She picked at the stack of whole-wheat almond pancakes that the cook, Luz, had prepared for her. It was weird for Alice to have people around her who waited on her. It made her feel nervous, not quite right, as if she was violating a fundamental belief she held about the equality of man or something. Like, this wasn’t decadent Europe. There was no master/servant dynamic here. At least there shouldn’t be. It made her feel unworthy, too (this was at a much deeper level, at an emotional rather than rational level), as if she wasn’t fancy enough to warrant this sort of treatment and that having to give it to her was degrading to the people paid to do so. Alice could well remember the agony she’d experienced when she’d first arrived at Richard’s, seen her ragamuffin possessions placed around her new room, the knowledge that someone had taken these sad little tatty objects out of a cardboard moving box and thought about where to put them, the best spot, mortifying her. She’d hidden most of them under the bed, out of sight. And she’d requested that the maid, Fernanda, not clean her room. She thought she’d been doing Fernanda a favor, showing Fernanda that she was more democratic in her views, but all she’d done was insult Fernanda. Probably made Fernanda think she had a gross or creepy habit she didn’t want found out, too. Like she stashed a huge porn collection beneath her mattress or something.

Alice watched Richard push aside his brioche, cut the yolk out of his sunny-side-up egg, drop it onto her mom’s plate without even looking up from the Arts section. (The yolk was the only part of an egg her mom would eat.) And her mother did the crossword puzzle, alternating sips from her glass—fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice—with sips from his—fresh-squeezed orange juice—her feet buried in his lap. Alice marveled at how compatible they appeared to be. How comfortable with each other, too. It was like they were already an old married couple. Though not, Alice thought, qualifying in her head, an old married couple like Maggie and her dad, Phil, had been. Maggie and Phil had fought, not a lot but some. And while Maggie had seemed to love Phil she didn’t seem to be in love with him in an active way, had treated him in a more casual and, well, more normal-type manner. Their relationship definitely wasn’t this all-consuming total mutual delirium thing she had going with Richard. A match made in heaven, Alice said to herself, sighing inwardly.