“Ten percent of every event. Every buy. No exceptions. It’s in every contract I sign. Standard policy.”
“Most of it is food. Money when food won’t travel or store. Two food banks in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody should be hungry. Ever.” She didn’t look up from a butternut squash. “And because if you can give it, you give it. You don’t wait for someone else to do it.”
“I imagine that’s something your grandmother would say.”
She glanced at him then, and her mouth softened. “It’s exactly something she would say.”
He reached for the tote. “Let me carry that.”
“I’m fine.”
“Twenty pounds of produce says otherwise.”
She handed it over.
They walked together while he carried her bag and she examined herbs with the care she probably brought to multi-course menus. The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable. He’d spent two years learning the shape of it, and his body remembered.
“What happened after graduation?” he asked.
“You mean after you left for Harvard?”
The words landed where she had aimed them.
“Yes.”
She paused at a flower stall lined with cut sunflowers and zinnias, and the colors did the work of giving her time.
“I went to a state school upstate on a scholarship that covered tuition and the dorm. I worked the dining hall for spending money. After two years, a culinary program in the city picked me up on a full ride. I realized halfway through that I was a better manager than I was a line cook, and I pivoted to events.” She looked up at him with pride. “You know how the rest started. The truck became a real kitchen. The kitchen became a warehouse. Fifteen employees now, and a contract list with names you’d recognize. The day I handed my mother the keys to her house in South Jersey, she cried for three days. I’m very good at what I do, Gabriel. I don’t say that to impress you. I say it because it’s true.”
“I know it’s true.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“So am I.”
At the edge of the produce section he checked his sack against Devney’s list one last time. Tomatoes. Basil. Burrata. Loaf. He pulled out his phone with the hand not holding the sack and thumbed a text.
Gabriel: Caprese to start, orecchiette to follow. Burrata, not mozzarella. Bread warm. Don’t ask how I know.
Devney: I love you.
Gabriel: Don’t tell Ronan.
They reached the end of the market where vendors thinned and the park opened beyond, and Gabriel’s stomach growled loud enough that she heard it.
She laughed. “Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“There’s a hot dog cart near the southwest corner.”
“Then hot dogs it is.”
