Mara’s lunch had six flying buttresses and nowhere to put a spoon.
On the practice plate it looked magnificent. Steam drifted through the arches. Beneath them, a brown pool of mushroom broth reflected the little roof. She turned the plate until the light went through all six openings at once.
Joss leaned across the space between their tables.
“Is somebody buried in there?”
“Your chances.”
He looked at the roof for another moment, then went back to his machine. It was printing something the color and general shape of a sock. Joss had been making stuffed dumplings for twelve years. He had a shop in the lower arcade, and the waiting line passed three other food counters whose owners no longer spoke to him.
Mara had a following. This was different from a waiting line. People watched her print edible chandeliers, staircases, a little horse which had briefly supported a rider made of sauce. They wrote things beneath the videos. They did not buy lunch.
Today’s winner got a year’s rent on the corner stall in the new market. Mara had walked around it that morning while it was empty. There was room to stand without her hip touching a sink. The window opened onto a courtyard where people sat even when they had nothing to buy.
Mara had already paid for a weekend table at the far end of the market. Two days were all she could afford. If she won, she could cancel the booking.
Joss wanted it for a second shop.
“You’ve already got one,” she had told him at registration.
“Yes. I know what they’re for.”
Now the roof on her practice plate sagged.
She put her spoon through it. The crisp walls broke with a satisfying crack. The roof, which had absorbed more steam, folded like wet paper. She ate a mouthful, then another. Warm mushroom, a little sharpness, the shell dissolving too soon against her tongue.
She checked the clock. A minute and thirty-eight seconds since the broth went in. At home she had eaten it at forty seconds.
The three judges sat down at the long table. A photographer asked them to stand up again. One judge was a woman who ran a canteen; another wrote restaurant reviews. The third was the man who owned the market. He held his spoon as though someone might take it away.
Mara went to the steward.
“How long from the table to the first taste?”
“As long as they need.”
“Roughly.”
“Don’t let it go cold.”
The steward put a clean cloth over her arm and went to fetch water.
Mara returned to her machine. Each entrant had one printer, identical cartridges of vegetable and grain mixtures, their own approved flavor concentrates, and ninety minutes. The files were theirs to change. The machine laid down whatever they asked for, including errors so faithful to the instructions that Mara sometimes felt accused by them.
She thickened the roof. The preview filled in another layer. That would add four minutes to each print, and she needed three plates at the same time. There was room on the printer bed for all three, but only if she removed the practice piece.
She ate another spoonful before scraping the rest into the waste tub.
Across the aisle, Joss had cut his pale parcel open. Steam came out. He bent close enough for his glasses to cloud.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lunch.”
“Yes, you’ve done that joke.”
“I’m hoping to do it twice a day.”
She started the thickened shells.
While they printed, she warmed the broth and adjusted its sharpness. The mushroom concentrate smelled of the back room of her grandmother’s grocery, where crates had once stood on wooden slats. The association was unreliable—her grandmother had mostly sold soap and batteries—but the smell made her hungry.
The thick roof lasted longer. It also stuck to her teeth. She chewed while the first contestant carried three bright cylinders toward the judges.
The photographer stopped him. He turned the tray. The restaurant writer asked about the recipe. The market owner asked about cost per portion. By the time the canteen woman lifted her spoon, Mara had finished chewing.
Three minutes, nearly four.
She looked back at her screen. Forty-one minutes remained.
She could make the whole building thicker. She could reduce the broth temperature. She could serve the broth beside it, but then the roof would remain intact until a diner knocked it down. The first bite would be a mouthful of dry architecture.
She took one of the thickened shells in both hands and broke it.
“Structural trouble?” Joss asked.
She ignored him. The roof was unpleasant. The thin side panels were good: salty, fragile, a little blistered along the ridges. She dipped one edge into the broth and ate it before it softened.
Then she ate the rest without dipping it.
“Have you got a bowl?” she asked the steward.
The steward pointed to a shelf of white crockery. “Anything there.”
