His FBI contact is a woman, and they meet at least once a week at some swanky restaurant. She's called Amelia Rossetti, and she's as lovely as her name. Heads bent together they talk softly, hidden in plain sight. Sometimes he kisses her, touches her hair. She kisses back, long fingers on his face. The Family thinks that she's his gooma. When they disappear into hotels together his crew chuckle enviously. "The boss got real lucky with her."
Yeah, real lucky. Sitting on hotel beds, thigh by thigh, papers and photos on their laps, they hand over tapes, discuss transcripts, the banal trivia of violence...
Intimacy. Don't touch.
And he knows that she has seen him talking to the air, seen him slapping himself upside the head when the old man just won't stop.
"You suit the moustache, Raimondo," she says, and his heart hurts. He starts to shave the damned thing, wears a false one. At least that way he can feel like it's a mask, something he can take off one day.
And one Friday she drifts her hand across his chest. And the tie comes off, the buttons are undone, and he drowns. And afterwards, after the downwards tumble and the dying fall, they lie heavy in each other's arms. She whispers, "shush, shush," like he's a baby, and strokes the tears from his face.
That's not why he's crying. It's not a sex thing, it never was. He just wishes that he had a compass, one friend, one real friend to keep him sane.
It hurts that she's not Benny.
