Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Luca
Ipressed Dominic’s white shirt with the iron. Steam rose and then disappeared into the kitchen air.
On the table beside me, I’d already laid out the black suit, the narrow silk tie he preferred for dress rehearsals, and the pocket square he would almost certainly remove before we left the house.
His score sat in its case on the counter, pencil clipped inside. Water bottle filled. Lozenge tin checked. Backup reading glasses in the jacket pocket because he would deny needing them until the moment he did.
The house was quiet, but not restful. I heard a murmur of voices from the courtyard, where Eamon and Thiago were going over something together before breakfast.
I set the iron upright and ran my thumb across the shirt placket to check for any wrinkles I’d missed.
“That’s an impressive amount of aggression directed at the linen.”
Dominic stood in the kitchen doorway in a pale blue robe, with one hand braced on the frame. His silver hair was still damp from the shower and combed straight back.
“It behaves better under discipline,” I said.
“That has not been my experience with linen.”
“That’s because you treat fabric as though it exists to admire you.”
He considered my comment. “It does, to a degree.”
I looked over at him. “And you are wide awake.”
“The only consolation of aging,” he said, “is the freedom to speak more accurately in public.”
He examined the collection of objects I’d gathered for his day in the public eye.
“You’re sending the black notebook with me,” he said.
“Of course.”
“I’m not convinced I want it.”
“Yes, you are.”
He let that pass without challenge because he knew I was right. The black notebook held the rehearsal notes he pretended not to rely on until he reached for it three times in the hour before stepping onto the podium.
I unplugged the iron and set it aside. Dominic was still looking at the table.
“I know the plan is solid,” I said. “I know Thiago and Eamon have covered the house, theater, stage access, and every moving part. I know they’ve checked the building. No one will drift through the Orpheum unseen.”
He looked at me. “And yet—“
“I don’t think he’s going to stop,” I said. “I think the closer we get, the more determined he becomes. Thinking about that doesn’t improve my mood.”
“No,” Dominic said. “Such a thing rarely does.”
“The linen understands.” I laughed briefly.
“I keep having the absurd thought that if I correctly sort and prepare enough things, the world will remain coherent.”
“That isn’t absurd,” Dominic said.
I looked at him.
“The problem is that coherence is not obedience.”
“Yes.”
He lifted the jacket from the chair, checked the lining with a glance, and set it back down. “You may continue.”
I inhaled slowly. “You’re important to me,” I said. “More than the job. More than anything I can make sound civilized first thing in the morning.”
He stood still and looked at me. I went on because stopping there would have been cowardly.
“You know that, I assume, but I don’t think I’ve ever said it without hiding it under a pile of domestic details. If something happened to you, it wouldn’t be a professional problem. It would feel...” I looked down once, then back up. “Personal.”
He said nothing for a few seconds.
At last he asked, “Do you realize you’re meaningful to me too?”
My throat tightened.
“You are the person who has made the past seven years of my life navigable. That is not merely an administrative function, Luca.”
I looked away toward the courtyard doors.
“When my hands shook after Helena died,” Dominic said, “you moved the donor luncheon by forty minutes so I could compose myself. When I forgot what day it was on the anniversary of Etienne’s funeral, you put coffee in my hand and the correct tie on my bed, and when people bore me, you save me.”
His voice remained even.
“You are loved here,” he said. “I hope you understand that.”
His honesty nearly undid me.
I leaned one hip against the table and crossed my arms, partly for posture and partly to hold myself together. “Let me say something else unpleasantly direct.”
“Please.”
“I’m frightened.”
He nodded once, as though I had handed him a correctly labeled folder.
“Yes. So am I.”
His willingness to openly admit being scared startled me.
“I don’t enjoy saying that either, but one should not become ridiculous in old age merely to appear consistent.”
I laughed and rubbed a hand over my face. He stepped closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough to signal increased intimacy.
“The fear is not the important element,” he said. “What’s useful are the changes it brings about.”
“And what has it changed for you?”
“Nothing essential.”
“But something?”
He looked past me toward the French doors. Thiago and Eamon had reappeared after sweeping the perimeter of the house.
When Dominic spoke again, his tone was more casual. “Mr. Reyes is a serious man,” he said.
“That’s one way to describe him.”
