"These are ugly," Benjamin said.
Cole looked at him.
"I mean that as a compliment."
"Good recovery."
Sheila met him behind a restaurant in Indianapolis the next morning.
The chef was named Matteo Rinaldi, an Italian American in his forties who ran the kitchen at an expensive restaurant whose name Cole had seen in a magazine but never expected to enter. Matteo did not care about the newspaper story or the soil experiment.
He cared about flavor.
He cut the first tomato with a narrow chef's knife, sprinkled it with nothing, and tasted it standing beside the loading dock.
He chewed slowly.
Then he cut another piece.
"How long off the vine?"
"Four hours."
"You refrigerate?"
"No."
"Good."
He pointed at the crate. "What do you want per pound?"
Cole had prepared for that question and still felt unprepared.
"For the top grade, six dollars."
Sheila looked at him sharply.
Matteo laughed.
Cole's face warmed.
"Too high?"
"Too low," Matteo said. "If you can give me this quality twice a week and keep them from getting bruised, I'll pay ten for the purple and pink fruit, eight for mixed specialty, twelve for the first twenty pounds of perfect fruit on Friday."
Cole stared at him.
Matteo lifted one shoulder. "I charge thirty-six dollars for a plate with three slices and burrata. Don't feel guilty for making the ingredient worth something."
Sheila watched Cole process the number.
"How much can you deliver?" she asked.
Cole did not lie.
"I don't know yet."
"Then figure it out before promising it."
That advice saved him from his first major mistake.
He returned to Harlow convinced the field could produce thousands of dollars immediately. April forced him to sit at the kitchen table and count actual mature fruit, labor hours, packing capacity, transport time, disease losses, and rejection rates.
"You can't sell what isn't ripe," she said.
"I know."
"You just wrote down eight hundred pounds for Friday. You have maybe four hundred ready."
Cole crossed out the number.
"Grandma would've liked you," he muttered.
"Grandma did like me."
"That's true."
They committed to three hundred fifty pounds for the first delivery.
Every crate sold.