Russell Andrews - Icarus

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.