fresh scallion and bright red minced tomatoes and just one strip of chile, roasted and spun into a ring. She carried them to the table.
Julian bent into the bowl. “Beautiful,” he said, inhaling.
“One more thing.” She fetched a tortilla warmer and carried it with an oven mitt to the table, then settled across from him.
He rested his wrists against the edge of the table. “Tell me about this soup, Chef.”
She sipped her beer without hurry. “Pork posole, a New Mexico stew, served with fresh corn tortillas.”
“And this is your favorite meal?”
“Well, comfort food, yes. Made from my grandmother’s recipe.”
“Very pretty.” He bent over his bowl and inhaled the steam, evaluating it. Then he picked up his spoon and dipped it into the stew and took a bite, his eyes on the bowl. Elena noticed the high bridge of his nose, the way the hair at his crown shone against the light. “Oh yeah,” he said, and bent into it again, taking a more generous bite this time, looking at the ingredients in his spoon for a moment. Nodding, he pronounced it “Very good.”
She nudged the dish of corn tortillas toward him. “Try one. Homemade.”
“Also Grandmother’s recipe?”
“Well, not exactly.” She pointed to the masa on the counter. “Add water and cook. The hard part is getting the shape. Took me years to master it.” She took one out and examined it, smooth and supple, then tore out a hunk to make a cup, and dipped it into the stew. It was her first real bite, not counting the samples tasted while cooking.
—tender explosion of salty broth, subtle sharpness of sweet chiles, pungency of onions and plenty of garlic, and the smooth texture of hominy and the grainy pleasure of fresh corn tortilla—
She closed her eyes. “Perfect.”
It was a recipe that never failed. Julian tucked it away with gusto, proving the rule, and Elena relaxed a little. She ate without speaking, enjoying the moment—the fat candles burning, the light fading over the mountains outside the windows, music playing quietly.
His hands were long and graceful as he imitated Elena’s method of tearing strips of tortilla, then dropping them into the soup, as if they were crackers. “This,” he said distinctly at the bottom of the bowl, “is delicious, Elena.”
“Would you like some more?”
He held up a hand. “In a moment, perhaps.”
Perhaps. Who said “perhaps”? She smiled. “Take your time. There’s plenty.”
He took a long, healthy swallow of beer. “Did your grandmother teach you to cook?”
“She did.” It was complicated, her story of cooking, so she said, “But we have to talk about you until I finish eating.”
“I don’t know how to cook,” he said, settling comfortably. “No one bothered to teach me. It was assumed a wife would do it for me.”
“Shocking.”
He inclined his head. “Traditional. After my mother died, my father and I subsisted on Hamburger Helper and Swanson’s.”
“You could teach yourself to cook.”
He gave Elena the smallest, most appealing little twist of his lips. “I buy restaurants instead.”
She laughed. “Interesting choice.”
“Money allows a lot of interesting choices.”
“It does,” she agreed, thinking of her own salary, which, even before she’d taken this position, had been quite good for a woman on her own. One of her early bosses had been a financial consultant in his real life, and had shown Elena how to draw up a budget and stick to it, how to invest in retirement accounts, how to build a credit rating—all things no one in her working-class world had thought to tell a child, especially a girl. The security was no small thing for a woman whose body might give out at any time. “Not that I’m in your league, of course.”
“Well, not to be arrogant, but not many are. I got lucky.”
“Talent might have had something to do with it.”
A shrug, not diffident, just sure. “A lot of talented people don’t make money. I was in the right place at the right time.”
Elena inclined her head. “It’s more than luck.”
His black eyes, so hard to read without the marker of a pupil, were direct as he said, “My dad drove a truck.”
“Mine worked at the post office. My adopted father, anyway.” She paused to drink some beer, let the food settle. She could sometimes be a pig, eating more than she needed, but over time, she’d learned to take breaks. The soup spread its good cheer through her body. “This really is my comfort food,” she said, and sighed. “It’s grounding, after a big change.”
“Maybe it should be one