Love in Bloom's

by Judith Arnold

  Julia glanced at her watch. She hadn’t squeezed in any lunch before her mother had summoned her. She ought to be starving.

  “I’ve got half a sandwich in my office, if you want it. Tuna on whole wheat.”

  A cornucopia of gourmet noshes downstairs, and her mother was offering her a tuna sandwich. She’d rather remain hungry. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Okay, then. Get to work.”

  Before Julia could respond, her mother was gone.

  She directed her attention to the printout on the desk. She supposed that as president she ought to know which products were selling and which weren’t. It was as good an introduction to Bloom’s as anything.

  But she didn’t want to think about how well the Gouda and Havarti and Feta sold—an asterisk next to the Havarti noted that offering free samples of the cheese had increased sales significantly. She didn’t want to read statistics on egg noodles and Red Bliss potato salad—or on bagels, the data for which filled three complete pages.

  She wanted to figure out whether her mother and Uncle Jay truly hated each other, and if so, how much, and whether by attempting to fill her father’s too-large chair she had somehow positioned herself at the center of a tug-of-war. She also wanted to figure out exactly why Grandma Ida had bestowed upon her the dubious honor of taking her father’s place.

  All in all this seemed a lot more complicated than hammering out an alimony agreement.

  She was here. At last. The goddamn president of the company.

  Jay hunched over his computer and simmered. He hated feeling this way—about his niece, no less. He’d never had a negative thought about Julia before. Well, maybe one, when she was graduating from fancy-schmancy Wellesley while his own brilliant son was dropping out of the University of Miami after spending two years amid the palm trees and fraternities, consuming vast quantities of beer and scant quantities of knowledge. Neil was smart—he was running his own sailboat charter business, wasn’t he?—but Julia had always been the golden girl, the straight-A wunderkind. And here she was, the golden-girl straight-A wunderkind again. President of Bloom’s. He wanted to shove her face in.

  Of course he loved her. She was his brother’s daughter. Sweet Julia, always the best-behaved child at the family gatherings, always polite and thoughtful and eager to please.

  He still couldn’t believe his mother had done this—not just to him but to his family, his sons. It ate at him. It hurt going down, like a bone in a piece of carp, scraping his throat, churning in his stomach. It pained him that his mother had phoned him a week ago Monday and announced this news as if it were nothing more significant than the weather report. “I tried you earlier,” she’d said, “but your wife—” she always referred to Wendy as “your wife” “—told me you were playing some goyishe game at a club, I don’t remember what. Paddleball?”

  “Racquetball,” he’d told her.

  “Paddle, racquet—I’m supposed to know the difference?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mom. I’m home now. How are you doing?”

  “I’m all right, considering. I wanted to let you know Julia is going to be president of Bloom’s.”

  “Julia who?” he’d asked stupidly. It just hadn’t occurred to him that Ida could be referring to his pipsqueak niece.

  “What do you mean, Julia who? How many Julias do you know? Ben’s Julia. You think I’d give Bloom’s a president who wasn’t a Bloom?”

  “I’m a Bloom,” he’d said even more stupidly.

  “So you understand how important it is to keep the company in the family. Julia will do a good job, such a smart girl. She reminds me of me.”

  Jay had wondered whether being likened to Ida Bloom could possibly be a compliment. “She’s a child, Mom.”

  “She’s twenty-eight years old. You know how old I was when your father and I opened Bloom’s?”

  “Twenty-eight,” he’d guessed.

  “Twenty-three. And before that I helped with the knish cart.”

  “You were a regular child prodigy,” Jay had grunted under his breath. Out loud, he’d said, “She’s never even worked at the store.”

  “She was a cashier.”

  “A couple of summers in high school. You know what I mean, Mom. She’s never put in time on the third floor. She doesn’t know how we do things.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you. I want you to help her out, teach her what she needs to know. She’s a hard worker. She’ll learn.”

