Free The Last Days of Il Duce by Domenic Stansberry

building ventures. I knew too that Marie had returned here after her divorce with Joe, and that’s where she’d met up with Michael Jr., though I didn’t know if that last part was true or whether the old man had any idea of the rumors that tied Marie to his adopted son.
    We pulled into the gravel drive. Some ocean-beaten date palms lined the way, and the pampas grass grew thick and wild all the way to the house. The old man himself came out to meet us, dressed in his baggy pants and his white shirt and his suspenders, clothes he had taken to wearing in his older years, as if now that he were an old man he wanted also to look as if he lived in an earlier century.
    â€œNick.”
    He said my name all by itself, as if it were a magic charm, and I saw something like tears in his eyes. He gave me the embrace old Genovesi give to one another—though in fact I am not Genovesi—pulling me close and putting his cheek against mine, once on each side. I felt the old complicated emotions I always felt toward Micaeli and broke away from him as soon as I could. He embraced Marie the same way, only for a little longer; then he stood back to look us both over the way old people like to do. Then, nodding his approval, he led us into the house.
    â€œThis place, it was built by Marco Fontana. In a certain tradition,” said Micaeli. “There are not so many places like it. Not here. Not in Italy anymore either. It loses me money but I don’t care.”
    We stood on the verandah looking toward the road. Marie was inside, unpacking. Later this afternoon Micaeli’s son would arrive and also Micaeli’s sister and his brother-in-law, the old man Ernesto Tollini, all coming to celebrate the birthday of Guilia Scarpaci Romano. The matriarch, half-senile, older than anybody wanted to believe.
    â€œMarie’s missing this wine. It’s awful good,” I said.
    â€œShe’ll be along, don’t you worry.”
    â€œBut it has such a nice taste.”
    â€œPour us some more.”
    I filled our glasses and drank. The wine came from some old crony of his, a vineyard in the interior, and had about it the taste of those empty hills. The old man watched me drink with pleasure. He was a good-looking man even now. Micaeli was somewhere in his seventies, though until recently he had defied his age, not graying really, staying clear-eyed and limber, lifting his head to laugh and drawing in public the looks of women ten, twenty years younger than himself. He was more gaunt now and seemed to have lost some weight, but his features still haunted you in a pleasant way, and his dark eyes still fixed you when he spoke.
    â€œYou know I was always fond of your brother,” he said at last. “We had our troubles. I didn’t like some of the things he did to Marie. And when his business went dry, you know, he blamed it on me.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter now.”
    â€œIt does matter,” Micaeli insisted. “You, your brother, your mother, you have always been like family to me. Marie too,” he said, nodding his head towards the house. “A man reaches my age, he has regrets. About this thing over here maybe. Or this piece of his past. I think you know some of mine. How it was once, with your mother and me.”
    â€œShe had a husband, you know. My father.” I spoke with some anger. “You didn’t need to keep coming around.”
    â€œMaybe not. But your mother and I, after the war, after I married Vincenza, it was different between us. Just talk between old friends at the kitchen table. But your father couldn’t let go his jealousy.”
    â€œWould you?”
    â€œI did. Or I did my best. But you, Nick, you. I know that you’ve had some trouble and I want you to pull yourself together. Your mother would want this too. Meanwhile there is some help you can do for me.”
    I took another sip of the wine, waiting to see what was coming. Micaeli