Icarus. (9 page)

"I pay you more than anybody."

"Because you know the difference."

Dom walked back over to the desk, reached into an already open drawer, and pulled out a bottle of scotch. Nothing fancy. Plain old Johnnie Walker Black. Jack had tried to buy him aged and expensive bottles of single-malt but Dom would have nothing to do with them. A shot glass was already sitting on top of the desk and Dom filled it to the brim. "Care to join me?" he asked.

"It's five-thirty in the morning."

"Is that too early or too late?" When Jack didn't answer, Dom said, "Besides, I'm celebratin'."

"What are you celebrating?"

"The fact that it's five-thirty in the morning. Always happy to see another one roll around."

He downed the shot, licked his lips happily, and put the glass back on the desktop. Then he stepped over to Jack, the sleeve of his apron covering the stump that was his right arm. With his left, he wound up as if to throw a punch. The fist moved toward Jack's cheek, a perfectly thrown hook, even now, even at his age, then the hand opened and curled around Jack's neck. Dom pulled Jack closer and smacked a kiss on his cheek.

"What was that for?"

"She's away, ain't she?"

Dom adored Caroline. And rarely called her by name. It was as if to name her was to insult her. She was, under most circumstances, "she." Jack always told her it was the royal version, with a capital S.

"Yes. She's away."

"Well, I figured you'd take a little smoochin' wherever you could get it then, Jackie."

With that, the old man cackled his raspy laugh again, gave Jack a hard slap on the back of the neck, turned and headed across the market. Jack knew he was supposed to follow so he did. He smiled, thinking of Dom's relationship with Caroline. A more unlikely pair never existed. Yet she was one of the few people Dom trusted. And it was the same for Caroline. She loved the old man. Could make herself vulnerable with him, which she couldn't do with many people. Jack wondered if Dom had had a similar relationship with his mother. Had Joanie Keller loved and trusted him, too? Whenever Jack allowed himself to think about it, the answer always came up yes.

"Do you have to keep calling me Jackie?" he said to Dom as he followed.

"Yeah, 'cause it's what I always called you. And always will call you. Now, you wanna do some business? 'Cause I got some other good stuff for you."

Jack sighed. "Okay, lay it on me, old man."

"Do you have to keep calling me old man?"

"It's what I've always called you."

Dom shook his head and grumbled to himself but soon was all business as he led Jack through the room to show him the merchandise. "I got you eighty pounds of organic chicken, should be good for two days, I got plenty more comin' in, no need to overstock. Your chef asked for three days' worth of veal, a hundred and sixty pounds. Three days of rib eye, four hundred pounds; another four hundred of sirloin; fifty pounds of hanger steak; thirty pounds of duck, cut up – you guys can take the meat off the legs and breasts yourself. What are you doin' tonight?"

"Jesus, you really are getting old. I'm having dinner with you, then I'm driving to Virginia."

"Drivin'?"

"Yeah. After we open I thought Caroline and I would drive back, take a couple of days off. Stop off at a bed-and-breakfast or two. Kind of like a hundred and thirty-seventh honeymoon."

"You know where I was gonna take your mom on the honeymoon?" Dom asked suddenly.

"Yes," Jack said. "Italy."

"I guess I told you that, huh?"

"I guess you did."

"Never been there," Dom said. "Never been to Italy."

"You'll go."

"Nah," Dom said, not a trace of self-pity in his voice, just stating fact. "I never been anywhere. I'll never go anywhere."

"My mom would have liked Italy, I bet. She would have liked going there with you."

Dom stared at Jack, his leathery mouth and chin moving in a kind of smile, then once again he threw a perfect roundhouse left. And again, he wound up grabbing Jack by the scruff of his neck. His grip was hard and firm and felt good. The old man's calluses scraped against Jack's skin and sent pleasurable shivers up and down his spine.

"You're a good boy, Jackie. You're a good boy."

"Forty-one in a couple of weeks. Some boy."

"Forty-one… Jesus… that makes me-"

"A hundred and eight."

Dom shook his head as mournfully as he could manage. "You never gave me nothin' but a hard time."

"'Cause you never liked nothin' but a hard time." Jack leaned over to him, gave him a quick hug and kissed him on top of the forehead. "Don't work too hard."

Jack heard a mumbled "Yeah, yeah, that'll be the day," on his way out, and when he turned back to wave good-bye, Dom was already busy lugging a 150-pound side of pork under his arm.

