Love in Bloom's (17 page)

“Your father,” Sondra scolded, “is spinning in his grave.” Deirdre indicated her agreement by sniffing sharply.

“My father was a wonderful president of Bloom’s. But now I’m the president, and I think we need a face-lift and some streamlining, or we’re going to be left in the dust.”

“What dust?” Sondra asked.

“It’s a metaphor, Mom,” Susie told her.

“I’ve gone through these profit-loss statements on the departments.” Julia reached for the pile of folders sitting on her desk. “But I want wiser, more experienced people to review each department’s performance closely. Mom, I want you to review the heat-n-eat department, the meats department, the fish department and the cheese department—basically, all the protein departments. Uncle Jay, I want you to review the coffee department—”

“Wait a minute!” Sondra sent Julia a wounded look, as if she considered her daughter the worst kind of traitor. “The coffee corner is mine. It was my idea in the first place!”

“Which is why you don’t have the objectivity to evaluate it. I’m going to have Myron assess our Internet mail-order businesses.”

“What, are you crazy?” Uncle Jay shouted, practically leaping to his feet. He sank back into his chair and shot Myron a disconsolate look. “Nothing personal, Myron, but do you even know what the Internet is?”

“I know what it is,” Myron said, nibbling delicately on his pink bagel. “This is good, Julia. Very good.”

Julia felt Susie’s gaze on her, communicating,
So there! Casey’s a genius.
And maybe cranberry bagels
were
good. But the bagel department still worried her.

“What I want,” she said, “is a one-or two-page report on each department, telling me what’s selling well, what’s under
performing and giving your suggestions for improving things. Deirdre, I want you to review all the reports and add your take on them. I’ll need this by the end of the week.”

“The end of the week?” Sondra squawked. “Like I don’t have any other work to do?”

“We all have lots of work to do,” Julia said. “More work than we had to do last week—because on top of what we have to do, we also have to give Bloom’s a kick in the rear end.”

She paced to the window and paced back. Everyone, with the possible exception of Myron and Lyndon, was staring at her as if she’d sprouted a huge pimple on her forehead. Lyndon looked amused, and Myron was busy licking cream cheese off his fingers.

“
Gotham Magazine
hasn’t published anything about us yet. But I have the feeling that if they
do
publish something it’s not going to be positive.”

“How can you say that?” Sondra exclaimed.

Even Deirdre shook her head. “I thought we handled that reporter pretty well.”

“He didn’t come here to do a puff piece,” Julia said, almost adding,
He came here to kiss me.
But of course he hadn’t come to do that, either. His kiss had seemed like an afterthought—or perhaps an afterthoughtless—some weird impulse that had apparently startled him enough that once he’d cleared his head, he’d decided not to contact Julia again.

“What do you think he came here for?” Deirdre asked.

“He was looking for news. With most journalists, that means bad news. They want a story. Writing about how Bloom’s is just sailing smoothly along isn’t a story.”

“But why would he come here and try to find bad news?” Deirdre pressed her.

“Because it would make a good story. In fact, he didn’t just come here looking for bad news. He came here assuming he was going to find bad news.”

“What makes you think that?” Sondra enquired, her voice shriller than usual. “Did he say something to you? He didn’t
say anything to me. In fact, he gave no indication whatsoever that he knew he was going to find something bad to write about.”

“It’s just a hunch.” More than a hunch—it was the way Joffe had unsettled Julia, the way he’d gazed at her, the way he’d asked questions she herself ought to have been asking all along, questions she was going to ask now that she’d made a commitment to the store. “I may be new to Bloom’s,” she conceded, squaring her shoulders and mustering her usually subdued self-confidence, “but I’m not new to life. I’ve worked in a law firm for two years. I have some intelligence, and I can sense things.”

“She can sense things.” Uncle Jay snorted, reaching for a pumpernickel bagel and shaking his head. “Maybe she can read people’s auras, too, and the lumps on their skulls. I’ll tell you this, sweetheart—” he jabbed a cream-cheese applicator at Julia “—the time that reporter and I spent in my office talking about the Web site and mail-order business, there was no bad news for him. All he could see in front of him was success, success, success.” He punctuated this boast by glaring at his mother. “Success,” he concluded, just in case she’d missed his message.

“What’s this about a reporter?” she belatedly asked, lifting dark, accusing eyes to Julia.

