The Pleating Problem

November twenty-fourth. Simone said 'low-key.' I want that on record. She used those exact words, low-key, just dumplings, nothing fussy, and I said yes because I had the day before Thanksgiving free and the alternative was standing in my kitchen watching Gerald do nothing and feeling purposeful about it.

The restaurant was small and genuinely good, communal tables, bamboo steamers in a stack behind the partition, a laminated card on the table explaining how to fold the dumplings yourself before they go in the pot. That last part was not on the menu description. I looked at Simone. She looked at the card. She said, and I am quoting directly, 'how hard can it be.'

It is harder than it looks. The pleating specifically. There is a technique, you're supposed to pinch and fold in one motion, and the woman two seats down from us was doing it in about four seconds flat, producing these perfect little half-moons like she'd been doing it since before I was born, and I was sitting there pressing the edge of my dumpling together like I was sealing an envelope I wasn't sure I wanted to send. Mine looked like a small accident. Simone's looked like a larger one. We ate them anyway.

She is laughing at my dumpling. My dumpling is fine.

The dipping sauce helped.

We stayed two hours. The tea was good. On the walk back to the bus stop Simone said she'd looked up whether the outdoor bouldering area closes for winter, she mentioned it the same way she mentions most things, offhand, not pressing, and I said I didn't know. Which is not the same as saying I haven't thought about it. It's Thanksgiving tomorrow and I'm going to make something easy and probably call it a win. But tonight was better than easy. Tonight had flour on the table and a stranger with a camera and dumplings that we folded ourselves, badly, and they were still the best thing I ate this week.

The part where we stopped talking and just ate.