Cosmo's Deli

by Sharon Kurtzman

His brother Todd said he was in LA. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Wow, you look great.”

  Bless his heart, he’s gone blind. “Thanks.”

  “So beautiful, where are you off to in such a hurry?” He flashes very straight, very white teeth.

  Gaby stares at him and decides fake flattery is better then none. “To meet you.” She smiles back.

  “All right then.” Griffin calls out to a group standing nearby. “You guys go in without me. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

  At the curb, Griffin hails a cab and holds the door open. “Your chariot, my princess.”

  Gaby hesitates, wondering what she is doing. She quickly heave-hoes her reservations and climbs into the cab, snuggling next to him.

  ***

  “I’m so glad I ran into you tonight.” Griffin’s arm lies across Gaby’s bare chest.

  “Mmm,” she says, lying in his bed with her head turned away.

  “I took the red-eye in from LA this morning. We’re thinking of opening another boutique out there.”

  His spunk, sticky between her legs, makes her feel like the popcorn crumbs left scattered and forgotten on a cinema floor.

  His finger plays with her ear. “These look familiar.”

  “Huh.” The earrings. Todd. Shit, I fucked the wrong brother, she thinks. “I stopped into the store the other day.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  I wasn’t there for you either, her mind retorts.

  “Did you meet my brother?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I guess. A guy helped me pick these out.”

  “If it was my brother, he would’ve hit on you. He’s had a crush on you forever, lingerie queen.” His hand grazes her stomach and rests on the faint scar where her U-shaped mole had once been. “I knew that mole was fake. What’d you do, airbrush it in for the ad?”

  She faces him. “It wasn’t fake! My dermatologist said it had to come off.”

  “Wow, that sucks.” His face looks as though he opened a jar of caviar to find tuna fish. “You know you could have it tattooed back on.”

  She sits up. “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just an idea.”

  “Here’s an idea. I could have left it there and dropped dead from melanoma.”

  “Hey, I was just suggesting—”

  “Fuck you!” Gaby pops out of bed.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  She whips her clothes on. “You didn’t want to be with me. You wanted to sleep with my mole. You’re so typical. Arrogant garmento freak!”

  “I heard you went psycho after your company crapped out. You’re a whack job.”

  “I’m gone!” She storms out of his apartment.

  Sh-Click, Sh-click, Sh-click.

  The locks on his door shut in a good riddance aural assault that makes her flinch on the other side.

  ***

  Gaby trips over Mt. Shopping Bags as she heads to her bedroom. Stripping out of her clothes, she retrieves a dirty pair of pajama pants and tee from the crumpled clothes pile on the floor. Throwing them on, she falls on the bed, a few of the scattered Valium pills sticking to her bare feet. She doesn’t have the energy to brush them off, so she curls up with them. Images from the night drip in her mind like Chinese water torture—Annette, Alex, Stan, Griffin, Annette, Alex, Stan, Griffin.

  Mama.

  Gaby grabs the bottle of pills from the nightstand and taps what’s left into her hand. She swallows the whole lot down and lays her head back. For the first time since childhood, Gaby prays aloud before sleep, “Dear Lord, please help me forget.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It is early Saturday morning as trees and guardrails fly past Sara’s car window in a blur. Every so often, she turns a curve and the city skyline peeks out from the distance.

  “You did quite a number,” the contractor told her yesterday. “The ceiling and sheet rock have to be replaced, along with all the insulation.” He took a pen and marked along the wall. “Behind here is your electrical. It’s damaged. And all the hardwoods downstairs are warped. They’ll have to come up.” After thrusting a six-figure repair estimate under her nose, he slammed her with the worst news. “You’ll have to move out during some of the work.”

  Sara’s knees buckled. “Move out? I’m about to have a baby. Where are we supposed to go?”

  “Most folks go to a hotel.” His shrug conveyed that the logistics were her problem, not his.

  “For how long?” Sara asked.

  “It could be a stretch.”

  “How long?”

  “About two months.”

