The Long List Anthology Volume 6 Page 4

  He’s still sitting there like that when the handsome band singer shows up. Nick is half out of his shirt when he notices Connor. The shirt hangs off his body by one sleeve.

  “Don’t tell me you’re fine, Connor.” Nick crouches in front of him.

  “Oh. Hi, Nick.” Connor looks up for a moment, then breaks eye contact. “Congratulations. Now that you’ve passed the audition, are you leaving us?”

  “Oh, that. It’s just the district audition. I still have the regional and, if I’m lucky, the national after that.” Nick shrugs. “I’m sorry some customer didn’t even touch your work.”

  “Not some customer. My sister.” Connor is too tired to resist any longer, so he lets the handsome band singer fill his gaze.

  For all the width across his thick back and the way his chest and arms pop, Nick isn’t built like some statue of Hercules. He’s soft enough to read as human rather than demigod. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he finally speaks again.

  “So, that’s your sister.” His gaze narrows, his lips purse, and distaste spreads across his face. “Am I supposed to slap you now?”

  “What?”

  “You told me once that if you ever let your sister railroad you into anything again, I should slap you.”

  “Oh, right.” He actually had said that. They chat in the locker room surprisingly often. “No, I really do want my share of my mom’s assets to go to my dad. It’s what she would have wanted. I just need to get a document from a lawyer to that effect that will hold up in court.”

  Connor rolls his eyes at Nick’s skeptical gaze. The handsome band singer has heard too many stories about Prue. Granted, Connor was the one who told him all of them.

  “Can you afford the consulting fee?” Nick stands and finally pulls off his shirt. “I can spot you the money. Pay it back when you can.”

  “No. I got it.” Connor yawns. “They’re letting me pull extra shifts here.”

  Nick’s gaze does not get any less skeptical. He goes back to his locker and pulls on a T-shirt. It manages to be both baggy and revealing on his body. Only now does it occur to Connor that he should change out of his uniform, too.

  “Want a ride home?” Nick pulls on a pair of jeans. “You look like you’re going to fall asleep on the bus again.”

  Back in civilian clothes, Connor shuts his locker. Now that Nick is fully dressed, looking at him doesn’t feel nearly as illicit. Nick, for his part, has chatted with Connor in every possible state of undress including naked. Illicit may not be how looking at Nick is supposed to feel.

  “No, I’ll be fine.”

  It’s cold out, and that’ll keep Connor alert enough to get on the bus. Sometimes, he gets lucky and he wakes up in time for his stop. Other times, well, he’s never not made it home.

  Nick frowns again. He pulls on a thick coat. It ought to obscure the taper from his shoulders to his waist. It doesn’t.

  “Look, if you ever want a ride—”

  “I’ll ask.” And, after an awkward pause, he adds, “Thanks.”

  “Well, safe travels, Connor.”

  Nick slams his locker shut and leaves. His walk is jaunty, stepping in time to a sea shanty only he can hear. Connor collapses back onto the bench, but then forces himself back up and puts on his coat. It’s freezing out, and the bus waits for no man.

  • • • •

  The lawyer that the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office recommended to Connor is three bus transfers away. It takes Connor several hours to get to her office. He shivers off the snow then hands the receptionist a check. The consulting fee has to be paid in advance.

  The lawyer’s office is cozy and warm. A large desk sits between them. The lawyer is way more ambitious than he is. She leans forward, asking him to come back with documentation about his family and Mom’s assets. When it becomes clear that he can’t afford any more than this visit, she scribbles out something that her office will make presentable for him to give to his sister. Her reluctant expression and audible sigh screams “against my better judgement.” Maybe it’s just pity, but he’s not proud.

  Shifts at the restaurant come and go. If Connor wants to chop vegetables and adjust the texture and flavor of meat for hours at a stretch, his fellow servers are happy to give up those shifts. There are a couple rough weeks where Nick is gone, preparing for and, ultimately, winning his regional auditions. More than once, Connor’s not sure how he’s gotten home.

