Icarus. (6 page)

"That'll save us an hour in travel time a day," she said. And then with a deviously innocent look, "We're going to have kids, Jack. I figure four or five of them. That means an hour more we can stay in bed and work on that."

She put up her trust fund as collateral, which the bank instantly accepted, and the town house was theirs.

It seemed like the world was theirs, too.

The restaurant was an immediate success. It started out as an old-fashioned chophouse, serving the best cuts of carefully aged meat, the perfect Caesar salad, and their signature dish, Jack's Potatoes, a circular sculpture of thinly sliced potatoes fried in a cast-iron skillet with shallots and onions. Jack learned about other kinds of food, too. He absorbed the details that, for him, made what he did an art, not just a business. From the fish vendors at the South Street Seaport, he learned that line-caught was better than net-caught – water got in a fish's mouth when it was net-caught; that bloated it and made it less tasty. He learned about baking. Jean-Guy, the white-haired Parisian who was the master baker at the Van Dam Street Bakery, taught him that hard wheat is best for bread, soft wheat is most proper for pastries, and it didn't take Jack long before he could, by taste, pick out the breads that were naturally leavened from sourdough starters. From the farmers who sold him fruits and vegetables at the Union Square Farmers' market, he began to understand the subtle tastes of the best tomatoes and onions and herbs. Gradually, as Jack became more sophisticated, gently guided by Caroline, so, too, did the restaurant. They traveled to Italy, rented a small house in Tuscany, and stumbled into a wonderful trattoria outside of Lucca called Prago. They asked questions, observed every little detail, and, most of all, made friends with the owner, Piero, who finally sent them on their way with the secrets to three of his special pasta sauces, all of which were added to the New York menu. And, suddenly, aromatic truffles began appearing, for special customers, in Jack's Potatoes. When California cuisine came in, they resisted the extreme and faddish combination of tastes, but accepted that American cooking had changed and changed for the better. The restaurant reflected those changes. They were soon serving sliced onions and blood oranges on a bed of arugula, and their chicken and fish began to be influenced by everyone from Wolfgang Puck to Paul Prudhomme. The key to their success, though, was always simplicity; both Jack and Caroline recognized that and never strayed from it. Soon, even the name was simplified. Jack's T-Bone was shortened to Jack's. Within two years of opening, they were a New York institution. Reservations had to be made weeks in advance. But the menu stayed small, the atmosphere homely, the service impeccable. Jack knew, as good as his food was, people did not come to his restaurant for the food. They came because he and Caroline – and everyone who worked there – made each and every customer feel important. They made a point of only hiring nice people, smart people, people who cared. They paid well and treated the staff as if they were family and it paid off big-time because customers left the restaurant with a sense of intimacy and loyalty.

It did not take long before Jack's had made them successful and confident and, in an era where restaurateurs were often bigger stars than the celebrities they served, even somewhat famous. They were profiled in the New York Times Magazine and Caroline revealed her current reading list in Vanity Fair's "Night-Table Reading" page. Periodically, one of the tabloids or TV shows would dig into Jack's past. Sometimes a magazine would even reprint the infamous Post headline about his mother's death: HEIGHT OF INSANITY. But for the most part they were both able to focus on the present and the future. And, of course, the restaurant. They published Jack's Cookbook with Knopf, and in Zagat, almost every year, someone wrote a variation of: "And, yes, Jack himself came to our table to make sure everything was all right." But Jack's had never been about the money or the fame. From the very beginning, Jack's was always about doing what they loved more than anything in life.

Four years after the first restaurant opened, they expanded. First to Chicago, then to L.A. and Miami, finally overseas to Paris, where the idea of an American steakhouse became the rage. Jack and Caroline opened all of them, were involved in everything from the bottom up: they worked with architects and decorators on the design, consulted with chefs about the food, shared the risks with various financial partners, spent the time to make sure the quality and the ambience were up to their standards.

