I want to record that, because people always ask what I was doing, as though I must have been frozen against a wall.

Rosalba and I plated forty-one lemon tarts with a raspberry coulis and a mint leaf, and I did every single one properly, and about halfway through I realized that my hands were completely steady and that this frightened me more than anything else that evening.

That is what thirteen years of being the person who copes will do.

The building could have been on fire and I would have finished the tarts.

At one point Rosalba stopped, took the spoon out of my hand, poured me a glass of water from the pitcher, and stood there until I drank it.