Love in Bloom's (31 page)

“I don’t want to be Grandma Ida’s favorite granddaughter.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to sit in this office knowing Joffe is going to figure out what’s wrong with this company and splash it all over the pages of
Gotham Magazine
.”

“And you want to get back to having sex with him.”

“No,” Julia said resolutely. “He’s called me a bunch of times. I told him I didn’t want to see him. He betrayed me, Susie. How can I have sex with him?”

“Because he’s good in the sack?” Susie suggested.

“It was a rhetorical question.” Julia pulled the tray back to herself and speared the last piece of stuffed cabbage.

“Is he here now?”

“No. He spent an afternoon downloading data onto disks and took them with him.”

“He took disks with him?” Susie’s voice rose to a near shriek. She was no business genius, but even she knew this was bad. A reporter with computer disks filled with all the financial data on the store that was the subject of a feature article he was writing…This was really bad. “Why did you let him do that?”

“I didn’t. Grandma Ida did.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

“Because she’s Grandma Ida. Have you ever tried to stop her from doing anything she wanted to do?” Julia flopped back in her chair. It was so big her head landed several inches below the headrest. “Anyway, I didn’t know he was copying everything onto disks until he appeared in my doorway and told me he was all done and ready to leave. He’d been here less than two hours. I couldn’t believe he’d finished reviewing everything in so little time, and he told me he was taking all the information home with him so he could work on it when he had a free minute. I went ballistic, but he didn’t care. He just shrugged and left.”

“And phoned you a bunch of times.”

“I’m not going to sleep with him. Not when he’s in possession of disks because our idiot grandmother told him he could take whatever he wanted.”

“I can’t believe she did that.”

“She likes him.” Julia paused, then added with emphasis, “She likes him for
you
.”

“She’s crazy. Maybe the time has come to put her in a facility.” Susie didn’t really believe that. Even if Grandma Ida was deteriorating, she’d be better off in Lyndon’s hands than in the fanciest nursing home in the city. And Susie didn’t believe Grandma Ida was deteriorating, either. “You know, Julia, if you sleep with him, he might give you the disks back.”

“Oh, right. That’s a swell idea. Maybe he’ll throw in a little cash to sweeten the deal.” Julia’s glare was as blinding as a solar eclipse.

“Well, okay. What’s done is done. Forget him. Find someone else. How’s old Heath Bar doing?”

“Heath? He’s out of the picture.”

“So put someone else in the picture. There are lots of men out there, Julia. And who needs men, anyway? They’re mostly pains in the ass.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Look. Let’s have dinner together tonight, okay? We can get more stuffed cabbage—and some salad. What kinds of salad do they sell downstairs?”

“I don’t know—deli kinds of salad. Red Bliss potato salad. Pasta salad. Cole slaw. Carrot salad. Sauerkraut.”

“The red kind? I love the red kind. And some carrot salad, too—as long as it doesn’t have too many raisins in it. We’ll go to your place because it’s closer.”

“This has to be one of the most exciting dinner invitations I’ve ever received,” Julia grumbled. “Takeout at my own place.”

“And we’ll rent a movie. Something with a revenge plot.
Attack of the One-Breasted Amazon Warrior Bitches
. Or
Thelma and Louise
.”

“It’s a date,” Julia said. “Is that a real movie? Not
Thelma and Louise
. The other one.”

“I don’t know,” Susie admitted. “But if it isn’t, it should be.”

Sondra wondered when Julia was ever going to start leaving her door open. It was the way things were done on the third floor. Open doors welcomed an ebb and flow, a give and take, lines perpetually open for communication. Plus, with the doors open, it was possible to keep tabs on how many hours a day Jay actually spent in his office.

Very few, in fact. Sondra paid attention.

She was going to have to figure out a way to mention Jay’s chronic disappearances to Julia. If by chance she wasn’t aware of what a sluggard her uncle was because she never kept her door open, Sondra would sneak the information into a chat. Given that Julia was the president of Bloom’s, she ought to make sure she was getting a full day’s work from her underlings.

