Icarus. (8 page)

What pushed Jack into his final decision – although deep down, he'd known as soon as she suggested it that it was as good as done, as soon as he saw the pleasure in her eyes – was that he visited some of the Virginia vineyards and tasted some of the local wine. Not there yet, but getting there. The Alan Kinne Chardonnay was absolutely first-rate, satisfyingly oaky. The Dashiell Pinot Noir was fine, not far behind some of the midrange Washington and Oregon vineyards. And the Barboursville Cabernet was both delicious and a smooth fit with Jack's menu. In another few years, he could have a perfectly nice Virginia section on his wine list. He liked that idea. After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who'd introduced wine to the New World. The local reds would eventually go very nicely with some of the Southern adaptations of the restaurant's classic recipes.

So they agreed it was a go.

"Is it still fun for you?" she'd asked.

He'd thought a bit, surprised he had to think, then he nodded and said, "It's still fun with you."

She smiled – the answer had pleased and touched her – and she leaned over, kissed him on the top of the forehead, let her lips linger long enough that he could feel her breath rustling his hair.

They got a good deal on a location, in the middle of the brick-lined Downtown Mall, near enough to the glorious university so it felt as if they were hovering in Jefferson's overwhelming shadow, yet far enough away so as not to be lumped with the raggedy barbecue and burger joints or the more staid places with their fake Colonial decorations and wild melange of would-be sophisticated ingredients. Their staff came together easily, too, and would come easier in the future; Jack talked to the university and they agreed to start a small master's program in restaurant management. Not only would Jack and Caroline give several lectures a year, the students could apprentice in the new kitchen and on the floor. In the meantime, they brought several people up from Miami, including the manager, a wonderful woman named Bella who worked twenty-four hours a day. was scrupulously honest, and was in the midst of a not-very-friendly divorce, so that she was anxious to get out of town for a while. The sous chef in Chicago was definitely ready to take over his own place and staff, so when he willingly made the move, everything was set.

Now they were in the home stretch. One day to go before the opening.

Caroline had been down in Charlottesville quite a bit lately, two or three days a week for several months, making sure that this newest venture would run with the only two things that she demanded of everyone and everything around her: precision and elegance. He'd gone with her several times, of course, as often as he could, but there was much work to be done at home.

An overwhelming amount of work, really.

There was a lot more pressure being the president of the United States, Jack always said, but even the president didn't put in the kind of hours a topnotch restaurateur in New York did.

Now Jack glanced at the alarm clock: 4:45. He was fifteen minutes behind schedule.

I must be getting lazy, he thought. And then he went through, in his mind, what he had to do that day, and he laughed out loud. Lazy. Yeah, right.

With that, Jack started to swing his feet out of bed. But before they could touch the floor, he was startled to hear the phone ring. Then he was smiling, not so startled, as he picked up the receiver and, without asking who it was, said with mock sternness, "Why are you up so early?"

'An annoying habit," Caroline said on the other end.

"I've never been referred to quite that way," he told her, "but I guess it's better than nothing."

"You're running behind schedule."

"How do you know I'm not on my way out the door?"

"You sound too cozy. My guess is you're still in bed thinking about how much work you have to do."

"Lucky guess," he said.

Her response was a confident "Mmmmm."

Then she filled him in on what her day was going to be like, said that she was going back to sleep for a few hours, that she'd just felt like speaking to him before he headed out.

"You're talking so quietly," he said. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's perfect. It's just so quiet and peaceful here right now. It doesn't seem right to spoil it."

"You, my sweet, are incapable of spoiling anything."

"And you, my sweet, are going soft in the head. When are you coming down?"

"Tonight. I'll have an early dinner with Dom and then I think I'll drive. Probably leave around eight, get there around midnight. Should I come to the house or the restaurant?"

"Restaurant. I'll still be there. And you know you have a meeting with the Beauferme vineyard guy at five-thirty tonight," she said. "He wants to sell you a new Rhone."

"Oh, Christ. I forgot."

"Write it down."

"He's going to want me to drink with him and I'm going to have to argue with him-"

"Write it down, please."

"You know I don't taste wine that way. I don't drink with the salesmen. I drink it with dinner, the way you're supposed to drink it."

"Write it down and stop whining. Or wining…"

"Very funny."

"… as the case may be."

"Even funnier."

"Write it down." And during the pause, as he made a face at the phone and waved his hand in the air, pretending to write down the information, she said, "Jack, don't just make faces and humor me. Write it down."

"I'll never understand how you do that," he said. "But it kind of steams me."

"Oh," she said. "Will you bring the hunting rifle? I want to go shooting tomorrow."

"It's here?"

"In the foyer closet. I brought it back to be realigned."

"This ain't what I thought romance would be – 'Yes, darling, I'll bring your rifle.'"

"Don't forget," she said.

"I'm writing it down," he said, and again he moved his fingers in the air.

"Go to work."

"Sleep well," he told her and then they hung up.

The next few minutes were as always: a trip to the kitchen to put the coffee on, a quick shower, a few moments to throw-on a pair of jeans and a comfortable sweater-shirt, back to the kitchen to pour a large mug of coffee, then a few steps over to the enormous wraparound balcony to sit – not too close to the rail, never too close to the rail – and sip the hot liquid, looking out, from on high, at the lights of the city caught in the fading night and rising dawn.

Jack took a deep breath, a satisfied breath, then left the terrace and walked into the elevator that opened up straight into his apartment foyer and took him down to the garage in the basement of his building. He slid into the driver's seat of his four-door, gleaming black Beamer, maneuvered out of the tight parking space, drove up the steep incline that led to the middle of East Seventy-seventh Street, then headed south on Fifth Avenue.

