"Right, Frank." I asked, "So, your son Frankie lives in New Jersey?"

Susan asked Anna, "Did you call the police?"

Anna glanced at her husband again and replied, "Frank doesn't like to bother with the police."

"I got my own security here," Bellarosa reminded us. "There's nothing to worry about."

Anna complained, "It's scary here at night when Frank's away. It's too quiet."

"Perhaps," I suggested, "you can get a recording of Brooklyn street noises."

Anna Bellarosa smiled uncertainly, as if this weren't a bad idea. Bellarosa said to me, "When you try to make them happy, or you try to compromise with them, they think you're a faggot."

I glanced at Susan to see how she reacted to that statement and saw she was smiling. I should point out that Susan is not a feminist. The women's movement is considered by women of Susan's class to be a middle-class problem that needs middle-class solutions. Women of Susan's class have owned property, entered into contracts, and gone to college for so many generations that they don't fully comprehend what all the fuss is about. As for equal pay for equal work, they're very sympathetic to that, as they are to starving children in Africa, and have about as much firsthand knowledge of the one as they do of the other. Maybe they will have a charity ball for underpaid female executives. Anyway, I mention this because many women would be somewhat offended by Frank Bellarosa's offhanded sexist remarks. But Susan Stanhope, whose family was one of the Four Hundred, is no more offended by a man such as Frank Bellarosa making sexist remarks than I would be offended by Sally Ann of the Stardust Diner telling me that all men were alcoholics, women beaters, and liars. In other words, you had to consider the source.

Anyway, Bellarosa made another pronouncement, this one, I guess, to balance his misogynist remarks. He said, "Italian men can't compromise. That's why their women are always mad at them. But Italian women respect their men for not compromising. But when Italian men don't agree with each other on something, and they won't compromise, then there's a problem."

Followed, I thought, by a quick solution, like murder. I asked, "So Frankie's in New Jersey?"

"Yeah. I helped him buy into a thing in Atlantic City. None of my sons is ever going to work for nobody. Nobody's going to be over them. They got to have men under them. Either you're your own boss in this world, or you're nobody. You're your own boss, right?"

"Sort of."

"Nobody says nothing when you come in late, right?"

"Right."

"So, there you are."

And there I was, off the subject of Easter morning. It was easy to change subjects with Mr Bellarosa, who seemed to have no agenda for social conversation but switched subjects in mid sentence the moment something else popped into his head. Business, I knew, was another matter. I knew the type. And I also knew that Mrs Bellarosa was not going to bring up the subject of the Easter monster again.

And so we talked for the next hour. We finished the urn of coffee – about twenty cups – and the second bottle of sambuca. The pile of pastry had dropped about six inches. I had, early in the evening, discovered that refusing food or drink was futile. "Mangia, mangia," said Mrs Bellarosa, laughing, stopping just short of shoving pastry in my mouth. "Drink, drink," commanded Mr Bellarosa, filling cups and glasses with any liquid within his reach.

I went to the bathroom three times and each time considered throwing up in the toilet bowl, to purge myself, Roman style. When in Rome, to paraphrase St Ambrose, use the vomitorium as the Romans do. But I couldn't bring myself to do that.

On one of my returns from the bathroom, I saw that Mrs Bellarosa had disappeared, probably into the kitchen, and Susan and Frank were sitting at the table alone. Before she saw me, I heard Susan say the words 'palm court' and feared she was making her pitch to paint the palm court. But when I sat down, she seemed to change the topic and said to me, "I was telling Frank about our trip to Italy a few years ago."

"Were you?"

Mrs Bellarosa returned with Filomena, who was carrying a platter of chocolates. I sat down, trying not to get a whiff of the chocolates or of anything on the table. I asked Mrs Bellarosa for some club soda, and she said something to Filomena, who left and returned with a bottle of something called Pellegrino and a glass. I had a glass of the mineral water, belched discreetly, and felt better.

As the conversation continued without my participation, I regarded Anna Bellarosa. She was deferential toward her husband, which was, of course, what her prenuptial agreement called for. But now and then she showed some Italian fire, and the don backed off. From what I gathered during the conversation, and the dynamics I observed between them, Anna Bellarosa, as the wife of don Bellarosa, had the status of a queen and the rights of a slave. And as the mother of his children, she was the madonna, revered like Mary for the fruit of her womb. Anna Bellarosa had borne three sons, suckled them, saw to their religious education, then let go of them when the father was ready to take charge of their lives, and perhaps, in the case of Tony, of the boy's death. How very different this family was from my own.

I noticed, too, that Anna Bellarosa, despite her good humour and easy laugh, had sad, faraway eyes, as if, I thought, decades of worry had dimmed the sparkle that must once have accompanied the laugh.

Bellarosa stood abruptly, and I thought the evening was over, but he said, "Anna, show Susan around the house. She wants to see the place. John, come with me."

The four of us made our way into the dining room, and Bellarosa informed his wife, "This is the dining room. Where we were is the morning room. For breakfast. I want you to ask Susan what all these rooms are. She knows this place. You give each other a tour. Okay?"

We all went into the palm court, and Frank took my arm and led me to the staircase. He said to his wife, "We'll meet you later in the living room. Leave the greenhouse for me to show." He corrected himself, "The conservatory. Right?" I caught Susan's eye, and she smiled at me, as if to say, "See, you're having a good time." I know that look. What I couldn't understand was why Susan seemed to be having such a good time. The nine-forty-five headache had not materialized, and being a macho man, I didn't want to complain about my nonexistent haemorrhoids, or admit honestly that I was tired and my Anglo-Saxon stomach was churning with Irish pub food and Italian dessert. So I let my buddy, Frank, steer me up the stairs.

We both navigated the winding steps without difficulty, and I saw that Bellarosa held his alcohol as well as I did. We got to the second level and walked around the mezzanine that ran in a horseshoe shape above three sides of the palm court. Every twenty feet or so we passed a heavy oak door, and finally Bellarosa stopped at one of them and opened it. "In here."

"What's in here?"

The library."

"Are we going to read?"

"No, we're going to have a cigar." He motioned me inside.

Against my better judgement, I stepped through the door into the dimly lit room.