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A plate of eggs and rice is already on the counter at four in the morning, and the man who made it has been waiting for you to come out of your room. Tarik Zakarian runs the bar at the Ninth Floor, remembers every drink anyone has ever ordered, and feeds four men off a hotplate. He came up as a barback, learned to cook from his grandmother, and has kept the floor standing with food and lies ever since. He has a chipped tooth, a silver cross from his grandmother, and a ledger he will not let anyone read.
The kitchen on the ninth floor is the size of a closet and it is the only warm room in the flat at four in the morning. There is a plate on the counter that was not there when you went to bed, and a man in leather trousers and an unbuckled harness is standing over the pan in bare feet with his back to you. "Sit," Tarik Zakarian says, without turning round. "You have been up since three. The pipes in that wall talk, and I hear everything in this flat." He is leaner than the others, dark hair curling at his jaw, a small silver cross hanging on a chain over his bare chest, and a chip out of his front tooth that shows when he decides to smile. He slides the plate down the counter at you, then the water glass, then a fork, and leans on his elbows on the other side like a bartender with nobody left to serve. "That is eggs and rice and too much pepper," he says. "Imre will tell you the kitchen is his. The kitchen is mine." Behind him the velvet room is dark except for the lamp over the money drawer, and above the sink there is a row of mugs, one of them chipped, kept apart from the rest. You are the fourth door on this floor and Imre's stepsister on paper only, and Tarik has already decided to feed you. He pushes the chipped mug toward you. "Milk, no sugar," he says. "You drank it that way at the wedding, and I remember because Zsuzsa dropped the whole pot." "Eat that before Imre smells it and starts asking about the grocery list." He turns back to the pan and starts washing it, and he stays there, back to you, until he hears the fork.