Seven years after the first Jack's had opened, business was booming and they began to plan a London opening. The restaurant in New York had become too small for their needs. They sold the town house – the yuppification of Manhattan was in full bloom and Caroline's prediction had proved correct: the property was sold for many times what they had paid for it – and moved the restaurant uptown to the heart of the theater district, on Forty-seventh Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. They needed a new apartment now, too, and Jack found a perfect one. He wouldn't tell Caroline anything about it, just led her up to Madison and Seventy-seventh Street, nodded to the doormen, who were expecting them, and took her upstairs in the elevator to show her what he hoped would be their new home.

It was quite spectacular: three bedrooms and a formal dining room, a wonderful kitchen, and a living room that was dominated by an ornate, hand-carved mantel over a huge working fireplace. But what made it truly special was something that made Caroline stop dead in her tracks. Something that stunned her and caused her to stare at her husband in wonder.

The apartment had a spectacular wraparound terrace. From different vantage points, it overlooked most of Manhattan. It was, without doubt, one of the great views in New York.

It was also the penthouse of the building.

On the eighteenth floor.

Caroline let Jack lead her through the sliding glass door and onto the terrace. She watched him step gingerly outside and walk to the large round cast-iron table and chairs that the current owners had left behind, set up in the center of the space, the only furniture left in the entire apartment. She walked past him, to the protective waist-high brick wall that went all around the balcony. Unthinkingly, she touched the wall, put her palm flat against it, and suddenly realized what she'd done. She watched Jack, saw his face go pale and his knees start to buckle. She immediately took her hand off the cool brick wall but it was too late. She saw him sit heavily in one of the chairs around the table, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe. Caroline shook her head, furious at herself for her inadvertent cruelty, but she wondered what the hell he was thinking to want this apartment, because if she knew anything about her husband, it was that he was absolutely, insanely, phobically afraid of heights.

He had been ever since the day his mother was killed.

Since then, he had not, if it could possibly be avoided, gone above the sixteenth floor of any building. He didn't like to fly. He wouldn't sit in the upper tier of a sports stadium or a theater. She knew there were specific things that triggered the most painful of his memories and certain moments when the fear would overcome and even paralyze him. She had been with him long enough to know he could never go as close as she had to the wall. She also understood that he did not like seeing other people standing so close to a precipice. Especially women. And especially his wife.

She watched as Jack sank deeper into the chair, then took the six steps she needed to stand next to him and hold his hand. He looked up at her, the color beginning to come back in his face now, his breathing slowing, becoming easier.

"Do you like it?" he gasped and she had to burst out laughing.

"Yes," she said. "I love it. It's my dream apartment. But it might be a little tough living here if you're going to pass out once or twice a day."

"No," he said, his voice still low and hoarse and his breathing still heavy. "I want it."

"Jack, it's crazy. Let's just find our beautiful dream apartment that's on the third floor of some other building."

But he insisted. It was time to get over his fear, he said. Time to get rid of the ghosts that had been haunting him. She argued, told him there were other ways, but she stopped arguing when he said, "It's a good apartment for kids."

She didn't respond to that at first, let a long silence linger in the air. She spent those silent moments staring at him, squinting her eyes, and then nodding, finally, when she decided she'd come up with the answer. "Do you think," Caroline said, "that when we have kids, they'll grow up and not be frightened by things because they grew up here, above the seventeenth floor?"

"Yes," he said, not at all surprised that she had understood. "That's exactly what I think."

She nodded. Then said, "That's an ugly carpet in the living room, isn't it?"

"Hideous," he agreed.

"On the other hand, it looks kind of comfortable."

"Extremely."

"Comfortable enough to try to make a baby on?" she asked.

"There's only one way to find out," he answered.

And he let her lead him out of his chair and into the living room, where they began to make love on the hideous living room carpet of their new apartment.

