Love in Bloom's (29 page)

“Just that I don’t think she and I would be…compatible.”

“Forget compatible. Sondra said…” Ida sighed and peered at Lyndon. “Why do I listen to Sondra? She’s always trying to stir up trouble. She should keep her nose out of other people’s business. Her nose is too small, anyway, am I right?” At Lyndon’s helpful nod, she turned back to Ron. “So. You’re not interested in Susie.”

He didn’t have the nerve to say no flat out. “I doubt Susie would be interested in me,” he said, instead. “What I’m interested in is, why did you put Julia in charge of Bloom’s? Why did you skip over Jay and Sondra and name Julia the president?”

“Why?” Ida seemed surprised by the question. “Because Julia is just like me, of course.”

He stared at the old woman. Her lips curved in an unremitting scowl, her gaze pierced, her chin jutted. Julia was nothing like her.

“Julia thinks the company is bleeding,” he said.

Ida Bloom pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Bleeding what?”

“It’s not growing. Profits aren’t what they should be. You’ve got a bustling business, yet it’s not making money the way it should be. This is the mystery at the heart of your store, Mrs. Bloom. Can you explain it?”

“What are you talking? It’s doing fine.” She fiddled with one of several gold bangles ringing her bony wrists. “There are ups and downs in a retail business, always. When my parents were selling knishes from a pushcart on the sidewalk, there were ups and downs. You think lots of people want to buy hot knishes in August? So there were downs. Then it got cold and there were ups. You’re not in retail, what do you know?”

“I do know a fair amount about business, Mrs. Bloom.” He eyed the tape recorder to make sure the tape was moving. “I have an MBA and I write a weekly column on business and finance for the magazine.” He leaned forward slightly. “Is Bloom’s in trouble, Mrs. Bloom? Shouldn’t the store be earning greater profits?”

“Don’t be silly,” she scoffed. “Bleeding? I never heard from such a thing.”

“Have you talked to your accountant about the store’s performance?”

“Myron?” She issued a disdainful grunt. “Look, you want to write a story? Don’t write a story about Myron. He’s a
schlemiel
. A good man, but not worth a story. Here’s the story you should write—the story of Isaac Bloom.”

Ron lifted a pen as if waiting for her to tell that story.

“Isaac was my husband. He came over after Krystallnacht. You know Krystallnacht? He was just a young man, and he
came steerage to America. We met, we married, we took over the knishes cart and we turned it into Bloom’s. Hard work. Oy, such work we did! But here was the magic of Isaac. He could schmooze. You know what schmoozing is?”

Ron nodded.

“Isaac, he could schmooze anyone into buying anything. A woman would come into the store thinking she wanted to buy only a quart of borscht, he’d say, ‘Mrs. Zaretsky, what a lovely scarf. So how’s your son? He still has that cough? Hot, wet cloths on his chest, that’ll break up the phlegm. What do the doctors know? Hot, wet cloths, I’m telling you.’ And the next thing, Mrs. Zaretsky is buying a challah, some pickles, a pound pastrami. That was the way Isaac was. He used to say it didn’t matter what you sold, as long as you were paying attention to who you were selling it to.”

“The people I’ve talked to imply that
you
were the brains behind the store.”

“I was,” Ida agreed. “But Isaac was the heart. You can’t sell if you don’t have heart.” She ruminated for a minute, her bullet-hard eyes aiming at him. “So, you think the heart of my store is bleeding?”

“You tell me, Mrs. Bloom.”

“My son says Julia worries too much, she fusses over details. You know so much about business, what do you think?”

Ron paused to consider his answer. “What you’ve got, Mrs. Bloom, is a very insular company. You’ve got family running the place, along with a couple of outsiders so close they might as well be family, too. There’s no objectivity at work in the way Bloom’s is run.”

“Julia’s the objectivity.”

“She’s trying to figure out why the store isn’t doing better.”

“She told you to put that in the article?” Ida waved at his pad, as if there were any question which article he might put it in.

“Actually, no. She told me to keep it out of the article. And I hope I can, Mrs. Bloom. But—”

“What kind of article is this, anyway? You want to write bad things about Bloom’s, am I right? Like those silly magazines that always have bad things about perfectly nice actors and actresses, that they’re on drugs, they’re breaking up their marriages, they cheat on their taxes, their titties are falling out of their dresses, all kinds of bad things. You’re going to put in your magazine that we’re insular. What is that, anyway? I thought it was something to do with diabetes.”

