The Key Word Was “Find”

“You can eat anything you find in the kitchen.” A kitchen the size of his house; in the cabinets — dusty plates, protein, emptiness; in the fridge — water, mustard, a lemon gone dry. “Ten minutes later he understood that the key word in that sentence was find.” And Simon catches himself finding it funny: a person whose house is the size of a city block has thrown open a pantry that holds mustard — “and apparently had genuinely no idea.” There is “something so unmalicious in that ignorance” that for the first time he looks down on Jacob — “Just a little. For a second.”

This is the first scene with no hierarchy between them, and it was brought about not by a conversation but by laughter. Humor toward a person one used to fear is a sign that fear no longer fills the whole field. Here Simon also learns something unexpected about himself: “cold pizza after ten in the morning was Jacob’s breakfast, not his. He had his own habits, it turned out.” Preferences appear where choice appears; until this morning there had been nothing to choose from. The card is short, like the respite itself: in a minute the lock will click in the front hall.