Livia
Over the next month, I become a working machine. I sit at my desk, with my trusty Mont Blanc pen in hand, and go over ledgers and logistics and all the normal boring day-to-day minutia which occupied me before Aedan came swaggering into my life. Aedan does not come by the bar, nor do any other Irishmen, and I hear reports of Irish-Italian violence just like the old days, but no reports of Aedan. He does not try and contact me, though once I thought I saw his car at the end of my road, near my apartment, but perhaps I was just seeing things.
I work so long and so hard—collating stats, keeping track of records, trying to work through the mess Carlos left behind when he died and his army disbanded—that sometimes when I come home my hand is aching from writing so much. And yet, somehow, my hand always has enough energy to slide down between my legs, eyes closed, Aedan imprinted upon my eyelids. That last sex session in the car... it was a mistake, had to be a mistake, after the tear between us.
Sometimes, when I’m touching myself and thinking of Aedan, I’m overcome with a profound feeling of guilt. Once again, he’s the enemy. Once again, he’s just an Irishman. Those are the facts, and yet when I picture him, I don’t see an enemy. I see Aedan, my Aedan.
“No,” I whisper to myself, late at night when the phantom of Aedan pushes sleep away. “No, don’t think that. No, no. That’s not right at all.”
Which is true. It isn’t right. He betrayed me. I must think this thought a thousand times.
But the truth is, though I know all this, I can’t feel it. Really feel it, with the mounting sense of betrayal I’d need to feel if I was going to push Aedan from my thoughts forever.
I think of him and instead of thinking about his betrayal, I invariably think about the first time we met, or our first drunken kiss, or his cocky, self-assured smile, or that first beautiful fucking session at my apartment, or the way he bravely protected me—chose me over Patty, really—when the Mexicans came, or that last frantic desperate grab for pleasure in the car. And then I think about how I just walked away from him and I feel guilty.
“Goddamn it!” I snap, hundreds of times at nothing in particular. A torn piece of paper, a sum which doesn’t quite add up, a pedestrian taking too long to cross the road when I’m driving—all become massive annoyances with the ghost of Aedan constantly haunting me.
Sometimes, when I get home, I just sit on the edge of my bed for hours, staring at the wall, my thoughts turned to the past. I relive the first time Aedan swaggered into the bar a hundred times. I relive the way he lifted me off the floor and fucked me with his fingers a hundred more. Over and over, a never-ending movie reel in my mind, repeating endlessly. I wake up late at night and claw at my sheets for a few minutes before realizing Aedan was only there in my dreams, not in reality.
Then, inevitably, my hand slides down my belly and between my legs and my fingers dance over my clit. Afterward, I always feel a sense of anti-climax. Self-orgasms can be fun, sure, but nothing will ever beat the animalistic unleashing of pleasure I shared with Aedan. I retreat into myself, responding to Mom and Dad with monosyllables, sometimes grunting, constantly thinking about him, him, him.
None of this affects my performance at my job—I’m not some pining princess, desperate for her man, though I am hungry for him—so I’m surprised when Dad calls me into his office.
Dad confuses me. When I told him about Aedan, how Patty was his dad, how he was going to kill him, Dad just laughed. “Aedan wouldn’t have killed me,” he said. “He saved my life; he’s had plenty of chances to kill me if he wanted; and he saved you, didn’t he, instead of Patty. No, Livia, Aedan chose his side a long time ago, even if he didn’t know it.”
“But,” I said, “he was going to.”
This had zero effect on Dad, who rarely dealt in might-haves. He shrugged, chuckled, and then said: “People are going to do hundreds of things they never do, Livia. That’s life. Don’t judge a man on what he once thought he might be; judge a man on what he becomes.”
Today, Dad’s looking even more at ease than he did when I told him, last month. He sits at his desk with his fingers tucked into his belt loops, a calm expression on his face.
“Livia,” he says.
It annoys me, to be honest, how at ease he looks. Aedan was going to kill him and he behaves as though this is completely acceptable, run-of-the-mill behavior, as though every day someone is going to—Ah, I think, he’s the don of the Italian mafia. Of course he’s used to his life being threatened. But it’s like he doesn’t even take it seriously.
Aedan was going to kill you! I scream in my head. If Dad isn’t taking it seriously, that must mean it wasn’t serious to begin with. Dad didn’t get where he is by misjudging things like that. No, he must’ve seen something in Aedan, something which told him he could be trusted.
“I once told Aedan he reminded me of Luca,” Dad says, using his uncanny and freaky ability to read my thoughts just by looking at my face.
