“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, rubbing 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 walked 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.”
I flipped through the images once more, studying them more closely. “You took some very ugly things and made them beautiful,” I murmured. It was true. Even with the pockmarked concrete facades, stained by pollution and soot and built without any regard for aesthetics, Rostovich had found beauty in their simple composition. “I like the colors, or at least how you’ve highlighted them. The grays and browns remind me of water in wintertime.”
He smiled. “That’s exactly what I wanted to evoke with these images, Nancy. You’re a natural-born art critic.”
“I thought you hated art critics.”
“Usually, I do. Because they usually never understand my work, at least not in the way I intend it to be understood. They all have their own agendas. But you aren’t like them. You’re different.” He reached out and tucked a stray lock of my hair behind my ear. “There’s a story behind these images, a story I’ve never told anyone before now. Would you like to hear it?”
I set my pen and pad down, folded my arms across my chest. I decided just to sit back and let him talk. No scratching away at notes, no probing reporter’s questions. I knew then I’d lose my chance at glimpsing the real Peter Rostovich otherwise. I even reached over and switched off the digital recorder as a sort of guarantee of our intimacy. Whatever he said, I would just have to commit it to memory if I wanted to use it later.
He took notice of that. “Are we going off the record now, Miss Delaney?”
“Only if you want to.”
“You’re welcome to write about what I tell you from now on in any way that you want. I trust you.”
I was touched. “All right. Go on.”
“I was hired to do these pictures by an old friend, someone I knew back in Sevastopol. Or rather, someone that my father knew. They were in the Party together in the eighties. Unlike my father though, my friend, who eventually became my client, was able to find a place for himself in the new Russian Federation government when my father failed at that. He’s done very well for himself since, and has business contacts all over the world. He’s primarily a politician, but one with quite a sizable business empire built up on the side. He still lives in Sevastopol, but keeps apartments in several world cities, including New York. I ran into him there when he was in town, and he asked me if I would do this project as a personal favor to him. He wanted to capture what Soviet Sevastopol was like before it disappeared forever. He paid me handsomely for the work, on the condition that I never show the images to anyone until after his death.”
“And yet you’re showing them to me.”
“Yes. And he’s still alive, so I’m breaking my promise to him. Of course, he’s since broken several promises to me, so I expect I’m entitled.”
I thought about probing him on what he meant by that, but decided he would probably tell me on his own, in his own time. My instincts proved correct.
“Suffice to say my client and I had a falling out. He’d paid me for the work, so the images and original works technically belonged to him, but he’d never actually taken delivery of them. I even tried to make him take possession of the images, but he always refused. I was never able to get him to explain why he’d paid so much money----even my travel expenses back and forth to Sevastopol, where he put me up in the best hotel in town, a former Imperial palace----for something he didn’t want. He never even looked at the images as far as I know. Which is disappointing, because I frankly consider them to be the best work of my career. And the most different from my usual style.”
“Does your usual style involve live models having sex?” I asked, almost without thinking. I still had plenty of sex on the brain, and it was hard not to get aroused with Peter sitting so close, shirtless, barefoot, and smelling of bed.
He laughed. “No, that was a one-off. Though my work is almost always very sensual, either involving the body or inanimate objects that evoke the body. I’m all about curves, Nancy. I like things to be natural and organic. Which is the exact opposite of what the Sevastopol pictures show. Those pictures are stark, sterile, unnatural.”
“And that’s why they’re so good.” Though I disagreed on the unnatural part. I studied the image I had up on the iPad then---a closeup of the dirty stucco wall of a Soviet apartment block. Even though it was flat, with corners and angles sticking out every which way, it reminded me of moving desert sands. Or perhaps the naked skin of a lover upon rumpled, flesh-covered sheets. . .
I switched the iPad off then. I had to focus.
“Did you know, Nancy, that what I ended up exhibiting at the Flaming River Gallery wasn’t my first choice? What do you think my first choice was?”
I gestured at the darkened iPad. “Those?”
