d read for nineteenth-century American literature class last semester.

Daisy Miller?
my inner self queried, looking up from her glossy magazine.
Hmph. No good could possibly come of that
. She was right. Like all Victorian literary fallen women, Daisy Miller had come to a very bad end. At this rate, I’d end up dying broken-hearted of consumption or something. Not my scene. I had to get back on track somehow.

But first things first---I at least had to make myself presentable before I went back after my scoop. I didn’t know what had happened to the toiletries I’d brought along with me in my press bag, so I searched the room for other options, and found plenty.
There was a selection of toiletries set out on the marble counter next to the sink. A new toothbrush, still sealed in its plastic packaging, along with a travel-sized tube of Colgate. Facial cleansing wipes, lotion, deodorant, a lady’s razor and shaving cream, even a fresh set of satin panties with the tags still attached, in my size. I chuckled to myself, wondering just how much trouble and advanced planning Peter had gone to providing all of these things. Then again, I figured the Ritz-Carlton staff had probably done it all for him, had probably even anticipated what was required and provided it without even being asked, just like Laverne had done for me in the private washroom downstairs. To think, Peter lived in a world where you could get anything you ever wanted or needed without even having to ask for it. The very notion made me feel warm all over, even as a niggling voice in the back of my brain scolded me for it. Sure, there were people starving all over the world, there were millions out of work and struggling to survive in my own country---but you’d never know it from the looks of this place.

I stepped into the marble steam shower and stood under the jets, relishing the scalding-hot water that poured onto my body from all directions. There was a bottle of jasmine body wash and a brand-new
loofah sitting on the shelf, and I used both liberally, scrubbing myself hard from top to bottom. The loofah’s texture was thick, rough, even hard, and it left marks on my skin that might have made some women feel raw and chapped, but only made me feel refreshed, even a little excited. It occurred to me as I stood among the body jets, inhaling a little cloud of scented steam, that I’d always liked things done the hard way---whether it came to reading heavy classical tomes instead of partying, working instead of playing, pushing myself and my body hard at the gym instead of relaxing, studying instead of dating.  Did that make me a masochist? Did it matter? In Peter Rostovich, had I finally found someone who shared my true tastes?

That last question frightened me a little. I didn’t want to explore that line of thinking any further, so
I switched off the taps and stepped out of the shower. I made use of all the proffered toiletries, including the silk panties, which felt delectable against my tender skin. After brushing out my damp hair and freshening up a bit, I surveyed myself in the mirror. I looked the same as always, and yet not quite. There was a ruddiness to my cheeks now that I’d never been able to achieve without acres of blush before. My eyelids were hooded, softer. My shoulders seemed lower, less hunched. I looked relaxed, even a little older. Wiser, too.

I was a woman now, to put it simply. I’d walked into this hotel a gawky schoolgirl, and now I was a vixen. A vixen with a past.

Good God, I was being ridiculous. A single romp between the sheets that took place less than five hours ago didn’t exactly add up to a past, at least not in the modern sense. Had I been living in 1830s London, I’d be royally screwed now, and probably doomed to work as a courtesan or even a guttersnipe in the East End. But this wasn’t Victorian London, it was modern-day Cleveland, where everything from out-of-wedlock births to neck tattoos were commonplace. I could walk out onto the street right now carrying a sign that read “I JUST LOST MY VIRGINITY” and nobody would even give me a second glance. This was the twenty-first century, and if I wanted to get anywhere in life, I needed to stop comparing myself to centuries-old literary heroines. I was a modern woman living in modern times, and I had a job to do.

I finished primping and went out to wander the suite in search of the elusive Peter
Rostovich. I found him sitting at the dining room table, staring at the iPad he’d set up for the interview that never took place. I hung back in the doorway for awhile before announcing my presence, just watching him. He wore a pair of plaid flannel pajama pants, and nothing else. His tawny hair was mussed, and a shadow of beard had crept out on his cheeks. I could smell his musky male scent from across the room----I could tell he hadn’t showered since our bodies had touched. For this I was glad. I wanted to smell myself on him, maybe even taste myself, too. The very thought thrilled me to the core.

I could see what he was studying on the
iPad over his shoulder. He was scrolling through the pictures of his art, or what I presumed was his art. It was radically different from what I’d seen at the Flaming River Gallery two days earlier. Photographs, sketches and paintings of drab-looking gray buildings, mostly. The colors and tones were stark, the lines and composition depressing---and yet, their simplicity made them strangely beautiful. I wondered what he’d wanted to evoke with images like that. My journalist’s mind began to spin, searching for any possible angle to explore.

“Were you planning to show me those during our interview?” I asked.

His shoulders jerked back and he looked up, startled. “Oh. Nancy. I---I didn’t realize you were up.”

“I woke up about half
and hour ago.”

He set down the
iPad, exchanging it for a half-empty highball glass that held amber liquid and melting ice. I noticed an open bottle of Jameson’s on the sideboard. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Not at all.
I woke up on my own, and wanted a shower. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind. Did you find everything you needed?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good.”
Peter took a few sips of whiskey, then set down the glass, studying its contents for a moment before speaking again. “I don’t sleep well with others,” he mused. “I prefer to sleep alone. I prefer to do most things alone, in fact.”

