Love in Bloom's

by Judith Arnold

  “You’re already softened up,” he said, his arrogance just this side of bearable. “You missed me, too.”

  “Not for an instant,” she lied.

  This time he laughed. “How about it? You need to get dressed, anyway. You may as well get undressed, first.”

  “Joffe. You’ve just convinced me that I’m not deranged when it comes to the missing bagels. I can’t think about sex now.”

  “I can think about sex all the time.”

  “That’s because men’s brains have much more rudimentary wiring. Just one basic circuit—sex, food, sleep, sex,” she said, tracing a loop in the air. “Women are a bit more sophisticated. They actually have room in their brains for other things.”

  “Like missing bagels.”

  “Exactly. What we need to do,” she declared, “is have a meeting.”

  “In the bedroom?” he asked hopefully.

  “A Bloom’s meeting. Today. Right now, in fact. Uncle Jay would have to drive back to the city. My mother would have to wake up. I’ve got to show them not only that I am not crazy, but that I’m the best damn president Bloom’s could possibly have. Are you going to help me?”

  “Will you have sex with me if I do?”

  She threw her bagel at him. He caught it and grinned again, that irresistible grin. “Probably,” she said.

  22

  Jay carried his cell phone with him when he golfed so he could make calls. Not so he could receive calls. He’d never given the number out to anyone other than Wendy, and she knew better than to phone him while he was playing.

  But Julia had tracked him down. “I called your home, and your wife gave me this number,” she’d explained.

  Jay was going to have to have a serious talk with Wendy about that. The cell phone was for his convenience, not for anyone else’s.

  Julia’s call came as he was lining up for a putt on the eleventh hole. The sudden beep shot his concentration to hell. And for what? For what great purpose had Wendy shared his cell phone number with his niece? For what profound reason had Julia interrupted his game?

  She wanted to have a meeting. On a Sunday, for God’s sake.

  He consoled himself by admitting that it was a lousy Sunday for golf. The sky leaked a steady drizzle, his golf shoes were wet and grass stained and he was going to have to shell out a whopper of a tip for the caddy because holding an umbrella over the player’s head demanded extra reimbursement. Muttering his apologies to Stuart, Jay bogeyed the eleventh hole, stuffed thirty bucks into the caddy’s outstretched hand and sloshed through the damp, spongy grass to the clubhouse, where he bought a can of cola to drink on the drive back to the city.

  He supposed he could have told Julia to stuff her meeting where the sun don’t shine—but the sun wasn’t shining on New York City today, so her meeting was already stuffed there. Besides, he didn’t think it would be wise to miss a meeting. If everyone showed up but him, they’d all talk about him behind his back, and he wouldn’t be there to defend himself. Given the lousy weather, what the hell. He hadn’t been having a good game, anyway.

  He emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel into the heart of a soggy Manhattan at a quarter to twelve. Julia could have scheduled the meeting a little later, to accommodate traffic problems, but he hadn’t been about to point that out to her. She’d sounded almost tyrannical on the phone. “This meeting is important, Uncle Jay. It’s not open to discussion. I’ve asked Mom to call Susie, and Deirdre to call Myron. Everyone is going to be there.”

  “What about your grandmother?”

  “I’ll be calling her after I call you. I’ll see you in my office at noon, Uncle Jay.”

  The nerve of her, handing out orders as if she were his boss or something.

  Which she was, but he hated thinking about it.

  To make it across town, uptown to the store and into the back alley it took him fourteen-and-a-half minutes. He spent a few more minutes covering the car with its canvas tarp. Julia could cool her heels for a few minutes while he protected his beloved vehicle.

  He hoped she would have food at this meeting. He was hungry. Wendy had bought some crullers at a chic Belgian bakery that had opened recently in their neighborhood, but he’d eaten only one before departing to meet Stuart out on Long Island. If not for Julia, he’d be finishing the eighteenth hole right about now, after which he’d be returning to the clubhouse with Stuart for martinis and roast beef sandwiches. The sandwiches at the club were a world apart from what was sold at Bloom’s—roast beef at the club was served au jus on toasted French bread, with a side of fried potatoes shaped like round waffles. They didn’t understand rye bread at the club. He’d once tried a sandwich on what they called rye. The bread had tasted like cardboard, only blander.

