Love in Bloom's (26 page)

He still would choose the Giants over a couples-sensitivity weekend, but…yeah, he’d done all right.

If she hadn’t been distracted by thoughts of her father—her father and
Deirdre
, for God’s sake!—she would have marveled at the realization that Joffe was holding her without sex being a part of it. His arms felt wonderful around her, as wonderful as every other time he had embraced her. But she didn’t even want to kiss him. She just wanted to feel his warm, firm chest against her, and his hand moving soothingly along her upper arm.

Her father and Deirdre.

Shit.

She sorted through her thoughts and admitted that shock wasn’t among them. Disgust, distrust, indignation that on a scale of one to ten, hovered somewhere in the vicinity of seventeen. But not shock. Not even all that much surprise.

Deirdre Morrissey was too tall to be considered mousy; in her stilt-like high heels, she’d stood taller than Julia’s father. Yet the way she did her job, quiet and capable, unnoticed half the time, had a kind of rodentlike efficiency. Or maybe it was just her buck teeth that made Julia think of gnawing mammals.

How could her father have kissed a woman with such an egregious overbite?

Julia didn’t want to think about Ben Bloom and Deirdre Morrissey knocking teeth. She didn’t want to think about whether her father had a fetish involving three-inch spike heels on women, or whether what had really turned him on was Deirdre’s passionate grasp of inventory management.

Why had her father been so careless as to have left condoms in Grandpa Isaac’s desk? Obviously, he’d assumed he would be returning alive from Russia. He’d kept the condoms in Grandpa Isaac’s desk because no one ever opened its drawers, so no one
knew what he kept in it. Except, apparently, half the world—the half Joffe had interviewed for his article.

“Who told you about my father?” she asked.

“A few people implied things. No one came right out and said anything. They couldn’t. How could they know for sure?”

“They could know if my father told them.” But that wasn’t likely. Her father hadn’t discussed personal matters with his family. Why would he discuss them with herring merchants?

“I suspect it was more that people picked up on the vibes,” Joffe said, tracing lazy figure eights on her arm with his fingertips. “Look, Julia, it’s not my business, and you can tell me to back off—”

“Don’t back off,” she said, nestling closer to him. At that moment, she was sure she loved him, which was really rather odd, since learning that her father was a philandering bastard ought to have turned her off the idea of love. But what Joffe had given her over the past weekend was nothing compared with what he was giving her now: solace. For all her life, it seemed, she’d been the one to offer solace to everyone else, making sure her loved ones were happy, knocking herself out to satisfy Grandma Ida’s demands, her mother’s and her siblings’ needs, her father’s expectations. Susie had rebelled and riled the family, but Julia had been the one to calm things down and smooth things out.

She wasn’t sure whether things ought to be calm and smooth right now, but if they weren’t, Joffe would handle it. This man she’d known such a short time, who could turn her on and fire her up like a gas grill, could also cool her off. If that didn’t make him deserving of her, she didn’t know what did.

“All I’m thinking,” he continued, “is that I’ve talked to a lot of people about Bloom’s—including the people who work here—and Deirdre seems to be pretty essential to the functioning of the place. I know she’s not family…”

“Maybe she was angling to be. Maybe she thought sleeping with my father made her family.” Julia at last pushed herself to sit up straight. Her heart was no longer thundering in her chest, and the tension that had fisted around her brain was be
ginning to relax its grip. “Maybe she was only screwing him because she thought it was the quickest route to power.”

“If she wanted power, do you think she would have hung her fate on a family-owned delicatessen?”

“This isn’t just a family-owned delicatessen. It’s Bloom’s. It’s the kind of institution a magazine like
Gotham
writes stories about.” She let out a long breath. “Maybe she thought that if she serviced my father, he’d move up to chairman when Grandma Ida died and he’d name Deirdre president. That sure would have pissed my mother and Uncle Jay off.” Shaking her head, she laughed sadly. “Everyone wants to be president of this place—except me.”

“That could be why your grandmother chose you.” He wove his fingers through hers. “The thing is, if you do something precipitous about Deirdre, it’s not going to be good for Bloom’s, especially when the store is bleeding.”

