Chapter Six

Adam was confused.

He was also kind of…well, not exactly angry. Vexed. Baffled. Maybe a little ticked off. When they’d talked yesterday, Uncle Jay had left Adam with the impression that they were going to convince Julia to open an East Side branch of the store. Adam had assumed that Uncle Jay would succeed where he himself had failed. He’d tell Julia about the retail space on Lexington Avenue that Dulcie had mentioned to Adam, near where her parents lived, and explain the value of opening a branch of Bloom’s there, and if all went well, Julia would say okay, let’s look into it. Adam hadn’t known Uncle Jay was actually going to quit.

If he’d quit, he had no intention of launching an East Side Bloom’s outlet. He wasn’t interested in expanding the family business. He was starting something new.

And he wanted Adam to be his partner.

Adam had witnessed Grandma Ida’s inability to reach Uncle Jay during the meeting, but Uncle Jay’s phone would have identified the call as coming from Julia’s office line, so he might have simply chosen not to answer. Adam left the office suite and ducked into the stairwell. Then he pulled out his cell phone and tried Uncle Jay’s number. Sure enough, Uncle Jay answered right away. “Adam!” he said cheerfully. “You’ll never guess where I am!”

He wasn’t at Bloom’s, which might be why he sounded so cheerful. “The golf course?”

“Lexington Avenue, checking out the property you found. It’s fabulous. The rent is a bit steep, but I’ve got financial backers. This is going to happen, Adam. Jacob Bloom’s Delectable Food Emporium. What do you think? Classy, huh.”

What Adam thought was that five words were at least two too many for the name of a store. How would all that verbiage fit on a sign, or in an advertisement? It would look like text rather than a title.

What he also thought was that if they were partners, maybe it shouldn’t be named after Uncle Jay. As if anyone ever thought of Uncle Jay as Jacob.

Finally, what he thought was that if they were partners, Adam would have to quit Bloom’s, too.

Quitting Bloom’s wouldn’t be a wrenching step, at least not to Adam. A year ago, he’d had no intention of joining the business. He’d been planning to move to Indiana, to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at Purdue—“Is that where the chickens come from?” Grandma Ida had wondered. “Not that we would carry those chickens. They aren’t kosher.” Adam’s girlfriend from Cornell had been planning to join him in West Lafayette. She’d expected to keep busy hugging trees and protesting environmental degradation while he collected a modest stipend for playing with abstract concepts under the guidance of a professor as obsessed with numbers as Adam had been back then.

One summer in New York had changed all that, however. Because Julia had asked him, he’d agreed to spend the time between his graduation from Cornell and his departure for Purdue working in the store. He’d met his first ballet student from Juilliard and discovered that—call him shallow—he liked lithe women who shaved their legs. He also liked eating meat and junk food. Tash had been passionate about saving the planet, and somehow she’d believed that Adam could destroy the planet merely by snacking on Cheese Doodles. Or, for that matter, knishes and kugel and some of the other delicacies sold at Bloom’s.

If Uncle Jay opened a store across town, could it possibly sell food as tasty as what Bloom’s offered? And if the food wasn’t as good as Bloom’s food, what was the point?

The point, he realized, was independence. It was proving to Julia that she’d been wrong about refusing to expand the Bloom’s franchise.

And for Uncle Jay, it was probably also about proving to Grandma Ida that he could be every bit as successful as his brother Ben had been. As a younger brother, Adam could relate. Younger brothers had a way of being overlooked and underestimated.

Still…leaving Bloom’s? Could Adam do that to Julia?

He realized Uncle Jay was waiting for him to say something. “So the store for rent looks good?”

“It looks perfect! Wait—hang on.” Uncle Jay said something to someone, then returned to the phone. “One of my backers. He’s from London. International money, Adam. This could be big.”

Was international money bigger than domestic money? And how had Uncle Jay found a London financier? “Is he investing or just loaning you the money?” he asked. “Because if he’s investing, he’s going to want part ownership. And if he’s loaning, he might charge a lot of interest.”

“What was I, born yesterday? This guy is the answer to all our prayers. He’s got more money than he knows what to do with. He needs to park it somewhere. Trust me, this is going to be amazing. I can already see the front windows, displaying only the best. That could be our slogan, Adam: Only the best. I love it. We can do funky things with the windows, like what Susie does with the Bloom’s windows, only classier. We want this to be a class operation. Class all the way. Maybe that could be our slogan: Class all the way.”

“That sounds kind of like ‘Jingle Bells,’” Adam argued.

“You’re right. Only the best. I’ll tell my backers.”

“More than one backer? Are they both from London?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of financing. You’ll take care of inventory. And hiring. We’ll need a classy staff. Do they have a career office at Cornell? We should hire Ivy League graduates, or the equivalent. I’m not saying Ivy League schools are the only places we should recruit, but they set a standard, am I right? We want a very high standard here. There’s another slogan: We set a high standard.”