  The hot roast beef sandwiches at the club seemed appropriate for the setting, but if he was going to be at a Bloom’s meeting, he might as well have good food. A roast beef sandwich—or, better yet, a Reuben—from downstairs would be ideal, but he’d settle for bagels if that was all Julia had thought to provide.

  He stalked down the hallway to her office. The door was open a crack and voices bubbled out. Sondra was ranting about how NASA was spending billions of dollars to send nudniks into space, while the schools in New York were crumbling. Susie laughed, presumably not about NASA’s budget, and Julia asked someone to bring more chairs into the room. As Jay reached to push open the door it swung inward, and Ron Joffe, his buddy from Gotham Magazine, filled the doorway.

  What was he doing here?

  Apparently, moving furniture was what he was doing.

  “Hi, Jay,” he said. “I’ve got to get some chairs, so…”

  He waited for Jay to step out of his way, then entered the open secretarial area and wheeled two desk chairs over. Jay might have offered his assistance, but why should he? Joffe was at least twenty years younger, and as far as Jay knew, he hadn’t just raced to the Upper West Side from a golf course.

  Jay’s sour mood galvanized when he saw no food in Julia’s office. Just the usual gang—Myron, Deirdre, Sondra and Julia—augmented by Susie and that tall blond guy she’d brought with her to the seder. He looked vaguely familiar, not from the seder but from somewhere else. Jay wasn’t sure where.

  “Good,” Julia said, beckoning him inside. “We’re all here.”

  “What about my mother?” he asked, commandeering one of the chairs Joffe had wheeled in. There was no room on the sofa. Myron was tucked between Sondra and Deirdre and looked dismayed about it. Jay realized it was the first time he’d ever seen Myron without a bow tie. Even when he’d viewed Myron outside of work—at his sons’ bar mitzvahs, for instance—Myron had worn a bow tie, as if his neck were some thrilling gift that deserved to be adorned with a bow. Today, however, he wore a plaid shirt—buttoned tightly over his throat—starchy khaki trousers and no tie at all.

  Sunday was clearly dress-down day at Bloom’s. Sondra wore a denim skirt with a long, textured blouse over it that emphasized the expanse of her butt rather than downplaying it. Deirdre wore tight designer jeans that would have looked suitable at a late-seventies disco—and didn’t look bad today, either, especially paired with the high-heeled open-toed shoes she had on. Julia was in a crimson blouse and jeans that, unlike Deirdre’s, did not appear to have been painted onto her legs. Susie, as usual, was dressed for a funeral.

  “I talked to Lyndon,” Julia told him. “He said he wasn’t sure if Grandma Ida would be able to join us.”

  “She’s got such a busy schedule,” Jay muttered sarcastically.

  “It’s Sunday and she’s an old woman,” Sondra intervened, obviously positioning herself as the reasonable, compassionate one. “If she doesn’t want to come, is it the end of the world?”

  Jay hadn’t wanted to come, and here he was. But maybe the meeting would be easier without Ida present. If he wanted to score points with his mother, he could do so later, one on one.

  “So, where are the bagels?” Myron asked. Jay silently cheered him on. />
  “That’s a good question,” Julia replied cryptically. Then she added, “I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to pick up any for this meeting.”

  She dragged her own chair out from behind the desk, but instead of sitting, she stood behind it, resting her hands on the edge of the high leather back as if it were a lectern. Susie and the familiar blond guy sat on the old desk, side by side, every now and then exchanging a look Jay could easily interpret. Every time their gazes met, the room’s temperature seemed to rise a few degrees. Julia must have dragged them away from something even more satisfying than golf.

  “I wanted a bagel,” Myron grumbled.

  “Let’s get started,” Julia said, her voice sounding more forceful than usual. She must know she’d annoyed everyone in the room just by calling this meeting, and annoying people was the last thing Julia ever wanted to do. She was the conciliator of the family, the facilitator, the smoother-outer. The only reason Ida could have named Julia president of Bloom’s was that Ida figured Julia would never alienate anyone.