“Aedan’s nothing like Luca,” I mutter. Luca was a boy, a little boy who liked to read and lose himself in his imagination. “Luca never would’ve made it in the life, Dad,” I go on, quietly. “You know that as well as I do.”
“Oh, I know,” Dad says. “But Luca was not all he seemed upon first glance, and neither was—is—Aedan. You know that as well as I do, Livia.”
“Why are you talking to me about Aedan?” I say, resisting the urge to snap. Aedan...there couldn’t be a sorer subject of conversation for me right now.
“Because Aedan is an integral part of this.”
“What is ‘this’, Dad? You’re speaking to me in riddles.” I can’t hide the bitterness in my voice. Even now, sitting here with Dad, it’s like Aedan is dancing around the room, peeking over Dad’s shoulder, flashing his wicked grin at me, his dark eyes watching and glimmering with lust.
“The truce.”
I stifle a laugh. “The truce is broken. Italians and Irish are killing each other again. With Carlos dead, the Mexicans have gone back into their little sub-groups. The Spanish have been quiet, so once more we just have Italians and Irish painting the street with each other’s blood.” Maybe Aedan’s caught a stray bullet from an Italian. But I doubt that any Italian could take out Aedan; I was there at the bar, after all; I saw how swiftly he killed those Mexicans. Aedan might be the most dangerous man in the country, let alone just New York. “What truce are you speaking about, Dad?”
“You’re angry,” Dad notes.
“I’m angry!” I agree, thumping the table with my fist.
Dad flinches, sits up. “It’s good that you have this in you, Livia,” he says, “but you must learn to control it if you are going to broker a new truce for the family.”
It takes a moment for his words to register with me. When they do, I sit up straighter. “Will the men go for that?” I ask. A chance to lead. A promotion.
“The men will go for whatever I tell them to,” Dad says, his voice iron. “Anyway, you are smart, quick-witted, fiery, tough. There is no reason why you should not be the one to lead the meeting.”
“What meeting? When?”
“I have arranged a meeting with Mona Cooley—Patty’s widow—for tomorrow evening on neutral ground, the function hall of a hotel. There’ll be equal numbers of Italians and Irish there and, well, we’ll be surrounded by other function rooms, security, and the public, so nobody’s going to be so stupid that they’ll try anything.”
“Carlos would have,” I mutter. “Remember the golf course.”
“Well,” Dad says, with a fatherly smile, “Aedan took care of that for us, didn’t he?”
He did, I think, and he saved my life. With the perspective and the distance of a month, that suddenly seems more important than everything, and Dad’s attitude only goes to confirm that. And yet it’s never as cut-and-dry as all that. But I may never see Aedan again, I reflect, rendering all my inner conflict meaningless. Maybe he’s gone dark, really dark, so dark that he’s in Texas or Maine or somewhere even farther away.
“So you’ll speak with Mona?” Dad asks. “We can’t let these murders continue. You understand that, Livia. You always have. As do I. As does Aedan—and hopefully his mother-in-law. Despite what people think, this is a business, and in no business is killing profitable. Except war, I suppose,” Dad goes on, musing.
“I’ll speak with her,” I say. Maybe I’ll ask her where Aedan is. God, I want to see him, just once more. I won’t even do anything, just let me see him. But I know that’s a lie. If I went home tonight and he was there, I’d fuck him until his balls were empty.
But then, the thought always returns: He was going to kill Dad.
As I leave the office and return to my desk, I wish for the thousandth time that I could just feel one way, just one emotion, clear and true, but it’s always a mixture of multiple emotions, all smashing around inside of me, a big confusing mess. I chew on the end of my pen—sacrilege, but something I indulge in from time to time—and wonder if it’s like this for other women. Do they bounce between emotions as much as I do? Are they as gripped by uncertainty? Or are they like those cool, suit-wearing, action-hero women on TV shows who always know what they want and how to get it?
The only time I feel one-hundred percent is when I’m with Aedan, naked, and we’re ravishing each other.
That’s true, too true for comfort. When Aedan’s inside of me, when I’m riding him, when I’m moving my hands over his bulging muscles, I never feel uncertain. In those sweet moments, everything comes into focus. I turn into a different woman, one of those confident women, and Aedan isn’t Aedan anymore but my man.
Maybe, I think, turning to the ledger and a row of figures, he’ll reveal himself once the truce is made.
Uncertainty aside, I know one thing for sure: I want to see Aedan again.