“It’s not like the store is gushing blood,” she retorted. “It’s just not thriving the way it should be.” His hand was so much bigger than hers. Her fingers looked skinny and pale intertwined with his, and she hadn’t done anything with her nails except trim them since the fateful day Grandma Ida had told her she was going to be the store’s new president. They were short and unpolished; she’d had no time to take care of them. “I’m not going to give Deirdre the boot. Whatever she and my father were doing, they aren’t doing it anymore. And it can’t be undone.”

“Are you going to tell your mother?”

“I don’t know.” If she did, maybe her mother would stop playing the loyal widow and start socializing, if only out of spite. Julia and Susie desperately wanted Sondra to find someone to fill her off hours with, so she wouldn’t fill them with her daughters.

But Julia wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with her mother’s rage. Sondra would be hurt, possibly awash in despair—and Julia would wind up having to make her feel better. God, what if Sondra started phoning in the middle of the night and wailing about how Ben had betrayed her?

On the other hand, how could she keep such a significant piece of information a secret from her mother?

“I’ll have to talk to Susie about it,” she said. Susie was smarter than Julia, who’d achieved what she had simply because she was more dogged. Susie was the most undogged person Julia knew, which was why she earned her living serving pizza and draft beer to downtown folks. But she was brilliant. If the store’s showcase windows turned out well, Julia would have Susie progress to the interior. It could almost be like a real, full-time job. Perhaps Julia could come up with a title for her: director of presentation. A fancy title and a real salary might lure her out of the pizzeria and into the family firm.

Julia shook her head in amazement. She’d just learned her father was an adulterer, and she was plotting ideas for managing Bloom’s. Where were her priorities?

Where were her tears? Where was her outrage?

Her father was a schmuck. End of story.

“You okay?” Joffe asked her.

“Who knows?” A small, weary laugh escaped her. She rotated her hand, twisting Joffe’s, as well, and glanced at her watch. Nearly five. “How long have I been sitting here in a catatonic trance?”

“A while.”

“Was your editor expecting you back at your desk?”

He grinned. “My editor expects me to submit my column on time. Other than that, she doesn’t make demands.”

“She demanded that you write about Bloom’s.”

“She requested it. She thought there might be a story.”

“What a story—money and sex. Why doesn’t it seem more glamorous?”

“Probably because the windows in this office are caked with soot. For real glamour, you’d need clean windows. And thicker carpet. And an uncle who doesn’t play golf in the hallway with a drinking glass.”

“Uncle Jay was playing golf in the hallway?” She rolled her eyes. “They’re all crazy. All of them. Do you think that if I got enough transfusions I could rid myself of Bloom blood?”

“If you wanted to get rid of it, you’d probably need a vampire to suck you dry.” He stretched, bringing her hand with him so that when he pulled his arms up over his head, her bottom lifted off the cushions. “What do you say we get some dinner?”

“I’ve got to talk to my sister.” Freeing her hand, she crossed to the new desk, the safe desk, the desk whose drawers held no surprises. She lifted the phone receiver and punched in Susie’s cell-phone number.

“Isn’t she just downstairs?” Joffe asked, remaining near the couch. She appreciated that he didn’t hover over her as if he expected her to collapse. She was okay, and she liked the fact that he knew it.

She shook her head and listened as Susie’s phone went unanswered. “She’s probably on the subway, heading downtown to Nico’s. Her cell phone can’t pick up calls on the subway.”

“Who’s Nico?”

“Nico’s. Her other job.” Julia gazed at the papers spread across her desk and decided she didn’t give a damn if Rabinowitz Incorporated had nearly doubled their price on onions and radishes over what they’d charged last year. Not long ago, she’d cared. Not long ago, she’d been about to put in a call to Ari Rabinowitz and tell him that if he didn’t keep his prices steady she was going to start buying from cheaper wholesalers. A radish was a radish, and most of the radishes they used were cut up into little magenta-and-white flower shapes and used for garnish in the cold cuts and salad cases, so if they weren’t the freshest radishes in the world, it wasn’t a big thing.