That Jay was Julia’s underling was a source of great satisfaction to Sondra. It was so satisfying, it almost made up for the fact that she herself was also Julia’s underling.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Here they were in May already, and Julia seemed further than ever from returning to her job at Griffin, McDougal. Sondra was going to have to figure out a way to finagle that into a discussion, too. She needed to know where she stood at Bloom’s, and how long she’d have to stand there.

Nothing was going as she’d planned. That good-looking reporter? He’d come and gone, and she’d be damned if he’d exchanged more than three words with Susie, who still seemed to be mooning over the bagel clerk. For God’s sake, he was so inappropriate! Why couldn’t Susie find a nice Jewish boy? Or at least someone with an education and a real job. What had Sondra and Ben invested all that money in private schools and Bennington for, if Susie was just going to throw herself away on some behind-the-counter
shlub
from the store? Was it a class thing, Susie rejecting the affluence she’d grown up in? Was it the exotic appeal of the forbidden? Sondra wasn’t forbidding anything. All she wanted was for her daughter to give a nice
boy like that Ron Joffe a chance. She’d wanted it so much, she even mentioned it to Ida. The woman was such a master of manipulation Sondra thought maybe she could manipulate Susie into his arms.

Julia didn’t seem to think the writer from
Gotham
was nice. Mention his name and she started snarling like a dog at the end of its leash. Who would have thought she’d respond so badly to the pressures of being president? Especially after working in a big, high-power law firm for two years. You wouldn’t think the mere mention of a magazine reporter would throw her into such a state.

The girls were talking. Hovering right outside Julia’s closed door, Sondra could hear their muffled voices but she couldn’t make out the words. Were they plotting something? Or gossiping, maybe? Giggling over Sondra’s thwarted desire to match her daughters up with suitable suitors? Julia had that lawyer, at least. Not Jewish, but his being a lawyer compensated for that. For all Sondra knew, though, the girls were talking about her, complaining. Shutting her out.

Julia never came to her own mother with ideas and questions about the store. She bounced all her ideas off Susie—who didn’t even officially work here. And she bounced all her questions off Deirdre, who undoubtedly knew everything but wasn’t a Bloom.

When Ben died, Sondra had felt closer to her daughters. But now that Julia was filling her father’s chair, she didn’t seem to want that closeness anymore. Suddenly she had ideas of her own. She wasn’t interested in Sondra’s ideas. She wasn’t interested in
any
ideas. All she cared about were teeny-tiny discrepancies in the inventory numbers. She nitpicked over the bagel count, while Jay was off having marathon lunches or playing racquetball during business hours.

Why didn’t Julia pay attention? Why wasn’t she making sure her employees were getting their jobs done? That was her role; she always made sure everything was all right, and if it wasn’t, she’d fix it. She’d been such a sweetie.

Not anymore. She’d had a taste of power and she’d changed. Now she let everything hang out—good moods, bad moods, annoyance, frustration.

It must be Susie’s fault. Susie had always let it all out. Now, instead of Susie becoming more like Julia, Julia was becoming more like Susie. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

Only two more weeks and Adam would be home from college. Sondra hoped he was still a sweetheart, at least. She used to feel as close to her daughters as peanut butter to jelly, but now…now she felt as close as pasta to mustard. They didn’t go together anymore. They didn’t even belong on the same plate.

At least she had a son, and thank God for that.

“W
omen!” he grunted.

God, what a cliché. Every heterosexual man in the western world, and probably a few gay men, too, at one time or another must have sprawled out across a sofa with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other and grunted “Women!” in the same tone of voice he might use upon discovering the dog had pooped on the carpet or the IRS planned to audit him.
Women!

Really, what else was there to say?

