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“Very well, then. What is the first item on your list?”

The first item on my list … what list? I haven’t made a list. All I’ve done is go through the catatog trying not to drool on the pictures. My first item? Well, what does our store need (besides everything)? Which products does it lack more than any other? Flip, flip, flip … I should have made a list. But then I would have thought about it and lost my nerve. And what the store needs is for people to stop thinking. It needs inspiration. Flip, flip, flip … Presto!

“I’ll have some Chessmen,” I pronounce decisively.

“Chessmen?” says the operator.

“You know, those little butter cookies shaped like rooks and queens?” Doesn’t everybody’s grandmother keep a package of stale Chessmen in her pantry for visits by the grandkids? Here, some cookies … from the year before you were born.

“What’s the SKU?”

“The what?”

“Product code.”

“Oh.” Flip, flip, flip … Now I’m starting to feel it creep up on me: hesitation. Second thoughts. Am I really going to defy my long-suffering wife so I can order some butter cookies?

“And give me some of those chocolate-covered Chessmen, too.”

“Next item?”

Now, having successfully fought off self-doubt, I begin to sense a growing freedom. The shackles are falling off. At first I select a few more bland, conservative, New Englandy cookies, but then I move on to the stuff Steinway Gourmet Foods specializes in: world cuisine. Culinary exotica. Gastronomic nirvana. The word “flavor” pops into my head as I peruse the offerings of Indian, Latin American and East Asian cuisine. How did we ever live without it?

Picking up speed and confidence, I order and order and order. Give me four cases of … And yes, a whole box of … Okay, multigrain too … Sure, throw in the fat-free as well.

This feels good, I think. I may be useless when it comes to a lot of things at the store, but I know my way around a Whole Foods. And this isn’t just regular grocery shopping—it’s shopping for the whole neighborhood. What could be more fun?

The only question is, When Gab finds out, will she ever forgive me?

DEATH TOMB

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, SOMEONE TRIES TO BREAK INTO THE DELI. It happens after we close; whoever it is jimmies the lock on the roll-down shutters, then tries to shoulder through the door. Luckily, he triggers Salim’s old alarm, which has a siren like the world’s loudest smoke detector and can be heard throughout the neighborhood. Frightened, the robber runs off. However, after he leaves, the alarm continues to sound, and as is their custom in New York, the police do nothing about it, while the alarm company attempts to contact Salim instead of us. As a result, we are greeted the next morning by some very tired and upset soon-to-be former customers.

Not the ideal start to a Monday. Yet within a few hours it becomes clear this will not be the worst news of the day, or the week, or maybe even the whole year. For that day the mail, which, as a small business owner I’ve come to anticipate with horror (“No, take it back!” I want to say when I see the postwoman coming toward us), brings a letter bearing the dreaded return address of the state department of finance—still a bit early for that tax assessment we’re expecting. We open it and discover that Salim may have accidentally underpaid his sales taxes for the last few years, and as a result the government is levying a whopping eighty-eight-thousand-dollar fine. Which to my unschooled ears sounds like a problem for Salim, not us. But not Gab. She knows. We now own Salim’s business, assets and liabilities; therefore, the government wants the money from us.

Gab looks like she just saw the noose we’re all going to be hanged with. Then, gathering herself, she reads and rereads the letter, poring over each word. When she was working as an attorney, Gab’s signature was thoroughness—she would stay at the office all night not to rack up billable hours but because she couldn’t bring herself to skim through projects. If she thought she’d been careless, it would torture her every second she was away