"See you at six," Jack said to nobody in particular. And for the first time in years, he found himself staring at the warehouse floor, at the spot where he knew Sal Demeter had fallen, and he was thinking about Sal and his sudden death, about Kid and his disappearance. No, he said to himself. Don't do this. No more ghosts.

Think about Caroline, his inner voice told him.

Think about tomorrow. And the restaurant. And Charlottesville.

Turning his back on the market, walking slowly out to his car, he even moved his lips, just slightly, and whispered to himself, "No more ghosts." And to be on the safe side, he did it one more time.

"No more ghosts."

She stared into the mirror. As always these days, she was surprised at what stared back at her.

She remembered an old joke; the girls in school used to mutter it after a date and giggle, "It looks like a penis, only smaller."

Peering into the mirror, she thought: It looks like me, only older.

Caroline Hale Keller flicked the switch on her small makeup mirror and recoiled ever so slightly when the dozen tiny bulbs exploded into a circle of bright light. She forced herself to examine the distorted, close-up image that seemed painted onto the glass. She looked past the elegant cheekbones and perfect features. All she could see were the lines streaming from the corners of her eyes, the slight downward turn at the corners of her lips, the small pockets under the eyes.

She raised her right hand to remove her earrings. Slipping them out of the lobes, her hand loomed in the mirror, and she froze it, kept it hanging in the air, unmoving. Her hands, too, were lined. Those elegant hands of hers were no longer smooth and soft-looking. And her nails, long and unpainted, somehow now looked grotesque to her.

She thought of Jack, driving down later that night. She smiled because she knew he'd time it so he could listen to the Knicks game on the car radio. He loved his Knicks, he really did. Had had season tickets, second row, right under the basket, for years now. He always said that if he had one place he could be anywhere in the world, it would be at the Garden for a Knicks play-off game. He knew some of the players, a lot of the sportswriters, all of the ushers. The restaurant had long been a sports hangout, at least for those athletes and writers and executives who actually knew their food. She couldn't find fault with this passion of his. He worked so hard. So all-consumingly. He needed to relax. The boy in him needed to root for Spree to score his twenty-five points and for Houston to hit his outside jumper. She understood perfectly. And yet…

And yet she wanted him in her bed tonight. And tonight she wanted the man. Not the boy.

She turned her attention back to the mirror. Patted her neck and chin. Pulled the skin on her face back, smoothing it out.

God, men were so lucky. They looked better with age, so many of them, anyway. Salt-and-pepper hair was distinguished, not matronly. Their bodies could remain firm and flat, not turn menopausal. Craggy skin looked good on them. Young women were attracted to them. More than that, would marry them. No wonder so many of them discarded their longtime mates. What did compatibility matter, who cared about a personal history if you could move on to firm skin and upright breasts? It wasn't fair. It wasn't goddamn fair.

She released the skin around her eyes, felt the tautness grow lax. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another…

She had never thought of herself as vain before.

Of course, she had never thought of herself as many things. As secretive. Duplicitous. Unsure. Frightened.

Dangerous.

But she was all of those things, wasn't she? Maybe she hadn't been. But she was now.

Time was an amazing thing, she decided. It didn't just change the way a thing looked. It changed the very thing itself.

Caroline exhaled in front of the makeup mirror, her breath creating a tiny patch of fog on the glass. She flicked the switch, turning the ring of lights off. She rose, slowly took all her clothes off, and stood naked before the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Her body was good. It was. She weighed exactly what she'd weighed when she first met Jack. Her posture was perfect, erect and strong. Her breasts were small, they'd always been small, and, yes, they were not what they'd once been but they were still fine. She knew she looked damn good for a forty-one-year-old woman with a string of restaurants to run and the pressure of opening a new one.

She just didn't look young.

Stepping into her blue robe, Caroline did not want to go back into the bedroom, instead padded into the den, searched the bookshelves until she found an old mystery, one she thought she'd read before but wasn't absolutely sure. She thought she could flip the pages, without having to think too much, until the sun was up and the new day began.

There were choices she had to make. Decisions she could no longer postpone. She knew that. She'd made some already. Hoped they were the right ones. For the rest, she didn't know how she would choose or what she would decide. She just knew that she had secrets now. Secrets she could never share with anyone. Secrets that, however they developed, would change her life and the lives of those she loved.

Whoever said that with age came wisdom was totally full of shit, she decided. What came with age was doubt. And fear.

Caroline wondered what was going to happen tomorrow.

But it was not tomorrow she was afraid of.