  The time Connor doesn’t spend at the restaurant, he spends in his own kitchen, a thin strip of linoleum flooring at one edge of his tiny apartment. Mom’s pot stickers won’t recreate themselves. The extra shifts at work now pay for flour, pork, vegetables, and spices. He figured out the hot-water dough a while ago. As winter thaws into spring, he is still puzzling out the filling.

  The dough rests in a bowl covered by a damp cloth. In another bowl, he mixes pork, scallions, ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil by hand. A savory, salty meatiness with a slight jab of heat fills his mouth as the mixture squishes between his fingers. He frowns. The flavor is still not what he remembers. He tamps down the fire from the scallions as he works the ingredients together. In retrospect, he should have stuck with jiucai.

  He rolls out the dough into a long snake. One by one, he rounds the small clumps he breaks off between his palms. Forming the tiny balls of dough used to be his job when he was too young to pay attention to how his mom made the filling. Just like he’s doing now, his mom would roll out each ball into a circle, put in a dollop of filling, then crimp the circle into a dumpling. When he’s done, several dozen of them form a neat grid on the floured table.

  He crafts rather than steams then fries the dumplings. No one wanted Connor to spend the years training to be a food crafter. Well, except for Connor, but no one cared what he thought. Since he is a food crafter, though, there’s no point to not taking advantage of that. Whatever made Mom’s pot stickers Mom’s has nothing to do with a bamboo steamer or frying pan.

  The dumplings bobble into the air. They plump with steam and are seared so that they all have crunchy, slightly oily, and savory crusts. Unlike anyone using a steamer and a frying pan, he can hit the bliss point exactly every time.

  He slides a plate beneath them, then lets them fall. Juices dribble down his chin when he tries one. It’s fine, perfectly cooked even, but it’s no more than that. It doesn’t taste like Mom’s. They never do. He can diddle with the flavors. Hell, if he put his mind to it, he could make the dumplings taste like a crisp, tart apple tinged with cinnamon and cardamom. What he can’t do, at least not yet, is make them taste like the ones he remembers, the ones his mom made when he was fourteen when she wouldn’t show him what to do no matter how much he begged.

  He pulls a journal out a drawer. The cover is tattered, and variegated pages paint swirls along the edges formed when the pages stack as the journal is shut. A bookmark sticks out the top. Each page has the flavor of a batch of dumplings he has made. This way, he never tries the same dumplings twice. He opens it by the bookmark to a blank white page. He scrawls today’s date on it, then infuses it with the flavor of this batch. Streaks of green flow down the yellowing page.

  The journal goes back into the drawer. The dumplings go into a resealable plastic container. They’ve become surprisingly popular at the restaurant’s staff meals. Connor, however, can’t make himself eat them.

  • • • •

  The maître d’ hands Connor a notebook that has “Mom’s recipes” written in his sister’s precise handwriting on the cover. Connor’s hands shake so much, the notebook vibrates. His heart pounds. The notebook is probably not what it looks like but, as always, he can’t help hoping. He pushes past her and several startled servers, and nearly crashes into a table busser as he sprints out of the dining room.

  Customers in their elegant dinner jackets and evening dresses wait in the restaurant’s lobby. They sit on overstuffed sofas and chat as they wait for their tables. Connor manages to halt his run just as he reaches
them. He catches sight of Prue just as she pulls on the door to leave.

  “What is this?” Connor is standing next to the maître d’s stand, holding the notebook out at her.

  Prue turns around. She rolls her eyes and purses her lips.

  “What does it look like?” Her head shakes in disbelief. “I thought you’d thank me.”

  Her tone is sharper than any knife. Connor is convinced Prue doesn’t have any other way to speak. That said, the sharpest knives make the cleanest cuts. You barely feel them. They slide rather than tear through the flesh.

  “So everything went okay with probate?” He clutches the notebook to his side. “My share of stuff went to Dad?”

