Jack Keller was twenty years old when he first thought he might be falling in love. He'd been infatuated with Caroline Hale since he'd first seen her, sitting in a psych class, seven seats to the left and three rows behind him. Of course, in the late 1970s, just about every male on the Columbia University campus was in love with Caroline from afar. He was not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination, to keep turning and staring during that lecture. She was worth staring at.
And it wasn't just her physical beauty, although that was reason enough. It was certainly reason to crane his neck almost every day in class so he could glance furtively as often as he could. Her face was angular, yet soft and lovely. High cheekbones and lips were perfect, not too thin, not too full. Serious eyes that seemed to change with her surroundings, sometimes a piercing blue, then at times a melancholy gray, even a turbulent violet. Her hair was dark brown and straight, long enough to reach her shoulders, sometimes tied back in a ponytail that made her look seven years old. Her legs were long and muscular and tan and quite visible, usually extending from the bottom of a short black skirt, and she had a way of crossing them – particularly when she became absorbed in her extensive note taking – that was so casually provocative it made Jack's heart pound. Jack couldn't understand how her legs stayed so tan, even in the New York winters. Later, when he got to know her, found out that she came from money, it was the first thing he noted to himself about rich people: they seemed to always be tan, as if their money awarded them more sunlight than was allowed to shine down on poor people.
Jack was never tan. He was one of the poor people, there on scholarship, working at night to pay the rest of his way. He had never even thought much about having money. Not until he saw Caroline. And even then it wasn't the money he was thinking about. It was those legs that were always so brown and elegant. He wondered what he'd have to do to be allowed near them, to caress them with his rough and callused and very white hands.
He watched her for almost a whole year. Never following her, just noticing her when she was near. And not pining, either; she didn't dominate his thoughts – he had girlfriends, his life was busy and full – but never quite removing her from his consciousness. Whenever he'd see her, in a class, across a campus, at a bar or party, he'd study her, marveling at her ease. It was inconceivable to him how anyone could be so sure of herself, so relaxed and confident in any situation. Men and boys flocked to her adoringly. Women seemed not to mind, liking her despite her astonishing popularity, reveling in her friendship. Jack, from across rooms and from skewed angles, watched as she was able to let anything and anyone come to her and wash over her – and be gracious and respectful in return, all the while maintaining her distance.
The first time he heard her voice, it surprised him. It did not match up with the rest of her. He had not expected the Southern accent, which was not strong but still had a lilt that permeated every phrase. Her voice was playful rather than serious or elegant. It was ever-so-slightly hoarse, not smooth and perfect. And it was not soft and unobtrusive and gentle, as he'd imagined, but strong and commanding and barbed.
They were in a club on the Upper West Side, not far from Columbia, called Mikell's. A jazz joint, dark and not at all fancy, with good burgers and cheap beer. They weren't there together; as usual, they were on opposite ends of the room. Caroline was with a group of friends, all well dressed, all laughing and talking through the music, all egotistical enough to believe they were far more interesting than the sweet, doleful sounds emanating from the stage. Jack was alone, not particularly well dressed, and not laughing. He was a junior and in a constant state of shock at the way his horizons were expanding so rapidly. One of those expansions was his appreciation for music: rock and roll, sometimes classical, mostly jazz. In the right club on the right night with the right musicians and the right number of beers inside him, jazz could speak to him. Sweep him away into its sensual and mysterious world. This was one of those nights. He was lost in the music, which was why he didn't notice when someone sat down in the extra chair at his table. And why, when the set ended, he was stunned to discover that that someone was Caroline Hale.
"I know you," she said.
He nodded, his tongue frozen.
"From Goldman's class."
He nodded again. Since his voice had clearly deserted him, he hoped that his eyes showed pleasure.
"And from campus," she added. "I always see you looking at me."
Another nod. This one embarrassed. He knew his eyes did not show pleasure now.
"You're usually behind a tree or a statue or something. Kind of lurking."
A nod. Misery in his eyes, definitely misery.
"Can you speak?" she asked.
