Page 57 of There Are No Saints

“This is so good.”

“I know,” I snap. “That’s why I work here. It’s the literal best brunch in the city.”

“Is that really why you work here?” Cole asks, watching me closely.

“Yes. The smell of food—I can’t stand it if it’s not good. The food here smells incredible because itisincredible. Here, try this now—take a sip of the mimosa, then eat one of the spicy-sweet potatoes.”

Cole does exactly what I said, taking a small sip of his drink, then quickly biting into the potato.

“What the fuck,” he says. “Why is that so good?”

“I dunno.” I shrug. “Something about the sour citrus and then the pop of salt. They amplify each other.”

Cole is watching me as I eat my own food, taking a small bite of one thing and then another, cycling through my favorite combinations.

“Is that how you eat?” he says.

I shrug. “Unless I’m in a hurry.”

“Show me more combinations.”

I show him all my favorite ways to eat the magnificent brunch spread Arthur laid before us—lemon curd layered with fresh strawberries and clotted cream on the scones, blueberries between bites of maple bacon, a dash of hot sauce mixed in with the hollandaise . . .

Cole tries it all with an unusual level of curiosity. I’d assume somebody as rich as him has eaten at a million fancy restaurants.

“Don’t you eat out all the time?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I don’t spend much time on food. It bores me.”

“But you like this?”

“I do,” he says, almost as if he hates to admit it. “How do you come up with all this?”

I shrug. “When I was little, we never had fresh groceries. Dinner was whatever I could scrounge from the kitchen without mold growing on it. A can of corn. Boiled egg. Dry cereal. I never tried most foods until I started working at restaurants. I’d never tasted steak, or cilantro, or avocado. I wanted to try everything—it was like discovering a whole new sense.”

“But there was a time when you weren’t poor,” Cole says, harrying that point like a dog with a bone. He’s really not gonna fucking drop it.

“Yes,” I say testily. “When we lived with Randall.”

“That’s your stepfather.”

“Yes.”

“What did you eat then?”

“Not fucking much. He used to scream at me if my spoon clinked in my cereal bowl.”

“How old were you?”

“Eleven.”

“He didn’t like having a stepkid?”

“No. He didn’t. And by that point, he had learned a thing or two about my mother. She’s very good at fooling people for a while. By the time he realized, they were already married.”

“Realized what?”

“That she’s a parasite. That her only ambition is to latch onto people and bleed them dry.”

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