  “Oh, that.” She turns around and pulls open the door. “I got Dad to give his share to me. I’m in a better position to deal with it.”

  She is out the door before Connor can collect himself. He just stands there watching the door close. The customers do an admirable job of chatting with each other and waiting as though Connor and Prue were not talking at each other from across the lobby.

  “Are you all right?” The maître d’s voice takes Connor by surprise. “Take the night off. It’s not like you haven’t earned one, or ten.”

  He turns to the maître d’, now back at her stand. A forced smile breaks his face.

  “No, I’ll be fine.” He holds up a hand, as if to press her away. “I just need to get back to work.”

  He rushes back into the dining room before she has a chance to respond. The rest of his shift is a blur. Customers are served. Water is transformed into seasoned beef stock then into a powder that is sprinkled on top of an emulsion of onion and gruyere that sits on top of parmesan-coated cracker. Veal shanks become their braised, tender selves and are infused with the flavors of tomatoes, rosemary, and bay leaf. Foams that taste of apple and cranberries float over a bed of puff pastry. Food seems to craft itself.

  It hasn’t, because, after the shift ends, he is sweat-soaked, stripped to the waist, and collapsed on the bench in the locker room. The noise of slammed locker doors, zipped zippers, and chatty servers surrounds him. People ask him whether he’s okay as they pass by, and he tells them he’ll be fine in a minute. When he sits up, the locker room is empty. He takes the notebook his sister gave him out of his locker.

  His heart starts to pound and his hands shake as he opens the notebook. The hope that bubbles in him makes him queasy. Years of searching and experimenting could be over in an instant because of help from, of all people, his sister. It’s not impossible Mom told Prue her recipes. Prue was the one Mom expected to be interested in cooking. It’s not impossible that Prue would write them down. Writing them down for Connor is a bit of a stretch. Passing Mom’s recipes down, though, would make her look good to their relatives.

  When he reads the first recipe, the bubble of hope growing inside him bursts. He riffles through the notebook. The pages rustle past. Spare text in his sister’s airy hand is spread across each page. It’s definitely a notebook of recipes, just not their mom’s.

  He snaps the book shut, expecting to dash it against the lockers. Anger is supposed to shudder through him. Instead, he laughs.

  His arms squeeze the notebook to his chest. His laughter is a hand saw ripping through wood. Air leaves his lungs before it’s had a chance to enter and tears fill his eyes.

  He stops only when he realizes he’s no longer alone. At some point, the handsome band singer, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, entered the locker room. Connor snaps straight, seated on the bench, the final laugh choked in his throat.

  Nick’s gaze sweeps across Connor. It stops at Connor’s tear-filled eyes.

  “What did your sister do to you this time?” Nick’s gaze is gentle, as though he actually wants to know. “Would you like a hug?”

  Connor smiles as he wipes the tears from his eyes. He shows Nick the notebook.

  “What she gave me is absolutely not a notebook of Mom’s recipes.” Connor sets the notebook on the bench. “You know how you can look at a piece of music and know how it will sound?”

  “Oh, you can look at a recipe and know how it will taste.” Nick sits next to Connor on the bench. He pats Connor’s knee. “I’m sorry, Connor.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s weirdly well meaning, actually. Anyone else—well, maybe not anyone else here, but anyone else—might believe these are my mom’s recipes and stop trying to recreate them.” Connor shrugs. “That’s just the way my sister is. She’s never going to change.”

  Connor starts laughing again. It’s more gentle this time. He’s hunched over, and his shoulders start pumping up and down.

  “What’s so funny?” Nick picks up the notebook and starts thumbing through it.

  “Mom’s dead. Probate’s settled. If I don’t want to, I don’t have to deal with Prue anymore.” Connor forces the next words out. “And I don’t want to. Does that make me a monster?”

  “Then don’t deal with her anymore.” The smile on his face is kind, not cruel. “It doesn’t make you a monster.”