He nodded again and she laughed. "Do all girls make you this nervous?"
This time he shook his head.
"Only me?"
Nod.
"Good," she said, and smiled, and the smile practically knocked him backward it was so wonderful. "Would you like to join me and my friends?"
He shook his head again. Just barely.
"It's hard to keep asking yes-or-no questions." When he shrugged, she said, "Because you're a snob and you think they're assholes? My friends, I mean. Is that why you don't want to sit with us?"
He nodded. The unhappiest nod of his life.
"Hmmm. Well, I kind of agree. So do you mind if I join you?"
He shook his head. The happiest shake of his life.
After she signaled the waiter for a drink, a dark beer, Caroline said, "Don't you want to know why I'm sitting with you?
He nodded.
"Because I love this music. And my friends don't get it. And I could tell you do, just by watching you. So I wanted to sit with someone who got it. Do you believe that?"
Another nod.
"Good. As long as you know that's the only reason. Because otherwise I don't think you're at all interesting or different, you're clearly just like everyone else I know, and on top of that you're not at all handsome."
"Do you like Italian food?" he asked. The first words he ever said to her.
She looked at him, as if surprised that he really could speak, then she nodded.
"You want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?"
She looked at him again, this time not surprised, but it was a long look, searching for something. And whatever it was she was searching for, she found, because she nodded again. A firm and decisive nod.
"What's the matter," he said, "can't you speak?"
This time she smiled another one of her smiles and shook her head, a long, slow, gentle, lovely, absolutely perfect shake.
They were together almost every minute after that. But it took four more months before he would know that he was truly in love with her, that he would have to marry her.
It was the day she met Dominick Bertolini.
– "-"-"AFTER JACK'S MOTHER died, Jack moved into Dom's two-bedroom Hell's Kitchen apartment. It was the most natural thing for both of them. They were good company for each other and they each provided a necessary and comforting tie to the past without ever having to talk about it.
In his early teens, Jack went to work in Dom's meatpacking plant on Gansevoort Street, spending most of his afternoons and evenings in the meat district. It wasn't a strange environment for Jack, just the opposite – it was where he felt most comfortable, where he felt grown-up. Doni paid him good money and young Jack had an affinity for the work. He was strong enough to lift and carry whole sides of beef, strong enough even to hack through just about anything. The blood didn't bother him. It was simply part of the job, something to deal with. The fact is, he liked the cold rooms, the sawdust on the floors, the stark walls, the carcasses hanging from hooks, surrounding him. He loved being around Dom, listening to his stories of the old days in New York, the saloons, the personalities, the infamy that had followed him around when he was young. It was most definitely a man's world and Jack was comfortable living in it. And he stayed there quite happily until he was old enough to move eighty blocks uptown and go to college.
But it took Jack quite a while before he could bring Caroline downtown to meet Dom that first time, to see the other side of his life, which she knew nothing about. Even after several months of dating, he was nervous about it. It was an alien world to her, as alien as her world, as she described it, would be to him. If hers was a world of privilege and refinement, his was dominated by sweat and hard work and the need to survive. He was afraid to bring her there, he told her. And the fear was not that she wouldn't like his world – that would not make him happy but he could deal with it – it was that she would cause him to dislike it also.
She didn't say anything when he told her this. Just said that she understood. Then, after a few months, they were having lunch – his treat, a Coke and a souvlaki in Central Park – and she turned to him and said, "Are you ready?" He knew immediately what she meant and he thought for a moment, then nodded and said, surprised, "Yeah, okay, I'm ready." But he prepared her first.
He couldn't do this to her without preparing her. So first he told her about his own past, told her more about himself than he'd ever told anyone.