Plenty, if the guys announcing the basketball game would quit babbling long enough for Ron’s brain to fill with his own words. Words about
women
. About how generally useless they were, how stupid, how they threw their little hissy fits and refused your calls because, gee whiz, it was so much more fun to be pissed off than to get off your chest whatever was on it. If only Julia had accepted his calls, they could have worked this thing out. He would have said,
I don’t know why you’ve got a bug
up your butt about my helping your grandmother. So shake it off, get your ass over here and let’s have sex
.

Yeah. A calm, rational discussion between adults, a meeting of the minds. They could have gotten back on track in no time.

If only she’d answer her damn phone.

He had tried her at work and at home. He’d developed a special relationship with her answering machine as well as with one of the secretaries at Bloom’s. There were things he wanted to tell Julia, important information about what he’d learned after poring over the past few years of Bloom’s financial records. Information she might actually want to hear.

Beyond being able to discuss Bloom’s with her, he wanted her in his bed. Hard to believe they’d only just gotten together so recently. It seemed as if they’d never
not
been together. The inevitability and certainty of it had nothing to do with love, with eternity or till-death-do-us-part, but damn it, he and Julia were good together, and not being together was turning out to be really bad.

So why wouldn’t she take his calls? Maybe she was out tonight with the
goyishe
lawyer her grandmother had mentioned. Maybe she hated her grandmother so much that she had cut Ron dead just because he’d thought the old lady was a hoot and he’d agreed to do a favor for her.

All right—a favor for himself, too. That was what Julia was really upset about: that Ron would use what he’d learned from the company records in his article.

Of course he would. What did she think, he was an idiot? He had a job to do, he was damn good at it, and if Her Majesty Ida Bloom, Queen of the Deli, supplied him with material that enabled him to do his job better, he sure as hell wasn’t going to seal that material inside a box and ship it back to the sender unused. If Julia was looking for a guy that moronic, a guy who took that little pride in his profession—well, who needed her?

He drank some more beer and pressed the Scan button on the remote. The screen flipped through an absorbing array of offerings: an SUV ad, professional wrestlers in tiger-striped
latex yanking on each other’s hair, a
Saturday Night Live
repeat, a bombastic report on the Battle of the Bulge, an ad for jock-itch ointment, a dazzling cubic zirconium pendant for sale, a preternaturally attractive duo squaring off to the accompaniment of hysterical canned laughter, another SUV ad and a commercial for
Greatest Songs of the Seventies
. Ron couldn’t think of any great songs of the seventies, let alone
greatest
songs. Perhaps the
Greatest Songs of the Seventies
CD would turn out to be blank.

He wished Julia were with him so he could have shared his ironic observation with her. She would have laughed. Maybe she would have snatched the remote from him, turned off the TV and then loosened the drawstring at the waistband of his sweatpants and slid her hand inside, as if he needed any help getting in the mood for her.

But she wasn’t with him. She was doing the hissy-fit thing and leaving him to the mercies of her answering machine. And he was working on his third beer and grunting “Women!”

Queens was weird.

Well, okay, that wasn’t fair. It had a lot more sky than Manhattan, more air, more space. The park Casey took her to for a picnic lunch might well have been smaller than Central Park, but it seemed larger because it wasn’t hemmed in on all sides by skyscrapers.

“Is it really called Flushing Meadows?” she asked, trying not to curl her nose. “That sounds like the name you’d give a sewage treatment center.”

As parks went, Flushing Meadows was adequate: grass, trees, artificial ponds, a few odd buildings left over from the 1964 World’s Fair and lots of broad paved paths filled with kids on scooters, skateboards and in-line skates, cyclists, parents with babies in strollers, parents with toddlers who raced off in assorted directions until the parents hollered, “Get back here this instant!” and dog walkers. And a few couples like Susie and Casey.

Her second favorite thing about Flushing Meadows was that, although Queens residents obviously enjoyed their little patch of green, the place wasn’t clogged with crowds the way Central Park would be on a balmy Saturday like today. Her favorite thing, though, was that she and Casey were a couple.

