The bookstore was a good thing in that food was not allowed inside. Everything was paper and ink, the air heavy with the musk of old books. She mostly worked alone, which afforded her time to read when there were no customers. She began with a romance novel in which a handsome Swedish rock star made quick work of seducing a plain Jane elementary school principal. Then came a brief stint with P. G. Wodehouse. Then, finally, the cookbooks.

She’d never understood cookbooks. Why spend the money when you could find recipes online? But when she opened the first one—a tome on vegetarian cooking—she suddenly understood the fuss. The books were made by people who cared deeply about food. Every recipe came with a glossy photograph and a detailed description of the tastes and textures, the ideal situation in which to eat food x, y, or z. She read about how to make the best breads and pastas, the sweetest jams and puddings. How to poach the perfect egg for avocado eggs Benedict and fry a block of savory ginger-soy marinated tofu. In time, she found that the words replaced her hunger. Once, when she was certain that nobody was in the store, she pressed her tongue to a recipe titled “Aunt Rochelle’s Apple Cinnamon Spice Cake with Decadent Caramel Buttermilk Frosting,” so certain was she that she would taste the capital A’s crisp tartness, the warm, sugary sponginess of the word cake.

Occasionally, Madeline would stop by with an iced coffee and the two would riffle through the incoming books, looking for inscriptions. “Dear Kathleen,” one of them would read out loud to the other, “I hope this book brings you as much wisdom as it brought me. Here’s to years of friendship!!! —Elizabeth.” The book would be titled something like A Woman’s Guide to a Life without Men. Madeline also understood when not to laugh. Like when they found, “I know we haven’t talked in a few years, but I’m always here when you need me. —Dad,” scribbled inside the cover of Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor’s Soul.

Patty liked the company and always dreaded the moment when Madeline would look at her watch and say she should probably get going. Patty hated to see her leave. Every day, when she came back to Kurt’s apartment, it was a relief to see Madeline’s messenger bag on the coat hook, her hemp loafers in the hall. She hoped Kurt would not fuck things up.

Who knew the hardest month would be November, with its pumpkin-spiced everything and bowls of leftover Halloween chocolates popping up everywhere, including the lobby of Madeline’s gym, where Patty now took a biweekly Zumba class?

To her relief, it seemed the diet would be over soon. She had lost nearly all of the weight. When she stepped on the scale, the red arrow arched lazily up to 135 and then stopped. The change had affected her mind as much as her body. She’d begun to think of food as something distasteful—an enemy out to destroy her. Sometimes she would pass a display case of pastries and think: You want to kill me. She preferred her food in print.