Excerpt from a novel (long) in progress

The heat is less than it was. A breeze has blown in, and in Stella's kitchen I stand with a bowl of artichokes flicking off stems, lopping off tops, yanking the tough outer leaves, and now I set a pot of water to boil and toss the naked white meat in. It takes a while to tender the artichokes with heat—that's how Stella says it, tender with heat—so I wait, and when the artichokes are boiled and drained and cooled, I slice them thin, and with a smaller knife remove each...