Julia dropped into her chair so her grandmother wouldn’t have to look up at her. “A guy from
Gotham Magazine.
He approached us and said he wanted to do a story about Bloom’s.” Addressing the rest of the group, she continued, “He wouldn’t have approached us if he didn’t think there was a story here. If you want good news about yourself in the media, you have to initiate it. When they come to you, it’s because they smell blood.”

“She’s such an expert,” Sondra muttered, then sipped her coffee. “This is good,” she observed, eyeing Grandma Ida over the curved edge of her cup. “Like I should be surprised. Our coffee is
so
good.”

“This reporter,” Grandma Ida asked, “why would he smell blood? Only thing you can smell at Bloom’s is cheese and hot entrées.”

“And the coffee,” Sondra reminded her.

“So he comes here, what? Sniffing around?”

Julia nodded. “Exactly. Sniffing around.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because Daddy died,” Susie interjected. Everyone turned to her, and she shrugged. “The man who ran Bloom’s for twenty-five years is gone. This reporter dude probably thought he’d find some turmoil here.”

“God knows why he’d think that,” Sondra whispered, just loud enough for everyone except Grandma Ida to hear. She turned questioningly to Lyndon, who repeated Sondra’s remark.

“Ben is dead,” Grandma Ida declared in a ponderous tone, her hair so dark it seemed to suck in light like a black hole. “But Bloom’s lives on. This reporter, who needs him?”

“I do,” Julia blurted out, then felt her cheeks grow warm. “We
all
do,” she went on, donning her best lawyer voice. “We need to examine just what’s going on with the store. If we have areas that are bleeding—or even just oozing—we need to fix them. And we need a jolt of energy. The reporter is providing it.” She resented that Joffe had been the one to jolt her—why couldn’t a cup of strong coffee do the job? Why couldn’t Heath? Why did she need a jolt at all?

The whys didn’t matter. She did need a jolt, and whipping Bloom’s into shape would give it to her, far more effectively than any guy who could sweep in, poke around in things that weren’t his business, plant a kiss on her mouth and disappear. Whatever she needed, it sure as hell wasn’t Ron Joffe.

“You want I should talk to this reporter?” Grandma Ida asked.

In unison, Julia, Sondra, Jay and Deirdre said, “No.”

Grandma Ida absorbed their unanimous decision. “So, you’re going to get all these reports,” she said, pursing her lips. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Study them and figure out how to improve the store’s performance.”

“More than sixty years I’ve been with Bloom’s, I never needed a report.”

“You ran Bloom’s differently,” Julia conceded. “So did Dad. But now I’m running the place—because you named me the president.”
And that was your choice, so live with it,
she wanted to add, but she was afraid she’d sound petulant and ungrateful. She’d managed to get this far with her meeting, and a sense of accomplishment spread through her. Her very first meeting, and no one had died. In fact, her mother was helping herself to an onion bagel, and Grandma Ida was pointing to a poppy-seed bagel, which Lyndon promptly smeared with cream cheese for her. Susie hopped down from the desk and grabbed an egg bagel. Skipping the cream cheese, she climbed back onto the desk, sat squaw-style and took a lusty bite.

Everyone was eating. Julia viewed this as a promising sign.

“These bagels are good,” Uncle Jay said as he bit into one. “What is this? I never tasted anything like this before.”

“I think that’s the pesto bagel,” she told him.

From the desk Susie issued a besotted grin. After this meeting was over, Julia would have to pump Susie for information on exactly what was going on between her and the bagel man.

“It’s not just the flavor. It’s the texture. Where’d you get these bagels, Julia?”

“Downstairs.”

“These are Bloom’s bagels?”

She sighed and glanced at the ceiling. What was wrong with this family, that they owned a deli and never ate its food? No wonder the store was foundering. It needed enthusiasm. It needed familiarity with the products. It needed people working for it who understood how good its merchandise was.

“I think,” she said, “we should all make an effort to eat Bloom’s food more often.”

“It’s too expensive,” Sondra and Grandma Ida said simultaneously.

“Then, maybe we should reduce prices.”

“No!” Myron and Uncle Jay bellowed simultaneously.

“This is really good, though,” Sondra said before taking another hefty bite of her bagel. “Almost as good as the coffee.”