  “Um, Nick.” Getting these next words out is like summiting a mountain. “Can I have a ride home? I don’t—”

  “Sure. Any time. It’s my pleasure.”

  • • • •

  Connor doesn’t invite Nick into his apartment. He wants to, and Nick even looks a little disappointed when Connor doesn’t and just says goodbye instead. The apartment, though, is a mess. Besides, there’s something Connor wants to do tonight, and he needs to do it alone.

  Nick’s car disappears down the street. It’s an odd thing, such a big man in such a small car. When Connor first saw it, he wondered how Nick would fold himself into the driver’s seat. Maybe he’ll ask for another ride sometime. Take another crack at figuring that out.

  His kitchen is the one neat area in his apartment. His training is too ingrained in him for the kitchen to be anything but pristine. All the surfaces have been wiped down. Everything is in its place.

  He opens a window. It’s spring, and the breeze that drifts in is not freezing. The battery pops out of the smoke detector with a practiced ease. He places a stockpot on the floor and puts into it: his dumpling journal, the notebook his sister gave him, and a lit match.

  Journal pages char, curl up, and slowly become ash. The scent of steaming dumplings perfume the air. The smell is not the one he remembers from when he was a kid, but it still reminds him of watching his mom cook. She’d roll out tiny balls of dough, fill them, and crimp them so quickly, he never had a chance to work out how to make the dumplings for himself. She always refused to show him, saying she’d always be around to make them for him.

  She, of course, will never make them for anyone ever again, and he needs to stop trying to recreate them. Prue, much as he hates to admit it, has a point. That doesn’t mean he won’t say goodbye to her, too.

  The notebook pages catch fire. The burning paper smokes. Black rings eat away at each page. Grey wisps stretch up, tangling with one another as they go. A thread of bitter weaves itself into the tapestry of flavors.

  Connor sits in front of the fire. Flames lick the sides of the stockpot. Individual tendrils dart up. The fire is a hungry creature licking its prey. The paper curls and shrinks with faint crinkles and crackles. Slowly, he breathes in the fragrant and the bitter as he watches his memories render into ash.

  * * *

  John Chu is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com among other venues. His translations have been published or is forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF and other venues. His story “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

  Articulated Restraint

  By Mary Robinette Kowal

  MOON COLONY EXPANDS TO 100 COLONISTS

  Sep. 26, 1960 (AP) — The International Aerospace Coalition announced today that t
he lunar colony, established last year, is ready to expand to hold 100 colonists. This is the next step in preparing to colonize Mars, although many still question the necessity of such an endeavor…

  Six thirty in the morning was a brutal time to start work even without a sprained ankle. Ruby Donaldson tried to tell herself that being sore and exhausted was good practice as an astronaut. Limping up to the third floor of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, she gave thanks that no one else was in the stairwell so she could lean against the metal rail. It was hard enough balancing work and life without people questioning her choices.

  All she wanted was to do the NBL training run and then collapse in bed, but somehow she’d agreed to another lindy-hop dance rehearsal tonight. It was just hard to disappoint a friend that you’d been dancing in competitions with since before the Meteor struck, and she didn’t have that many pieces of Before left in her life.

  At least, the benefit of being a doctor was that she could diagnose and treat her own injuries. She didn’t have to risk getting grounded if she admitted to a flight surgeon that she’d twisted her ankle practicing a Charleston Flip. All they would have done was exactly what she did. Ice. Wrap. Analgesic.

  As she came out on the pool level, the smell of chlorine met Ruby at the door. The massive football field–sized pool hummed with activity as dozens of divers and suit techs prepped for the run.

  Wait— There were too many people here.

  And there were four EVA suits on the bright yellow donning stands by the pool. There should only be two, because her run had been scheduled with just one other astronaut. All she and Eugene were supposed to be doing was a simulated spacewalk to work out the procedure for attaching cameras to the outside of the station.