Peake’s was at the epicenter of the mess. Ned was sending out food for an afternoon wedding, and at home, Polly made gnocchi and arancini and lamb meatballs studded with pine nuts. It was a day for round things, and she drove carefully, imagining an especially ludicrous accident scene. The clients had requested coleslaw on the side, not some sophisticated Italian version but picnic style. Hers was not to reason why. It was enough that people liked to eat.

Ned was blasting a wall of punk, confusing the twenty-year-old staff. Polly wanted to help serve the roast pig—the surplus Maude pig—in the alley parking lot, where they put out food and drinks for concerts and mud baths like the parade. Ned wanted her to work in the kitchen with Graham, who so far that morning had talked to Ned about his swimming career without once saying a word about Ariel. Hence the music.

Polly found Graham staring straight up with his unbandaged eye, watching a fly bash its head against a light fixture. Precision piles of folded napkins, his forte, surrounded him. Polly arranged a grater and three heads of cabbage, a knife and a board. When he gave her a blank look, she explained that he needed to wash the heads and trim them. This resulted only in a pool of water on the board and some tentative hack marks. Polly dried everything and trimmed everything and went off to pull Bolognese and tart dough from the freezer. She returned to see Graham leave his knuckles in the grater. They watched his blood drip onto the vegetables.

Polly was not squeamish. The squiggle in her mind was something about Graham, and his body, and the idea that he seemed to think this shit show was funny. The idea that he thought anything on the planet was funny right now. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Wrap it up.”

He shrugged, shoulders rolling, grin fixed, and she realized his own blood upset him. Polly found bandages. It was like dealing with Sam at four—she needed to explain everything. Rinse your hand off, use soap, dry it, hold still. She could feel Graham’s breath on her neck while she wrapped his hand.

“I didn’t realize your scar was so large.”

Polly jerked back. “I’m fine.” She finished and scrubbed off the feel of his skin, scraped up the bloody vegetables and threw the board in a sink full of bleach water. She gave him some parsley to chop for something, someday, and worked at another table with her back to him, happy for the wall of noise. Being around Graham made her feel both miserable and competent. When she checked, his mound of parsley was a combination of purée and stems, and she watched his slow, resentful fingers pull the stems out when she said they had to go. He repelled her, and this made her try to be nice.