Julia gazed at the assembled group. Deirdre plucked a plain bagel from the tray. Susie was tearing small chunks from her egg bagel and popping them into her mouth. Sondra was eyeing seconds, nudging the dwindling supply with one elegantly manicured nail to see what flavors were left. Adding cream cheese to a whole-wheat bagel, Lyndon paused and angled his head to study the Star of David, now visible as the tray emptied.

Julia cleared her throat. “If any of you have trouble getting your reviews done—”

“We won’t have any problems,” said Deirdre, scraping the sides of a nearly empty tub of cream cheese with a wooden applicator.

“Then, I guess we’re adjourned,” Julia said, smiling and feeling the tension ebb from the muscles along her spine. She’d survived the meeting. She’d emanated poise. She’d acted presidential. And now she’d like them all to leave so she could savor her triumph.

But no one left. No one even stood. They were all too busy eating.

S
usie was not going to go to the bagel department. She wasn’t even going to go near it. She was going to inspect the rest of the store, take notes, step outside to study the windows, take more notes, figure out whether the place needed a face-lift or extensive surgery—as if she had the expertise to make such a diagnosis, although she had to admit she had at least as much expertise in retail presentation as Julia had in retail management—and she was somehow going to do all this without crossing paths with Casey Gordon.

Sure. And once she’d accomplished that, she would build a car that used water for fuel, come up with a simple explanation of string theory and put an end to war.

What was the strange power Casey held over her? She wasn’t used to complicated relationships—as if long, verbose telephone calls and one family seder could be called a “relationship.” Her dealings with men had always been straightforward. Like with Eddie: they’d get together, they’d have some laughs,
they’d have some sex. Nothing deep, nothing Byzantine. Just a man and a woman enjoying life and each other.

Why couldn’t she have something like that with Casey? Just because he lived in Queens shouldn’t mean he and Susie were fated to construct their entire friendship on a series of phone conversations. For God’s sake, she was horny and he was gorgeous. He’d never indicated that he found her repulsive.

So what was the hang-up?

And why was she letting it bother her? There were plenty of other men in New York, men interested in laughs and sex and nothing more. Eddie, for one. Yet the last time he’d called her, she could hardly think of anything to say to him.

Unlike Casey, to whom she could always think of plenty of things to say. But she wanted more than talk. And she wanted not to be driven crazy by a man. She’d never let a man drive her crazy before, and twenty-five seemed too old for her to start.

She stood in front of the cheese display and tried to think about how the refrigerator units were set up, how clearly the prices were marked, how much the port salut smelled like sweaty gym socks—anything but the fact that just three aisles down, Casey was chatting with customers and filling bags with bagels for them. Maybe he was flirting with his female customers, telling them they were nubile. Maybe he was setting up dates with them, making plans to attend Zen festivals or Moonie mass weddings so he could continue his education in the world’s religions.

Her lower abdomen ached like a menstrual cramp. She didn’t have her period, so she assumed this was a psychosomatic symptom. She was out of sync with her womb, maybe. Out of touch with her womanhood. Or else nauseated by the stench of the port salut.

She moved on, ordering herself to focus on her assignment and ignore all the Casey vibes that emanated from the bagel department like a radio signal her antenna couldn’t seem to avoid picking up. The sooner she devised some ideas for Julia, the sooner she could head south, back to her apartment and
Nico’s, where the intrigues and tensions of her family couldn’t reach her. She’d been the smartest person at the meeting that morning, but had anyone paid any attention to her? Had anyone given a shit what she might have to contribute?

Well, yes—Julia had. She’d been the other smartest person at the meeting.

Nico adored the windows Susie created for him. He adored her poems and her pizza-esque ensembles. He didn’t have an ego problem, a lifetime’s worth of rivalries, a love-hate relationship with everyone sharing his last name, a hunger for approval from an emotionally stingy autocrat like Grandma Ida. Susie wanted to go downtown, back to the world she knew.

But Julia needed her here.

And Casey was now only two aisles away, because Susie had abandoned the cheese aisle for the coffee corner, which smelled much better than port salut.

The store needed goosing, and it needed sprucing. Armed with a pad and pen, she pondered the shelving, seeking answers to a question she wasn’t sure she understood. The wood plank floors lent the store a homey feel—if the home was, say, Ralph Lauren’s vacation cabin. It felt Waspy to her, even if Ralph Lauren happened to be Jewish.

