“You’d take that risk?” I ask.
Will looks down at his feet. He’s ditched the wing tips he wore his first day, thank God, and is wearing black-and-white Adidas tennis shoes that look pristine except for one foot’s front edge, which he is currently dragging back and forth across our already threadbare carpet.
“I mean, it’s my job to help this restaurant succeed, right? And I really think doing the Boilermaker will help. Think of this as a money-back guarantee.”
“At one dollar a pop, we’d probably have to sell about one hundred and twenty orders of five to break even, assuming we spend about two hundred dollars in ingredients and supplies,” I muse. “You’re absolutely sure this is doable?”
“Absolutely.”
For the first time since I met Will, I allow myself to stare at him. He meets my eyes without flinching, like he’s used to the scrutiny, and when I think about it, I guess that’s probably pretty accurate given the town we live in. I’m used to it, too—the gazes that linger just a second longer than they would if I were white, the frank assessment that people make when they add up the sum of your parts and think, Other.
“Okay,” I say grudgingly. “I’m on to you, you know. You’re the fairy godmother of this story.”
“The what?”
“The fairy godmother. You know, the deus ex machina that allows the plot to progress?”
“Um, okay.”
“Someone needs to start reading more TVtropes.org. Pro tip: Use tabbed browsing. And also, I’m going to draft up a formal agreement where if we don’t make up the four hundred dollars with sales from the day of, we’ll pay you in pot stickers instead.”
Will’s eyes dance. “You know that was my master plan all along, right?”
This Is My Brain on Pot Stickers
WILL
The next day is food prep boot camp. Jocelyn is honest in laying out her expectations.
“Your first few jiaozi are going to look like lumpy little bags of crap,” she says bluntly.
“Wow, tell me what you really think about my fine motor skills,” I joke. It’s okay that she’s candid. More than okay, if I’m completely truthful. When my father asked me yesterday what I thought of my new job, I said that the work was interesting and that my boss was smart, fair, kind, and completely 100 percent free of bullshit.
Sometimes you don’t realize how people layer their lives with a bubble wrap of concern for other people’s feelings, until you meet someone who’s unvarnished—what some people would call rough around the edges—and realize how refreshing it is not to have to sort through their protective wrapping and suss out who they really are. It just makes you that much more likely to peel off your own buffers against the world, to let yourself breathe.
As Jocelyn explains to me the steps of dumpling making, I can’t help but notice that one side of her bottom lip is just a little plumper than the other, and that she has a tiny mole on her left cheek, near her ear.
“Earth to Will, want a pop quiz?” Jocelyn snaps me back from my distraction.
“No need. I got it. Cut off about an inch of dough. Roll it into a ball, flatten it, and use the dowel to thin out the edges while moving it around to make it symmetrical. Put in about a tablespoon of filling. Then you do the twisty thing.”
“Not twist!” Grandma Wu scolds. “Pinch.” She demonstrates the way to crimp the edges of the dumpling wrapper together. Her moves are as perfectly fluid and graceful as a concert pianist’s. I kind of wish we had ESPN here to offer a super-slo-mo replay.
“Do you think you could do that again, maybe not as fast? It looked a lot easier in that Crazy Rich Asians scene,” I say.
“Best way to learn is to do, no to watch,” she insists, waving her dowel. And I prove Jocelyn wrong. My dumplings aren’t lumpy little bags of crap.
They’re lumpy little bundles of crap that pop open and spooge raw pork onto my T-shirt.
After I manage to make four passable jiaozi in the time it takes Jocelyn and her grandmother to make two hundred, we take a break to transfer the dumplings to the walk-in freezer so we can store them for the race. Then we regroup with Grandma Wu and work in assembly-line fashion. We fall into a synchronized swim of movement, my initially awkward motions smoothing out into a clockwork of activity that hums along with the Wus’.
Our rhythm only breaks once, when Mr. Wu comes in after a supply run. He’s glued to his phone and his forehead is furrowed and pinched like one of our jiaozi seams. “… cannot raise rent by ten percent. It unreasonable,” he shouts. “I give you five percent. We have been good tenant for many years.”
He listens for a few minutes, his breath audible in the suddenly quiet room. Beside me, Jocelyn is frozen mid-wrap, straining so hard to hear the conversation that she’s vibrating.
Still listening, Mr. Wu starts shaking his head. “You want to do that? You try. We talk again in July and see what happen.” He jabs his thumb to end the call, his mouth twisted in a rictus of frustration. My reporter’s curiosity is killing me. What’s up with their landlord? Are they really in danger of being kicked out of their space? Mr. Wu puts his left hand over his face and stands there for a second, then storms out of the kitchen to the dining room.
As the swinging door flaps shut, Jocelyn’s shoulders stiffen. Her mouth tightens. And grimly, with increasing speed, she keeps on folding.
Before I know it, we have another five hundred jiaozi cooling in the freezer unit, and we call it a day. My T-shirt is gray with flour and there are spots of grease on my jeans that will take a mighty pretreat to remove. When I get up to wash my hands, my stomach rumbles.
Grandma Wu gets a glint in her eye and barks out some commands in Mandarin. Within minutes she’s shepherded Jocelyn and me to the front and laid out plates like the staff do for their end-of-the-day meal, with side dishes that don’t show up on the menu: smashed cucumber salad, sautéed bok choy, and stir-fried “glass” noodles that Jos says are made from mung beans.
“Why aren’t these noodles on the menu?” I ask as I stuff my mouth. “And these cucumbers? They’re ridiculously good.” They’re obscenely flavorful—salty and sweet, tangy and nutty all at the same time.
“I dunno,” Jos says. She’s barely eaten anything on her plate, using her chopsticks to make a series of mounds with her noodles instead. “My dad just copied the menu my uncle used. Also, mung beans aren’t exactly a big draw here in central New York.”
I nod, but think to myself that the noodles seem like a no-brainer addition—extremely tasty and made from generally low-cost ingredients. On the other hand, I’m beginning to understand that cucumbers are relatively expensive as fresh veggies go. But it could be an in-season special for August and September, when local farmers are drowning in cukes. I could even ask Mrs. Peabody next door for some the next time she comes around trying to offload her extras. If the restaurant’s rent is going to increase, a new popular item could help. I’m dying to ask Jocelyn for their landlord’s contact information, but it’s pretty obvious that now is not the right time.