“I think we should think about more basic things first. The slogan will come later.”

“You’re right. That’s why I need you as my partner, Adam. You’re so basic. First we’ll rent this store. Fantastic real estate. That’s why I need you on board with me. You found our location.”

“Shouldn’t we have, I don’t know, a business plan or something?” Adam had been friends with a few business majors at Cornell. Tash hadn’t liked them—they were too capitalistic, according to her, and of course they were, because that was what majoring in business was all about. But they were smart, and they threw excellent parties, with expensive beer. Not that no-name light piss-water stuff, but flavorful beers. Gourmet beers.

Maybe Jacob Bloom’s Delectable Food Emporium could sell gourmet beers. How did one go about getting a liquor license in New York City? You probably had to sleep with someone. Or kill someone. Adam might be willing to do the former, but definitely not the latter.

Uncle Jay’s exuberant chatter dragged him back from bleak thoughts about murder to the immediate issue of this new enterprise. “We don’t need a business plan,” Uncle Jay insisted. “Did my parents have a business plan when they sold knishes from a pushcart? Did they have a business plan when they moved into the Bloom Building? No. They had vision. They had chutzpah. That’s all you need to start something like this, Adam—vision and chutzpah.”

And maybe a couple of international financiers, Adam thought.

Did the financiers really just want to park their money somewhere, no strings attached? Did Uncle Jay really want to make Adam his partner? If Adam became Uncle Jay’s partner, would he have to leave Bloom’s? If he left Bloom’s, what would Julia think? What would she do? What would Susie do if Adam stuck her with Uncle Jay’s entire job? Would she have to quit working at Casey’s place? Would they break up? Would she blame their breakup on Adam?

His brain was overheating, redlining. He needed to slow down.

But Uncle Jay was going so fast. He was used to speeding, scooting around town in his super-revved Beemer Z3, even though there was too much traffic in Manhattan to put the coupe’s engine through its paces. When it came to starting his own business, Uncle Jay was flooring the gas pedal.

“Grandma Ida seemed pretty upset about your leaving Bloom’s,” Adam said, wondering if that would be enough to get Uncle Jay to test the brakes. “So was Julia. I think everyone was. Like your departure is some kind of existential threat.”

“What the hell does that mean? Wait, hang on.” Uncle Jay conferred with someone, then returned to the phone. “I could spend years listing all the ways my mother has upset me. As for Julia, she’s young. She’ll get over it. I bet your mother wasn’t upset to see me go. She hates my guts.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Adam said, although he had no idea if that was true. His mother hadn’t seemed particularly bothered by Uncle Jay’s resignation, come to think of it. But family members shouldn’t hate one another’s guts. It made for awful holidays and expensive therapist bills.

“Not a problem, Adam. The feeling’s mutual. Sondra and I will probably get along much better, now that I’m gone. Listen, these people here need me. I’ve got a rental agent, our backers, some guy from the tenants’ association. There’s a thirty-story apartment building above this store, did you know that? Oh, and someone from the city health department, because we’re talking food. Bureaucracy, Adam. It sucks, but we’ve got to deal with it. If you want to come over and join this discussion, you know where the place is. Just hop on a cross-town bus.”

“I don’t know, Uncle Jay. There’s stuff I have to do here.”

“Right. You do what you have to do, and then we’ll get together, have a drink, and make plans. You’re old enough to drink legally. It’s time you learn a thing or two about single-malt scotch.”

Adam would prefer microbrewery beer. Or maybe just a nice, fat spliff, but he didn’t think he should mention that to Uncle Jay. “Okay,” he said, because debating the finer points of various intoxicants seemed like a subject for another time. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Uncle Jay said. “Let me know if anyone there is plotting against me. And keep your mouth shut. I don’t want them to know what we’re up to until it’s a fate-accompany.”

Fait accompli, Adam thought, but he didn’t correct his uncle. The inability to toss off a French expression was no indication that Uncle Jay couldn’t run a business. He’d worked at Bloom’s his entire adult life, after all. He’d grown up with it, just as Adam had. He had bravado. He had chutzpah. He had two financiers, and one was a Brit.

This would all work out.

After saying good-bye, Adam tapped the end-call icon and pocketed his phone. He took a few deep breaths, then exited the stairwell, retracing his steps down the hall to the suite of offices. Glancing around, he noticed that all the doors were open as usual, but no one was hollering back and forth. Either they were all shell shocked from the news of Uncle Jay’s departure or they were hard at work figuring out how to replace him.

Hoping his mother wouldn’t spot him, he eased past her office door and slipped across the threshold into Susie’s office.