Mara chose three. They were the sort of bowls in which people left cereal to harden. She had brought dark square plates in a case lined with felt.
On the screen she removed the roof and separated the six side panels. They lay in a row like fence sections. She made enough for the judges and an extra row for herself. The new print would finish with nine minutes left.
Joss came around his table to rinse a spoon. He saw the bowls.
“That’s a better idea.”
She disliked him more for saying it kindly.
At the judging table, Mara set the panels upright against the bowls. The photographer asked for one on its own. She fetched a fourth bowl from the shelf and filled it from the leftovers. He was still moving it when the canteen woman asked a question.
“How do we eat this?”
“Dip the crisp. Or break it over the top. I like dipping it.”
“Why?”
Mara almost said something about control of texture. She had practised phrases like that in the lift.
“You get more crunch.”
The woman dipped. Mara heard the small crack between her teeth.
The market owner asked the portion cost. Mara gave him both figures: what the cartridges cost here, and what she had priced for a stall. He asked how many she could serve in an hour. She knew the number for the buildings. She looked at the simple panels resting against the bowls.
“More than I was going to,” she said. “I haven’t timed this version.”
He wrote that down.
The restaurant writer broke all his panels into the broth before tasting it.
Mara watched them sink.
He stirred. He asked where she had learned to cook. She told him about the videos, and his face changed in the small way she had spent the last year learning to recognize.
“I think I’ve seen the horse.”
“This tastes better.”
The canteen woman laughed, still chewing. The writer took a spoonful.
“It needs something fresh,” he said.
“There’s acid in the broth.”
“I can taste that. I mean something to bite.”
Mara looked at his bowl. He had drowned all the crisp pieces, but that was not quite what he meant. She had spent weeks making the outside stand up. Inside was one lovely brown flavor, then the same lovely brown flavor again.
“Yes,” she said.
She carried her tray back. Joss passed her going the other way. His parcels had narrow vents cut through their tops. He held the tray flat with both hands.
“Good luck,” she said, too late for him to answer without turning.
He kept going.
She sat on her case of square plates and ate the photographer’s portion. Halfway through, she wanted something green.
Joss won by three points.
He did not pretend surprise. He shook hands, took the folder containing the tenancy, and asked the market owner about the extraction hood. Mara came second. The photographer made her stand beside Joss, holding a certificate that bent backward in the breeze from the door.
Afterward Joss brought her one of his spare parcels.
“You should taste it,” he said.
“I did notice you won.”
“That’s not why.”
She tore it open. He had tucked little sharp green pieces between the warm layers. She ate one, then a mouthful with everything in it. The outside was softer than hers. It did not need to be crisp.
She asked what the green pieces were. He told her. He asked what she had put in the broth, and she told him that too, except for the quantities.
“I could sell it with those,” he said, pointing at her leftover panels. “You interested in licensing the file?”
She looked at the tenancy folder beneath his arm. For a moment she pictured her broth passing through his window, carried away by people who had stood in his line.
“How much?”
He named a sum. She made him say it again. It was more than she had expected and much less than a year’s rent.
“Exclusive?” she asked.
“For the market.”
Her weekend table was paid for. If she signed the file away, she would have to serve something else there.
“Not yet.”
Joss nodded. He did not increase the offer.
They packed beside one another. He wrapped his printer cord so it would not kink. Mara put the dark plates in their felt slots, then went to return the bowls. The steward counted them, including the fourth one, and pointed her toward the place that supplied the market’s crockery.
At the empty corner stall Joss stopped to measure the window with his forearm. Mara carried on toward the weekend tables. Her space was at the far end, beside a man who sold plants. He was watering them. A smell of wet soil rose above the hot pavement.
“Are you the soup?” he asked.
She set down her case.
“Saturday.”
“Can you do me one before you open? I can’t leave these.”
“What time?”
He told her. She put it in her phone, then asked whether he had room to keep a bowl behind his table.
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