Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [43]
What is Grappa worth? Of course, Jerry is asking me for a dollar figure, but that’s only a small piece of what Grappa is worth to me.
“Jerry, you said this consultant has taken a look at the books? What does he think it is worth?”
“Well, he said Jake’s offer was a bit low, but he did not mention a precise number. These accountants can be tough to nail down. Let me see if I can reach him and at least get a range of values.”
Jerry calls me back half an hour later. “Well, it took some doing, but I got him to a pretty narrow range for an accountant: considering the existing debt and mortgage, the equity value of the restaurant is in the range of $2.1 to $2.2 million. . . .” Wow—we owned something worth over two million dollars, had been multimillionaires really, without ever even knowing it.
Fifteen minutes later Jerry has explained to me (for the second time) what is, in his opinion, a brilliant strategy. Our opening move will be to counteroffer Jake exactly the terms he offered me— $950,000, with $250,000 up front and the rest over four years. When they reject it, as they are guaranteed to do, that puts us in the driver’s seat. We will have established that they tried to lowball us. Then, we counter by proposing—and this Jerry assures me is the brilliant part—that I set the amount that I think Grappa is worth, and Jake gets to decide who buys out whom. Since Jake will have to pay me child support over the buyout period, we can set the buyout at a number that I can afford to pay, but Jake cannot, virtually guaranteeing that I end up with Grappa. Of course, the higher we set the number, the more I’m cheating myself, but the more I raise the odds of getting Grappa.
“Are you sure you’re okay with a highball offer?” Jerry asks me, for the third time.
“Jerry, Grappa is like my child. How much would you pay to keep your child?”
In that case, Jerry assures me, there’s no downside to this strategy. I either win Grappa or I get paid considerably more than my share is worth.
The meeting is scheduled for ten the following morning, and I agree to show up at Jerry’s office by nine thirty for final strategizing. He tells me that I should be prepared for Nicola to be there, too. “What! Why would she have a right to be there? This is between me and Jake!” Jerry instructs me that, although Jake and I are the actual “parties,” it would be bad form to try to exclude Nicola, and if I want to, I can bring a friend for moral support as well. Who would I bring? Hope? Renata? And why would I subject anyone to this, let alone someone I call a friend? Finally, Jerry further instructs me that if I’m worried about controlling myself, I should try to avoid looking at them. Nor should I talk directly to Jake. All communication will be handled through the lawyers.
Predictably, I don’t sleep, my angst extending well beyond the ministrations of the lone Valium I manage to scrounge from the bottom of my travel bag at three fifteen in the morning. I’m a nervous flyer; it’s left over from the trip we took to Italy for our anniversary three years ago and has probably long since expired, but I wipe off the lint and swallow it nonetheless, washing it down with the dregs from the wine bottle that I opened after Jerry’s initial phone call.
Despite the confidence with which I’ve stated my intentions to Jerry, I have some lingering doubts about running the restaurant on my own. There’s a niggling suspicion that perhaps I haven’t been completely fair to Jake. After all, he had helped get Grappa off the ground. It had been his idea to expand, a risky move and one that originally I was against. But Jake sensed that the market was right, that there was room