  She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, knowing that in construction time two months means four, if not six. Pressing the issue earned her another shrug.

  “Uh-oh!” Sara quickly changes lanes and heads toward the Triboro Bridge, narrowly missing being hit by a flying BMW. The morning traffic is so thin that twenty-five minutes after leaving her parent’s Westchester house her SUV is already bearing down on the city. Last night she decided she couldn’t handle it anymore. Not all this. Not alone. Bart would have to help her. And now that she knows Bart is in the city, she knows where to find him.

  Every Saturday morning for the last three years, Bart and Peter have played racquetball at the Eastside Health and Racquet Club. They have a standing court reservation from nine until ten. Sara knows Bart would never miss his game. Last night’s quick call to the club reservation desk confirmed that.

  Sara races toward the city hating herself for harboring hope. Hope that everything could go back to the way it was even if the way it was wasn’t really all that great.

  ***

  Ten o’clock and Sara stands outside the club, periodically shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her stomach aches and she feels like she has to go to the bathroom. Panic rises through her like steam off a hot surface. What if Bart decides to take a shower after playing? That could take an extra half-hour and she’s already uncomfortable.

  The club door swings open and Peter walks out, followed immediately by Bart.

  This is it, Sara thinks. He’s going to have to talk to me. She watches the easy way he waves good-bye to Peter and air catches in her throat. He looks the same.

  He’d come back to their apartment every Saturday morning looking just like this. Garbed in the same nylon exercise pants and sweatshirt, a gym bag slung over one shoulder and his hair slicked back from sweat. Tears spring into her eyes, but she forces them away. She expected him to look different, like a stranger. Wouldn’t he have to be a stranger to hurt her so badly, so intentionally?

  Bart doesn’t notice her standing just a few feet away. He cuts across the street, heading up 68th toward Central Park.

  Sara springs after him, but has a hard time keeping up as pain fills her lower abdomen. She walks it off, refusing to stop.

  A DON’T WALK sign at Fifth stops him. Sara quickens her pace.

  Fifteen feet.

  Six feet. The light is about to change.

  WALK. Bart steps off the curb with the crowd.

  “Bart!” Sara shrills.

  He turns and for a fleeting moment he looks happy to see her, but that disintegrates into the familiar dissappointed face she’d seen on him over the last months. She watches him turn away and wonders when that expression joined their marriage and how she hadn’t noticed it.

  “Bart, wait!”

  He keeps walking across the street and breaks into a run as he hits the sidewalk near the park.

  She follows. “Bart, please!”

  As he glances back over his shoulder, a food deliveryman on a bike speeds toward him.

  Bart doesn’t see him.

  She opens her mouth to yell.

  CRASH.

  A crowd instantly gathers around the tangle of bodies, metal and splattered food. Sara pushes her way through just as a bystander pulls the bike off the top of the pile.

  “No!” Sara screams. />
  Bart is on the ground unconscious, blood pouring from his head.

  Rushing toward him, Sara’s body feels like it is wading against a tide, surrounded with silence except for the shrill of her own voice. “Call 911! Someone, call 911! My husband is bleeding! Oh my god! Help him, call 911! Call 911!” She crumbles to the ground and takes his hand, her body rocking, her words mumbled. “Oh my god, don’t die. Oh my god, don’t die. Please don’t die.”

  She feels the baby shift abruptly in her womb and warm liquid rushes down her legs. The sound of an ambulance grows closer as her amniotic fluid and his blood flow like tributaries onto the sidewalk.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Renny hauls herself up the subway stairs, weighed down by a backpack full of tchotchokes and arms grappling with two boxes overflowing with files. She wishes she’d taken a cab. You’re unemployed, her thoughts snap. No job, no income, definitely no cabs. A ringing from her backpack forces Renny to plop the boxes down, providing brief relief from her exhaustion. She fishes her phone out from the bottom of her bag. “Hello.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Lucy says. “What’s wrong with your cell phone? It kept saying you were unavailable.”

  “I don’t know. I tried to make a call earlier and I couldn’t get a signal. I was at the office clearing out my stuff.”

