He walks over to the kitchen counter—a very unrenovated hideous orange Formica—and removes the contents of the Ess-a-Bagel bag, sulking.
The maddening part is the idea was sound. And at the beginning, everything had gone according to plan.
The Brod had been at the top of the city’s “most anticipated” lists. Reservations for the early weeks were impossible to find. But critics, food bloggers, and the diners themselves expected The Brod to be a whimsical, modern upgrade to the original Brodsky’s. What they didn’t want was braised sunflower with sunchoke fumet for $37.
East Village locals wrote angry screeds on neighborhood blogs. The Yelp reviews called The Brod a betrayal and insisted that Danny Kestenberg must be rolling in his grave. When a review in The New York Times went viral （“The Brod is a culinary Oedipus complex”）， reservations dried up. Josh had to lay off the staff just a few months after opening.
Briar pops up on his right side, her ridiculous coat giving her the look of a stubborn Muppet, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “What if we didn’t sell? We could reopen as a deli again—”
“No.” The iconic neon sign, now sitting on his Restoration Hardware runner, is a nagging reminder of his giant fucking failure. He has zero desire to return to the kitchen where his dad would plant himself in front of the prep table to make the exact same bland egg salad every Wednesday afternoon.
At night, when he’s trying and failing to fall asleep in his drafty bedroom, Josh hears Danny’s voice, echoing around his brain, louder than ever. Why do you gotta make everything so damn convoluted? My food wasn’t good enough for you?
This time, he can’t shout back. Can’t apologize. He’ll just have to live the rest of his life with the knowledge that Danny was right.
Briar removes her coat and takes a seat at the dining table where Josh has never hosted a dinner party. Sophie picked it out.
“You can’t just sit up here in a creepy apartment, licking your wounds for another six months,” she says. “It’s a high-risk industry. You misfired. Now you have to deal with it.”
Bold words from a twenty-four-year-old who’d never so much as lifted a dishrag at the deli.
Josh unwraps his bagel, inspecting it and placing it on a small white plate. Untoasted sesame seed bagel loaded with cream cheese and a sliced tomato.
“Every fucking time. I said a thin—thin—schmear of plain. This is fucking scallion.” He slides the plate to Briar. “Did you eat? You can have this one.” He retrieves a second sesame seed bagel and a separate container of cream cheese from the bag. He always orders a backup because they load up the bagels like they’re troweling concrete. “Salt the tomato first. They forgot the capers.”
“For the record, I warned you not to respond to that review.” His sister swipes a finger through the mountain of cream cheese and tastes it before reaching for the saltshaker. “I’m a marketing professional and you never listen to me. This isn’t toasted?”
“You’re an influencer—”
“Content creator and consultant.”
“—and it wasn’t a review.” Josh saws into the backup bagel with a steak knife. He can’t remember the last time he opened his knife roll. “It was a hit piece. And we don’t toast bagels in this household. It’s blasphemy.”
“God,” his mother says, from where she’s directing the movers around the front of the loft, “sometimes you sound exactly like Danny.” Josh nearly saws into his hand.
Briar continues on her new favorite topic. “Okay, so maybe the whole thing garnered a little more scrutiny than the typical negative review. But attention of any kind is good.”
“I got an email from Guy fucking Fieri, telling me to ‘keep my head up.’？”
Briar pulls a bottle of green juice from her bag, along with a metal straw. “Okay, but the upside of a massive failure—”
“I thought ‘it’s a high-risk industry.’？”
“—is that you have the opportunity for a redemption arc.” She leans forward. “Give people a reason to root for you. This is your Reputation phase: messy as fuck, but more interesting than just being successful.”
She takes an enormous bite of the bagel sandwich.
“No, I’d rather be successful.” He tosses her a much-needed napkin. “And after we sell the building, I can get my life back.”
He could move to Big Sur or Miami or Lisbon and start over without all the baggage.