  She didn’t sound conciliatory today. She stood straight, visible only from the bosom up because Ben’s old chair was so big. Her hair was held off her face with simple silver barrettes, which made her eyes look larger than usual.

  “The reason I called this meeting is that I’ve been vindicated,” she orated from behind the chair. “Grandma Ida asked Mr. Joffe here to review our finances. He has an MBA, and he was able to assess our records with the kind of skill and training I lack.”

  “You’re a lawyer, dear,” Sondra interjected. “Don’t belittle yourself.”

  Julia smiled faintly. “I’m not belittling myself, Mom. I’m just saying Grandma Ida asked Joffe to look at our records, and he did.”

  “I’m trained,” Myron remarked, clearly disgruntled about the absence of food. He usually said nothing at these meetings.

  “Mr. Joffe brought a fresh eye to the records. A fresh—and desperately needed—perspective.”

  Joffe rolled his fresh eyes as if being the topic of conversation embarrassed him.

  “And he found that, yes, we are missing bagels.”

  “Oh God—not with the missing bagels again,” Sondra moaned.

  For once, Jay was in complete agreement with her.

  “Show some respect, Mom,” Susie called from her perch on the desk. “Julia wouldn’t have dragged us all here if this wasn’t important.”

  “The hell with respect. I’ve had it with the missing bagels. Julia—” Sondra twisted to view her older daughter, a movement that caused something of a tidal reaction along the sofa, with Myron and Deirdre rocking in her wake “—you have a store to run. A business. You’re fussing over a few missing bagels a week like Lady Macbeth with invisible bloodstains on your hands. It’s enough already.”

  Jay suppressed a snort. Leave it to Sondra to drag Shakespeare into it.

  Julia stood taller, as if leaning into a stiff wind. “Mr. Joffe found the same discrepancy I found in the records. It’s not a small thing. It’s three hundred dollars’ worth of food systematically disappearing from the store every week. About a hundred and fifty bagels, a few gallons of coffee, cream cheese and the occasional dessert. We’re talking about brunch for a hundred. Every week. This is not some accidental misplacement of food. It’s not spoilage or shoplifting. It’s a real problem.” She turned until her dark eyes were homing in on Jay.

  What was she staring at him for? What had he done? He wasn’t the one calling her Lady Macbeth.

  “Three hundred dollars a week adds up over time. Beyond that, it’s a mystery that needs solving.” That she was staring at Jay was so obvious, the other people in the room turned to stare at him, too.

  “What?” He threw his hands in the air. “What are you all looking at?”

  “I’ve thought about it and thought about it, Uncle Jay,” Julia explained. “I was trying to figure out who among us would be most likely to host a brunch for a hundred people every week.”

  “Not me! I hate entertaining. Ask Wendy. Ask Martha, too.” He’d hated entertaining in both marriages. Of course, with Martha, entertaining had involved drinking fruit brandy that tasted like cough medicine and discussing philosophy with boring people she met on picket lines or in classes at the New School. Sometimes, when she got dangerously creative, she’d prepare stuffed grape leaves or chicken steamed in green tea. At least when Wendy entertained, they served regular booze and had the food catered by that fancy French place on Madison Avenue.

  “Every week, you go to your country club to play golf,” Julia pointed out. “That’s where you were when I called you today, right?”

  “So I golf on Sundays. Since when is that a crime?”

  “And do you eat after you golf?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Goyishe food, too—forgive me, Deirdre and…” He glanced toward Susie’s boyfriend but the name didn’t come to him. “Anyway, the food isn’t to write home about. But it’s better than what you put out for this meeting. I happen to be hungry right now.”

  “So if the food at your golf place isn’t good,” Julia intoned, leaning over the back of the chair, “it would make sense if you brought food with you, wouldn’t it? Enough to share with the other members of the club?”

  “What, you think I bring bagels to the country club? What are you, crazy? It’s a goyishe club. What would they want with bagels?”

  “Even non-Jews have taste buds,” Deirdre remarked. “I’m Irish and I eat bagels.”

