Love in Bloom's

by Judith Arnold

  “I thought Deirdre was supposed to handle the details.”

  Her mother pursed her lips. “Better he should come to me. Deirdre doesn’t run this place.”

  Julia wasn’t so sure of that. She also wasn’t sure she wanted her mother talking to the reporter. Sondra was so eager to minimize Uncle Jay’s contributions to the store that she might just say something negative—for instance, that the on-line sales were stagnant. Or she’d insinuate not only that Deirdre wasn’t running the place, but that Julia, the president, wasn’t, either. Julia might not know what she was doing at Bloom’s, but one thing she ought to be doing was protecting the store’s reputation.

  Her mother left, and she thumbed through the folders, looking for the one with information on last month’s Internet sales. She wondered, in particular, how well the Seder-in-a-Box sold. She’d just found that folder, stuffed between the heat-n-eat folder and the electric appliances folder, when her door opened again, this time to admit Deirdre.

  One glance at the tall, red-haired woman was enough to convince Julia that Deirdre knew more about the store than all the Blooms combined. She’d been with Bloom’s nearly from the first day Julia’s father had become the president. First she was a secretary, then a glorified secretary, then an administrative assistant and finally assistant to the president, a more impressive title than Sondra’s for sure, since Sondra didn’t have a title at all.

  Julia gave Deirdre her best smile. Deirdre had never commented on Julia’s chronic absences. She simply did her job, put things on Julia’s desk, took things off and figured out what Julia needed long before Julia realized she needed anything at all.

  “These are some letters you have to sign,” Deirdre informed her, setting a pile of stationery beside the heap of folders. “Oh, and Ron Joffe from Gotham Magazine is here. I believe he intends to speak with me first, and then I’ll send him in to you. When will you be ready for him?”

  Julia glanced at the stack of letters, then the thicker stack of folders. Stacks or no stacks, she would never be ready for him. “Whenever you’re done with him,” she said bravely.

  “If it’s all the same—” a man’s voice floated into the office from the hallway “—I’d just as soon start with you.”

  The owner of the voice appeared in the doorway. He was wiry and slightly taller than Deirdre, with wavy brown hair crowning an angular face. He wore a gray tweed jacket and blue jeans, and he extended his right hand toward Julia. He marched directly to her desk. “Julia Bloom? I’m Ron Joffe.”

  She had no choice but to shake his hand. His grip was as firm as his gaze. His eyes were an intriguing hue, brown but with undertones of amber and copper, like autumn leaves changing color.

  No, his eyes weren’t intriguing, she corrected herself as she extracted her fingers from his warm clasp. They were very ordinary eyes. He was a very ordinary man. Lean and turbo charged, with a harsh jaw and a golden cast to his skin, and surprisingly wide shoulders for someone as lanky as he was.

  Really, quite ordinary.

  If she suddenly found getting oxygen into her lungs difficult, it was only because she was anxious about the interview. She was worried that Ron Joffe would splash across the pages of the most popular magazine in New York City that Bloom’s had a do-nothing, know-nothing as its president, a woman whose only qualification to run the place was a law degree from NYU, which wasn’t any sort of qualification at all.

  “That coffee smells good,” he said, surveying her office and opting to sit on the couch. “What do I have to do to get a cup?”

  “Write a great article about us,” she said pleasantly. “The coffee is from the store. Deirdre, could you send one of the secretaries downstairs to get a cup for Mr. Joffe?”

  Deirdre gave the reporter a toothy smile. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black is fine.”

  With a nod, Deirdre departed. Julia felt abandoned. She wished she had gone to get the coffee and Deirdre had stayed behind. She didn’t want to be left all alone in her office with Ron Joffe.

  She eyed him cautiously. He was digging assorted paraphernalia from his jacket pockets: a notepad, a pen, a tiny tape recorder. “You won’t even notice this,” he assured her, placing it on the scratched table in front of the couch and popping open a compartment to make sure it contained a tape. “It’s just a backup.”