“Yes. I wanted to exhibit those. I planned to call the exhibit the Sevastopol Series. I came very close to doing it,
too, even went so far as to have the photos and sketches framed and mounted for hanging. I did the framing and mounting myself, I didn’t even trust it to my closest assistant at my studio back in New York. Nobody---not even Richard Darling----knows that was my original plan. Only you.”
“So in other words, you’re giving me an exclusive.”
“Yes. You could call it that. Though I’m only giving you permission to write about these images and the story behind them, not show the images themselves.”
“I doubt my editors will go for that. Not at Art News Now, and definitely not at the Plain Dealer. They’ll want to see---and read---everything.”
“I think that withholding the images will just spark more interest from readers,” he retorted. “Especially when I tell you the rest of the story.”
“Fair enough. Dish.”
“I will. But there’s something you and I should probably do first. Follow me.”
EIGHT
He led me down the hallway of the suite, and we ended up in a small sitting room. I realized then that this was the foyer of yet another bedroom----the bedroom he had promised to me when he first made the invitation. “Please, have a seat,” he said, motioning to one of the striped overstuffed chairs.
This room was decorated in a different style than the others, which were mostly muted earthtones and solids in a postmodern, stripped-down style. This room had more of a throwback look, with floral Chinese rugs, patterned upholstery, dark wood furniture, and shiny brass fixtures. I wondered if maybe they forgot to remodel it along with the rest of the suite.
“I chose this Presidential suite over the other one in the hotel because it still has a Victorian bedroom,” Peter said, as if reading my thoughts. “I thought you would appreciate it, given your literary tastes.”
My literary tastes? How did he know what they were? Had I ever discussed them with him? I couldn’t remember, the past few days had become such a blur. Or had he simply deduced them, the way he seemed to deduce so many things about me based on sheer instinct? Either way, the notion excited me. “It’s lovely. But aren’t we going to, um, spend the night together?”
He sat down in the chair opposite me. “As I think I’ve already mentioned, I don’t do well when it comes to sharing private spaces. I prefer to sleep alone. I hope that doesn’t upset you.”
It did upset me. But I made no outward indication of such. I kept my expression neutral and my mouth shut, waiting for him to go on. I still wanted my story. And I still wanted him. But I would just have to wait for both to come to me in their own time, in their own way.
“Nancy, I have some of the originals for the images you saw on the iPad stored here in this room for you. Not all of them, because I couldn’t carry them all with me at once. But I want you to look at them again, and tell me if you notice anything unusual.”
He got up from his seat and went to open a small closet, where he retrieved several framed images. Mostly photographic prints, but also a few drawings. “Look closely at the photographs, then compare them to the corresponding drawings. Do you notice anything you didn’t on the digital versions?”
He placed the framed images on the coffee table in front of me, one by one. They were very large, about three feet by four feet, not including the frames and mats. I studied each of them for almost five minutes apiece, coming back to two in particular. These were close-ups of the taupe-colored apartment block I’d seen on the iPad in the other room, the ones that had reminded me of shifting desert sands. I stared at the photos, my eyes scanning their stunning angular composition again and again until I almost felt seasick. I didn’t notice anything different at first, but just as my eyes began to glaze over and my vision blurred slightly, I noticed something I hadn’t before. There was a shadow in one of the building’s windows. Barely noticeable, but it looked like the outline of a person.
A person who seemed to be in trouble. A person who was trying to escape the building by jumping out the window.
I pointed to it. “Do you mean this?”
Peter didn’t reply. His face was a blank slate. “What about the other photo?”
I studied the other one again. I hadn’t noticed anything untoward in that one yet, but after I let my eyes follow the vortex created by the unusual composition until my eyes began to blur, something popped out at me, almost like what used to happen with those old “Magic Eye” posters I had in my bedroom when I was a kid.
There was a person-shaped shadow on this photo too. But instead of appearing on the window, it appeared in midair.
The shadow was falling out of the building.
I looked up, saw Peter staring at me expectantly. “What do you see?”
“I see someone jumping out of the building.”
He gave me a single nod. “That’s what I see, too. I wanted to know if you saw the same thing, but I didn’t want to bias you.”
“You took these photos?”
“Yes. I also did the drawings. Some of them on-site, plein-air style, others from the photos.”
“Did you see someone jump out of the building when you were there?”