Explaining insulin wasn’t worth the effort. “It could be that the family is sparing you,” he suggested. “According to Jay and Sondra, you’re not all that involved in the running of the store anymore—”

“I’m the CEO,” she announced. “What does that stand for again, Lyndon?”

“Chief executive officer,” he supplied.

“That’s right,” she agreed, nodding resolutely. “Chairman of the board. If the store is bleeding, someone’s supposed to tell me. Certainly they should tell me before they tell you, some reporter who wants to write bad things about my family.”

“I don’t want to write bad things,” he insisted. It wasn’t his fault that bad things sold more magazines than good things. “I don’t understand why Bloom’s isn’t earning profits hand over fist. The store is always full of shoppers. The quality of the merchandise is excellent. Do you think someone is skimming?” he asked. “Myron, maybe?”

“Myron doesn’t know from skimming. No one is skimming.”

“Deirdre? Do you suppose she might have a reason to want revenge?”

“Everybody’s got a reason,” Ida said flatly.

If she knew Deirdre had been her son’s paramour, she gave no indication.

“I came here to make sure you wrote a nice story and put in something about my Isaac, may he rest. I didn’t come here so you should write bad things about insular and skimming.”

Ron didn’t remind her that she’d come to try to sell him on Susie. “I’ll include everything you said about Isaac,” he assured
her. “But in the meantime, Julia says merchandise is disappearing.”

Ida suddenly sat forward, reached across the desk and clamped a surprisingly strong hand over Ron’s. “My granddaughter will suffer if you write bad things.”

Her protectiveness toward Julia appealed to him. “I intend to write the truth, Mrs. Bloom,” he told her. “I don’t want to do anything to make Julia suffer.”

“Then don’t put in anything about this—the bleeding, the diabetes, all that stuff.” She released his hand and settled back in her chair. “You know so much about business, you think the store should make more money? Tell me how. New windows? Susie’s doing new windows. Computer? Jay does computer. Low fat? Sondra thinks we need more low-fat foods. She’s always on a diet. So fine, introduce low-fat foods into the inventory. But you can’t make a low-fat bagel, I’ll tell you. Bagels already have no fat.” Her gaze met Ron’s, steady and challenging. “You’re such an expert, you tell me. Nobody ever skimmed from my store. So what else would make these problems you think we’ve got?”

“I haven’t reviewed your store’s finances, Mrs. Bloom. I can’t begin—”

“You talked to everyone. You know.” Her eyes hardened, almost accusing. “You think Julia doesn’t know how to run the store? She doesn’t have the heart, she doesn’t have the brain, is that what you’re saying?”

“Of course not.” But how could he know for sure?

“So, you’ll come,” Ida was saying.

“I’ll come where?” Once again he had to scramble to catch up to her.

“You’ll come and figure out why Julia thinks the store is bleeding.”

She nodded to Rollins, and he rose and helped her to her feet. Ron sprang to his feet, as well.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“My store could be bleeding, and you’re worried about
ideas? Come and tell me what’s wrong, Mr. Hoo-ha Business Expert. If the store has a problem, someone has to tell me what it is. Jay won’t. Sondra won’t. Julia doesn’t know. So you’ll come.”

If she was serious about letting him investigate Bloom’s finances, he could write the truth about Bloom’s—and help Julia, too. He had one week to get the piece finished and on Kim’s desk. Why not review the store’s records and turn the article into what his editor wanted it to be?

“You find a problem,” Ida challenged him, “and I’ll nominate you for that prize, what’s it called? The Plotzer Prize.”

“The Pulitzer,” he corrected her.

“That’s the one. Let’s go, Lyndon. I need to get back to the store and find out if it’s bleeding. You come with us,” she ordered Ron.

“I can’t. I’ve got…work,” he said vaguely, because the only work he had was the Bloom’s article.

“So you’ll get your work done later. Come.” She hooked her hand around his elbow and pulled him away from his desk. If she looked no older than seventy, her grip felt no older than a twenty-five-year-old’s. “First we’ll fix Bloom’s, and then you’ll write your story. And maybe you could talk to Susie a little, see how things go. Not that I’m pushing, but it wouldn’t kill you to talk to her.”