  She might be a know-nothing, but she knew a few things. “It’s so if I say anything I shouldn’t say, you’ll have incontrovertible proof that I said it.”

  He shot her a look, then grinned. He had dimples, she noticed with some dismay. Ordinary dimples, but still…

  “If you can pronounce incontrovertible, you won’t be saying anything you shouldn’t say.” He pressed a button on the compact machine. “The mike’s built in. Just speak in a normal voice.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. So, you’re Julia Bloom, the new president of Bloom’s. Why you?”

  “Why me what?”

  “Why are you the new president of Bloom’s? Isn’t it hard for you to replace your father, given his untimely death?”

  She decided she didn’t like Joffe. She didn’t like anyone who used the phrase untimely death, even if in her father’s case it was accurate. Deaths happened when they happened. What kind of death could possibly be timely?

  “If you’re asking whether I’m too crushed by grief to handle the job,” she said, “no, I’m not. Of course I miss my father. We all do. No one can replace him. But Bloom’s is more than just one person. It’s family.”

  “Food poisoning, right?” He wrote something on his pad, then peered over the spiral binding at her. “Your father died from food poisoning?”

  “Yes.” She wished she could fabricate a few tears so he’d believe she really did miss her father. She was able to produce only an emotional sigh. “It’s not a happy subject.”

  Joffe shrugged as if reluctant to move on. He studied his notepad, then asked, “What about your uncle? He started working here just a few years after your father did. How come he didn’t get named president?”

  “It was my grandmother’s decision,” Julia said carefully. “She probably believed Uncle Jay was contributing so much where he was, developing our on-line and direct-mail presence. He’s doing a fantastic job there. I can’t imagine we’ve got anyone else on staff who could have taken on that task if Uncle Jay had moved into this office.”

  “Oh, come on—any teenage boy can set up a Web site. Your uncle has some sons, doesn’t he?”

  “My cousins Neil and Rick. Neil runs a charter sailboat outfit in the Florida Keys. You probably ought to interview him. His job is much more exciting than mine.” She smiled, hoping she could disarm Joffe with what he would view as charming modesty rather than the pathetic truth it was.

  He smiled back at her, and the air grew precipitously thinner in the office. She didn’t know why she was having trouble breathing, why her heart seemed to have the hiccups, why she was letting him get to her. She was a confident, successful woman, after all—not necessarily a successful president of Bloom’s, but successful in other contexts. She was a Wellesley graduate. She was an attorney. She’d passed the bar exam on her first try. Surely she could handle this reporter.

  If only his eyes weren’t quite so…beautiful. If only the movement of his hand as he jotted notes on his pad wasn’t quite so graceful. If only he’d close the top button of his shirt so she couldn’t see so much of his neck.

  “So Neil Bloom is a yachtsman,” Joffe murmured.

  “Not really,” she argued.

  Joffe flashed a skeptical smile at her, and she was once again startled by the fact that such an ordinary-looking man could look so extraordinary. He had a big nose, she observed. Straight and thick. It lent ballast to his face.

  His quizzical expression prompted her to explain herself. “What I mean is that Neil works very hard, sailing rich people around the Florida Keys. It’s not like he’s rich himself. ‘Yachtsman’ makes him sound rich.”


  “He’s a Bloom,” Joffe pointed out, jotting something on his pad.

  Or maybe jotting nothing. Julia knew the lawyer trick of pretending to write things down in order to panic the other side. Lawyers made grand flourishes and dramatic scribblings on their elongated yellow pads during trials, negotiations and other assorted confrontations—and frequently all they were writing was quart of milk, peanut butter, mocha fudge ice cream. But they seemed so energetic and intent as they scrawled words onto their pads it gave their opponents something to worry about.

  She wasn’t Joffe’s opponent, and she shouldn’t be worrying so much about what he was or wasn’t scrawling. She took deep, slow breaths, trying to steady her heartbeat, and waited for him to elaborate on his comment. He didn’t. He only studied her, settling deeper into the sofa and propping one leg across the other knee. On his feet were scuffed leather sneakers.

