Not just hot, but correctly, expertly seasoned. Hot like when they brought you a plate of lemon slices, to suck on as needed, to partially neutralize the burn. It had been a long time since Milgrim had had food like that. It had been a long time since he’d eaten a meal that had provided any memorable pleasure at all. The Chinese he was most familiar with these days was along the lines of the stepped-on Cantonese they brought him at the laundry on Lafayette, but just now he was recalling that sensation, strangely delightful, of drinking cold water on top of serious pepper-burn—how the water filled your mouth entirely, but somehow without touching it, like a molecule-thick silver membrane of Chinese antimatter, like a spell, some kind of magic insulation.