Then, several days before his fight with Sweets, Dora got the word. He was supposed to lose. He wasn't naive and he hadn't been so protected that he didn't understand the ways of the fight game in those days. But he was arrogant and sure of his own toughness and, when he climbed into the ring, he knew one thing and one thing only: he was not going to lose.
He didn't. He knocked Lenny Sweets out in the seventh round.
A week later he was in his apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Not the one in which he'd grown up; after he'd gotten out of the hospital he never set foot in that apartment again, leaving everything he owned behind, even his clothes. There was a knock at the door; he got up from the kitchen table, opened the door. After that, it all happened very fast.
There were three guys. Fat, strong, slow, but slow didn't matter, the apartment was small, there was no room to move. Two of them held him down. One of them had a butcher's knife. Huge and gleaming.
"You got a good fuckin' right, don't you?" one of them said. "You're pretty proud of that fuckin' right."
Dom didn't say anything. Even when the cleaver came slashing down and cut through the bone of his right arm, severing it at the forearm.
The only thing he heard after that, right before he passed out, was "You two-bit piece of shit. Don't think you'll be usin' your fuckin' right much anymore."
– "-"-"CAROLINE HAD STOPPED walking for the last part of the story. She was leaning against a lamppost, one hand clenched around it, gripping it so tightly her fingers were white and blotchy.
"Oh my God," she said. She said it several times.
"I told you."
"You told me it was a different world."
"It is a different world."
"It's a different universe."
"Do you want me to stop?"
"There's more? That's not the end?"
Jack shook his head.
Her eyes closed for a moment. Then opened. "Tell me the rest," she said.
So he did. He told her how Dom recovered over the next few months, his ring career over. When he was strong enough, he got a job as a butcher. It was a deliberate choice – the career somehow seemed fitting to him after what had happened. He worked at a butcher shop for a couple of years, learned the ropes, started saving to open up his own place. During that time, he asked questions, kept his eyes and ears open. A little over three years after that night in his apartment, he finally found the three men who had paid him a visit. Now he paid them a visit. Two of them were together and he picked them up when they came out of a bar not long after midnight. Dom came up close behind, never identified himself, shot them while they were walking down the street. It took him ten more days to find the third man. But he did. Waited in the hallway of the guy's apartment building. This time he was going to identify himself but he didn't have the opportunity. The moment the guy saw Dom's arm he turned and ran. But he didn't get far. Before he could take two steps, Dominick Bertolini put a bullet through the back of the man's head.
Caroline was pale now and looked a little unsteady on her feet. "Did he go to jail?" she asked.
Jack shook his head. "No proof. And no one looked too hard to find any. The victims were not exactly what you'd call model citizens."
"But if everyone knew that Dom-"
"No one knew. Maybe some people suspected, but he didn't broadcast it. That's not what it was about. He only told the people he trusted. Even now, I don't think there are more than five people who know what happened."
"How… how is he going to feel about the fact that… that…"
"That I told you? I told him yesterday I was going to tell you."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't say anything. He trusts me."
Caroline exhaled a long, deep breath. "This man… he raised you?"
"I'm here because of him. And whatever it is I am, I mostly am because of him." He waited but she didn't seem to have any more questions. "Do you still want to meet him?" he finally said.
She nodded.
"What's the matter," he smiled, "can't talk?"
And when she shook her head, she was, for the first time since he'd met her, not smiling back.
He led her into the meat market, watched her eyes take in the carcasses and the blood on the floor and the men with their big bellies and greasy hair lugging meat. He watched, too, as she zeroed in on Dom. When he glanced up, noticed that they were there, Dom didn't move. He looked at Caroline as if waiting to see what she'd do. She went straight over to him, didn't wait for an introduction. She took his good hand in hers, leaned over, and kissed him gently on the cheek. As she did, she whispered something in his ear. Dom turned red, as if embarrassed, but he didn't pull his hand away. Letting her hold it, he stood there, remarkably at ease, asked her a few questions. Where you from? How'd you get to New York? What are you doin' with – a jerk of the head toward Jack – a lug like him? Then he said, apologetically, I gotta get back to work.
He gently pulled his hand away, turned, and headed toward the huge walk-in refrigerator. But before he got there, he stopped, twisted his head toward Jack, and nodded his approval.
When Jack tried to get out of her what she'd whispered to him, Caroline wouldn't say. It wasn't until later, when he called Dom, that he found out.
"What's the matter?" Dom said. "She won't tell ya?"
"No," Jack admitted. "All she'll say is that it's up to you."
"Ain't that somethin'," Dom said.
"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.