Manhattan was still asleep and there was a faint, predawn chill to the air as Jack's day began. He loved that chill, never failed to appreciate it when it hit him each morn. It made him shiver and come alive and thrill to the edge of the city-It reminded him, every single day, how much he liked that life, despite the ghosts that still haunted its edges. The life that he and Caroline had fought for, and worked for, and carved out for each other.

The life that, in one more day, when the Virginia restaurant opened, would shatter and change forever.

There it was.

Touch it. Hold it. Make sure it was real. Yes. Oh, yes. Very, very real. It was the key to everything, this little card. To the future. To the good life. To love and money and respect. To everything the two of them had always wanted.

To everything they were in danger of losing. But now they didn't have to lose it. Any of it. Here it was and she had done it for them. Arranged it all.

Did she even know what she was doing? Maybe. Hard to know. Hard to know anything.

Except there was nothing else to know. They had what they needed.

Invite you to the biggest off-Broadway opening of the year

The invitation seemed to get larger, growing all by itself, and it took on a surreal glow. It was indeed a magical thing. It was a solution to all their problems. A ticket to a beautiful new world.

And in this world… well… it knew the truth there, too. It most certainly did.

We're thanking you for welcoming us…

They would be welcomed, all right.

They were thieves, both of them, the very worst kind of thieves. Had been right from the start. Stealing dreams. Stealing love.

Stealing the future.

We're thanking you for welcoming us…

Oh, yes, they surely would be welcomed.

And they just might be dead, too.

If they were lucky.

It took Jack less than fifteen minutes to drive down to the Fourteenth Street meat market area. At five o'clock in the morning, it took less than fifteen minutes to drive almost anywhere in Manhattan.

His destination was two blocks south of Fourteenth, Gansevoort Street, where he turned right off Ninth Avenue. As always, over the past year or so, he was surprised by the almost daily change in the neighborhood. Much of it was as it had always been, at least for a long stretch of the twentieth century. The streets were old cobblestone, half the buildings were still warehouses – meat lockers and butchers – with generations represented by the words "And Sons" on almost every sign. Most could just as easily have read "And Grandson and Great-Grandson." The neighborhood was also still a haven – a graveyard, Caroline always said – for all the hot dog vendors in the city; these were the buildings where every street cart was stored. Watching the vendors roll out or roll in at the beginning and end of each day gave Jack the eerie feeling of being in a time long past, before fast food chains and department stores and Internet shopping. But the twenty-first century was rapidly encroaching on this last bastion of blue-collar Manhattan. Many of the butchers had succumbed to the high rents and disappeared, replaced by art galleries and chic women's clothing stores. Warehouses were being converted into precious co-ops. And upscale restaurants were springing up on every corner, luring models and actors and rappers with their posses. Briefly, Jack and Caroline had thought about opening up another place in what was being dubbed the Lower West Side but Jack had spent much of his adult life escaping from there. He loved taking quick dips back into this part of his past but, no matter how hip and trendy the area was becoming, he didn't want to retreat there on a full-time basis.

He eased the car over to the right side of Gansevoort and parked directly in front of Dominick Bertolini's Meat Mart. A burly guy, his back to Jack, his overalls and white T-shirt streaked with blood, was lugging a huge side of beef out toward a truck. He glanced at Jack's car, a hostile glance, started to yell that he couldn't park there, then as Jack stepped out the hostility turned to recognition. He turned back toward his heavy load and, as Jack walked past him, nodded a professional hello.

Jack stepped over a streak of light-red liquid – blood mixed with water – that was slowly streaming out of the warehouse. As he hopped up onto the metal-grating platform and toward the heavy sliding door that led to the enormous warehouse, he could hear, even from outside, the thudding and slamming of cleavers slicing through meat and striking into a butcher block.

He stepped inside and could see Dom, writing at a small desk. His right arm – what was left of it – was holding down a piece of paper. His left hand was busy scribbling. As usual, he was muttering to himself as he wrote. Jack waited; he didn't say anything, just watched the old man concentrate on his figures. His back was ramrod straight. And even under his butcher's whites it was easy to see that his stomach was still flat as a board and his good arm was still hard and muscular. The old man was astonishing. He hadn't aged a day since they'd first met, Jack thought. Still as feisty, still as hardworking. Still as strong and arrogant as ever. He was certain that Dom didn't know he was there and Jack was content to watch and admire, to let his friend work, but then he heard the familiar cigarette-and-whiskey-stained voice say, "What, you got the hots for me, you're just standin' there starin' at my ass?"

Dom turned now to look at Jack. His head was bobbing up and down – a sign of his usual nervous energy as well as his seventy-five years – and he growled, "Whaddya want?"

"Why do you ask me what I want every day when you know damn well you're gonna tell me what I want?"

"I don't want you to feel like you don't matter."

"So what do I want?" Jack asked.

"Baby lamb. Beautiful. All organic, four, five months old, twenty-four, twenty-five pounds. And before you ask, since I know you got weird notions of fair play and like to support the area, yeah, they come from around here, New Jersey, from Burden Farm."

"Okay, I'll take-"

"Jackie, gimme some credit, will ya? You'll take two hundred and seventy pounds, that'll cover you for three days. I already broke it down – shoulder, loin, chops, neck, and thighs for braising, no brain, no head. Although why you don't hire yourself a chef who knows how to cook brains…"

"You try selling brains to my customers, okay, Dom?"

"Your customers could use some brains, Jackie boy. That's a damn fact." He cackled, then walked over to one of the four-month-old lambs, not yet broken down, hanging from a ceiling hook. Dom slapped it and the thick sound reverberated for a moment in the warehouse. "Look at this baby. She's a poem is what she is, Jackie. You know how many people I give somethin' like this to? You. And you alone. And you know why?"