  She knew she shouldn’t speak, but she couldn’t stand having his words linger in the air. He’s a Bloom. What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Do you think being a Bloom means being rich?” she asked when the silence began to make her scalp itch.

  “You tell me.”

  She forced a smile. “I don’t think my family’s finances are an appropriate subject for your article.”

  Abruptly, he leaned forward. “Your family’s finances are intricately bound up in the store, aren’t they?”

  What was he getting at? If she could figure it out, she’d have a better idea how to deflect him. “It’s complicated,” she said vaguely.

  “Let’s uncomplicate it.” He studied his pad for a moment, as if memorizing all those notes about milk and peanut butter. Before he could uncomplicate anything, Deirdre swung into the office, carrying his coffee. His came in a cardboard cup, not a Bloom’s mug. Julia should have told Deirdre to bring him a mug, which he could keep as a souvenir. Maybe that would have convinced him to write a nice article about the store.

  “Thanks,” he said, rising at Deirdre’s entrance and accepting the cup from her. She smiled, nodded and left.

  He settled back onto the sofa, pried the lid off his cup, and took a sip of the steaming brew. “This is great,” he said. “Better than the stuff you get at most neighborhood coffee bars.”

  Julia smiled; she’d have to pass his compliment along to her mother. Sondra would be ecstatic. She’d probably race across the hall to Uncle Jay’s office to brag about it.

  He took another sip, then lowered the cup to the table and scrutinized his notes some more. “Okay—we were discussing the Bloom family wealth.”

  She sighed. She didn’t want to discuss the Bloom family wealth.

  “Your grandparents founded Bloom’s. The store supported them, it supported their sons and it’s supporting their sons’ families pretty nicely. The third generation—yours—all attended private school. That’s not bad for a little mom-and-pop store.”

  “The store has done well,” she conceded, then bit her lip to keep from saying anything more. She wasn’t sure what to say: that discussing money was in poor taste, that the store was still doing well—not that she could prove that without going through the folders her mother had left for her—that he had a hell of a nerve and he’d damn well better tell her what his real agenda was.

  She decided to say nothing.

  “So, what’s the problem?” he asked.

  “What problem?”

  “With the store.”

  “What problem with the store?”

  “Well, it’s losing money, isn’t it?”

  She caught herself before blurting out “It is?” The folders on her desk might answer that question. “The store is doing fine,” she said, praying—for a lot of reasons—that that was close to the truth.

  “What steps are you taking as the new president to make sure of that?” he asked, as casually as if he were enquiring about the location of the nearest bus stop.

  Again she chewed on her lip while she willed her nervous system to settle down. What if the store wasn’t doing fine? Oh God. What if it was in trouble? She was the president, and she didn’t know, and this reporter did know. Unless he was just playing head games with her, hoping to shake a story loose.

  “Bloom’s sells what people want to buy,” she said. “As long as our customers don’t suddenly decide that bagels are repulsive, I think we’ll manage to stay successful.”

  He laughed. It was a quiet laugh, deep in his throat, and it irked her even more. She wished he would fold his little pad shut, turn off his little tape recorder and leave. She wished all his hair would fall out—including his thick brown lashes. She wished that if he ever laughed like that again he wouldn’t do it anywhere near her.

  “I have more questions for you,” he said, shoving away from the sofa’s enveloping cushions, “but they’ll have to wait. Deirdre Morrissey was supposed to be my first interview today.”

  “Yes. You’d better go and interview her.” She hoped her gracious tone concealed her relief at his imminent departure.

  “And then we’ll talk some more.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll have the time,” she said, gesturing toward the pile of folders. “As you can see, I’ve got a lot on my desk.”