It was the tomorrow after that and the one after that and then all the tomorrows into the future.

Okay, stay calm. No need to be nervous. Nothing has changed.

The Plan was in place and it was a good one.

The Man had come down for the opening. Drove the whole way. He couldn't stay away but that was to be expected. The Plan allowed for that. There were still no surprises.

There were three stages. Just keep remembering that. The three crucial stages. Before, During, and After. Each stage was easy. Just stay calm.

That's all that was needed. Stay calm and keep to the Plan.

Before: It couldn't be better. No one suspected a thing. Not the real thing, anyway. And everything was set. The phone call this afternoon confirmed all that. Easy as pie.

During: What could go wrong? Nothing, that's what. Be quick, that was crucial. Quick but no rushing. Rushing meant mistakes. Quick but slow? Was that possible? No. Quick but relaxed? Yes, that was possible. That was the goal. Quick, quick, quick but nice and relaxed. Get in, wait for the right moment, do it, get out.

Quick quick quick.

Relaxxxxeddddd.

And then there was After. That would be the trickiest. Loose ends to take care of. And no way to practice what was going to happen. Too had. Practice was usually the key. Practice made perfect, didn't it?

Well, at least it made it easier to he quick quick quick.

And easy and relaxed.

Still, After would he fine.

And then: Over.

All over.

Soon now. One more day.

Before, During, After, Over.

Very, very soon.

April 1, 4 p.m.

Jack and Caroline were surveying every tiny detail of the new restaurant. To Jack, every night he was at work was a little bit like being in a Broadway show. The preparation, the pre-curtain tension, the beginning of the performance, the exhaustion that came after the final bow. Today, even this early in the day in Charlottesville, it felt like an opening night on the Great White Way.

They'd taken over an old soda fountain/restaurant/general store in the Downtown Mall as well as the pizza parlor next door. The location was perfect, right next to the Piedmont Council of the Arts, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, and the Virginia Economic Development Corporation. Everyone who worked for those influential organizations had been sent invitations to the opening-night party and they, as well as all office workers within a five-block stretch of the mall, had received a voucher saying that Jack's would stock their favorite wine or brand of liquor and keep individual bottles for private use when they dined there. After knocking down walls and redesigning the space, the restaurant sat 125 inside. They had also negotiated for the use of outdoor seating on the long red-brick patio in front of the restaurant. So right outside were cast-iron tables and thirty chairs, along with clay planters overflowing with rosebushes.

The restaurant looked gorgeous. Jack didn't even bother to concern himself with that – Caroline was incapable of making a restaurant anything but wonderful-looking. It had the feel of the original Jack's but, as with each of the spinoffs, there was a vague regional atmosphere to it. Jack was never quite able to put his finger on how she managed this. Tonight, he suspected, it was the flowers and the pastel colors that somehow gave the restaurant a slightly Southern feel.

The employees were all in place, as was the complicated management structure unique to the restaurant business. They'd found the morning manager at a local bed-and-breakfast that had recently been sold. The night manager was Bella, from the Miami Jack's. A treasure. Jack had no reservations about leaving everything in her capable hands. The chef was solid. He'd been the sous chef in the Chicago Jack's and was more than ready to step up to his own kitchen. He was not intimidated by running a large staff and he seemed to be a good manager as well as a genuine talent. The assistant manager, the beverage manager, and the special-events manager were all young and relatively inexperienced but were clearly gems. Jack did not like maitre d's and he never had one in any of his restaurants. He thought of maitre d's as money-grubbing bodyguards, imperious and bribable. Instead, he had what he called anchors, and they ran the front of the restaurant – they knew how to juggle the seating, the overbooking, the walk-ins, and they knew how to deal with the extreme anxiety that came with dictating the flow of the restaurant on a nightly basis. Jack and Caroline took particular care when hiring anchors. These people had to be smart, they had to have pride, they had to be driven to make people happy. A restaurant's reputation was based on its staff's interaction with its customers. And not just at the top. That's why, for the new place, they had also hired servers and bussers who were all experienced, all happy to have stepped up in class and even happier to have an employer who provided health insurance. Watching them all prepare now – vacuuming, buffing the tables, folding the napkins, cleaning menus, testing the volume of the jazz that would be playing over the speakers throughout the evening – Jack was pleased and proud. Caroline seemed to have done an extraordinary job in this area. He ran down his usual list, tried to find anything that was missing, that wasn't being done. He couldn't come up with one thing.