  “Because you work here. You’ve seen the light.” Jay shook his head. If Julia truly believed he would tote a hundred-fifty bagels out to Long Island every week to share with the guys at the club, all those Wallaces and Pierponts and Van Der Horns, she was crazier than Lady Macbeth. “Julia, bubeleh. Use your head. A country club like that, they’d probably kick me out if I brought them bagels. They only let me join because Stuart Pinsky nominated me and he’s less ethnic than I am.”

  “You know Stuart Pinsky?” Ron Joffe asked.

  “He’s my lawyer—and my friend,” Jay said. “How do you know him?”

  “His wife is my boss.”

  “That’s right. She’s a magazine editor. Small world.” Jay smiled, although his brain suddenly felt overloaded. That Joffe had out of the blue decided to write about Bloom’s—did Stuart’s wife have anything to do with it? Jay had certainly told Stuart plenty about Bloom’s. But everything he said to Stuart was lawyer-client, wasn’t it? Confidential.

  Not if they were having lunch together or playing golf. They weren’t a lawyer and a client then. They were just friends.

  What had he said to Stuart? If the magazine article was full of criticisms and insults, would anyone trace them back to Jay? For God’s sake, he’d only been unloading on a friend. It wasn’t as if he was a bagel thief or anything.

  At last Julia released him from her stare. She peered at Joffe, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. What did he know? Jay wondered. Whatever it was, had he found it out through some slip of Jay’s tongue? Was Jay’s indiscretion—and Stuart’s, the son of a bitch!—going to cause Bloom’s to go under?

  “Okay,” Julia said, sounding a touch less sure of herself. “I’ll accept Uncle Jay’s statement for now—”

  “Statement? What statement?” he erupted. “This isn’t a courtroom, sweetie. You’re not a lawyer in here. What exactly are you implying?”

  “I’m implying that for now I’ll assume you’re not the one taking three hundred dollars’ worth of brunch out of the store each week.” She circled the room with her gaze, as if in search of culprits. “Who could it be? It’s got to be someone in the store. Do you think it could be one of the clerks?”

  “Why don’t you accuse your mother?” Jay asked. “She loves food.”

  “I don’t eat Bloom’s food. It’s too expensive. And too fattening,” Sondra shot back. “She knows better than to ask me because she’s eaten in my home for twenty-eight years. If I was going to steal three hundred dollars’ w
orth of food a week, it would be cheese crackers from the grocery store down the block.”

  “This is true,” Susie confirmed.

  “Then, what about Deirdre? You just said you’re Irish but you eat bagels.”

  “Not a hundred-fifty a week,” Deirdre retorted. “Jay, you’re the obvious one because you get together with a hundred people every week—on a Sunday morning when people would want to have brunch.”

  “She—” he pointed at Julia “—just said she considered me innocent.”

  “And I’m saying, maybe we’ve got a hung jury here,” Deirdre argued.

  “You sound pretty defensive,” Jay retorted.

  Deirdre’s smile was bitter, and way too toothy. “The best defense is a good offense, huh?”

  “Okay, okay!” Julia held up her hands like Gandhi trying to quell the rioting Indians. She glanced at Joffe again, silently questioning.

  He shrugged. “It’s your family.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sondra asked. “Why are you even here, anyway? You’re supposed to be writing a nice article about what a great place Bloom’s is. The beauty of a family-owned establishment—”

  “Yeah, it’s a real beautiful thing.” Joffe cut her off. “I’m here because at Ida Bloom’s behest, I examined the books. And your daughter—your president—is right. There’s something going on with this three hundred dollars’ worth of brunch leaving the store every week, unaccounted for. You’re all executives here. You’re supposed to deal with things like this.”

  “I’m not an executive,” Susie declared. “Just family.”

  Jay looked toward the desk, but he didn’t sense so much heat between Susie and her boyfriend now. The guy looked…bored, maybe, and bemused about why he was there. Jay could have explained to him one of the immutable facts of life: sometimes a man had to sit through a lot of crap if he wanted to get laid.

  Julia addressed Deirdre. “Did my father ever discuss a hundred brunches a week with you?”