People do give us things. They always have. They give us buttery homemade caramels and free haircuts. They send over plates of gnocchi at the local Italian restaurant, where the owner nurtures a fervent love for the Virgin. Once someone gave us half a cow—first when it was living, and then when it was dead. The steaks of this cow tasted like they had been stockpiled for the end of the world, but what else could we do? We ate them. It is steaks like these that have sustained me throughout my life, no matter what I believed.
