There, I said it. Well, sort of. She didn't reply for a few seconds, then asked, "Is that why you're in a bad mood? You dreamed that I was having an affair with Frank?"
"I think it was more than a dream. It was a nocturnal revelation. That's what's been bothering me for months, Susan, and it's what has come between us." Again there was a long silence, then she said, "If you suspected something, you should have come to grips with it, John. Instead, you've become withdrawn. You've indulged yourself in playing Mafia mouthpiece and telling off all your friends and family. Maybe what's happened to us is as much your fault as mine." "No doubt about it."
Again, silence, because neither of us wanted to return to the issue of adultery.
But having come this far, I said, "So? Yes or no? Tell me."
She replied, "You had a silly dream."
"All right, Susan. If that's what you say, I will accept that because you've never lied to me."
"John… we have to talk about this… in person. There's probably a lot we've been keeping from each other. You know I would never do anything to hurt you… I'm sorry if you've been upset these last few months… you're a very unique man, a very special man. I realize that now. And I don't want to lose you. I love you." Well, that was about as mushy as Susan ever got, and while it wasn't a full confession of marital infidelity, it was something very like it, sort of like plea bargaining. I was pretty shaky, to be honest with you, and I found myself sitting on the bed in my room, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. If you've ever confronted your spouse with charges of sexual misconduct, you know the feeling. I finally said, "All right. We'll talk when I get back." I hung up and stared at the telephone, waiting, I guess, for it to ring, but it didn't. You have to understand that prior to that day in court and the subsequent media exposure, I wasn't ready to confront this other issue of Susan and Frank. But now, having put my old life behind me forever, and now that I felt good about myself, I was prepared to hear my wife tell me she had been sexually involved with Frank Bellarosa. What's more, I still loved her, and I was prepared to forgive her and start over again, because in a manner of speaking, we'd both had an affair with Frank Bellarosa, and Susan was right that this was as much my fault as hers. But Susan was not yet at the point where she could tell me it had happened or tell him it was over.
So, lacking a confession from Susan, I had to remain in that limbo state of the husband who knows but doesn't know, who can't ask for a divorce or offer to forgive, and who has to deal with the parties as if nothing were going on, lest he make a complete fool of himself.
Or maybe I could just ask Frank, "Hey, goombah, you fucking my wife, or what?" Later that morning, Bellarosa and I met Lenny and Vinnie with the Cadillac outside the plaza. We drove back down to Little Italy where we stopped at Bellarosa's club for espresso. The Italian Rifle Club had few similarities to The Creek, as you might guess, except that it was private and that men discussed things there that had to do with manipulating the republic for the benefit of the club members. Maybe there were more similarities than I realized. That morning Bellarosa had a series of meetings scheduled in his club, which was actually a large storefront with a black-painted picture window, dark inside, and divided into various dim coffee rooms and private rooms. I was pretty much ignored most of the time, and sometimes they spoke in Italian, and sometimes when someone present didn't speak any Italian, I was asked to leave the room with the words, "You don't want to hear this, Counsellor." I was sure they were right.
So I drank a lot of coffee and read all the morning papers and watched some old geezers playing a card game that I couldn't follow.
After an hour or so in the club, we left and got back into the car. Though there was a layer of clouds blocking the sun, the morning was getting hot, an urban heat produced by cars and people and yesterday's sun still trapped in the concrete. Country squires can tolerate only about a week in Manhattan in the summer, and I hoped we wouldn't be much longer in the city, but with this guy you didn't ask questions about times and places.
We made a stop at Ferrara's, where Bellarosa picked out a dozen pastries for Anna, which were put into a nice white box with green and red string and which Bellarosa carried to the car. I can't describe to you why the sight of this big man carrying that little box daintily by the string struck me as so civilized, but it did. It wasn't exactly Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer, but it was a profoundly human act that made me see the man, the husband, and the father. And yes, the lover. Whereas I'd always seen Bellarosa as a man's man, I saw now that my original impression of him as a man whom women would find attractive was accurate. Well, not all women, but some women. I could see Susan, Lady Stanhope, wanting to be debased and sexually used by this insensitive barbarian. Maybe it had something to do with her seeing her mother in bed with a gardener or stableboy or whoever it was. Maybe this is something that all highborn ladies fantasize about: taking off their clothes for a man who is not their social or intellectual equal, but is simply a sexual turn-on. And why should this be such a shock to men? Half the wealthy and successful men I know have screwed their secretaries, cocktail waitresses, and even their maids. Women have libidos, too. But maybe Susan Stanhope and Frank Bellarosa had a more complex relationship.
Anyway, we spent the rest of the morning in Little Italy, Greenwich Village, and environs, making a few quick stops, sometimes for talk, sometimes for taking provisions aboard the Cadillac. The car soon smelled of cheese and baked goods, and some horrible salted codfish called baccala, which I suppose couldn't be put in the trunk because of the heat. Bellarosa explained to me, "I'm going to send all this stuff home later. This is all stuff Anna likes. You want to send something to your wife?"
It annoyed me that he always referred to Susan as my wife, instead of by her name. What did he call her when they were alone?
"You want to stop for something? Flowers or something?"
"No."
"I'll send these pastries from Ferrara's like it was from you."
"No."
He shrugged.
As we headed up toward Midtown, he said to me, "You called this morning?
Everything's okay at home?"
I replied, "Yes. How's your wife? You call this morning? Everything okay at home?"
"Yeah. I'm just asking you because if you got problems at home, you don't have your mind on business. And because we're friends. Right?" "How was I yesterday in court?"
"You were fine."
"Subject closed."
He shrugged again and looked out the window.
We stopped at the Italian Seamen's Club on West Forty-fourth Street, and Bellarosa went inside by himself. He came out fifteen minutes later with a brown bag and got into the car. Now what do you suppose was in that brown bag? Drugs? Money? Secret messages? No. The bag was filled with small crooked cigars. "These are from Naples," he said. "You can't get them here." He lit one up and I could see why you couldn't. I opened the window.
"You want one?"
"No."
He passed the bag up to Vinnie and Lenny, who took a cigar apiece and lit up. Everyone seemed happy with their little duty-free cigars. Of course, today it was cigars, tomorrow it could be something else that came out of the Seamen's Club. Interesting.
Instead of stopping for a three-hour lunch at an Italian restaurant, we stopped at an Italian sausage cart near Times Square. Bellarosa got out and greeted the vendor, an old man who hugged and kissed Bellarosa and nearly cried. Without asking us what we wanted, Bellarosa got us all hot sausage heros with peppers and onions. I said, "Hold the mayo." We ate outside the double-parked car as we chatted with the old vendor, and Bellarosa gave the man a hunk of goat cheese from Little Italy and three crooked cigars. I think we got the best of that deal.
If a man is known by the company he keeps, then Frank Bellarosa was sort of a populist, mixing with the masses the way the early Caesars had done, letting the common people hug and kiss him, venerate him, and lay hands on him. At the same time, he mixed with the highborn, but if the Plaza was any indication, he seemed to treat the powerful with cool contempt.