“It will suffice for now.” Dominic looked at me again. “He is also steadier than he believes and lonelier than he admits.”
“That last part sounds speculative.”
“Most things are.”
I folded my arms more tightly. “Are we having a conversation about my emotional state or yours?”
“Both. Efficiently.”
The corner of his mouth turned up slightly, and his eyes glistened.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You are not using your potential assassination to workshop my romantic future.”
“I refuse the term ‘workshop.’”
“Dominic.”
“You may not have unlimited time to hesitate,” he said. “That’s true whether or not anyone takes a shot.”
That was the opinion. Clean, irritating, and accurate.
I glanced toward the courtyard again. Thiago had stopped near the gate. His stance was loose enough to appear natural and precise enough to show he’d already thoroughly mapped his surroundings.
“I’m not hesitating,” I said.
Dominic’s expression did not change.
“I’m being cautious.”
“That’s hesitation with a better tailor.”
He let the comment settle for half a beat, then touched my forearm briefly. It was a rare gesture from Dominic.
“If something happened to me,” he breathed, “I would object strongly to leaving you alone with only work for company.”
I looked at him.
“And if nothing happens to me,” he continued, “I still object.”
My eyes burned at the corners, which felt melodramatic. I blinked it away.
“You’re impossible,” I said.
“You’re not the first to establish that fact.”
The back door opened. Eamon walked in with a folded printout in one hand and stopped when he saw us. “I can come back,” he said.
“No,” Dominic insisted, stepping back into complete composure. “That would imply we were discussing something undignified.”
“Were you?”
“Deeply,” I said.
I detected a slight smirk from Eamon. “Good. I prefer the house to remain emotionally functional.”
He crossed to the table and handed Dominic the printout. “Route revision for this afternoon. Minor. One block shift on the return because of utility work.”
Dominic scanned it. “Accepted.”
Eamon nodded, then looked at the laid-out suit. “You still do realize you’re going to a dress rehearsal, not accepting an honorary doctorate.”
“I’ve received honorary doctorates,” Dominic said. “Accepting them was less work than a dress rehearsal.”
Dominic set the route sheet down.
“We should leave in forty minutes,” I said.
“Then I should dress before you speak to me as though I were a distracted cellist.”
He picked up the shirt and went upstairs.
I stood alone in the kitchen for a moment after he left, hands braced on the table, listening to the old house breathe around me.
By the time we left, the August heat had settled over the avenue with full authority.
The SUV’s air-conditioning gamely fought it.
Eamon drove. Dominic sat beside him with the score case between his knees.
Thiago took the third row, which let him see Dominic, the route, and both side windows without turning his head much at all. I sat beside him.
None of us spoke for the first several blocks. Traffic moved in small surges. A delivery truck nosed halfway into an intersection and thought better of it. Tourists clustered near a corner café, wearing Hawaiian shirts. Thiago glanced at them, and then toward the rear window before settling again.
At the Orpheum, the side stage entrance was already operating under controlled access.
One uniformed officer stood by the door and another at the alley mouth.
Thiago got out first, scanned the line of parked vehicles, the opposite roofline, and blind corner near the loading entrance, then gave Eamon a nod.
We moved inside.
Dominic stepped onto the stage and paused. “She still knows how to make an entrance,” he murmured.
“You’re talking about the building again,” I said.
“Very few people rise to the occasion like the Orpheum.”
Bridget arrived two minutes later through the stage-right corridor, with her violin case in one hand and her black rehearsal folder under her arm.
She’d pinned her hair back more tightly than usual.
She greeted the principal second with a touch on the elbow and a low comment that earned a nod.
Then she took her place, unpacked, and rosined her bow.
Rehearsal began on time.
I took a seat in the second row. Dominic stopped the orchestra twice for balance and once because the timpani entrance was correct in tempo but wrong in attitude.
“No,” he said from the podium, one hand raised. “You’re arriving like a natural disaster. I’d prefer something more human.”
The timpanist blinked. “Less force?”
“Less declaration.”
They ran it again. It was better.
Halfway through the first run of the last movement, Dominic cut them off and asked Bridget to take the opening transition again.
She did. Perfectly.
He moved on.
I watched her through the next passage. She played with full command, phrasing clean and bow hand steady. If I had not known what I knew, I would have considered her magnificent.