'So are you going to tell me?'
'You want her exact words?'
'Yes. Her exact words.'
'Her exact words,' Dom said with something approaching wonder in his voice, 'were 'Thank you for Jack. You did a good job.''
That night, he and Caroline made particularly fervent love in his room. When they were done, she shuddered with pleasure and when he tried to move she stopped him. She wouldn't let him escape from inside her and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight. That's when he told her his plans. After graduation, he said, he wanted to open a restaurant. He could take what he'd learned studying business at school and combine it with everything he'd picked up living with and working for Dom. He knew exactly what the restaurant would be like, too. Comfortable and real, with good, simple food. The kind of food he knew about. And great service. Maybe it would be in a brownstone, he said, something that felt like home.
She waited to see if there was more and, yes, there was.
I want you to be my partner, he told her. I'll run the back, do the kitchen and the food and the business. You run the front. Make it look the way you want. Make it classy.
She waited and, yes, there was still more.
'I love you,' he said. 'And I want you to be my wife.'
'Those are good plans,' Caroline said. 'I like those plans.'
And after they kissed, a long and luxurious and enveloping kiss, and then made love again, she said, 'Yes, I like those plans very much. I like the idea of living happily ever after.'
THREE
The wedding was your basic nightmare. Caroline's parents wanted a fancy affair, several hundred people, held down in Virginia on the family grounds. Dom thought it should be upstairs at the Old Homestead Restaurant, the venerable steak joint on Fifteenth Street. It was near enough so the boys in the meat markets could easily get there, and they had good, icy-cold beer on tap.
They compromised. Jack and Caroline got married in the late morning in a judge's chamber down at City Hall. Her parents came up for the ceremony, as did her two sisters, Llewellyn and Susanna Rae. Llewellyn was the perfect Southern belle, gracious and friendly toward all. Susanna Rae was distant and seemed resentful of Caroline's happiness. She stayed separate from the group, barely acknowledged Jack's existence, and looked as if the short and simple vows were for no other purpose than to inflict upon her a painful and permanent wound.
Caroline's family did not attend the party that followed the wedding. It was their way of showing disapproval without having a confrontation. They waited back at their midtown hotel. Dom threw a bash at his market – it was Caroline's choice of locations. Jack stood in a tuxedo, the first one he'd ever worn, and Caroline was radiant in a white silk blouse and short, white silk skirt, The beer, scotch, and bourbon – and even a bit of champagne – flowed while a band played raucous rock and roll all afternoon. They danced among the hanging slabs of beef, kicking up sawdust, and everyone from Jack's and Dom's past lined up to kiss and hug the glowing bride. At six o'clock, Jack and Caroline hopped in a taxi, rode out to the airport, and met the Hale family. They all took the shuttle to Washington, D.C., then drove from there to the farm in Virginia, just outside Charlottesville. The next day was an all-day party. Tents were set up on the property, an orchestra played sonorous chamber music, hundreds of elegant friends pressed checks into Jack's or Caroline's hands and wished them well. Jack, for the most part, stayed silent, not wanting to say the wrong thing or reveal just how uncomfortable he truly felt stepping up in class. References were made to events he hadn't heard of. People laughed at jokes he didn't understand. There were toasts singing Caroline's praises from scores of people she'd never mentioned to him, including several obvious ex-suitors. Caroline's father spoke about what a fine young man Jack was, greatly exaggerating his background and accomplishments. Her mother kissed Jack on the cheek, the barest graze of a kiss, whispering to him that he had a real handful to take care of.
But he knew that wasn't true. Caroline was no handful. She was easy. And it would always be easy between them because they were in love.
They left the next morning for the honeymoon, a week in a small hotel on the Caribbean island of Virgin Gorda. They had their own one-bedroom cabin, with a thatched roof and an outdoor shower, which was all they needed since it never went below eighty degrees.
On the plane ride down, they were holding hands, sitting in a comfortable silence; he was thinking about the party in Virginia and he knew she was too. He squeezed her hand tighter and said to her, 'Why did you marry me?'
'You mean seeing where I come from, seeing my friends, seeing the bucolic life I'm leaving behind to go live the pauper's life in the evil city with a nobody like you?'
He shrugged, then nodded and said, 'Something like that, yeah.'
She turned her head, just an inch, so her eyes could search his. When they were done searching, she smiled gently, then she, too, squeezed harder and said, 'I don't want you to become like those people, you know.'
'I won't,' he told her. 'I don't think I can.'
'That's good,' she said. 'That's why I married you.'
Their week in Virgin Gorda was a lot like being in heaven. They sat on the beach and read, took long walks, spent hours out on the water, motoring around in a little putt putt that came with the room. They snorkeled and ate grilled lobster and drank rich, foamy pina coladas that were dappled with nutmeg. They talked long into the night, confiding their fears about and their confidence in their future and revealing what little they hadn't yet revealed about their pasts.
Day and night they lay in their king-size bed under the ceiling fan, the slats in the windows letting in a faint sea breeze, holding each other. She would stretch out, naked, and let him stroke her. He would kiss the tops of her thighs, staring down the seemingly endless length of her magically bronzed legs toward her slender bare feet. She would guide him into her and moan with pleasure. He was always surprised that someone so elegant and in control could be so sensual and sexually uninhibited. Sometimes she screamed so loudly they would start laughing. She told him it was a good thing their room was so close to the water, that the roar of the waves better drown her out or hotel security would come and drag him away.
When they returned to New York – there was never any question that they would live there – they began the daunting task of becoming not just life partners but business partners. They found themselves strategizing long into the night. They would go out for a pizza or some Chinese food, planning on a movie afterward, but they would get so excited discussing the details of their planned restaurant that the movie never materialized. They would stay in the pizza place, jabbering at each other, throwing out questions, tossing back just-thought-of answers, until they'd be asked to leave because the table was needed, then they'd move on to a coffee shop or a bar and plan away until they'd realize it was two in the morning and time to go home.
They searched for the right location. There were all sorts of variables and rules, they knew, but 'right' meant 'affordable,' so they wound up breaking the rules. They found the perfect setup: a small brownstone with the first floor licensed for a commercial business. It was easily convertible into a restaurant space; there was even a garden out back with a patio. The only problem was that it was on a side street in Chelsea. Hardly any foot traffic. Not a very desirable area, not back then. Too far west, too far downtown. Too downscale, too rough a neighborhood. But they could afford it. Their first investment, before they bought a can of paint or a single piece of silverware, was a small blue-and-white awning. On it, it said 'Jack's T-Bone' in small, scripted letters. The awning stood at the front of the building for a full year before the restaurant opened. Every time he saw it, it gave Jack the confidence to succeed and made him understand that his dream was about to become a reality.
Caroline was the one who insisted they buy, not rent. It made him nervous – Jack had never owned anything more expensive than a leather jacket. But she said they had to look into the future. If they owned the property, they could do what they wanted with it. They would be the ones in control. And, besides, they could live above the restaurant. Not only would they have a beautiful home, they could serve the last customer, lock the door of their business, and be in bed two minutes later.
'That'll save us an hour in travel time a day,' she said. And then with a deviously innocent look, 'We're going to
