My Business Partner Cashed Out and Left Me With the Debt, So I Bought His Wife’s Salon

Danny came back on a Wednesday in June.

I know it was Wednesday because I was at Manny’s, eating the French dip alone, which I had started doing on Wednesdays because I refused to let him take that from me too. And I looked up and there he was, walking through the door in a linen shirt I had never seen before, tan the way you get tan in Arizona and not the way you get tan in Iowa.

He saw me before I could look away. There was a full second where his face did nothing, and then it did the old Danny thing, the wide grin, the raised hand, the *hey brother* mouth-shape from across the room.

He walked over.

“Tommy.”

“Danny.”

“Can I sit.”

“It’s a public restaurant.”

He sat down. He ordered a Coke from the waitress and she brought it and he did not touch it. He put his hands on the table, palms down, the way a man does when he wants you to see he is not hiding anything.

“I owe you an apology. And a lot more than that.”

“You do.”

“I want to make it right. I’ve been thinking about it for months. I have some ideas. I know I can’t undo what I did but I want to sit down with you and put together a plan, a real plan, to pay back every dollar.”

I chewed my sandwich. I did not answer.

“The thing with Vanessa is over. It was a mistake. The whole thing was a mistake. I’ve been staying at my brother’s in Bettendorf for a couple weeks trying to figure out how to come home.”

“Home.”

“Rachel. Kayla. The house.”

“Rachel filed for divorce in March, Danny.”

His face did a small thing then. Just a small thing.

“I heard. I want to talk to her. I think if I could just sit down with her.”

“She has a lawyer. Talk to the lawyer.”

He picked up the Coke and put it down without drinking.

“Tom. Look. I know what I did to you. To the business. And I want to make it right. But I have nothing. I have literally nothing right now. I need a job.”

I set my sandwich down.

“You’re asking me for a job.”

“I’m asking you for a chance to earn back some of what I took. Even minimum wage. Loading trucks. Sweeping the floor. Just something to show you I’m serious.”

I looked at him across the table. I looked at his tan and his linen shirt and the tired around his eyes, and I understood something I had not understood before. He had not come back to make it right. He had come back because he had run out of anywhere else to go, and he was betting that sixteen years of history and the fact that we used to be family would still be worth something to me.

He was betting on my decency.

“Danny. You know I bought Bella.”

His face went perfectly still.

“What.”

“In February. From Rachel. I bought the salon.”

“Rachel didn’t tell me that.”

“You’ve been talking to Rachel.”

“I called her once. Last week.”

“She didn’t tell me that.”

We sat there and looked at each other. Somewhere behind the bar a glass broke, and the busboy said something in Spanish, and someone laughed.

“You’re serious,” he said.

“I’m serious.”

“You bought the salon from my wife.”

“From my sister.”

He sat back in the booth.

“How much did you pay her.”

“None of your business.”

“Tom. Come on. That salon was worth three hundred grand.”

“I paid her fairly. Better than fairly. She kept the house.”

“She kept the house.”

“Free and clear. Kayla has her bedroom.”

He was doing math in his head. I could see him doing it. He had come back expecting to slide into a marriage he still legally had, into a house that was in his wife’s name, into a life he could rebuild off assets he had cleverly hidden from creditors by putting them in Rachel’s name. And he was realizing, in real time, that the woman he had used as his human shield had been quietly liquidated by her brother.

“Tom. I need that salon.”

“You don’t own the salon, Danny. You never did. It was in Rachel’s name.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

He put his hands flat on the table again. This time they were shaking a little.

“What about the print shop.”

“What about it.”

“The Cedar Rapids thing. The contract. I know what it looks like but I can explain.”

“I don’t need you to explain, Danny. I already bought the mortgage on the Cedar Rapids print shop. In April. I called their loan in May. I own the building and the presses now. I moved our county contract back last month.”

His mouth opened slightly.

“You.”

“The two guys who took the kickback from you are working for me now. They needed the jobs. I kept them on.”

“Tom.”

“I run both shops now. It’s been a busy spring.”

He stared at me. Really stared. The way you stare at someone when you are recalibrating everything you thought you knew about them.

“You did all this in four months.”

“I did all this in four months.”

“While I was in Scottsdale.”

“While you were in Scottsdale.”

He looked down at the table. He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again his voice had changed. It was smaller.

“I don’t have anywhere to live, Tom.”

“I know.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“I know.”

“I was going to ask Rachel.”

“Don’t ask Rachel.”

He nodded slowly. He did not look up.

“The girlfriend. Vanessa. She didn’t leave me. I left her. I ran out of money and she was going to figure it out and I left before she could.”

“Okay.”

“I keep thinking if I could just get back to before. Before any of this.”

“You can’t.”

“I know.”

We sat there. The waitress came by and asked if we needed anything and I said no and she left. Danny was looking at his hands.

“Are you going to give me a job.”

I thought about it. I really did. I thought about my son at the funeral, holding onto Danny’s leg because he was too small to reach his waist. I thought about Rachel at coffee, signing her name. I thought about Kayla, who was seventeen now and had not spoken to her father since October.

“No, Danny. I’m not.”

He nodded. He kept nodding. Small little nods, like his head was on a spring.

“Okay.”

“There’s a shelter on 4th Street. They’ll take you tonight. In the morning you can go to the temp agency on Central and they’ll put you on a construction crew. That’s what I would do if I were you.”

“Okay.”

I put money on the table for both meals. I stood up.

“Danny.”

He looked up.

“Don’t call Rachel again. Don’t go by the house. If you need to see Kayla, you go through Rachel’s lawyer. His name is on the divorce papers.”

“Okay.”

I walked out. I did not look back. I got in my truck and I sat in the parking lot and I put my hands on the steering wheel and I noticed that they were shaking too, in the same small way his had been, and I sat there until they stopped.

Then I drove to Bella Salon.