“Me? Buy the business? I can’t even afford to pay my electricity bill"

Bentzy: I wish I could help you, but it isn’t so simple.

Gavriel: If you couldn’t help, why didn’t you say so right away?

GAVRIEL

Bills, bills, bills. It seemed like that was all Miri and I ever talked about.

It wasn’t always like this. I vaguely remembered that we used to spend time together talking about the kids, interesting customers I came across, and the latest family news. But ever since Miri went back to work after her last maternity leave, and with my increasingly longer hours at the warehouse, we barely had a chance to breathe, let alone a quiet hour to sit and talk. Our evenings were a hectic marathon of baths-bed-supper-baby, with Miri often heading back to the computer to clock in the rest of her hours, and me dashing out to catch a Maariv.

But we spoke about the bills, because they were urgent and in our face, one plain, forbidding envelope after the next: electricity, gas, tuition, credit card. There was the account at the grocery and new shoes for the boys and rent. Every night, it seemed, there was another crisis, another reason to frantically search through our dwindling accounts to try and scrape together the next payment.

“This is crazy,” Miri said to me one night. “We’re working and working and working, and we’re still drowning in these bills! How can life cost so much?!”

I agreed with her. But I was grateful that at least we both had decent jobs. I was managing a warehouse — and by extension, most of the sales and general operations — for an Amazon business, and Miri was a graphics designer for a large marketing company. With COVID and lockdowns, sales had skyrocketed at my job, and while Miri now worked remotely most of the time, she retained her job, too. We were lucky.

When my boss, Mr. Ferber, called me in a few days later, I wasn’t unduly nervous. We’d been working together for years, he trusted me implicitly, and everything had been going well at the warehouse. Still, it was strange for him to call me in for a whole official meeting. Even stranger was the serious look on his face.

“Gavriel, I have something to tell you,” he began, cutting straight to the point.

I nodded and waited.

“I’ve decided to sell the business.”

My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t seen this coming. Not in a million years. Mr. Ferber was going to sell the business when it was running so well? Did that mean a new boss? Or worse, was I going to be fired? Who said the next owner would—

“When?” I croaked out. “I mean — wow, that’s huge news. How come? And who’s buying it?”

Mr. Ferber finally smiled. “As soon as possible,” he said. “My wife and I have decided to take early retirement, and we’ll be relocating to Florida. We’re not young, you know.” He spread out his hands. “And while originally I’d been hoping to keep the business in the family, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out.”

Mr. Ferber’s daughter had made aliyah years earlier, and his son was a respected rebbi in a well-known yeshivah. I couldn’t imagine either of them taking over the business.

“And as for who’s buying it — well, I was actually hoping that you would.”

If I’d been shocked by his last announcement, now I nearly fell off my chair. “Me? Buy the business?” I can’t even afford to pay my electricity bill.