But Rabinowitz’s prices were not central to her well-being. Her mind was crowded by the realization that her father was a stupid putz who’d had an affair that his professional colleagues knew about, and who’d used Grandpa Isaac’s heirloom desk to store his contraceptives. It occurred to her that Bloom’s stagnation might be due to her late father’s vindictive lover sabotaging the place. Who knew? Maybe Deirdre was sneaking in after hours—she had a key—and stealing bagels.

If she was, at least she’d be stealing stale bagels. New batches were baked fresh every morning.

“So, where is this Nico’s?” Joffe asked.

She eyed him, his long legs slightly parted, his expression intent. That he’d known about her father’s infidelity before she did irked her, but he was a nosy journalist poking around a story, and he had sources. Someone had told him about her father, just as someone had told him Bloom’s was bleeding. Her exact word,
bleeding
.

“Deirdre,” she guessed. “Deirdre told you Bloom’s is bleeding.”

“No.”

“She’s getting back at us by talking to you behind our backs.”

“Why would she want to get back at you? And even if she did, why would she do it by talking to me? She’s got lots of better ways to take revenge, if that was what she wanted to do. Which I don’t think is the case.”

“Somebody told you Bloom’s was bleeding. Someone used that word.”

He opened his mouth and then shut it. “It’s a secondhand source,” he confessed.

“What do you mean?”

“Someone told someone who told me.”

“And you wrote about it?”

“I didn’t use the word
bleeding
. Someone told someone who told me, and I investigated. Everyone in this place had something to tell me, okay? Your mother, your uncle, Deirdre, that little accountant with the bow tie—”

“Myron.”

“That’s the guy.” He nodded. “Everybody talked to me, Julia. Even you.”

“You haven’t talked to Grandma Ida.”

“Not for lack of trying. Can you arrange for her and me to—”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She’s an old woman. I don’t want you badgering her with
questions. She’s old, she’s retired and she’s earned the right not to have to deal with magazine reporters.”

“She could give me great background,” Joffe pointed out. “I had to piece together the store’s history from what other people told me. If I could talk to her—”

“You’d ask whatever you needed to make your story better, even if it was about her son’s infidelities. No, Joffe. Leave my grandmother alone.”

Scowling, he crossed to Grandpa Isaac’s desk and gathered up the draft of his article for her. “You think I have it in for your family? This thing brought tears to your eyes, don’t forget. It isn’t the final draft, but go ahead and read it.”

“I’m almost afraid to,” she muttered, scanning the pages in the hope that anything incriminating would leap out at her. God knew what other dirty secrets he’d learned about Bloom’s and the Blooms.

She couldn’t concentrate on reading it right now. She needed to see Susie so they could figure out what to do about their mother and Deirdre and everything else in her chaotic life. “I’ve got to go downtown and talk to my sister,” she said, letting the pages lie unread in her lap.

“I’ll come with you.”

She almost blurted out a no. But when she saw him standing before her, she felt a rush of warmth. Not heat, not the rabid, breathless yearning she usually felt when he was nearby, but something softer, something that nudged rather than shoved. Something that told her seeing Susie would be easier if Joffe was by her side.

She didn’t like that feeling at all. She much preferred the fiery, passionate hunger she usually felt around him, the desire that was still such a novelty for her. It was scary and fun and it didn’t force her to think. The spreading warmth she felt now did.

She didn’t want to think. She just wanted to go back to where she’d been when she’d read his first paragraph and kissed him. But it was too late.

“Okay,” she relented. She stuffed the article into her brief
case, along with Rabinowitz’s radish and onion figures. Surveying the office, she paused when her gaze captured the box on the coffee table. She grabbed it, carried it to Grandpa Isaac’s desk and dropped it into the bottom drawer, which she kicked shut. “Okay,” she said again. “Let’s go.”

J
ay had visions of Wendy dancing through his head—specifically, lap-dancing—as he shut off his computer, stashed his golf club behind the door and fished his keys from his pocket. He had visions of climbing into the Z3, putting down the top and cruising through Central Park to the East Side, where Wendy would be waiting for him without fund-raiser tickets, without plans and, hopefully, without underwear.

