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