Going more modern, more sleek and streamlined, wouldn’t be appropriate for Bloom’s, either. The store needed to feel like…a grandmother’s apartment. One containing at least as much affection as Depression glass.

She moved to the next aisle, pretending she knew what she was doing. Customers shared the aisle with her, some dawdling, some striding briskly in modified power walks, some nudging her aside to reach items on shelves. An elderly man in a V-neck cardigan and baggy green trousers shuffled past her, clutching a cylindrical tin of Danish butter cookies and mumbling to himself about the IRS being the spawn of Satan. It occurred to Susie that if the store resembled a grandmother’s apartment too much, it might attract only customers like him.

She couldn’t afford to do anything drastic, anyway. Julia
wanted the store goosed and spruced, but at minimal cost. The whole purpose of this project was to boost profitability so their precious trust funds wouldn’t be depleted. Oh yes, and to uphold the legacy their father had bestowed upon them.

Adam ought to be here upholding the legacy, too. Julia had told Susie she’d tried to get Adam to travel down to the city for her meeting, but he had midterms. Susie loved Adam, but he really was spoiled. He always left his big sisters to cope with every crisis, while he remained sequestered in the snowy hills of Ithaca, safely removed from the tumult of being a Bloom. He believed pursuing the life of a scholar was somehow more pure than vending latkes in a deli on the Upper West Side. Go figure.

She had drawn near the bagel counter. Even before she saw Casey her pulse began to perk up. He
had
asked Julia about her. And he
did
phone her regularly, if only to discuss cranberry harvesting techniques or the subtext of the mayor’s latest edict. He must like her. Maybe not enough to consider a seduction, but a little, at least.

She wasn’t going to approach him like a lovesick ninny, though, some desperate chick with a demeanor that screamed,
Do with me what you will.
She was a strong, brilliant, desirable woman, a poet, a savvy survivor. If Casey didn’t have the good sense to jump her bones, well, damn it, she’d find someone who did.

She turned the corner and saw him. He was handing a bag of bagels to a thin man with a retro afro, parts of which were depressed by the earphones of his Discman. Casey nodded at the man, then caught Susie’s eye and smiled.

He was happy to see her. She felt ten years younger and ten pounds lighter. His smile, his sparkling eyes—she wanted to race over to him and coo,
Do with me what you will!

Cut it out!
she ordered herself.
Control yourself.
She drew in a deep breath, straightened her spine and strode to the counter, shaping her face into the most nonchalant expression she could manage under the circumstances.

God, he was magnificent. His hair begged her fingers to twine through it. His arms seemed designed for bracing himself above her, or holding her above him. His smile said,
Kiss me.

“Hey, Susie,” he greeted her. “Your sister told me I’d get to see you today.”

A nice collection of sarcastic retorts filled her mouth.
I bet that must have made your day,
she almost snapped.
I hope you don’t hate my sister for telling you that. I’m surprised you didn’t run downstairs to the kitchen and punch in my cell-phone number so we wouldn’t have to talk face-to-face.

Exercising exemplary willpower, she said, “Well, here I am.”

“You look great. Want a bagel?”

No, she didn’t want a bagel. She wanted to bask in his compliment—he’d said she
looked great!—
and ask him why, if he really believed that, he wasn’t suggesting they go someplace private so he could do more than gaze at her.

“We had bagels upstairs at a meeting,” she told him.

“Yeah, I put that platter together for your sister. Big goings-on in the corporate sphere.” His wry grin let her know what he thought of the corporate sphere.

That was all right. She didn’t think much of it, either. “The accountant loved the cranberry bagel,” she reported. “Julia considers the color funky.”

“Pink?” He shrugged. “What’s wrong with pink?”

“It’s funky for a bagel,” Susie clarified, suffering a twinge of apprehension. He liked pink. He wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t want to
be
with her. And he was so damn good-looking. Things were starting to add up.

“Do you have a minute?” she asked impulsively.

He glanced at the older guy who shared bagel duties with him—Morty, Susie recalled. He had just finished slicing a floury bialy for a blue-haired lady who called him “dahlink,” and turned to Casey, who held up five fingers. Morty’s gaze shuttled to Susie and he winked and nodded.

Casey emerged from behind the counter in a long-legged
lope. He motioned with his head toward the staff door that opened to the stairway, then led the way.

