They didn’t argue at lunch yesterday. Karen never got around to disagreeing with anything, and Alice restrained herself. In the 15 months since they’d seen one another Karen had acquired diagnoses of hypertension and diabetes, and Alice attempted to be gentle with her. She knew Karen was trying to be good. She was taking her meds and walking every day, her refrigerator now contained some food, and she had given up those Starbucks coffee shakes. Alice was a bit dismayed when Karen ordered eggs benedict instead of something like the portobello sandwich she selected, but she noted the side salad, and she watched her companion leave most of the fried potatoes on her plate.

She was trying not to argue, so Alice stayed away from work topics. She was trying not to harp on diet, so she focused on her own food. She began to wax loquaciously about her sandwich, the roll, bread in general. Alice never cooked much but when she did, she experimented with soups and bread. She understood bread.

“Talk about transubstantiation,” she said around her final bite of sandwich, “and I always think of bread. For that matter, I think about alchemy whenever I knead dough.” She swivelled in her seat a bit as she entered the subject.

“I mean, there I’ll be, with bread and water and a little yeast in the bowl, and as I put my hand in and begin working it all I can think of is that old flour-and-water paste we used to make. Yech. The smell takes me back to like first grade, gluing the paper around the kite frame. I remember reading in a biography of Clara Barton that they cooked the paste – to get the lumps out you know? – but we never did that . . .”

Alice might have noted Karen’s change in complexion but she was wrapped up in her own words. She continued: “It’s like the warmth of my hands is magic. Because the more I work that paste, the sooner it transforms to bread dough. From gunk to the staff of life. Now that’s what I call a miracle.”

Karen retched. She felt the gag and barely got out of her chair before her gorge rose. Luckily the bathroom was near their table. She made it inside before she lost her lunch.

Her regurgitation was clean but her soul was shaken. She sat on the small bench by that toilet for almost 10 minutes, trying to calm, trying to understand or banish the flashing images of helping Darren build that kite.

She was still confused and wobbly when she returned to the table, where Alice had settled the tab and was ready to leave. Karen preceded Alice out of the restaurant. Her shoulders were slumped and her pace was a shuffle. Alice attributed it all to the food.