This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,27
sound too annoyed when I ask, “You done?”
She has the gall to look innocent when she scrolls through the images on her phone and says, “Just a couple more shots. J’s eyes were closed.”
“They’re not closed, I’m just Asian,” I say. Will chokes down a laugh and my resolve breaks—I look at him, he looks back, and I’m trapped. Frozen by how intensely he’s seeing me.
It maybe freaks me out a little. I wonder if he’s noticing that one of my eyebrows is less straight than the other, or if he clocks the scar on my left cheek that I got in sixth grade from a zit that I couldn’t stop picking at and eventually got infected. I should have worn lip gloss or tried to pluck the fine baby hairs on my lip that make me look like I have a mustache that was inexpertly photoshopped out.
Finally, after what seems like a hundred shots, Priya is satisfied.
“I’m going to totally keep that picture for your wedding slideshow,” she whispers to me while Will helps another customer.
I snort, tearing my eyes away from Will to concentrate on the boiling pot of water. As if he could be remotely interested.
“Let’s focus on cooking and selling, okay?” I plead. “We’ve got three hours and more than a thousand dumplings to unload.”
WILL
My friends like to rag on me a lot. I’m Will the perpetually picky eater (dairy makes me feel bloated), the teacher’s pet (so sue me if I like to turn my assignments in on time and occasionally give them thoughtful end-of-the-year thank-you gifts), and the envirofreak (seriously, why don’t they understand, I keep used plastic utensils in my backpack because of the children—do they even know how much energy goes into creating our disposable culture?).
The point is, they’ll really have a field day when they find out how much it turns me on to watch Jocelyn cook.
She’s a whirling dervish of efficiency: talking while frying, tossing the perfect amount of oil into pans straight from the bottle, wielding the spatula as if she’s a fencer, shouting out orders like she was born to do it, which I suppose she was. There is not a single millisecond of hesitation in any of her movements. Watching her, I feel this buzz under my skin, a constant awareness of where she is, a little hiccup in my heartbeat when she’s close.
They don’t tell you in life skills class how hard it is to work with someone who you’re attracted to. I’m simultaneously drawn to her and afraid to get near out of fear of the train wreck that is Will When He Tries to Get His Game On. But we’re colleagues, right? I need to be her right-hand man. I need to take things that she hands to me hurriedly, so that our fingers brush in a completely unsexy way that nevertheless makes my blood rush (just a little bit) into very unhelpful body parts.
It’s hot and it’s sweaty and there are so many people lining up to place orders that my chub never completely materializes, but I do take a bathroom break to readjust when Jocelyn gets overheated and takes off the T-shirt she’s been wearing, revealing a black camisole with just enough lace to make my mind short-circuit a bit.
The pace picks up, and Priya and I both give up on prep work for a bit to take orders and run the register. The line in front of our little stand gets longer, which attracts more customers.
Jocelyn gets a pinched look around her eyes as she looks out at the rows of people. “We’re going to have to cheat,” she says flatly. “Can you take over for a sec?” We talked about it beforehand, that deep-frying the dumplings would be an option. She walks over to the Wu’s van and brings out the deep-frying unit, then fills it with oil with a grim face. In the twenty minutes it takes for the fryer to get hot enough she tells us to offer boiled dumplings until we catch up to demand.
“If you’d like them panfried it will be an extra ten minutes, but it’s actually healthier without all that oil,” I reassure any customers who look askance at the pale boiled dumplings. Admittedly, they do look like they could use some sun.
Whether they’re panfried, boiled, or deep-fried, folks keep coming. It’s a steady stream of people unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in the restaurant.