There was barely room for the two of them in the tiny room. No place for him to sit down, unless he sat on top of her desk or in her lap. She shot him a quick look, then scowled. “I am so pissed,” she whispered.

Adam shut her door and leaned against it. “Because Uncle Jay left?”

“Because Julia thinks you and I should take over his job.”

“It’s only temporary,” Adam assured her.

Susie’s scowl intensified. He could almost feel electrons humming in the air around her, creating an aura of rage. “Just yesterday I told Julia that I was going to start doing poetry slams again. You know what? Writing poetry takes time. It takes focus. It takes energy. So what does she do? She dumps Uncle Jay’s job on us. I don’t want to do his stupid Seders-in-a-Box.”

“They’re pretty cool, actually,” Adam said. “I mean, the concept—”

“I don’t give a shit about the concept.” Susie stewed. “I want my life back.”

“Which life?”

“The one where I stay out late at night and have fun and watch cheesy kung-fu movies. How much of Uncle Jay’s job can you do?” She gestured toward her computer monitor. “I was checking out the website. I don’t know what needs to be done with it. I mean, it’s all there. It works. You click on things. You put them in your shopping cart. You go to check-out and enter your credit card number. What are we supposed to do with it?”

“Keep it up to date?” Adam guessed. He had no idea.

“So, if we’re discounting the blintzes, we have to change the price on the website. I don’t know how to do that. I hope you do. You’re the computer genius.”

“I’m a mathematician, not a computer genius,” he argued.

“Well, I’m a poet. I think you should be the one to change the prices.”

“Are the blintzes on sale right now?”

Susie rolled her eyes. “That was just an example. This coming week, it’s knishes, kugel, and vermicelli. I just finished the Bloom’s Bulletin.”

“What’s vermicelli?”

“A kind of pasta.”

“Why are we selling that? It’s Italian.”

Susie rolled her eyes again. If she rolled them any more, they might pop out of their sockets and spin across the floor, like two big brown marbles, staring up at him with each rotation. The image made Adam smile. Just a fleeting flashback. The weed he’d smoked last night had been pretty damned strong.

“Uncle Jay probably worked with a website geek,” he said. “It’s not like he knows how to do programming. I’ll find out who his geek is and we can send updates to him.”

“First you have to be able to reach Uncle Jay. If this morning’s meeting is anything to go by, he’s not answering his phone. I mean, really—what’s his problem? He walks out, he gives no notice, he shuts off all contact. He blocks his own mother.”

“He didn’t know Grandma Ida was calling him,” Adam said. “If he has caller ID, it would have shown her call coming from Julia’s office. And let’s face it, how many times a day would you like to block Julia?” Good save, he assured himself. Susie would never guess that Uncle Jay was taking calls from Adam, let alone why he was taking calls from Adam.

“Julia can be a pain in the ass,” Susie agreed, staring forlornly at the Bloom’s website on her computer. “There are so many products here. Maybe we can just move the Seder-in-a-Box to the first page of the website for the next few weeks. Once Passover is done, we can move it back again.” She sighed. “Once Passover is done, maybe Bloom’s will have someone new here to handle Uncle Jay’s job. Because I sure as hell don’t want to do it. If I’m going to do it,” she added, gazing around the stifling space where she worked, “I should get his office, right? A window, a couple of chairs, room to move.”

“Room to practice your putts,” Adam joked. If he made teasing remarks about Uncle Jay, no one would suspect him of being part of his uncle’s defection.

“Putz is right. I can’t believe he’s such a dickhead. Although, yeah, I can believe it.”

If she believed Uncle Jay was a putz and a dickhead for leaving Bloom’s, would she believe Adam was a putz and a dickhead for leaving Bloom’s, too?

Probably.

But Julia was whatever the female equivalent of a putz and a dickhead might be. She’d stymied Uncle Jay at every turn. She’d stymied Adam, too. They were smart. Their idea of growing the store was brilliant. But she’d ignored them.

He recalled the excitement in Uncle Jay’s voice when they’d spoken just a few minutes ago. He’d never heard Uncle Jay so psyched about anything. To be sure, Adam couldn’t recall ever being as psyched as Uncle Jay had sounded. Maybe when he’d gotten his first smart phone, back in middle school. Maybe when he’d smoked pot for the first time. Probably when he’d lost his virginity. But never over a work situation. Never over the prospect of doing something daring and independent, something that required chutzpah.

He wanted to have chutzpah. Did that make him a dickhead?

Screw it. Screw Julia’s bossiness and stubbornness. Screw Susie’s whining. Screw his mother for hating Uncle Jay’s guts. Screw Grandma Ida for deciding Julia was her only worthy grandchild.

Screw them all. He was joining the chutzpah/dickhead team.