  He’d understood what his mother was insinuating: she didn’t think he was a hard worker. Well, damn it, who said you had to be at your desk 24/7? Where was it written that working hard was more important than working smart? Jay got his work done. He just didn’t act like a drudge about it.

  And for that, he was being dethroned by his own niece.

  The only thing that made it tolerable was that she was never there. The lady with the big title and the corner office was a no-show. If she remained AWOL awhile longer, he’d be able to go to his mother and point out her mistake in having entrusted the family business to a child who couldn’t even seem to find her way to the third floor. He’d explain to Ida that somehow the place was running just fine without Julia—because he was there, making sure things got done.

  And that bitch Sondra wouldn’t be able to take any credit for the fact that things were getting done, because to take credit would mean belittling her own daughter. So he’d get all the credit, and his mother would come to what few senses she had, and she’d make Jay the president, the way she should have right from the start.

  But now that plan wasn’t going to happen, because Julia was here. Damn it.

  He hit the Save button on his computer and rolled away from the desk. He was the only person on the third floor smart enough to have laid down a slab of Plexiglas under his chair so it could roll smoothly. He was the only one with a halogen lamp on a dimmer switch, so he could make his office as bright or as dim as he wanted. He was the only one with a pen stand from the Levenger’s catalog—high-class writing equipment, not the schlocky pens Sondra bought by the gross. He was forward-thinking, creative. Exactly what Bloom’s needed to grow in the new century.

  And that little ninny—his beloved niece—was his boss? Not in this lifetime.

  He shoved back his hair, which was as thick as a teenager’s if maybe a little grayer. Wendy liked the gray. She said it made him look mature. He looked a hell of a lot more mature than Julia, that was for sure.

  Quick strides carried him from his own office past Myron’s, past Sondra’s and Deirdre’s, to the end of the hall. He peered through the door and found Julia at her father’s desk, squinting at a stack of inventory printouts.

  Jay exerted himself to look nonthreatening. “Julia, honey! Hi!”

  She spun around and smiled hesitantly at him. “Hi, Uncle Jay.”

  “Nice of you to drop by.” Sarcastic, but he didn’t give a shit.

  Her smile changed, warming with apology and love and endearing helplessness, and he felt ashamed of himself for resenting her.

  “Oh, Uncle Jay, I’ve wanted to get started here sooner, but I’ve been so busy trying to smooth the transition at my other job. I couldn’t just bolt from Griffin, McDougal. These things take time.”

  Of course those things took time, especially when you were a big shot at a law firm. His own sons could have taken over the presidency on ten minutes’ notice. Well, Rick could, anyway. All he did was wander around Lower Manhattan, grubbing for financial backing for his movie and framing shots in his mind. Neil—it might have taken a full day for him to pack up and fly to New York. They weren’t attorneys like Julia. They had nothing better to occupy their time.

  But she did have something better, which made it all the crazier that she was here. This job should go to someone who could take it over full time, full force, full commitment. Like his sons. Like him.

  “So, what are you doing?”

  “Mom told me to review these lists to see what’s selling well an
d what’s selling slowly.”

  “You don’t need to study that.” More accurately, she shouldn’t have to study it. She should know it by now.

  “All these statistics are really confusing.” She sighed and shook her head, then smiled hopefully at him. “Actually, what I really wanted to find out was about the Seder-in-a-Box. That sounds like such a bizarre idea.”

  “It’s not bizarre. We’re doing well with it.” Sales had been a little slow, he had to admit, but as Passover drew closer he was sure they’d skyrocket. The concept was ingenious: pull off the lid and pull out a seder. The deluxe box even came with yarmulkes and a CD of Passover songs.

  His idea. For that alone, he should have been rewarded with the presidency. He knew the boxes would sell. And the beauty part was there was no languishing inventory. An order came in, a box could be assembled in an hour or two and out it went.

  “I would think,” she said slowly, “that families like the labor of preparing a seder. Even the most rushed, modern family—if they’re going to have a seder, they view it as a chance to touch base with the rituals of their ancestors, don’t you think? They like doing things the old way.”

