‘Well something that should be pleasure,’ said Joe. ‘But I’m sorry to say, I’ve screwed that all up.’ He stared out over the tidy garden. ‘Anna’s on my mind.’
Nic nodded. ‘How’s she doing?’
Joe let out a breath. ‘She… kind of lost it yesterday. You know she’s been hanging around the house a lot. Well she got herself together yesterday and went out on a shoot for work. She got as far as the hotel where it was being done and she just freaked out.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t think she’s even telling me the full story. All I know is she felt everything close in on her and she ran. She got in a cab and came home. She even turned off her phone and didn’t tell her boss. She hasn’t even turned her phone on today she’s so scared. I mean, she could lose her job. I’m worried she was that scared that that didn’t matter to her.’
‘OK,’ said Nic. ‘What I want to hear about is you.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘You’ve told me about Anna. You always tell me about Anna. That’s easy. She’s got all the problems, right? You don’t have any?’
Joe frowned. And said nothing.
‘Me and Patti went through some pretty hard times,’ said Nic. ‘Do you want to know the biggest mistake I made? Thinking she was the only one who had to change.’
Joe stared down at the cracks running across the deck.
‘And Anna…’ said Nic, ‘well, she had a hard time.’
Joe nodded. He squeezed the bridge of his nose.
Nic took a deep breath. ‘You don’t think you’re her hero any more.’
‘What?’ said Joe, staring at him.
‘I’ll let you in on a little secret,’ said Old Nic. ‘What you think is a knight in shining armour to a woman and what they think are two entirely different things. I spent too long trying to be this hard-ass protector guy who solved all the problems of the universe. But I’m not that. No-one is, Joe. You’re going to have to get past what happened because it wasn’t your fault. Shit happens. Very, very bad shit sometimes. So – you can let this Rawlins guy sink your relationship, put the final nail in the coffin or you can say “Screw you, you motherfucker, you came close to my family once, you had your chance, you blew it, you don’t get a second chance and I’m not spending my whole fucking life acting like you will.” Give that psycho the power to alter the course of your life? Fuck that, Joe. You owe it to Anna and Shaun not to let that happen.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Joe.
‘It is. Let me tell you something. Patti thought the sun shone out of me when we got married. I was the big, tough cop. No-one around here messed with Victor Nicotero. We walked down the street together and I knew she felt proud and she felt protected. And I fucking loved it. It made me feel great. Then one day I was at work and she wasn’t feeling great and I didn’t get home in time. She was two months’ pregnant – it was before Bobby – and she lost the baby. And there was nothing I could do, Joe. And something changed. For a year after that, I thought she saw me as a weaker man, that I’d let her down in some way.’ He shrugged. ‘And do you know what she said to me? “Thank God,” she said. “Thank God you know you are not invincible. And I’m sorry if I ever gave you that impression.” And she was right. I believed what she told me. Then she said to me, I’ll never forget it: “A hero means a lot of things. It’s about strength of character, it’s sacrifices, it’s sometimes just laughter or quietness. It’s not wasting energy thinking you can control all the bad things in the world and then getting angry and frustrated when you can’t. I don’t want that angry, frustrated man. And I’m glad he’s gone.” That’s what she said to me. And then she just walked out of the room and finished whatever she was in the middle of doing.’
‘Patti’s something else,’ said Joe.
‘No woman wants to be with a weak man,’ said Nic. ‘And that you are not.’ He paused. ‘Talk to Anna. Really talk to her, not in an angry way. Just tell her how you feel.’
Joe laughed. ‘You’re getting soft in your old age.’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ said Nic. ‘Everyone looks for advice from the person they know is going to tell them what they want to hear. You come to me because you know I’m going to say how good you and Anna are together and you have to stick at it. You don’t want to go to the guy who’s going to tell you it’s gone too far to ever go back to the way it was.’
‘But what if it has?’ said Joe.
‘It hasn’t,’ said Nic. ‘All right? It hasn’t. Drink your beer. I’m worn out with all that wisdom.’
Hours later, Joe pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine. Even after six months in the house, he couldn’t shake the disappointment he felt when he arrived home. He had been forced to make a decision on it while Anna was in Paris. It came down to money – the rent was low because the owner was another cop who wanted to help a colleague out and trusted Joe enough not to bother him while he travelled around the world.
When Joe went to look at the place, it was on two hours’ sleep and lots of painkillers. Sonny, the owner, had managed to get a lady friend to clean it up and put some vases and air freshener around. The kitchen appliances were just six months old and the bathroom had been renovated, but Joe’s usual attention to the tiny details left him as soon as he walked through the door. A strange sense of relief took over. He could imagine the three of them leading a wonderful life there and he floated through the rest of the viewing on a positivity warped by desperation. Three things tricked his eyes – the sections of stainless steel countertops in the kitchen, the cream L-shaped sofa in the living room and the old-fashioned wrought-iron bed in the master bedroom. It was Anna’s style.
He worked hard to get the house ready for her. Danny put in long hours with him, but opened with, ‘Rather you than me, buddy, when Anna shows up,’ and, ‘Man, you’re screwed.’ He became more useful when he started writing a list of things that needed to be done. It was a long list that they decided they could bypass Sonny to tackle. This came after they found a canine tooth in one of the kitchen cabinets and when they realized one of the main storage areas in the house hadn’t been emptied of Sonny’s stuff.
The day they moved in, Joe saw that the nice cream sofa had been swapped for a stained orange one and instead of the wrought-iron bed, there was a beige base and mattress from a discount furniture store. The only blessing was that Anna had arrived at the house after an eight-hour flight from Paris. She glanced around, got the vague sense of somewhere clean and tidy, then went upstairs, exhausted enough to sleep on the cheap bed. Shaun had been coached by Joe to create enthusiasm and distraction and it had worked – at least until Anna got up the next day. The problem was that short of rewiring, replumbing and calling in a carpenter, the place was doomed to appear unfinished, however freshly painted the walls were. Everything wooden was a series of misjudged measurements: baseboards that were too long or too short, doors that were too narrow, cabinets that wouldn’t close. Some of the doors had been hung with just two screws in each hinge. The bedroom doorframe had come off in Joe’s hand. Upstairs, by the bathroom door, light shone through from the recessed lighting in the kitchen.
Anna had taken it well. She was so touched by the effort Joe had made, she hadn’t made a fuss. But over the months that followed, Joe would hear random shouts from around the house when things broke or handles came off or heads were banged against surprise corners.
‘It’s only me,’ said Joe, always reassuring her every time he came home. ‘Hey,’ he said, kissing her on the lips. ‘How you doing? You look cute.’ Anna was small, with sallow skin and pale green eyes. She was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a black tank. She shrugged. ‘I’m OK.’ She ran her hand over the back of her hair, trying to flatten the tangles.
‘Did you call Chloe in the end?’ he said.
‘You are not going to believe my luck,’ she said.
‘Luck?’
‘Yes. The photographer from yesterday has a new girlfriend, who is, maybe, twenty-two. Anyway, she styled the whole thing. He offered her as a solution to Chloe, which she had to accept, because she had inconvenienced him. And I’m not fired.’
‘You are kidding me.’
‘You thought I’d be fired?’ She smiled.
‘No. But Chloe is…’
‘I know. But she’s schizophrenic. We’ve agreed she pushed me into the shoot, so for now I can just stay
