Chapter Sixteen #2
“I’m at the stage of my life and my career,” Abe replied as he checked a temperature gauge, “that I only do the kind of taxes that fascinate me. Artists who do visual art, event design and charity work fascinate me. My friend who can’t keep his hands out of every single pot he sees that he wants to fix fascinates me, and someone building a business up from nothing after her piece-of-shit former boss screwed her over fascinates me.
If your documents are in order,” he continued, “I’ll do your taxes. ”
She swallowed. He was, in fact, making the offer—and taking a very obvious pot shot at Ida while he did so. Maybe there was truth to the fact he’d declined to cater the wedding because of Ida?
But that wasn’t the conversation they were having at the moment.
And whatever conversation they were, in fact, having, was something Abe was dictating the tenor of.
Years of event planning meant Naomi’s default was to listen and pull threads of moods out of people, whether they were her client, whose tastes and feelings were primary for the event she’d be planning for them, or a contractor she was in negotiations with.
“Thank you,” she said, clear at the response required from her at that moment. “I appreciate it.”
And as she made to stretch her leg, she saw Abe shake his head out of the corner of her eye.
“We’re not done,” he said, as if to put a finer point on the situation.
She nodded, knowing she hadn’t really moved, but also clear that her host was dictating not only the direction, but also the tone of the conversation.
And he’d also done her one big favor.
“I’m all ears,” she said.
“Because it occurs to me,” he continued as he stepped away from the smoker, crossing his arms, “that as you’re building up this company, you’re also saving the wedding of someone I’ve gotten to know, and that a few of my friends have a special interest in.”
She nodded.
“You’ve been talking to people, setting things up, pulling contractors together and signing them to your new business.”
“I have been,” she said. “I’ve been really lucky, and I’ve gotten great recommendations.”
“But it seems,” he continued, “that you have one particular job open, which would allow me to see how you organize your company up close and personally. Which would be important to me as both a potential vendor and as your tax accountant.”
She nodded, deciding to push the conversation slightly. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, or what you might want to do. But one of the open vendor slots is saved for a caterer I trust. If that’s something you might be interested in.”
This was her host’s turn to nod, as if they were passing the conversational football of a gesture between them.
“What you have to understand,” Abe continued, “is that like Max Parker-Roth, I’ve been able to leverage my skills to benefit each other.
I don’t have to take on every single tax client who comes knocking at my door, and I don’t have to do every barbecue pop-up or catering job that comes my way.
Which means, that if the head of an event planning company is a snobby idiot who publicly bashes the culmination of my wife’s life’s work as a ‘television show that is both uncouth and airs way too much of our community’s dirty laundry for the world to see?
’ I don’t have to ever take a job she offers no matter who it’s for. ”
Naomi nodded; there it was. The confirmation Abe wouldn’t cater her cousin’s wedding because of Ida’s involvement, right there and clear in front of her. She always knew Ida was a horrible person; but the very clear evidence that Ida’s careless words had gotten back to Abe, and also Batya?
And the consequences that those careless words caused? Icing on the cake.
Icing on the cake.
“After seeing you in action and getting to know your sister,” Abe continued, stepping into the conversational space in a situation where Naomi didn’t know what to say. “I probably shouldn’t have to ask, but in this day and age you have to make sure.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Ask me anything.”
“I assume you’re not the kind of person who would treat people and their dreams so callously?”
Naomi shook her head. Vehemently. “Nope. Not at all. People are important; their dreams are important. You can’t go into event planning and be judgy about dreams because both show up in the event you’re planning for them if it’s personal.
And if you’re judgy about their event, that makes for a horrible event. ”
Abe nodded. “Good. Just had to make sure about the kind of choices you make and would continue to make.”
“Understandable.” Naomi paused. “I want to make sure that my company reflects my values, not the values of someone who no longer is in business. Acceptance. Love. Joy. Professionalism.”
Abe nodded, and Naomi liked the expression that followed it.
“Good to hear,” Abe continued. “Anyway, I’d like to take a look at your contract. Do you have information about what your cousin may have wanted?”