  “I think most people like doing things the easy way,” he retorted. Little smart-ass, trying to undercut his concept.

  She must have sensed his resentment. Her smile grew even less certain.

  “Well, it’s a very creative idea.”

  “I’m a very creative man.” And I should be sitting at that desk, he almost added. “You know, it takes a lot of creativity to keep a place like Bloom’s moving forward. You don’t want to stagnate in this market. You have no idea what this market is all about. But one thing it’s about is not stagnating.” People went to business school for years to learn the sort of wisdom he’d been born with. He could run the entire Bloom’s enterprise with what he knew instinctively. Hell, he could probably run the city.

  And here he was, answering to a niece who didn’t know her tuchis from her elbow about how to run a deli in the new millennium. It was outrageous.

  Julia eyed him quizzically. He took a deep breath and forced a smile. “I don’t know if you’ll ever learn everything you need to know,” he said, deliberately refusing to offer comfort or encouragement. “I’ve been working here forever, and I know Bloom’s the way I know my own name.” That didn’t sound right, but he forged ahead anyway. “It’s in my blood, Julia. If it’s not in your blood, I don’t know how you’re going to get the job done.”

  Her smile remained, but her eyes sharpened, dark and shiny like black olives.

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised.

  Her best would never be as good as his mediocre. Damn it, this should be his. “Well, I guess you’d better get back to those inventory lists,” he said, satisfied that he’d undermined her enough for now.

  He turned and crossed the threshold in time to see his mother emerge from the elevator, her hand resting firmly on the forearm of her…what the hell was Lyndon, anyway? Her cook? Her valet? Her companion? Her boyfriend? With his angular smile and all those little braids sticking out from his scalp, his body clothed in a silk turtleneck and slim, pleated trousers, he looked like one of those painfully sharp fashion models in GQ. “Your grandmother’s here,” Jay alerted Julia, adding silently, impress her the way you just impressed me, and you’ll be out of this office in no time.

  “Jay,” Ida greeted him, her brow dipping in a frown that emphasized the creases in it. “How is our new president doing?”

  “She’s doing swell,” he assured her. Go ahead. Ask your little pet if she’s figured out our inventory yet. Ask her if she’s doing anything to earn her fat salary and her office. And her title. Ask her if she knows one-hundredth of what I know about Bloom’s.

  “You just keep helping her until she has the job down,” Ida said—a blunt command.

  He watched as his mother and her chic black buddy vanished into the president’s office. Then he turned and entered his own office. He didn’t want to be there. The hell with the Web site. If his own mother could stab him in the back, why should he stick around, working his ass off until she returned to stab him in the chest?

  He switched off his computer, grabbed his suede jacket from the hanger on the back of his door and left the office. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and he’d already accomplished everything on his calendar. As for the Web site, he could get the pictures scanned in tomorrow.

  He ought to have Rick come uptown and scan in the pictures. That would let Ida know that Julia wasn’t the only wonderful grandchild she had. Rick knew computers, and he had such a strong visual sense. He could probably come up with a way to animate the Seder-in-a-Boxes on the screen. He could make them dance the goddamn hora.

  Jay took the elevator downstairs and exited the back door into the narrow alley behind the building where he parked his car. He pulled off the canvas cover and circled the car to inspect it for signs of vandalism—even though the likelihood was pretty small that anyone would wander down this alley just to scratch his BMW, when there were so many other scratchable cars parked conveniently on the street. Satisfied that his vehicle had survived the day unscathed, he got in, revved the engine a few times and backed out of the alley.

  The traffic was wretched, but that was no surprise. The roads were straight, the lights supposedly staggered, and the pedestrians knew how to dodge cars as well as he knew how to dodge pedestrians. He cruised through the park and made it home in fifteen minutes. As always, his precious parking space was waiting for him in the underground garage. Worth every goddamn dollar, he thought as he got out of the car and locked it.

