“Then do it,” Jonny said fervently. “Be literary. Be whatever you want, babe.”
“It means taking a chance,” she said. “It means I’ll probably make less money.”
Jonny dismissed this. “If you want something, you’ve got to take it.”
“Huh?” Pandy said.
“You don’t ask for it. You take it. How do you think I got to be the manager of the hottest restaurant in the city when I was just a kid? Eighteen years old, and I’ve got every pretty woman begging me to take her number.”
“Jonny,” Pandy said, laughing, “this isn’t about sex.”
“You want people to think you’re literary? Then be literary,” Jonny said, as if the answer were just that simple.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Pandy tried to explain. “You can’t just demand things and expect to get them. You have to earn your status.”
Jonny laughed. “Earn your status? You have to take your status. Listen, babe,” he said, motioning for her to sit. “Do you think I really give a rat’s ass about French food? The only reason I ended up going to France was because I needed to get out of town, and one of my buddies had a house in Saint-Tropez. When I saw what a big deal all the women were making out of the food…” Jonny shrugged.
Pandy nodded, thinking she understood. The next day, they both went back to work, like two little trains chugging around and around a track.
* * *
And then, after four months of labor, Jonny brought home a magnum of expensive red wine and said they were celebrating.
“That’s amazing!” Pandy declared, after Jonny told her all about the restaurant deal in Vegas and how it was finally coming through.
PP, it seemed, had put Jonny in touch with his pal Tony Hammer, who was some kind of Hollywood “guy” who had access to a celebrity clientele that liked to invest in restaurants. That made the Vegas guys happy, and in any case, the long and short of it was that Jonny was going to be opening a restaurant in Las Vegas.
Pandy was outwardly thrilled. But secretly, she was nervous. For she’d learned another thing about Jonny: He had far less money than she’d imagined. He had to take the money he earned and
put it back into his restaurants. Adding another money-gobbling venture to what was already in the red didn’t seem like a good idea. But what did she know?
Instead of confronting him directly about it, she found herself pouting and then claiming to be angry that he’d “lied,” at least about PP. Hadn’t he sworn he was never going to talk to PP again?
Jonny pointed out that he’d never said he would never talk to PP again. He’d said Pandy didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. And there she went, being all emotional about business again. Which was the very reason he hadn’t told her about the one or two occasions when PP had been in New York and he and Jonny had gotten together.
While it disturbed her that her husband was having secret meetings with the head of the studio that produced Monica, she couldn’t exactly object. Especially when Jonny reminded her that she was the one who had introduced Jonny to PP in the first place.
On another night, a couple of weeks later, when they were again enjoying their enormous new kitchen, she once again tried to explain. “It’s just that…” She faltered, trying to find a way to express her feelings of dismay. “I guess I’m a little hurt. I thought we were a team. I thought we were supposed to be doing things together.”
“But we are!” Jonny beamed. He swung a stool around and motioned for her to sit. He took her hand. “I want you as my partner,” he exclaimed, as if they’d discussed this before.
“Your partner?” Pandy was confused.
“In the restaurant!” Jonny crowed proudly. “You’ve been a great partner in marriage, so I want to make you a partner in the business as well.”
“Really?” Pandy sat back, knowing Jonny expected her to be excited, but unable to push down a slight feeling of dread. “What does that even mean? What would I have to do?” At that point, she was up against her Monica deadline and desperately needed to finish. She didn’t have time to get involved in some restaurant in Vegas.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Jonny said, smiling. “You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is write a check.”
“But—”
“You and I will be fifty-fifty partners. Together, we’ll own thirty percent. I have four other investors lined up for the other seventy percent; guys in Vegas that the LA guy hooked me up with. But you and I will be the majority. We’ll each get fifteen percent of the profits. Look,” he said, scribbling numbers on a piece of paper.
Pandy put her hand over his to stop him.
“It’s okay. I understand the numbers,” she said.
* * *