You never met my partner. I call him my boss. It’s something we both need. I can’t do shit without somebody to answer to, and he needs to feel like he can ask me anything. Luckily, he never pays any attention to the answers. I guess you’d call him a silent partner, since you never met him, and you’re no stranger around here. He’s usually out of town, which explains any silence.
He loves an argument. He told me I keep all the secrets, and that he has to ask too many questions to fully understand the situation. He finds this frustrating. I tell him there are no secrets. Ask me anything. Why don’t you just tell me? he asks. Tell you what? Everything. But I don’t have time to tell you everything. There are a thousand things, and you want to have an argument about every single one of them. If I stopped and told you everything, we wouldn’t get a sandwich out the door. But you get to make all the decisions, he says. This gets me angry. We’re spinning plates here. There are few decisions to be made, the answers always self evident, and every one forgotten in the urge to perfection.
Why don’t you give me a compliment sometime? I ask. Look at the balance sheet. The next time you’re in Chicago, ask anybody where to eat around here. Tell me what they say. Or call down the street and ask about our service. Why not just buy a round of drinks and give yourself a pat on the back? And while you’re at it, I’ll take one too.
He tells me he’s not comfortable giving compliments; it’s not the way he was raised. So what? I ask. Just because you were deprived of compliments as a child, we all have to suffer? Talk is cheap. Try lying. Stand in front of the mirror and make pretend you’re giving someone a compliment. You can practice on me, I won’t mind.
Even though he’s always fighting with me, fighting with me makes him very sad. He asks if I want him to leave, since he makes it perfectly clear that I am essential and he is not. This is by no means true, since neither one of us would do shit without the other. We’re both trying to get what we can’t have from people who are incapable of giving it in the first place. This is a formula for success, given the right parameters.
We’ve been working together for 25 years. He held the lease on this place, but never lived around here. He’s much more comfortable in center city, whenever he’s in town. This corner wasn’t doing so well when we met, but that changed. And we have no regrets. Quite the contrary. After our last argument, I told him that I love him, which is certainly true. He couldn’t say it back, which makes it perfect.
