Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

lie to himself, and this troubles him. If you’d asked if you could write about us, he would have told you no. But you didn’t, and now he gets to have his cake and eat it too.” She watched him hand a slice of cheese to a little girl on the other side of the counter. “I think that, deep down, he’s afraid.”
    “Of what?”
    “That it’ll go to his head. That it’ll change him.” The look she directed at her husband held both love and faith. “But it won’t. You can’t change Sal. Nothing can. So you stop your worrying. This won’t last,and in a week, maybe two, everything will go back the way it was before. You’ll see. You take a break now, walk around the block, get out of here for a little while.” She gave me a small push. “The air’ll do you good.”
    I untied my apron, feeling a small ripple of disappointment eddy through the shop; the customers’ wait would be longer now. But as I walked toward Chinatown, breathing in the scent of soy sauce, dried shrimp, and garlic, I gave myself to the raucous street, with its river of jostling people, and I could feel my shoulders relax as I slipped into the flow. Lured by the promise of cheap grease, I stared into the window of a dumpling shop, startled by the sight of a tall, thin woman in colorless clothing with chin-length brown hair and a wide mouth. She could have been anyone, but when she put her hand up to adjust her glasses, I realized she was me. I dropped my hand quickly, went into the small, steamy shop, and traded a dollar for five hot, juicy dumplings. My phone buzzed as I took the first bite. I looked down at the screen: Aunt Melba.
    “Billie!” Her voice was high, a bit breathless, obviously elated. “We just read your story! We’re so proud; your dad’s bought up every copy of
Delicious!
in Santa Barbara. You’ve made Sal Fontanari sound like a cross between Santa Claus and the Dalai Lama; I can’t wait to come to New York and meet him.”
    “Don’t buy your tickets yet,” I interjected quickly. “Right now the store’s full of tourists, and he’s pretty pissed.”
    “He can’t be!” It was Dad on an extension. “You made the man sound like a saint.” So they were together, in her house.
    “You don’t know Sal. He hates publicity, hates having strangers invade his little universe. He glares at me every time a new one comes through the door.”
    “Nothing lasts.” Dad was using his lawyer voice. “He’ll get over it. It’s—”
    “—only the first day,” Aunt Melba chimed in, reminding me of how she always finished his sentences.
    How odd, I thought: They were using the same words as Rosalie, but their meanings were so different. Rosalie lived in a rock-solid world,and she believed that everything settled back into familiar patterns. All it took was time. But we came from a land of earthquakes, and my family knew how everything could shift in a single instant.
    I left the shop, carrying my dumplings in a paper tray to the grassy area along Allen Street. Huddled on the bench, I could feel the cold green slats pressing into my thighs; it suited my mood. Reluctant to go back to Fontanari’s, I ate the dumplings slowly, losing myself in the raw garlicky sting of the plump crescents.
    “Hey, lady, can you spare a dumpling?” Mr. Complainer was standing in front of my bench. He looked wonderful, his brown hair tousled by the wind, his cheeks pink from the cold. I held up the tray with its lone remaining dumpling and he picked it up, practically inhaling it.
    “I love these,” he admitted, sitting down next to me. “A secret addiction we obviously share. Don’t tell Sal; he wouldn’t approve.”
    “Your secret’s safe with me.”
    “Thank God. Sal’d start giving me the second-best Parm, and I’m not sure I could deal with that.”
    I laughed, wondering what he was doing here. He answered as if I’d spoken the thought. “I usually shop in Chinatown after Fontanari’s. That place over there”—he pointed