I pulled out the chair beside him and sat down. I had a feeling I was seeing the real Peter
Rostovich for the very first time. Maybe not all of him---probably just the rough edges, the parts that he couldn’t keep well-hidden underneath that worldly veneer. After all, how much can somebody reasonably hide about himself at three o’clock in the morning? “So you’re a loner. You wouldn’t be the first artist who felt that way.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only artist in the world who lives and works the way I do.”

I leaned closer to him. I could smell his scent full-on now; it took me back to t
he heady moments of our joining just a few short hours before. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to feel those things again. But I also wanted to get my story, and now might be my only chance. I resisted the urge to reach out and caress his stubbled cheek, and reached across the table for my reporter’s  notepad and digital voice recorder instead.

“Why do you say that?”
I asked, pen in hand. Perhaps it was a bit too obvious, but I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip past me.

He stared out the window for a moment, took another sip of whiskey, set down the glass. He turned to face me, took note of my reporter’s tools, didn’t comment on them. “These past few years I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices I’ve made, what led me to this life,” he said. “I wonder if I’ve made the right decisions. I wonder how my life might have been different if I hadn’t gotten into the things I did when I was a teenager.”

“You mean the, um,
investments?”
I wanted to say
organized crime,
but I still had no proof of that. I wasn’t sure there even was any proof. My editors at the
Plain Dealer
would surely be disappointed.

“You say that like what I did was a bad thing,” he scoffed. “But what you people don’t understand is, when my people step off the boat or the plane or w
hatever it was that brought us to this country, we simply didn’t have access to the resources that people who grew up here take for granted. We have to find alternate ways into the system. We have to find other ways to succeed. Not wrong ways, necessarily. Just different.”

“You’re still being needlessly vague about what exactly it was you did back then,” I retorted. “You have to admit, it seems suspicious.”

“No, I don’t think it seems suspicious at all. Not to me. But I come from a different world than you do, a world where nosy journalists don’t poke around asking silly questions about things that happened almost twenty years ago.”

“You mean, you come from a place where corruption and secrecy are the norm, and where presidents and prime ministers silence their enemies by poisoning them with radioactive isotopes.”

He laughed. “Yes, that’s exactly right, Nancy. I can see why the
Plain Dealer
hired you to dig up dirt on me. You’re very, very good at your job.”

“I haven’t managed to dig up much of anything yet. Except maybe your
bedsheets.”

Peter reached over and grasped both my hands in his. He took the pen out of my hand and set it on the table, though he didn’t disturb the digital recorder, which was taking down everything we said. “About tha
t,” he said. “I hope---I hope what we did was an enjoyable experience for you. Because I enjoyed it. Immensely.”

“It was wonderful.”

He squeezed my hands tight. My entire body tingled in response. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. In fact, I want to do it again. Again and again and again. With you.”

He let go of my hands and sank backwards in his chair, r
ubbing his temples, then ran one hand back through his tousled locks once, twice, three times. “Oh, Nancy. You have to realize that’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible. We did it once, we can do it again.” I picked my pen back up from the table. “
After
the interview, of course.”
“And that’s exactly why it’s impossible. How many different lines are we crossing at once? We have to stop now, before we make things any worse.”

“Nobody has to know. You’re famously discreet, it shouldn’t be hard for you to keep something like this a secret.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s you. Nancy, you can’t possibly comprehend what getting involved with me would mean. How it would impact your whole life. How it might ruin things for you before you’ve even had a chance to make a place for yourself in the world. I don’t want to cheat you out of the life you deserve for my own selfish reasons.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly have that much power over me. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” he replied. “There’s so much you don’t know about me, Nancy. So much that nobody knows. Nobody who walks in normal circles, anyway.”

“And that’s exactly why I want to know more about you. Because you’re not normal.”

“You’re right, I’m not.” He took up the
iPad again, handed it to me.  “Scroll through these pictures, tell me what you think you see.”

It was the same set of pictures I’d seen him scrolling through when I w
alked in. I flicked through the whole series, covering all the ones I’d seen from a distance, plus a few more. Lots of gray, hulking, blocky buildings under gray skies. The architecture was functional yet ugly, already showing signs of wear and weathering even when the buildings obviously weren’t very old. Lots of harsh angles, horizontal and vertical lines, nothing unnecessary, everything built cheaply of low-grade materials. It was mostly photographs, along with some scanned images of pencil sketches and pastel paintings that looked like hand-drawn copies of the photographs. One showed something that might have been a prison, a long, low gray building behind razor wire with a guard tower.

“These look like Soviet government buildings,” I observed. “We talked about Soviet art and architecture in my Intro to Art History class last year. Just a little bit
, though. But my roommate is an art historian, and she knows a lot about it.”
“You’re exactly right,” Peter said, then reached over and flicked two fingers across the iPad screen to expand the image size. “These pictures are all of buildings in the town where I grew up. Sevastopol, in the Ukraine. This is the outskirts, where I was from, an area called Balaklava. The old city on the sea is quite beautiful, but I lived in the modern part, the Soviet part. It was depressing, especially when I lived there. I took these pictures and made these drawings about five years ago. A lot of these buildings have since been torn down.”