  He hoped Wendy wasn’t home. He just wanted silence and a generous glass of single malt. He wanted to drink and think, figure out a way to make this whole Bloom’s fiasco work out for him.

  He had rights. He had needs. He had a mother’s unspoken promise to her son. Julia Bloom didn’t belong in that office.

  Or maybe he didn’t belong. They wanted to hand the family franchise over to Julia? Fine. Let him open his own competing deli. Jay’s. Jay’s Gourmet. Jay’s Gourmet Emporium. Yeah.

  It would be a lot of work, he pondered as the elevator carried him upstairs. A hell of a lot of work. He could delegate, though. He could hire good people. Maybe he could even hire Deirdre. Not that idiot accountant Myron, who probably still added on his fingers.

  He could do the whole thing on-line. Skip Manhattan’s exorbitant rentals, set up a warehouse in Jersey and do everything mail order, through catalogs and the Web. Not just Seder-in-a-Box but Succoth-in-a-Box. Rosh-Hoshanna-in-a-Box. Shabbat-in-a-Box. Yom-Kippur-in-a-Box—and he could ship an empty box!

  A great idea, but it wouldn’t prove how indispensable he was to Bloom’s. If he could just show them how much they needed him; if he could just get through to his mother that Julia couldn’t spread the mayonnaise, let alone cut the mustard, as the president; if he could make sure his mother found out that her beloved granddaughter wasn’t even on the third floor most days…If he could convince her that the only reason the enterprise hadn’t collapsed like one of those dynamited buildings imploding was that he, Jay, the son of Ida and Isaac, was holding everything together, making everything work.

  He could almost hear his mother’s voice, weak with age and relief, as she said, “Jay, I was wrong about you. You’re a better man than your brother ever was. Please—I beg you—take over the store.”

  He was actually smiling as he entered the apartment. He didn’t even mind that Wendy was there, reading a magazine on the couch and wearing the silk kimono he’d purchased through a Web site that sold Japanese stuff. What he liked about the kimono was that it was held shut only by a sash. One simple knot was all that stood between him and her lush body.

  “You’re home!” she said, tossing aside her magazine and leaping to her feet. Her face still amazed him, the way it always glowed. She was thirty-three but didn’t have a single wrinkle, because she never scowled, never worried, never th
ought too hard, never did anything to crease that flawless skin.

  He was feeling better. Much better. He’d prove how indispensable he was to Bloom’s and wind up on top, exactly where he was supposed to be.

  And in the meantime, he thought as Wendy pranced across the airy living room, her arms outstretched and her smile welcoming, he’d open the knot of that sash.

  6

  In the olden days, a room like this would have been blue with smoke.

  Susie didn’t like cigarette smoke. It smelled harsh and bitter and made her eyes sting. Yet something had been lost in the city’s transition to smoke-free. Something atmospheric. Something to do with consistency. She’d be willing to bet more people got sick from the scarcity of sunlight, which was blocked by the city’s multitude of tall buildings, than by secondhand smoke, but no one was passing any laws to knock down the skyscrapers and open up the sky.

  A poetry slam in a TriBeCa basement club ought to have smoke. This poetry slam had everything else: bad lighting; lousy acoustics; uncomfortable chairs crowded around small, wobbly tables; enough unbathed participants to make her think cigarettes would have smelled appetizing in comparison; cheap beer and the kind of wine that caused migraines. Susie found herself wondering why she had even come.

  She was sharing a spindly table with Anna, Rick and a buddy of his named Ross. Ross was skinny, with long, curly hair and cheeks pitted with acne scars. Susie imagined he would be a Raisinette; there was a kind of desiccated quality to him. She suspected Rick had brought him along to distract Susie so she wouldn’t interfere if he made a play for Anna. But she knew he and Anna were all wrong for each other. He was interested in Anna only because she was Susie’s roommate, and maybe because her grandparents were from Taiwan, which made her exotic in his eyes even though Anna had been born and bred in Brooklyn.