Playing Dead. Jessie Keane

his son. ‘Is your mother fetching us something? You look thin.’

      ‘Had a virus,’ lied Rocco.

      ‘Bad things,’ said Enrico, shaking his head, and returned his attention to the game.

      Rocco looked at his father. He was balding and relaxing into old age in a beige cardigan and carpet slippers. His heart was bad, too; he couldn’t do too much these days. His father had no style, but Rocco understood that even so he was a great man. Rocco had a lot of style, but he knew in his heart that he had no real substance at all.

      His mother came in, carrying a tray of verdure fritte, arancini, olives and cheese. She set the appetizers down on a low table in front of them, along with strong coffee laced with anisette, tweaked Rocco’s pallid cheek once more and left the room.

      ‘So, what’s the news?’ asked Enrico. ‘You don’t phone home much. It upsets your mother. Now suddenly you do, so what’s the beef?’

      Rocco swallowed. This was very delicate, very embarrassing; he wasn’t quite sure how to start.

      ‘I’ve . . . been having an affair,’ he said.

      Enrico looked at him. ‘And this is news?’

      Rocco paused. Both his elder brothers were married, and both had their fair share of little popsies on the side: it was expected. What the hell, they were men, weren’t they?

      ‘Cara found out about it,’ said Rocco.

      ‘And? You telling me you can’t keep control in your own household, Rocco? Give her a sweetener or two and lay it on the line; you do what you do. Who’s the man of the house, you or her?’

      Rocco was sweating; this was even more difficult than he had imagined it would be.

      ‘She found out and she had this person worked over – really badly – as a warning to me.’

      Now he had Enrico’s full attention. ‘She did?’

      ‘Her name was mentioned when it happened.’ And so was mine, he thought, but didn’t say it.

      Enrico paused for a beat. Then he picked up an olive and popped it in his mouth. Chewing, he looked at Rocco and said: ‘Don’t sound like any woman I know, to do that. And for sure this ain’t Constantine.’ Then he spat out the stone.

      ‘We can’t know that.’

      Enrico gave a laugh. ‘You kiddin’? I’ve known that man thirty years. He’s a good friend to this family. A thing like this, over his son-in-law having a little fun outside wedlock? He wouldn’t stoop so low.’

      ‘Cara wouldn’t act without his approval.’

      ‘You think so?’ Enrico’s old eyes stared at his son in disbelief. ‘I think you’re wrong. She’s been overindulged since her mother died – she’s become too headstrong. I told you so when you married her, but would you listen? You would not. Now you see the sort of woman you married. She thinks she’s too special to have her husband playing around. I did warn you. I told you you’d be pussy-whipped for the rest of your life if you married her.’

      Rocco thought about that. His father was right; but it was Cara’s looks that he had fallen for. He had been stricken by her blonde beauty and, before they married, she had curbed and concealed the worst excesses of her spoiled and dominating nature. Once they were wed, she had dropped her guard, let it show who was the boss; and that was her.

      ‘Men have women on the side,’ Enrico shrugged. ‘We all do it. Why should the girl take offence at an affair? It don’t affect her standing as your wife and that’s what matters. You got to keep the wives sweet, Rocco, that’s what I’m telling you.’

      Rocco’s heart was thumping in his chest. His mouth was dry. He knew Cara had taken the whole thing badly because it was a man he’d slept with; had it been a woman, she would probably have ignored the situation, even accepted and eventually maybe welcomed the focus of his sexual attentions being elsewhere.

      ‘It . . . Papa, it wasn’t a woman,’ he managed to say.

      Enrico was silent. The teams were rampaging around the pitch to the cheers and shouts of the crowd. Slowly, Enrico levered himself out of his armchair with an elderly grunt of effort. Then he leaned down and struck Rocco, very hard, across the face.

      Rocco recoiled in pain and surprise. His cheek stung. He sprang up, furious.

      Enrico looked him dead in the eye.

      ‘Oh, you think you want to hit me back, uh?’ he scoffed, his eyes running over his son with contempt. ‘You ain’t hard enough to even try it. Now I understand. You deserved that. And Rocco, you deserved to have your fag boyfriend worked over. I always knew there was something off about you, you little . . .’ Enrico looked disgusted. He flicked his ear in the Italian sign for homosexuality. ‘How’s any woman going to take that, her husband playing away with another man? You know Cara’s nature. And you’re surprised she did this?’

      Rocco was almost crying with humiliation. ‘I think the Don himself ordered it,’ he panted. ‘If he knows, I’m as good as dead.’

      ‘Yeah, maybe he did. For this? Maybe he’d feel his daughter had been insulted; maybe you’re right.’

      ‘Well, what are you going to do?’ demanded Rocco.

      ‘Me?’ yelled back his father. ‘I’ll tell you what I am going to do: precisely nothing. You think I’d raise a hand against one of my oldest friends over a little fucker like you?’

      Rocco’s mother came into the room and stood just inside the door, looking anxiously from one to the other. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked.

      ‘What’s going on is that your milksop little baby has had his nose smacked and he don’t like it. Well, he had it coming,’ Enrico told her sharply. He turned to Rocco. ‘Now get outta here. I got a game to watch.’

      And he sat back down in his armchair and gazed once more at the screen.

      Rocco’s mother stood there, staring at her son. After a second, Rocco managed to get his legs working, and he pushed past her, out of the door, out of the house. He heard her concerned cry drift after him but he ignored it. He got in his car and drove back to the city.

      His father was going to do nothing to help him – so what else was new? His father never had. Cara must have told the Don about this. After all, who among Constantine’s soldiers would dare do her dirty work for her without first securing her father’s permission? No one would do that, would they? No one would risk incurring Constantine’s wrath by acting without his say-so. The Don must know. And if he knew . . . then he was just waiting to pick Rocco off at his leisure.

      Chapter 19

      Cara was shopping, as she often was, when the man with the scarf hiding the lower part of his face came up to her.

      ‘Cara Mancini?’ he asked, his voice muffled.

      Cara was both startled and puzzled. How did he know her? He sounded English. And why the hell was he wearing a thick knitted scarf on a summer’s day? He looked cloak-and-dagger, like a spy in one of the old movies. Now she wished she’d had Fredo come in with her today, but she hated his guts, hated him anywhere near her; she hadn’t wanted him trailing after her.

      ‘You’re married to Rocco Mancini, that’s right?’ he said, and she was struck now by how attractive his clear grey eyes were, how thick and glossy his chestnut-coloured hair. But the scarf . . .?

      He saw her looking at it.

      ‘Neuralgia,’ he said, patting it. ‘I’m a martyr to it, sadly. I’m an old friend of Rocco’s. Can we go somewhere and talk for a moment?’

      Cara suppressed an impatient sigh. She didn’t want to sit somewhere with this weirdo and talk about the cheating yellow-bellied