It had been an excellent day. He’d started laying groundwork for a new mail-order program in small appliances, he’d practiced his putts and he’d finessed the
Gotham Magazine
reporter. He was feeling fine.

His phone rang just as his hand touched the doorknob. He wished he could swing the door open and stroll out of the office, but he lacked the discipline to walk away from a ringing phone. He grabbed the receiver and pressed it to his ear. “Jay Bloom here.”

“It’s Lyndon,” his mother’s majordomo announced. “Your mother would like to see you.”

So much for his excellent day. In his mind, Wendy slid off his lap and put on some panties. “About what?” he asked, not caring if Lyndon heard him sigh.

“I don’t know. She’d like you to stop by at the apartment before you leave for home.”

It was almost five o’clock. He should have taken off early; if he had, he would have missed Lyndon’s call. But a day this good couldn’t U-turn and go bad. He was on a roll; maybe he’d finesse his mother, too. “Sure. I’ll be right up,” he said.

The elevator carried him to the twenty-fifth floor. He still experienced a twinge of dread when the floor indicator lit up with “24,” as if the doors would slide open on that floor and he’d find himself in a time warp, once again married to Martha, once again returning home to that drearily earnest apartment, spending his evenings listening to her pontificate on the cultural morass of professional wrestling or the fate of the sperm whale.

But the elevator kept going, the light changed to “25” and the doors opened. Releasing a pent-up breath, he strode down the hall to Ida’s apartment. Lyndon let him in. “You really don’t know what this is about?” Jay whispered.

“I really don’t,” Lyndon answered in a normal voice, “except that she’s having tea and she’d like for you to join her in a cup. I’m brewing it now.”

Jay hated tea. “I’d prefer coffee, if she’s offering.”

“She’s not,” Lyndon said, his voice so silky Jay wanted to slug him. Instead, he resigned himself to the prospect of forcing down a few sips of tea. Hell, he’d drink piss-water if that was what it took to get his mother to give him more power in running the store. Most tea tasted like piss-water, anyway.

“She’s in the living room,” Lyndon directed him, turning back toward the kitchen. “I’ll be right in with the tea.”

“Take your time,” Jay muttered, ambling down the hall to the living room. Ida sat in one of the wingback chairs, her posture straight, her hair settled on the top of her head like an unusually dark storm cloud, her wrists circled in clinking gold
bracelets. “Hello, Mom,” he said, dutifully leaning over to kiss her cheek before he lowered himself onto the sofa across from her.

“Jay.” She eyed him up and down. “For a man who spends his life shut up in an office, you look not so bad.”

Was that her way of saying she knew he didn’t spend his life shut up in an office? So what if it was? He was getting his job done; golf, squash and his other activities didn’t keep him from meeting his responsibilities.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” he asked. “Everything okay?”

“At my age, how should I feel?”

Eighty-eight. In two years she’d be ninety, if she didn’t die. One good look at her made it clear she was nowhere close to dying.

Lyndon appeared in the doorway carrying a tray laden with a teapot and two cups. There was no escape. Jay would have to drink some.

He pretended patience while Lyndon set the tray on the coffee table, filled a cup with the steaming brew and placed it on the side table near Ida’s elbow, then filled the other cup and handed it to Jay, who had to thank Lyndon even though he wasn’t the least bit grateful. When Lyndon left the room, Jay glanced at his mother and found her watching him. Trying not to grimace, he took a sip.

That seemed to satisfy her. Without drinking any of her own tea—she probably knew how wretched it tasted—she folded her hands in her lap and said, “What’s with the reporter?”

“Who? The guy from
Gotham?
”

“Lyndon bought this week’s copy of the magazine. There’s no article in it. He bought last week’s copy, too. Same thing, no article. So? It’s not being written? What?”

“It’s being written,” Jay assured her. “The reporter was just in today. He wanted to interview me one more time.” A slight exaggeration; Joffe hadn’t come to the office to interview Jay. Although maybe he had. Jay wasn’t exactly sure why he’d come.

“Sondra tells me it’s going to be nice and schmaltzy, all about how wonderful Bloom’s is,” Ida said.

“Sondra has no idea what she’s talking about.” He adjusted his tone to imply that it pained him greatly to admit this.

