This Is My Brain on Frugality

JOCELYN

My brain feels like a giant ball of lint.

Will, in contrast, comes into work all eager, like a Saint Bernard with a tennis ball in his mouth. I nod at him in greeting, because words seem too hard at the moment.

“I should’ve brought coffee again, huh?” he jokes, and for a moment it irritates me. Is he basically saying that I look tired? Or worse, cranky? I swallow a snarky response and wave to the kitchen.

“Amah has some green tea already steeped if you need some caffeine.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m good,” he says a little too quickly, like he’s trying to manage my mood, for God’s sake. I shake my head to clear out the cloud of negativity in my head.

Snap out of it, Wu.

“So,” I say. “What’s in the folder?”

“Oh!” Will lays down his folio and starts pulling out computer printouts. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I made some mock-ups of a new website.”

“Wow,” I say after some stunned blinking. “These look awesome!” I mean, anything that uses a font more sophisticated than Arial Black would win an A-Plus design competition, but what Will has come up with is both functional and super slick.

He flips through some different views of the drop-down menus and spouts some technobabble that I mostly ignore, before he asks anxiously, “You like it?”

“Are you kidding? It’s ridiculous. You did this in one night? My dad will freak out.” At least he’ll be happy when he finds out it was free. He’s always ignored our website except for the annual grumbling when he has to renew our hosting service.

Will gives a bashful smile. “And, oh, I’ve got another advertising opportunity. You know the Boilermaker?”

I laugh. “Do I know the Boilermaker?” It is the biggest event of the year in Utica, with literally thousands of runners flooding the city, seeking carbs and electrolytes. “It’s a freaking zoo every year. Dad tripled our order of water and Gatorade last year and we still ran out. Why? Are you thinking of running in it?”

“No, it’s just… have you ever thought about doing a food stand in the Expo?”

“I don’t know,” I say dubiously. “Like I said, it’s our busiest day of the year.”

“Sure, I get it, but we would only have to do the Friday before, not race day. It could expose tens of thousands of people to the restaurant. You and I could run the booth. I think the focus should be your grandma’s pot stickers. The smell alone will have hundreds of people following their noses, and when they come by we can hand out samples. I’m sure we’ll sell at least a thousand dumplings—and people are going to be ready to pay concessions prices.”

“Let’s do five for five dollars,” I suggest, warming up to the idea. Then I look at the vendor application that Will has already partially filled out, and my eyes goggle.

“It costs FOUR HUNDRED dollars just to have a freaking food stand?” That is more than what we net some nights.

“Look, I know it’s a lot, but I swear, it’ll be worth it. Even if we don’t make up the vendor fee through direct sales, the exposure is priceless—you’ll be listed in the program, we can have huge signage. We can hand out menus, too.”

I shake my head. “There is no way in hell that my dad is going to shell out four hundred bucks for the ‘privilege’ of having a booth. He’d sooner take his money and try to deep-fry it.”

Will bites his lip. “What if he didn’t have to?”

“What, you can get them to waive the fee?”

“Not exactly.” Will cricks his neck like he’s gearing up to throw a pitch, and he takes a deep breath in and out. “You don’t have to give the whole amount up front. There’s a fifty-dollar deposit, and then you can put the rest on a credit card the day of the event. If we don’t make up the booth cost, I’ll pay you back from my tips, or volunteer extra overtime hours without pay.”

“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?”