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into slices, and assembled the sandwiches for croque madames. And at eleven, the orders came in. This wasn’t, theoretically, difficult: I was pretty much just popping things into the oven and frying eggs, but there were a lot of different things in the oven to keep track of. At one point, there were about fifteen different orders being heated, with more and more coming in, and I got lost. I couldn’t keep track of the tickets that the servers were submitting, so I pulled things out whenever they looked done, set them down for Felipe to plate, and figured the right order would somehow get to the right person. I couldn’t figure out how many eggs I wassupposed to be frying; I just started cooking them and assumed they’d be used. There were no complaints. I didn’t burn anything. Even if I was lost, my instincts seemed to be somewhat correct, and no one had to wait for food.
    Andy had come in late that morning to check up on me. At the end of service, he asked me, “What are you doing on weekends from now on? Do you want to be the brunch cook? We’ll pay you for it …”
    But that was the last I heard about it. I kept bringing it up to Andy, but he kept changing the subject—
We’re still trying to figure out some scheduling things
, he’d say, or
We’re going to be making some changes and we need to see how they’ll shake out
. After a while, I let it drop. But one afternoon, I overheard Andy interviewing a friend of Felipe’s, asking about his brunch cooking experience. I finished out a couple more shifts and then told Paris it was time I moved on.
    During that summer, Nelly and I were on Cape Cod at my cousin’s house for a few days, along with my parents, my aunt, a dozen other cousins and their kids, and a handful of old family friends. One of the family friends, Gail, sat next to me in the shade of a pine tree. Little kids were running all over the lawn playing dodgeball, and I half watched them, drinking a beer, while Gail told me that her nephew had just enrolled in the CIA.
    “I’m jealous,” I said. “You have no idea what I’d do to go to cooking school.”
    “Your mother tells me that things have been a little rough lately on the job front.”
    “I’ve got nothing,” I said. “I’m teaching a class at Pratt in September, and I’ve got these Interboro classes, but you have no idea how little money I’m earning, and how much Nelly is just hating my guts right now.”
    “Do you want to be a chef? Is that your dream?”
    “I don’t know if I can picture myself in a restaurant or owning a restaurant or anything like that. I haven’t figured out the fine print with this. But I want to learn to cook. I want to cook for a living. I want to learn really badly.”
    “Then why don’t you go to the CIA?” Gail asked. “I’m serious: no equivocating, no excuses. Why don’t you go?”
    “It’s expensive.”
    “There are worse things than having some debt. Which will you regret more, debt or not going at all?”
    “It’s two years out of my life. I’m not twenty years old anymore.”
    “Again, the same question: Which are you going to regret? You should apply. Really.”
    Later that night, Nelly and I sat together outside and I told her about the conversation.
    “Is that something you really—and I mean
really
—want to do?” Nelly asked.
    “Yes. I want to go. I think Gail’s right.”
    “How would we do this? Would you live up there? Would
we
live up there? How would you pay for it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Nelly’s tone was calm and matter-of-fact. “The thing is, we’ve been waiting a while for you to figure everything out. And this feels kind of like you’re putting the question off for another two years.”
    “I feel like this
is
the answer to the question. I don’t have all the details, but I want to try and do this.”
    She took my hand and squeezed it. “Well … then let’s do some investigating and see what the situation looks like.”
    L ATE THAT FALL, AN