“It’s not going to be schmaltzy?”

“I think he’s digging a little deeper, getting into the nitty-gritty. He asked me about how the store is run, how responsibilities are divvied up. And of course, how Bloom’s has remained synonymous with the best delicatessen food in New York all these years. I’ve explained to him how I’ve spread the Bloom’s brand far and wide through mail order and the Internet. It’s that kind of fame that brings the crowds in, and I wanted to make sure he included that in his article.”

“What about Julia? What does she think of this article?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” Jay retorted, then sipped some more of the vile tea to atone for having spoken sharply to his mother about her favorite grandchild. Why she preferred Julia to the others he couldn’t guess. But if he drank enough tea, maybe his mother would stop shoving Julia in his face. “If you want to know the truth,” he said in a gentler voice, “Julia gets tripped up on trivia, on
mishegaas
that’s not worth the effort she puts into it. I love Julia, you know I do—but she’s shortsighted.” He’d said as much to the reporter, carefully couching his opinions in euphemism. He might as well express his opinions to his mother, too. She needed to know what was going on at her beloved store.

“What
mishegaas?
”

“Well…for instance, the inventory. She reviews the numbers again and again. She
shvitzes
when a single knish is unaccounted for. And her meetings—they waste everybody’s time. We can talk to one another without meetings.”

“I liked that one meeting I went to,” his mother said. “Having everybody all together in one place—it was like a party.”

His mother obviously didn’t go to too many good parties. “Look, Mom—I know Julia is trying hard, and she’s smart. Maybe in time she’ll get the hang of it. But right now she’s
struggling. She doesn’t do things the way we’ve always done things at Bloom’s.”

“And is that such a bad thing?” At last his mother drank some tea. “I want you to tell me when this magazine story comes out. I want to see if it has things I don’t like in it. Who’s writing it?”

“A guy named Ronald Joffe. He writes the magazine’s weekly business column, and he seems smart. He listens very closely to what people tell him. I think he’s going to portray Bloom’s fairly.”
And he’s going to report that I’m the brains of the outfit, the one with vision.

“Maybe I should talk to him.”

“No,” Jay said quickly. “He’s only talking to the people actively involved in the store.” In fact, Joffe had asked Jay if it would be possible to interview Ida, and Jay had thought it best to keep Joffe away from her. God only knew what she might say in an interview. Given the opportunity, she might go off on a tangent about her beloved hairdresser, Bella, or she might declare that her dear husband, Isaac, may he rest, didn’t know
bupkes
about running a store. Ida often said things that made her sound unhinged or unpleasant. Bloom’s didn’t need that kind of exposure. Jay was sure the rest of the folks on the third floor would agree.

“So, Julia is concerned with the inventory?” Ida asked.

“Petty stuff, Mom. Nothing you should worry about.”

“I’ll decide what I want to worry about.”

She pursed her lips in that forbidding way of hers and searched his face with her hard, clear eyes. Why couldn’t she get cataracts like a typical woman her age? Why couldn’t she require trifocals as thick as thermopanes? What magic elixir did Lyndon feed her to keep her from falling apart like a normal person? Something he brewed into the tea, maybe?

Jay had his own magic elixir to keep him young: a wife like Wendy, sexy and compliant and never too much of a strain, combined with adequate amounts of recreation to keep him physically fit and mentally relaxed. Jay didn’t think his mother
viewed Lyndon as sexy or compliant—the idea was so outrageous Jay had to stifle a laugh.

He sipped some tea and concluded it didn’t taste too ghastly. If it really contained anti-aging properties, they ought to be selling it at Bloom’s.

“All right, then,” his mother said, dismissing him. “You want to leave, I can tell. You’ve got that bouncy wife waiting for you at home.”

“She’s not bouncy,” Jay argued, although in truth she was.

“Go home. But promise me you’ll let me know when that magazine article comes out.”

“I promise.”

“And if Julia’s having problems, help her. That’s part of your job, Jay. It’s important, for the store.”