  “I’ve got news.”

  “Great,” Renny’s cracks. “What now? No, let me guess. Georgie and Tawney are doing it live on the Internet? Gee, where can I hook up and watch?”

  “This is good news. Remember Mr. Giggles?”

  “Yeah.” Renny sits on a box, which sags under the weight.

  “After a few drinks last night we went back to his place. As it turns out, he’s a buyer at Bratton Media and he just happened to have two tickets to the Q92.7 bash at the Meltdown. They were laid out on his dresser.”

  “I’m thrilled for you. Have a good time.” Renny tucks the phone between her ear and shoulder and hoists her boxes back up.

  “You don’t get it. I have his tickets. Do you want to go with me tonight?”

  “You didn’t steal his tickets, did you?”

  “Don’t get all high and mighty on me. The shit is married. His wife is out of town for the weekend and he thought he’d have a little fun. Well, I am no guy’s Other!”

  “Other?”

  “Hello! Other as in Oth-er wo-man. Never have been, never gonna be. So let’s just say I acquired the tickets. Big F’in deal! I figure he owes me a good party. It starts at five. I can swing by in a cab at six. We’ll be fashionably late.”

  That’s Lucy, Renny thinks. No one messes with her and gets away without payment. A night out at an A-list party certainly sounds like more fun than sitting around her apartment waiting for her mother to end the silent treatment. Renny called her parents three times that morning, but her mother wouldn’t get on the phone. “Make it six-thirty. I need time to run up to my apartment and shower.”

  ***

  The microwave clock reads six twenty-five as Renny grabs her keys off the counter. That afternoon when she opened the Mu Mu garment bag to get dressed, she found the red mini dress with the diamond cut-outs instead of the black one she assumed Francine gave her. Gaby must have told Francine to switch them.

  At first Renny wasn’t going to wear it, but then she slipped it on, just to see how it looked. She checked her reflection in the mirror and all she could think of was Tawney’s comment, Great dress…but not you. It was a dress that screamed daring, bold and sexy. That’s when Renny decided, “Fuck it. Tonight I am this red dress.”

  Renny leaves the kitchen and puts her lipstick on facing the small mirror in her foyer. Her hair cascades around her shoulders in loose curls completely devoid of kink, thanks to about a gallon of Bed Head Defrizz. She smiles to make sure nothing is in her teeth and perches on tippy-toes to get as much body view as possible. Glancing down at the Princepessas Renny can’t help clicking her heels together, the red rhinestone bows reflecting against the wall like ruby stardust. The phone rings and Renny grabs it, “Lucy, I’ll be right down.”

  An unfamiliar woman’s voice tells her, “This isn’t Lucy.”

  “I’m sorry. Who is this?” Renny asks.

  “Do you know a Herman Mendelbaum?”

  Renny can’t believe the question. “Who is this?”

  “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself. My name’s Laura Shacker. I’m Herman Mendelbaum’s daughter.”

  So that’s who Laura is, she thinks. “Oh my god.” Call waiting beeps in. “Can you hang on a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  Renny clicks over. “Hello.”

  Lucy shouts, “I’m downstairs and the meter’s running.”

  “Give me a minute and I’ll be right down.” Renny clicks back. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” The woman answers.

  “I do know your father. Only I didn’t know his name was Herman. He’s been calling me for the last few months. Wait, how did you get my number?”

  “The nursing home just gave us all his phone records. Do you mind my asking why he’s been calling you?” she asks, suspicion peeking through her words.

  Renny understands. There are so many con artists that prey on the elderly; she probably thinks I’m one of them. “You’re father started calling me out of the blue about four months ago. At first I would hang up on him, because I thought he was a crank. I guess I got used to him though, because after a while I started listening. And I think he did too. But he thinks my apartment, or my number, belongs to a place called Cosmo’s Deli. I found out it used to, but obviously not anymore. I tried to tell him that, but it didn’t exactly sink in.” She asks, “Can you tell me where or what is Cosmo’s Deli?”