Neither of them had to say it. It was just there, as if they were wearing invisible matching jackets. When they observed the people around them, analyzing the technique of a skater or chuckling over the rainbow-hued Mohawk sported by a heavily tattooed guy walking a dachshund, when they swapped sandwich halves so they could each have half a turkey on rye, and half a tomato, Swiss and Dijon mustard on whole grain, when they debated whether the rap blaring from someone’s boom box was truly street poetry or just a lot of noise, they were a couple. Something connected them, something they didn’t have to see or feel to know.

It was almost like sex, that connection.

Before going to the park, they had spent a little time at his apartment, which impressed her mostly for being three times the size of the apartment she shared with Anna and Caitlin in the East Village—and Casey didn’t even have to share it because the rent was actually affordable. She had no idea what Bloom’s paid him, but she’d bet it was a decent salary. Plus, he told her, he occasionally did freelance gigs for a caterer he’d gotten to know at the Culinary Institute. He felt Bloom’s ought to be pushing their catering service more. Susie told him to recommend that to Julia. She wanted him to get the credit for a useful suggestion, and she wanted her family to admit that he was clever, with valid ideas to contribute.

She’d never before cared what her family thought of the men she knew. She’d never bothered to introduce most of them to her family. And while she hadn’t cared much what the Bloom clan would think when she’d brought Casey to Grandma Ida’s seder, she cared now. She didn’t want Grandma Ida setting her up with Julia’s magazine guy. If Grandma Ida ever spent five minutes talking to Casey, she would recognize his quality.

They left Queens around five, rode the subway into Manhattan and downtown, and ate pizza at Nico’s. She’d arranged to have the night off, and it was fun to be waited on by the people with whom she usually worked side by side. Casey thought the current window—which featured a bicycle with two fake pizzas where the wheels were supposed to be, and information about Nico’s delivery service—was catchy, but he wasn’t overwhelmed by the pizza itself. “Not enough texture to the crust,” he critiqued it.

After dinner they went to a Jackie Chan double feature, which let out around eleven. Then to a café for espresso and cannolis, and then back to her apartment.

Fourteen hours they’d spent together so far. And now they were going to sleep in the same room, which she was prepared to argue should count toward the final hour tally if he gave her a difficult time about it. A part of her was edgy with excitement, but another part of her was totally calm.
Of course
, that part of her seemed to say,
this is what’s supposed to happen. You spend a day together. You spend a night together. Sex or no sex, you’re connected
.

Unfortunately, Anna and Caitlin were both without plans that evening. Anna told Susie she’d gone out earlier for Thai with Rick, but even though he’d invited her she’d wound up having to pay for most of it because he’d had only eight dollars on him. “Your cousin is a great guy, but he’s a turd, you know?” Anna said.

“That about sums it up,” Susie agreed.

Apparently, there were no hockey teams in town, so Caitlin was home, too. She and Anna retired to the bedroom, and Susie told Casey they would both sleep in the living room. No way was she going to use her bed in the other room while he slept in the living room. If she did, it wouldn’t count toward their total hours together.

Although, as she thought about it, the whole hours thing didn’t seem to matter anymore. She just wanted to be in the same room with him. He insisted that she take the couch, and
she dragged out her old sleeping bag—which at one time had been her cousin Neil’s, although she wasn’t really sure how she’d wound up with it. She had a vague memory of Aunt Martha’s having pressed it upon her when she was packing for Bennington. “Perhaps up in Vermont you’ll become one with nature,” Aunt Martha had predicted. Susie had become one with a few boys at Bennington, but nature hadn’t done much for her.

She gave Casey the pillow from her bed, spread a sheet and blanket for herself over the lumpy sofa cushions, and wondered what would happen next. She didn’t want to sleep clothed, but what was she supposed to do, strip down to her undies in front of him? She’d greatly prefer for him to strip her himself, but that wasn’t going to happen when they still had at least five hours left.