She pulled out the blue ombré binder, flipped to the food section and removed the typed notes on menus. “I do,” she said, passing over the stapled packet of papers, and a contract from a second folder. “Obviously we’re running short on time, so…”
“Nope,” Abe said cutting off any conversation about altering the menu concepts Judith had initially wanted. “I can call in a few favors,” he said, flipping through a few of the pages. “I can also ask someone here for a favor if he’d be interested?”
As she and Jason had discussed this together the night before, as well as in the car, and when they’d recounted the conversations they’d each had with Liv and Artur, she didn’t have a problem answering. “I think he can be persuaded.”
“Good,” he said with a smile. “I think we have a deal, yes?”
“We do,” she said. “And thank you.”
“Don’t thank me now. I haven’t signed anything yet, and you haven’t seen your taxes,” he said with a laugh.
“The fact that you’re stepping in to help me, and my business, on both levels means a great deal to me,” she said. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”
He clapped her on the shoulder. “Continue to treat people well,” he said, “continue to be as lovely to people as I’ve heard you are, and you’ll have no problems.”
Which was a compliment she’d never expected, but very much needed.
And as she listened to Abe describe the process of watching the temperature, Naomi found herself realizing how lucky she was, and how wild the last few days of her life had been.
*
The irony of being left alone in a chef’s kitchen was more than enough for Jason to deal with.
His fingers twitched as he stared at the multi burner stove, the oven that opened top to bottom, and the double-door refrigerator with the craft ice cubes. He dreamed of opening cabinets and pulling out pots and pans, playing with ingredients. The things he could create in this kitchen…
But invading someone else’s space, especially the kitchen of another chef, without permission, was not how he wanted to start a friendship.
Instead, he focused on what was going on: how he was waiting by himself in the kitchen for Batya to return after she’d marched Naomi back to the backyard where the smokers were.
As a chef himself, he understood how precise cooking stages were.
By this point in their lives and marriage, it would stand to reason that Batya knew the stages of Abe’s smoking process as well as Abe did, and more specifically what Abe needed at that stage.
He could understand the fact that if Abe needed company at a particular stage…
and wanted specifically to talk to Naomi, it would be critical to get her back there as soon as he and Naomi had arrived at the house.
Which left him and Batya.
But that, he decided as he poured himself a glass of water, was just an externality: a leftover from the need to get Naomi to Abe and quickly.
Of course, that was when he heard footsteps. “Sorry,” Batya said as she entered the kitchen, noting what seemed to be approval at his drink choice. “The process is such that I needed to get her out there quickly. I apologize for being rude.”
Jason shook his head; just as he’d suspected. “I’m a chef. I get it. I know cooking times and processes. He’s smoking back there?”
Batya nodded, slightly more relieved. “Yep. And he always wants someone back there to keep him company; it feels strange to him to do it by himself when we’ve got company or when he’s just…when it’s just us. And so tonight he wanted to talk to your…Naomi.”
Which meant the conversation he’d had with Artur that morning had, in fact, been recounted from Artur to Batya and Abe.
Most likely, a warning was attached about using certain words around him that corresponded to the threat he’d issued at the coffee shop earlier in the day. “Aaah,” he replied. “I understand.”
Batya nodded. “There were a few things he wanted to say to her, so I figured I’d facilitate that. But also, I really wanted to talk to you.”
He raised an eyebrow.
So not just a random externality.
Hokay.
“Me?” he said, bracing himself for whatever was coming his way. Because knowing the way his life had been going, it could be anything, really. “I’m really not that interesting.”
“You’re a member of the Michigan branch of the Greenblatts?” she replied, sounding matter-of-fact in a way that made him…nervous. “That makes you interesting.”
“That it does,” he said with a smile. For whatever reason, that particular fact about him fascinated people.
At least the ones in New York. “My dad’s grandfather went to Michigan to seek his own fortune after coming to the US and staying with the New York family for a while.
He found a community and a life, and the family moved from Ann Arbor and flourished in the Grand Rapids area. ”