He took a deep breath, then blew it out. “That’s the thing. I didn’t see anything of the kind. Not even a shadow of someone doing it, say maybe from behind me, or from someone projecting an image or something. And the shadows don’t appear in the digital versions of the photos, either. They only showed up when I transferred the digital images to traditional film and then developed them from negatives.”
“How very strange.”
“Yes.”
“How do think those---whatever they are, shadows---got there?”
He sighed. “I have absolutely no idea. I was hoping maybe you could find out.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Using your keen mind and investigative journalism skills. By the way, this isn’t all of it.”
He set those two framed prints aside and pulled up another. I hadn’t seen this one before on the iPad. It was darker, more complex than the other images, a panoramic view of what looked to be a centuries-old church with a large dome, surrounded by crumbling ruins.
“That’s the Chersonesus, on the banks of the Black Sea in downtown Sevastopol,” Peter explained. “An ancient Greek settlement and temple that was later made over into an Eastern Orthodox church. This was the only building in that area my client wanted covered in the project. I didn’t understand why, since this is a famous site---photographed and painted all the time, unlike the others, which are mostly gone now. It never made sense to me. Until I did the analog prints, that is. Look closely and tell me what you see.”
I studied the long, wide panorama. The main building was huge, a palace of sorts with scores of windows, and not a close-up like the other two of the apartment block were. The surrounding ruins were mostly crumbling foundations, with a half-erect building here and there, and plenty of tourists combing the grounds. How was I supposed to find anything unusual with so much ground to cover?
I looked up at Peter. “Seriously? What am I supposed to be looking for here?”
“I don’t want to bias you. I want you to find it on your own. But this might help.” He reached into his pajama pocket and pulled out a magnifying glass. “Take your time. And keep an open mind. It’s not going to be what you expect.”
I took the magnifying glass from him and started going over the image with it. I went in stages, section by section, covering it from left to right. It was a slow, painstaking process as I laddered up and down, up and down in parallel vertical lines, trying to see something that wasn’t supposed to be there. But how was I supposed to know what was and wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place? Chersonesus was a huge complex, surrounded by crowds and a traffic roundabout, with the Black Sea a vast, fading blue line in the background. The photo had to have been taken from a vantage point high above.
“I took this from a hired helicopter,” Peter explained before I had the chance to ask. “It was the only way to get the whole site in
to one shot. I used the widest-angle lens made at the time.”
There he was, reading my mind again. How on earth did he do that? It was eerie.
I went back to scouring the photograph. The church had to have been built mostly in the nineteenth century from the looks of it, but everything else was literally thousands of years old, a contradiction of sorts. I vaguely recalled reading about Sevastopol’s role in the Crimean War, how those events had inspired Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write The Charge of the Light Brigade. As per usual, I could only analyze things in terms of Victorian literature.
Silly girl, my inner self snapped at me. This is no time to be thinking about poetry. Concentrate. And yet, I couldn’t get Tennyson’s verses out of my mind. I’d memorized them for a quiz sophomore year, and they plagued my brain now the same way you can’t get an annoying pop song out of your head.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
Round and round those words went in my mind. I wasn’t sure why I’d fixated on the third verse of the poem, but it seemed relevant to what I was doing for some reason. Taking the poetry as my cue, I stopped scanning the photo by laddering up and down and just glanced right, left, up and down. I did it once, twice, three times, watching the image blur a little bit, just as the other photos had when I’d inspected them. Just when I was about to give up, I saw something.
I pressed my finger to a spot in the lower right corner of the panorama, a dark shadow that creeped between two crumbling bits of Greek ruins. “This,” I said.
Peter gave me a single nod. “You’re very good,” he said.
“What do you think this is?”
He took a deep breath before speaking. “I want to hear your interpretation.”
I studied the shadow for a bit longer. I had to squint my eyes a bit to see it at all, otherwise it just disappeared into the landscape. It looked like a body---a dead body, sprawled out on the ground between two ruined buildings, yet it also seemed almost like a ghost. There were no details, no clothing, no facial features. Just a blurry dark shadow, as if cast by moonlight.
Domino (The Domino Trilogy) Page 16