He excused himself to use the bathroom. While he was gone, she shed her black jeans and V-neck, leaving on her kelly-green camisole and panties. She slipped under the blanket and tried to find a comfortable position on the cushions.

Lumps or no lumps, she’d be more comfortable in Casey’s arms. She’d be more comfortable if he just held her, let her use his shoulder for a pillow—even if it was a pretty bony shoulder—and allowed the quiet, steady thump of his heartbeat to lull her to sleep.

He returned from the bathroom wearing only his cargo pants. She tried not to ogle his naked chest, but the whole warm, connected, sex-doesn’t-matter concept was hard to hang on to when she was confronted with the sight of Casey stripped to the waist. His blond hair hung loose against his shoulders, his eyes were radiant despite the late hour, his torso was sleek and golden—and he barely spared her a glance.

“Where’s the light switch?” he asked.

All right, so she didn’t tempt him the way he tempted her. He’d kissed her once in the stairwell at the Bloom Building, decided she wasn’t worth pursuing beyond that one kiss and opted to play with her head for a whole bunch of hours. There she was, clad in the closest apparel to lingerie that she owned,
and he was going to spend what was left of the night no more than five feet away from her, and he didn’t even consider her deserving of a good-night peck on the cheek.

Twenty hours she’d invested in this guy! Twenty hours with him and untold hours dreaming about him, puzzling over him, trying to psyche him out and convincing herself that the effort, however futile, was great fun. And tomorrow she was going to wake up to find him gone, or laughing at her. “Suckered you, didn’t I?” he’d snicker. “Do you honestly think I would have wasted all those hours talking to you if I wanted to get it on with you? Think it through, Susie! Does that make sense?”

No, it didn’t make sense—and the sudden realization caused her nose to clog as tears filled her eyes and backed into her sinuses. The couch was uncomfortable—parts of the upholstery were soft enough to swallow her, and other parts jutted into her as if the cushions had baseballs and burrs embedded in them. She’d sacrificed her pillow to Casey, and her head banged against the couch’s arm. The light was off and she couldn’t see him, but she could hear his steady breathing, she could smell his Ivory-soap scent, and she hated him for having made a fool out of her.

It was well past one-thirty, however, and she’d put in a long day traipsing all over Flushing Meadows with him, and she would be able to hate him more effectively after she’d enjoyed a good night’s rest. Closing her eyes, she mouthed a blasphemy in his general direction and glided into a surprisingly deep sleep.

“Susie.”

She’d barely drifted off, and now someone was rousing her with a sibilant whisper. She resisted, but the voice hissed into her ear again. “Susie?”

Irked, she squinted one eye open. Anna was hunkered down beside the couch. The living room was bathed in murky light that seeped through the window shades. “What?” she grunted, not quite awake enough to remember that she was supposed to be full of resentment about something.

About
someone
. Casey. She hated him; it was coming back to her. She hated him for toying with her for twenty hours and not even feeling enough attraction to her to kiss her good-night.

“Caitlin and I are going out for brunch,” Anna informed her. “We’ll be back at noon, okay? That gives you two-and-a-half hours.”

In two-and-a-half hours, she could stab Casey through the heart, dismember him and shove his body parts down the compactor chute.

She attempted a smile. Anna and Caitlin thought they were doing her a huge favor, clearing out of the apartment so she and Casey could have two-and-a-half hours alone, but she didn’t feel grateful. What could happen between them in those two-and-a-half hours? Besides bloodshed. They could have a nasty argument. She could kick him out. She could phone Julia and ask her to fire Casey—except she’d never do that, because his inventiveness with bagels was too valuable to the store.

Shit. She hadn’t even officially accepted the job as editor of the
Bloom’s Bulletin
, and already she was thinking about what would be best for the store. If Casey’s talent was required by Bloom’s, Susie was just going to have to let him live.

What was happening to her? Why did she care about what was best for Bloom’s? Had she turned into a pod person?