Jack explained to Caroline that he had come to terms with the tragedy that cast such a long shadow over his youth. He'd had to come to terms with it – because he'd lived through it and because he knew he had to keep on living with it. It was what had happened, the way Little League or broken arms or divorce had happened to other children. But when she began to ask questions, tentative and careful but never embarrassed or awkward, and then to touch his arm gently and probe, as if it were her right to know everything there was to know about him, he admitted that sometimes he still awoke in the middle of the night, horrified at the images that flitted before his eyes: standing there frozen with fear, unable to help his mother; the lunatic dangling him from the shattered window; Dom pulling him up to safety. When he couldn't sleep it was often because the guilt overcame him. He had lived and she hadn't. She had moved to save him; he knew that's why she was running to him before the madman had stopped her. But he had not had her strength or will. He had not saved her. He had let her die and he would have to live with that forever.
That night, after they had made love on the single bed in his cramped dorm room on 115th Street and Amsterdam, he could see she'd been thinking about what he'd told her, and he thought she was going to say something sappy, try to make him feel better by saying It wasn't your fault or You can't save other people or You were only a boy or one of the other meaningless phrases that so many people had thrown out to him, trying to be kind, over the years. But she didn't say anything like that. Instead she murmured: "You said that your mother had something she wanted to tell you that day. Did you ever find out what it was?" Jack nodded and said, "Dom had proposed. She was going to tell me they were getting married." Caroline rubbed his shoulder with the heel of her palm and kissed the side of his neck, then she buried her head in his chest and told him that this is what she knew: when wounds healed, it wasn't as if they'd never existed. They left scars and those scars lasted a lifetime. She told him that he would never be the same person he was before his mother died, he was somebody different, somebody new. She also told him that she loved this new person. Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
The next day, Jack called Dom and told him he was bringing someone over to meet him.
"Oh, Christ, is it a girl?" Dom asked.
"Oh, Christ, of course," Jack responded.
"You don't wanna do this, Jackie. This ain't my best thing. What am I gonna talk to her about – hanger steaks?"
"Just charm her with your natural wit," Jack said. "But try not to use the words 'fuckin' and 'asshole' in the same sentence too often, okay?"
"Nothin' but trouble," Dom told him. "You know that? You give me nothin' but trouble."
Jack and Caroline went downtown straight from Goldman's psych class. They took the Broadway line to Fourteenth Street, walked the two blocks west from Seventh Avenue.
"What I'm going to tell you," he said, holding her hand, "Dom told me when I was eight. It's something I've known and lived with my whole life. He was a nervous wreck, told me it was a big secret he was sharing with me, and I'm still not sure why he told me when he did, but I remember he really wanted me to say something afterward, so I looked at him and said, 'Thanks.' He was kind of thrown and he said, 'That's all you got to say?' and I said, 'What else is there to say?' I never saw anyone look so relieved. He just told me, 'Yeah, I guess that's right.'"
"So are you ever going to tell me?" she asked as they got closer to the meat district. "Or are you just going to keep telling me stories about whatever it is without ever telling me what it is?"
He took a deep breath and nodded. There was no point in putting it off any longer, so he just started right in.
In 1948, when Dominick Bertolini was twenty-two years old, he was two fights away from getting into the ring with the lightweight champion of the world. Dom's record was 34 and 0, with twenty-eight of those wins by knockout. Of those twenty-eight, nineteen came within the first five rounds. Three of the men he fought never stepped into a ring again. One of them lost his hearing in one ear, so ferociously was he pummeled. The other two escaped whole, but their spirits were as broken as their ruptured spleen or lacerated kidney. Dominick was a brutal club fighter, not an elegant one, a favorite of bloodthirsty fans and cynical newspaper columnists for his clumsy and unadulterated savagery.
Dom did not like hearing himself referred to as a savage, although he did nothing to correct the image, at least publicly; his managers said it put people in the seats, which also put money in Dom's pocket. And since Dom hated very few things in life more than fighting and was doing this for one reason and one reason only – money – he had no desire to see those seats empty. If he had to use a word to describe himself, it would have been "unrelenting." That indeed is what he was and what he had been since a small boy.
He was certainly no stranger to violence or even to savagery. Fear and brutality were fairly common neighbors on the west side of mid-Manhattan, the neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen, in the 1930s. They often invaded the walls of Dom's own apartment, in the form of his father. As near as young Dominick could figure out, Anthony Bertolini had absolutely no redeeming qualities. He was crude and loud and mean and he always smelled like an unpleasant combination of sweat, alcohol, and whatever harsh odors clung to him from the street. Tobacco. Dirt. Garbage. Sometimes even blood.