If she thought his job was to help Julia reap all the glory, he obviously hadn’t been as successful at presenting himself as the mastermind of Bloom’s with his mother as he’d been with Joffe. “Listen, Mom,” he said, “the thing about Julia getting caught up in
mishegaas
…She’s a great kid, but she’s coming at the job from a lawyer’s perspective. I think she’s terrific, but I wonder if she has retailing in her blood.”

“She’s got Bloom blood, no? That’s all the blood she needs,” Ida declared.

“I’m just saying, a little guidance, maybe a little power sharing—”

Ida peered up at him, her eyes as clear and sharp as crystal shards. “You think you could do a better job?”

He hadn’t expected her to be so direct, but what the hell. She’d asked; he would answer. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

Ida sniffed. She didn’t laugh, didn’t shake her head, didn’t call him a fool—but she also didn’t say he could take over the store. Just that single sniff, like someone with hay fever, too lazy to get a tissue and blow her nose.

He would win her over. He’d get the edition of
Gotham Magazine
with the Bloom’s article in it as soon as it hit the stands, and he’d bring her a copy. Two copies, one for read
ing and one for safekeeping. He’d have Lyndon prepare her a cup of tea to drink while she read the article. In it she would read that Jay was the de facto leader of the company, the visionary, the genius who could accomplish more in a six-hour day than Julia could in a twelve-hour day, because she was so busy fussing over the number of bagels the store sold in a given week.

His mother would see that she’d made a mistake in naming Julia the president. She’d see her error, and she’d correct it—and Jay would get what he deserved.

“This pizza isn’t so good,” Joffe grumbled.

Nico’s wasn’t packed, but it was bustling enough to deny Susie the chance to sit for a minute and talk. Julia didn’t know why she’d thought to come downtown tonight, except that sisters needed each other in times of trauma. And while Julia was managing to maintain a calm facade about her father’s infidelity, inside she felt traumatized.

She picked at her own pizza, a slice of Sicilian with mushrooms. Joffe had ordered two slices with meatballs for himself, along with a beer, and although he was complaining about the food’s quality, he was close to polishing off the first slice. She’d witnessed this male idiosyncrasy before: a woman tried something, didn’t like it and set it aside, while a man tried something, didn’t like it and proceeded to wolf it down.

“We should have picked up some takeout from Bloom’s,” he said after popping the last of the crust from his first slice into his mouth.

She shrugged. “I wanted to see my sister.”

“We could have eaten in the cab on the ride down.” He’d insisted on taking a cab. No way was he going to dangle from a subway strap all the way down to SoHo at rush hour. “What’s it called? Heat-n-eat. Those hot meals are great. You ever have the stuffed cabbage? It’s fantastic. Of course you’ve had it,” he corrected himself before lifting his other slice and catching a wad of melted cheese that threatened to slide off the crust.

Actually, she’d never had Bloom’s stuffed cabbage. She made a mental note to try all the heat-n-eat entrées.

Susie hustled past them, carrying a tray laden with plates of manicotti. She flashed them a smile but didn’t break her stride. “It must be tough for her, doing your store windows all day and then waiting on tables here at night.”

“The windows are just a temporary job,” Julia explained. Speaking the words deflated a mood that hadn’t had much air in it to begin with. She wished Susie would leave Nico’s—as she herself had left Griffin, McDougal—and devote herself full-time to Bloom’s. Julia could use her there for moral support and aesthetic perspective. “Susie’s so smart,” she said, surprising herself by giving voice to her thoughts.

Joffe followed Susie around the room with his gaze while he sipped some beer. “If she’s so smart, what’s she doing waiting on tables in a pizzeria?”

“She’s a poet,” Julia answered.

He nodded as if that explained everything. “So—assuming she can spare five minutes sometime before midnight, what are you going to tell her?”

Before Julia could answer, the door swung open and in walked Rick. She cursed under her breath.

“What?” Joffe twisted in his chair to see what had caught her attention. Rick was heading straight for their table, his face breaking into a smile. Joffe turned back to her. “Who’s that?”

“My cousin.” Her lips strained at the effort to return Rick’s smile. Encouraged, he dragged a chair over to their table and flopped down into it. “Hey, Rick,” she said. “Should I ask you to join us?”