They entered the stairwell, and he let the door shut behind them. Susie wondered if she should be alarmed, then remembered what she’d just figured out about him and realized she didn’t have much cause for concern. He slouched lazily against the wall, digging his hands into his trouser pockets under the flap of his apron. His smile was so tender, so genuinely pleased that she wanted to weep at the tragic waste of this prime specimen of manhood.

“So, what’s going on? You look like you’re working,” he said, aiming his chin toward her notepad.

“Julia’s hired me to design new windows for the store,” she told him, then moved ahead before they could detour into that subject. “Casey, I’ve got to ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“Are you gay?”

He stared at her for a minute, then shook his head. His smile never wavered. “Nope.”

She ought to have been relieved; he hadn’t been removed from the pool of available men. But she was even more deflated. If he wasn’t gay and he wasn’t hitting on her, the problem must be her. “Are you married?” she asked apprehensively.

He continued to smile, but from the cheekbones up he frowned, his brow denting and a crease forming across the bridge of his nose. “What are you really asking?”

Damn it. He was married. He’d been carrying on a telephone affair with her because he was too moral to carry on a flesh affair with her. “I’m really asking,” she said, figuring she had nothing to lose, “why you don’t want to have sex with me.”

His smile vanished completely. With her free hand she gripped the stair railing. Despite all her courage, she needed to brace herself for his rejection. He had every right to be as blunt as she was—and if he was that blunt, his words were probably going to hurt.

“I’m not married,” he said, “and I do want to have sex with you.”

It took her a minute of deep breathing to assimilate his response. “You do?”

“You’re beautiful. You’re funny. You’re smart. Why wouldn’t I want to?”

Anxiety gave way to anger. What the hell was wrong with him? He wanted her, she wanted him, and they’d spent the past two weeks playing telephone. “Why haven’t you done anything about it?”

He shrugged. “I’m still getting to know you,” he said, as if it was the most sensible thing in the world.

Sensible? Getting to know her? What planet had he fallen to earth from?

She knew the answer to that: Queens. “What do you need to know? You want to have sex with me—you just said so. I want to have sex with you.”
I’ve been dreaming of it. Aching for it. Hugging my pillow like a feverish teenager.

“Well, that’s good,” he said, his smile returning. “But I don’t sleep with women I don’t know that well. I don’t know you that well yet.”

“We’ve talked on the phone a billion times.”

“That many? I must have lost count.” His smile expanded, taking on a teasing quality. “Look, Susie, you work nights—I work days. You live on the IRT line—I live on the IND line. Sometimes these things take time.”

“I brought you to my grandmother’s seder!”

“And it was a lot of fun. What was the name of that stuff again, the ground apples and walnuts with the wine mixed in?”

“Charoseth.”

“Yeah. That was great. I’ve been thinking about whether we can make a
charoseth
-flavored bagel.”

“People can’t eat bagels during Passover,” she reminded him. “Only unleavened bread, like matzo.”

“Yeah, but for the rest of the year, if they like the flavor—”

“Casey. Pay attention. I think we should make a plan to have
sex.” This wasn’t very romantic, but he seemed too easily distracted. She had to address the subject clearly and directly.

He mulled over her suggestion, appearing to do some calculations in his head. “How about after we’ve spent a minimum of twenty hours together?”

“Twenty hours?” Given how rarely they saw each other, that could take years. “Does this meeting count?”

“No. We’re still working things out here.”

“Where did you come up with twenty hours?”

“It’s a nice round number. I like round numbers. They remind me of bagels, all that roundness.”

He was nuts. Unfortunately, that made him even more appealing.

Twenty hours, like bagels. She let out a laugh. “When do we start counting hours?”

“The next time we see each other.”

“Okay. Why don’t you go back into the store, and then I’ll come in a few minutes later and we’ll start the clock then.”

He gave her a slow, painfully erotic grin. “Okay,” he drawled, then started toward the stairwell door. Pausing, he snagged her upper arm and pulled her away from the railing, into his arms. He bowed, covered her mouth with his and kissed her as if this was the kissing Olympics and he was going for the gold. He kissed her until her breasts burned, her stomach clenched, her toes curled and her hips nestled against his. He kissed her until the pad and pen fell from her hand and the pen rolled down several stairs, making a clicking sound as it hit each step. He kissed her until his tongue had claimed pretty much every square inch of her mouth’s interior, until his hand clenched into a fist against her back, until she was absolutely certain she was in love.