  Laura Shacker fills in the Mendelbaum blanks for Renny. “My parents lived in the city their whole lives together. Fifty-two years. Around the corner from their apartment was Cosmo’s Deli. Whenever my mother didn’t feel like cooking we’d go there. Even when I was a kid we did that. That place was there forever. My mother passed away about eight years ago and my Dad still had all his meals from Cosmo’s Deli. My mother wouldn’t let him lift a finger in the kitchen, so he’d never learned to cook for himself. Different generation.”

  “My father’s the same way. I don’t think he’s ever cooked a meal in his life,” Renny remarks.

  “The waitresses knew my father was lonely and that he missed my mother terribly. So when he’d call or come in they’d make conversation with him. He went into an assisted living home about five years ago. Coincidentally, Cosmo’s closed a few months after that. My brothers and I used to joke that they had to close because they lost their best customer.”

  Renny realizes she moved into her apartment about that time, inheriting the old deli’s phone number. But it didn’t add up. “Your father didn’t start calling me until about four months ago.”

  “That’s when we moved him into the nursing home. He’s got Alzheimer’s. I don’t think he liked it there very much.”

  Renny can’t believe she’s finally found Mendelbaum. “Would it be okay if I visit him there? We’ve kind of become friends.” The question is met by silence. “I know I’m a complete stranger to you,” Renny stammers. “And I don’t want anything from him. I just would like to meet him.”

  Laura Shacker sighs. “My father passed away yesterday.”

  Renny’s breathe catches in her throat. “I’m so sorry,” she murmurs into the phone.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I hope my father didn’t cause you any trouble or inconvenience. If he did I’m very sorry. I didn’t know he was calling you.”

  “No, not at all.” Renny remembers her hysteria the other night and how Mendelbaum’s call soothed her. “I want you to know his calls made a real difference for me. It was a pleasure talking to him. He must have been a good man.”

  Her voice breaks, “Thank you, he was.”

  As they say good-bye, a tear streams down Renny
’s cheek. She hangs up the phone and is reminded of the old proverb—bad things happen in threes. First Gaby’s mother, then Mendelbaum. Her mind resists the leap to—.

  Lucy pounds on the door. “Hello,” Lucy shouts. “You’re paying for this cab, ‘cause the meter’s still running.”

  “I’ll be right out.” Renny sniffles, wiping the sadness from her eyes but not the dread from her heart.

  ***

  Renny’s Princepessas touch down in the Promised Land as Lucy tugs her by the arm over the threshold of Meltdown. Loud techno-music pulses all around and Renny’s eyes struggle to adjust to the club’s dim lighting. She shouts over the music, “How am I going to find him in here? It’s packed.”

  “I’m sure he’s not down here. Mr. Giggles told me there’s a VIP room upstairs.”

  “Can we get in there?”

  “No problem. We’ll wave a green invitation.”

  “But you gave the guy at the door our passes.”

  “I’m talking about money.” Lucy rubs her fingers together. “How much cash do you have?”

  Renny opens her small black purse, which holds the single girl’s equivalent of name, rank and serial number: ATM card, cab fare, apartment key, Bobbi Brown Ruby Shimmer Lipstick and a driver’s license, solely for picture ID purposes since keeping a car in the city is an unaffordable luxury. Renny pulls out three twenties, realizing the bus tickets her father gave her last week are stuck between the bills.

  Lucy points to the tickets, “I don’t think round-trip to Jersey is going to get us into the VIP room.” She grabs the cash, “That should do it.”

  Renny takes it back. “I don’t think so. What about you?”

  “I never carry cash.”

  “How do you go out to a club without any money?”

  “Because I have these.” Lucy opens her wallet and an accordion cardholder with over thirty credit cards cascades to the floor. “Everyone takes plastic and besides, the guys are the ones payin’ for the booze.” With a flip of her wrist, the whole thing is back in her bag.

  Renny hands her a twenty. “Here.”

  “That’s it?” Lucy balks.

  “I need money for cab fare after this fails.”