  His smile was slightly mocking, as if he believed the folders were full of notes along the lines of milk, peanut butter, mocha fudge ice cream. But he pushed himself to his feet. Julia stood, too, a lawyerly habit. Whenever a deposition or negotiation ended, everyone stood. To remain seated while the other side stood made one seem smaller or weaker.

  She wasn’t sure whether the past few minutes constituted a deposition or a negotiation, but she felt the need to be on her feet, if only to usher Joffe out of her office. Too bad he was so much taller than her. Her shoes didn’t do much to reduce the difference. She ought to start wearing Manolo Blahniks like Deirdre.

  He started to extend his hand, then hesitated. “Just one more question before I go. Why do you have two desks in your office?”

  She felt her panic ebb slightly, leaving room for a glowing nostalgia. “The old desk belonged to my grandfather,” she said, smiling at the stained, battered piece. “When my father became the president of Bloom’s, my mother bought him this new desk.” Twenty-five years old, it hardly qualified as new, but her father had taken meticulous care of it. Unlike Grandpa Isaac’s old desk, her father’s desk had no scratches, no dings, no water stains. No little girl had ever been allowed to complete her first-grade worksheets on its pristine surface.

  “That still doesn’t explain why the old desk is here.” Joffe circled the coffee table and approached the desk, his gaze admiring. Did he think it was a valuable antique or a sentimental eccentricity?

  Julia didn’t believe she was the least bit eccentric, but she certainly felt sentimental about the desk. She crossed the office to join Joffe—to make sure he didn’t leave a mark on it, although God knew one more mark wasn’t going to make a difference. “My father never got around to moving the desk out,” she said, deciding it was all right to talk about this. It was the sort of human-interest detail that might be effective in Joffe’s article, presenting the Bloom family less as rich yacht people and more as human beings. “When I was a little girl, I used to come here after school and do my homework at this desk.”

  “Really?”

  He gently ran a hand over the blond wood. She decided he was showing the proper reverence for it, so his touch was allowed.

  “How about your sister and your brother?”

  She laughed. “My sister used to go downstairs to the store and wreak havoc after school. My brother was just a baby then. He stayed upstairs with a nanny.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “My family’s apartment was upstairs. My mother still lives there.”

  He nodded, but his gaze remained on the desk. He wasn’t taking notes. She glanced over her shoulder at his tape recorder, but she couldn’t tell if the tape was still turning.

  “So, what’s in this desk now?” he asked, tugging on
the center drawer and discovering it locked.

  “It’s empty.”

  “If it’s empty, why do you keep it locked?”

  She stared at him. His smile was crooked, forming a dimple where his mouth skewed higher on one side. The truth was, the desk had been locked from the day she’d first knelt on a chair beside it and traced the dotted-line letters in her alphabet workbook. She’d pulled on the center drawer, just like Joffe. It had been locked then, and every other time she’d tried to open it.

  “The desk was emptied out when my father got his new desk,” she said. Her father had told her this the one time she’d asked him why the drawers were locked. “And the key for the desk got lost. So if there’s anything inside it, we’ll never know.”

  “Unless you pick the lock.” His smile had grown mischievous. Was this his idea of investigative journalism? Pretend to be writing a puff piece on an Upper West Side culinary landmark, and then break-and-enter an old piece of furniture? So much for his treating her grandfather’s desk with the proper reverence.

  “No one is going to pick the lock,” she declared. “My grandfather’s spirit is resting in that desk. Mess with the lock and you mess with his spirit.”

  Her answer seemed to surprise Joffe. It surprised her, too. It was the sort of sassy, defiant, weird thing Susie would say. Susie was more creative, more whimsical, more likely to worry about messing with dead people’s spirits.

  Julia would have to ask Susie if she thought their grandfather’s spirit might be locked inside the desk. She herself had never considered the possibility before now.

  Evidently, Joffe was impressed by her having thought of it. Impressed, or maybe just amused. “You think his spirit’s in there?”

  “Why not?”

  “You ought to hold a séance,” he suggested. “If you heard a rapping, you could assume it was the old guy inside, banging on the drawer.”