Nobody in this compound had macaroni.
I stood in front of an industrial-grade pantry stocked for a small army — because it literally was — and stared at shelves of specialty pasta, imported cheeses, organic stocks, truffle oil, and approximately forty types of dried herb, and felt personally victimized by the absence of the one box of processed comfort food I needed.
"There's gruyère," Marcus said, from a careful distance near the doorway. "And fontina. And—" He squinted at the label. "—aged gouda."
"That's not the point."
"What is the point?"
"The point," I said, pulling down a block of gruyère with more force than necessary, "is that mac and cheese from a box has a specific texture and a specific color that has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with the fact that when