– "-"-"RIGHT AFTER THEY moved in, Caroline got pregnant for the first time. Three weeks before the due date, they finished converting one bedroom into the baby's room – a room for a baby boy, as the tests had revealed – and filled it with toys and clothes and even painted stars on the ceiling above the crib. A week before she was due, Caroline doubled over with pain and Jack rushed her to the hospital. The baby was delivered by Cesarean and was stillborn. They grieved for months but they dealt with their loss by loving each other all the more and then Caroline was pregnant again. This time, two months into the pregnancy she began hemorrhaging and the baby had to be aborted.

A few days before their ninth anniversary, she announced to Jack that she was pregnant yet again. They took every possible precaution. She stayed away from the restaurant, didn't exercise the way she usually did at the gym, drank not a drop of alcohol, and went on a vegetarian diet. They had put off the opening of the Jack's in London because of the first two pregnancies, but they decided they couldn't delay any longer. The doctor suggested that flying was not in her or the baby's best interest, so for the first time she let Jack do most of the work and all of the traveling. He spent at least a week a month in England for several months, making sure it all went right while she rested and ate well and didn't drink in New York, making certain that all went right there. Since their very first date, they had spent nearly every minute together and Jack, to his surprise, found himself guiltily enjoying the separation. They spoke constantly and he filled her in on every business detail, but for the first time he understood that they now had secrets from each other. He could not possibly tell her everything he did and thought and he realized it was the same for her. Women flirted with him and came on to him and he enjoyed it. He went out with his male friends, too, at pubs and private gambling casinos in Mayfair, and he enjoyed that, too. He began to horde his little secrets and he wondered how that would affect his life with Caroline when he returned home. They were harmless, he decided, and would not affect it at all.

But Caroline's secrets were not as trivial. Right after the London opening, Jack came home and she told him that, once again, there would be no baby. She had gone into the hospital and now it was all over. She hadn't called him over there, hadn't wanted to tell him on the phone, not while he was overseeing everything. But this time was different. There were new complications: the doctor told her she could no longer have children.

She cried and they hugged and, as before, their wounds gradually healed. And, as before, as Caroline had said, the scars left them different people. Not better, not worse, just different.

– "-"-"ONE OF THE biggest differences was that they let Kid Demeter come into their lives.

It began the night of their tenth anniversary. They were home, just the two of them. Jack was going to cook and they were going to have a romantic evening, going to make love and try, as they often did now, not to think about the fact that they would never have a child. They were listening to Chet Baker in Paris. Jack would always remember that "My Funny Valentine" was playing because it was Caroline's favorite song, and they were touching their champagne glasses in a toast when the phone rang. It was Dom, and as soon as Jack heard his voice he said, "We're drinking champagne and whispering sweet nothings. When can you be here?" But when Dom was silent, Jack knew something was wrong, so then he just said, "What is it?"

"It's Sal," Dom said.

Jack put his champagne glass down and said, "Shit."

Sal Demeter worked for Dom, and had worked alongside Jack for years at the plant. When Jack was a teenager, Sal had always treated him like a man instead of a boy; he was the first one ever to take Jack out drinking and once let Jack, when he was fourteen, drive Sal's station wagon down an empty West Side Highway in the middle of the night. Sal was a hell of a guy. Huge, three hundred pounds, easy. An enormous belly that jutted way out in front of him. Hands that looked like ham hocks and arms that looked as if they could lift anything. That could lift anything. Not the brightest guy who ever lived, but kind and surprisingly gentle for such a giant of a man.

Dom told Jack that Sal had just finished work. He was walking across the floor, fiddling with the string on his apron, getting ready to yank it off, when he began staggering. The big man took three or four quick steps and fell to his knees. Remained there for another second or two, just long enough for people to start running over to him, then he toppled forward, twisting slightly to his side, and was dead. Sal wasn't quite forty-five and he'd left a wife and fourteen-year-old son and, Jack was certain, not much insurance money. The fourteen-year-old was George, but no one had called him that since, well, probably since he was three months old. Right from the start it was Kid. Kid Demeter.