Sometimes it was Dom's blood.
Mostly it was his mother's.
On his eleventh birthday, after a particularly painful beating administered to both mother and son, Dominick realized he had to make a choice. It was clear to him that there were only two possibilities. He could remain quiet, stay frozen in his painful, silent world and keep on taking his father's punishment. Or, when he was ready, when he was able, he could fight back and win and put a stop to the misery.
By the time he was fourteen years old, he had become a fearfully tough child. There was no boy in his school, no matter how old, he could not take in a battle. It wasn't just that he was so strong or even so unrelenting, although he was both. It was that he didn't mind getting hit. He didn't fear the pain. He was used to it.
Three days before his fifteenth birthday, his father erupted at the dinner table. With almost no provocation – his mother had coughed nervously and Anthony took it as a deliberate slight – he lashed out with the back of his hand and knocked Rosemary Bertolini off her chair. He then began to slowly roll up his sleeves, got up from the table, and with a twisted sneer announced that he was going to beat his wife within an inch of her life. That's when Dominick decided the time had come. He stood up from his chair and without raising his voice said, "No, you're not."
His father looked at him incredulously. "Say that again?" he asked. "I must be goin' deaf."
"You're going to leave her alone."
"Fine." The word was stretched out into several syllables. Anthony finished rolling up his sleeves, then looked down at his wife, who was still on the floor but was now pleading for him to leave their son alone. He smiled at her, the first time Dominick had ever seen him smile at her, then he stepped around the dining table and moved toward Dom.
Dominick Bertolini was ready. He wasn't nervous. His voice hadn't quivered. His hands weren't shaking. He'd been preparing for this in his mind since he was a small boy. He wanted it, wanted it now, and as he took his first step toward his father, he knew that he would cherish this moment for the rest of his life.
Cower and die. Or fight and live. He'd made his choice. From now on, things would be different. Things would be better. It was time to win for the first time in his life. Not just win a fight but win a war. Win forever.
Unfortunately, Dominick was too young to have realized there were choices beyond the ones he'd envisioned. Yes, stay silent and suffer was one choice. And fight and win was another.
But so was fight and lose.
Which is what happened that night.
Anthony Bertolini moved slowly and deliberately at first, until he was two short steps away from Dominick. Then he attacked quickly. And viciously. He had palmed his drinking glass, which he now slammed into the side of his son's head. A deep gash opened up over Dominick's eye and blood poured out of the wound as if it were thick paint being dumped out of a can. Without giving him a chance to retaliate, Anthony picked up a chair and brought it down over Dominick's head. The wood splintered and the noise was like that of the sweet spot of a baseball bat meeting a fastball and sending it four hundred feet. Then Anthony's right leg swung back and the hard point of his shoe cracked into Dom's throat. The boy made a sad, gurgling noise, which only seemed to motivate the enraged father. The leg swung back several times and the shoe found the neck again, and then the ribs. The punching and the kicking went on long after Dominick lost consciousness. And then Anthony turned back to his wife.
This time he did not, as promised, beat her to within an inch of her life. He beat her to death.
When Dominick woke up, nearly two days later, he was in the hospital, his mother was buried, and his father was in prison. Anthony spent four years there for murdering his wife. When he got out, he never tried to find or contact his son. Even he understood that he would not survive the next meeting.
It didn't take long for the teenage Dom to find his calling. Within a year he'd had six amateur fights, winning them all easily. He turned pro. Over the next few years, he fought regularly, touring the clubs up and down the East Coast, and won always. At twenty-two, he was ranked number twelve. He would have been higher but no one in the top ten wanted to get in the ring with him. Until his manager came to him and said they'd gotten a fight with the number six contender, Sweet Lenny Sweets. If Dominick won that, he'd get the number one or two. And if he won that, he'd get a chance to fight for the title. He had no doubt that soon he would be champ.
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."