There was a crisis in the deli-meats cooler. A trucker whose first language was Latvian had dumped a delivery of Camembert and Roquefort in with the meats. Bloom’s wasn’t strictly kosher, but sensitivity to the laws of kashruth meant not tossing cheeses in with the meats.

As president, Julia had overseen the removal of the cheeses. She’d calmed down a few fretful elderly customers, including one wizened man who shouted at her that if only he were dead he could be rolling over in his grave right now.

Julia was not going to discard the cheeses or the meats—or, for that matter, the cooler. She assured the man who wished he
were dead that she’d have a rabbi come in to say a prayer over the meats, and that mollified him. He didn’t move from the bin, though. Evidently he intended to remain in place until the rabbi arrived.

She had no idea how to summon a rabbi on such short notice. Returning to the third floor, she called through Deirdre’s open door, “Do you know a rabbi?”

The minute the words escaped her, she clapped her hand to her mouth. Why would Deirdre, of all people, know a rabbi? And why was Julia hollering through open office doors? Had the culture of Bloom’s permeated her that thoroughly?

Deirdre slipped her feet into her spike-heeled shoes and stood, straightening each long limb until she loomed over Julia. “I have a variety of rabbis in my files,” she said. “You want Orthodox, Reformed, Hasidic or Zionist rabble-rouser?”

Julia gazed up at her and experienced a soul-deep shudder of understanding. No wonder her father had fallen for Deirdre: not because of her gangly appearance, her toothy smile, her wispy red hair and her eyes the color of unripe crabapples. Not because he’d wanted an illicit thrill, or because he’d experienced an uncontrollable urge to liberate himself from the constraints of his marriage, but because Deirdre had a variety of rabbis in her files. For that alone, Julia was half in love with the woman.

“We need a blessing said over the meat in the deli-meats refrigerator,” Julia told her.

“Reformed,” Deirdre decided, flipping through the wheel of phone numbers on her desk. “I’ll take care of it.”

With a weary sigh, Julia nodded, thanked her and continued to her own office. She slumped in her chair and shook her head. If she ever confronted Deirdre about her affair with Julia’s father, Julia would lose her. And if Julia lost her, Bloom’s would collapse.

Her father and Deirdre had had what they’d had. Maybe it had been nothing more than lust, maybe the result of boredom or too much time spent in proximity. It had been wrong, it had been dishonest, but it was over. Nothing Julia did today could
change what her father and Deirdre had done years ago. But what she did today could affect what happened tomorrow.

She needed Deirdre, if only for those catastrophic times when Baltic-native deliverymen dumped cheese into the meat bin.

The sound of footsteps, barely muffled by the paper-thin carpeting, alerted her to someone’s approach. She glanced toward her door in time to see Joffe, and her spirits rose like a helium-filled balloon. “Hey! What are you doing here?” she asked, leaping out of her chair and crossing to the door.

He closed the door and opened his arms. She settled into them and met his lips with a sweet, warm kiss. It still amazed her that being kissed by him was like getting hit by a wrecking ball, only less painful. She felt shattered inside, shaky, on the verge of collapse. She wouldn’t mind collapsing, as long as when she did collapse and wound up on the floor he’d be down there with her, still kissing her.

But he ended the kiss before they could get to the down-on-the-floor part. “What are you doing here?” she asked again.

“Your grandmother brought me,” he said.

“What?” She fell back a step and gaped at him. “Grandma Ida?”

“I think she wants to set me up with your sister.”

“You’re kidding.” Julia didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. She opted for laughter. Susie and Joffe together made about as much sense as liverwurst and Camembert.

“I did my best to discourage her,” he said, moving farther into the room. “She’s a stubborn woman, though.”

“When did you see her?”

“Today. She wanted input into the article.”

Julia pursed her lips, less than thrilled. Grandma Ida had her own agenda, and no one—probably including Grandma Ida herself—knew what it was. “So you interviewed her?”

“She came all the way to my office to see me. She was insistent.”

Julia had never been to his office. To think her grandmother had been there miffed her. “Did she tell you anything you can use in your article?” she asked cautiously.

“Some interesting stuff about your grandfather.” He ran his hands gently over Julia’s shoulders. “In the course of our conversation, it came out that I have some business expertise, and she asked me to figure out why Bloom’s is bleeding.”