Book One, Page Two. The Plan Checks With Reality.
Julie Wells struggled with the upholstery fabric. A few days ago she bought it because she thought would look good on the old sofa. She'd made clothes for a long time, and believed that making clothes for a piece of furniture wouldn't be hard. But, it seemed, it was, and it was frustrating. She was red in the face, sweaty, and hairy, her bangs covering most of her field of vision as she tried to pull the damn fabric over the sofa arms.
Jerry entered the house through the back door--with the dogs. Dogs! The last thing Julie needed. "Jerry, I need your help!" she shouted. That sentence was one Jerry had heard many times in their nineteen years of marriage, and he knew what it meant. Eggs to walk on. He slipped around the back of the sofa and started tugging on the fabric. "Not there!" Julie said. "Over here!"
"Wait," Jerry said, and jumped up. "I have the perfect tool for this." He came back with three short pieces of black plastic. "You use these to change a bike tire." They slipped in one, then another, and the third, and the fabric was almost on. "Hold on!" he said, ran into the kitchen, and returned with a wooden spoon. He slipped it in between Julie's straining hands, and they heard a soft pop and the fabric wrapped around the bottom of the sofa. It was tight and immovable.
"Good job!" said Jerry.
"Tell me you washed your hands," Julie said. "How many dying dogs did you fool with today?"
"All healthy dogs without worms," Jerry said. He didn't mention the squashed cat. "But who cares about that? Wait until I tell you what we're going to do!"
Julie fell back off her knees and sat on the floor. She brushed away her hair at last. "What now?" she said.
"We're going to open a restaurant!" said Jerry. His grin looked ridiculous.
Julie stared generally in the direction of Jerry's face, but her eyes were focused on a point some ten feet behind him. Then she tilted her head down and shook it to get the hair out of her eyes. "What?" she said.
"You know the old Roquette's Drugstore on Carrollton and Claiborne? It's closed. Empty. Carrollton and Claiborne. The center of the known universe. Roquette's. Great old tiled floor. High tin ceilings. Long and narrow. What a place for a restaurant!"
Julie just nodded. Jerry knew the nod. It meant, "What makes you think that you could run a restaurant?"
Jerry answered this unspoken question by delivering, for the first time, what would become his most famous line in the restaurant's early days."I know how to cut meat up," he said.
"That's disgusting!" Julie said. "Don't ever tell anyone that, or they'll think you serve dog meat! Wait. Hold it. I'm telling you that as if this is actually going to happen."
"It is going to happen," Jerry said, and began describing the dream he'd had in the office. Her look said that this was a mistake, and for a moment he wondered whether his inspiration may, in fact, be loony.
"The Best Of Restaurant?" Julie said. "You need a better name than that for reality. How about Roquette's, since everybody knows that?"
"But wait, you haven't heard the menu concept," Jerry said. "See, all we'll sell are the best dishes from other restaurants. Give them credit, say we're trying to come as close as we can to the original. I'll bet something like that will pack the place."
"What if they won't give you the recipe? What if they sue you?" Julie said.
"Why are you women always looking on the dark side?"
"Oh, right, I forgot," Julie said. "Wait, I have a name for your restaurant. How about Misogynist Bistro?"
