Max was quiet for a long, long time, then he got to his feet and came over to the bed. ‘And how did that go down?’ he asked. ‘With you?’
Annie felt anger rising. She was tired, edgy, and here he was again with the inquisition. Yes, she wanted him back. She needed him. But this? Right now? It was too much.
‘How do you think?’ she asked.
‘That’s what I’m asking. Did it bother you, seeing him with other women?’
Annie reached out for her robe, awkwardly pulled it on, and swung her legs off the bed, sending him a glare as she stood, tied the sash, pulled the robe tight around her, right up to her bruised throat.
‘Why the fuck would it bother me, Max? I told you: all that was dead and gone. Just like he should have been.’
‘Yeah, so you keep saying.’
‘And I mean it.’ Annie went over to the dressing table and started angrily pulling a brush through her hair. ‘Can’t you get it through your skull? We were finished years ago. He was just a lonely, desperate man and . . .’ she hesitated, her hand pausing on the brush. ‘You don’t understand what it was like. How things changed over these past five years, how he changed.’
Max came up behind her and his eyes locked with hers in the mirror. ‘Meaning what?’
Annie put the brush down. ‘I don’t want to talk about this now,’ she said.
‘Well, fuck your luck. I do.’
Annie turned, confronting him. She let out a sigh.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘Come on.’
‘I saw a change come over him,’ she said. ‘He loved reliving his old glory days, when he was Il Papa, sending Lucco and Alberto out, his caporegimes, to pass on his orders to the capos and the foot soldiers on the streets of New York. He liked to talk about his family back in Sicily, all the things that had happened over his lifetime. As time went on, he changed a lot. The hookers didn’t come any more. He stopped trying to get me drunk. He just wanted to talk – about the past, mostly.’
‘And . . . ?’ he prompted.
‘Over five years I saw it happen. He didn’t take care of his appearance any more. He became vague. A bit confused. Max . . .’ Annie looked at him earnestly. ‘The thing you seem to have forgotten here? He’s thirty years older than me. When I married him, New York was scandalized because of the age gap, but he was still a young, vigorous man. And now he’s old, Max. You know what he wanted from me, more than anything, at the end of the day? He wanted my company.’
Max was silent, his eyes on her face.
‘It shocked me, realizing he was growing old,’ she went on. ‘But I couldn’t miss it. His shoulders started to stoop, his hair was growing thinner. He liked to talk, sometimes he liked me to read to him. That crack you made about playing board games? Sometimes, that’s what we did. Chess, or card games. Just passing the time. Things like that.’ She frowned. ‘And then it happened, and I realized what was going on with him.’
‘What?’
‘We were clearing the chessboard one day and he said to me, “You were never much of a player, Gina.”’
‘He mistook you for his sister?’
‘He did. I said to him, don’t you mean Annie? And then he said that he’d said Annie, what was I talking about. He got very angry. Almost aggressive.’
‘Go on.’
‘The next time I visited, he called me Maria – that was his first wife’s name. I queried it again, and he got angry again. He said what the fuck was I talking about? And then he asked me where Nico was, he said he kept asking that housekeeper woman where he was, but she didn’t know.’
‘Nico?’ Max frowned. ‘Who the fuck’s Nico?’
‘Nico used to be Constantine’s right-hand man. He died in the early seventies.’
Max stared at her. ‘That was the one who hid Layla when she was a kid, right? The one who got hit outside the Palermo.’
‘Yeah,’ said Annie sadly. ‘That’s him.’
‘You’re saying Constantine’s been going senile?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. And that’s what makes what you think so fucking stupid. At the beginning, yeah, maybe he tried it on. Or thought he would. But within a couple of years, that was right off the agenda. I pitied him, Max. I went there to keep him company because it was clear how lonely he was. Alberto couldn’t visit very often, it was too risky. So I went there. The castle, all that grandeur, it was just another prison. And I was just a visitor.’
Max’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her face. ‘So it was all very close, you and Constantine up there playing cards and discussing ancient history.’
‘It was OK for a while, yes. I hated the deception, Max, I really did. I wanted to tell you. I couldn’t.’
‘So you say.’
‘I do say. It was pitiful to see, Max. He was forever asking after people who died long ago, forgetting they were dead. And there were other things: a change in his character, a shortness of temper. He just wasn’t Constantine any more. And then, six months ago, it got to the point where he didn’t know me at all. He barely spoke to me, and if he did it was to ask, “Who the hell are you?” He’s not the Don any more, he’s just a confused old man.’
Max said nothing.
‘It seemed pointless to keep going there, so I stopped. And now . . .’
‘Now what?’
‘He’s asked to see me again. He wants me to go.’
‘Like fuck you are,’ said Max, and grabbed her wrist, spinning her round to face him and pulling her in close against his body.
Annie gasped in surprise. His grip hurt, it was so hard. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but—’
‘Don’t I? Maybe I wouldn’t believe that shit about him losing his marbles, if I hadn’t seen his sister.’
Annie’s eyes widened in realization as they stared up at his face. ‘That was it then? I couldn’t work out why Gina would have done that, broken the code. So that’s why.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Could that be a family thing? Passed down, father to son, mother to daughter . . . ?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘I know you don’t want to hear this,’ said Annie. ‘But you know what? It’s heartbreaking to see him like that. Once he was so powerful. Now he’s just . . . nothing. You’ve no idea.’
‘Yeah, I have. Remember – I saw Gina.’
‘You’re hurting my wrist.’
Max stared into her eyes for a long time, then he let her go. Annie went back over to the bed, sat on the side of it, pulling her robe in tight around her.
‘I really can’t tell you anything else,’ she said tiredly.
‘What, and you think I’m leaving it there? I haven’t finished with you yet. Not by a bloody long chalk.’