“Absolutely not. It was a hot dog with legs,” she says with a shiver. “At least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself. And you should, too.”
“I hear those are half-off on Tuesdays,” I joke. “So then those weren’t cockroaches but little pecans.”
She laughs. “Exactly.”
I spread my arm out in front of me, directing Rooney toward an invisible pathway. “In that case, lead the way.” After a stretch of silence, I add, “Tonight was… unexpected. In many ways. Definitely not part of my plans.”
“Or maybe it was,” Rooney says, tilting her head.
“Right. Fate,” I say, walking closely beside Rooney. “I have to know more about how this works. You make decisions on what food to eat. How did fate come into play there?”
She gives me a face. “Now it feels like you’re mocking it. The level of belief in fate varies for everyone.”
I put my hands up in front of me. “I don’t mean to. I’m genuinelycurious about how it works for you. You make me want to understand it more, even if I disagree.”
“It’s something that’s been a part of my life from the very beginning,” she says slowly, like she’s being careful with which words she chooses. “Fate guides me in love and work.”
“Love and work,” I repeat. “The little stuff.”
“The littlest,” she teases back. “It guides the important stuff. Not what kind of tea I drink. You don’t ever feel like you come across opportunities or events or people in your life because you were meant to?”
I walk around an overflowing garbage can on the sidewalk. “I think what we experience is because of decisions we’ve made in life. We make a lot of small choices every day. Those decisions add up. And those decisions have consequences. Decisions that we made.”
“Do you believe in gravity?” she asks.
“It’s safe to assume I do.” I jump into the air, landing on an icy patch. My foot slides a few inches.
Rooney places her arm under my elbow to steady me, the pressure of her forearm on mine making me aware just how close I want her to be. She lifts an eyebrow as though quietly mocking my firm stance on gravity.
“And what is gravity but an invisible force pulling objects—oceans to the moon, you to the sidewalk, stringmates to stringmates—closer together,” she poses. “You can’t physically see gravity pulling items toward another object, but you trust it’s there, working its magic every day.” Rooney says this so confidently that it’s almost convincing.
I turn to face her and walk backward for half a block. “Sure, we can’t see gravity. But we can measure it. Gravitational effects are how we detect its presence. What are the gravitational effects of fate?”
She smiles. “I thought you’d never ask. People finding the person they’re meant to be with.”
“But how do you know?” I push on.
“Because I believe.”
I can feel a frown forming. “It’s the ambiguity I have a problem with. Life exists because Earth is the right distance from the sun. Any farther and it would be too cold. Any closer and we’d boil.” I look up at the dark sky. “The fact we exist right now is because of the right combination of temperature, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and other elements. And, of course, gravity.”
“And fate,” she says markedly.
“With even the smallest shift in anything that makes up Newton’s laws or the rules of atomic physics,” I continue, “we’d all be gone or never have existed. The universe evolved in enough time for intelligent life to evolve.”
“Everything you just said… how were we not fated to be here?” she asks. “You said it yourself. If anything were different, we wouldn’t be here. The stars aligned, and we were destined to exist. To be here in this moment in time.”
“All I can say is I’m glad to be here in this moment in time with you.”
Rooney peers up at me through her eyelashes. “Even if I look like a lobster?”
I laugh with her. “Especiallybecause you look like a lobster.”
We cross the street to a nondescript Chinese restaurant with paper signs taped across the front. Drawn toward the restaurant like hungry tourists after a long bus tour. A red, blue, and green neon “Fried Dumpling” sign is displayed in the window. I’m immediately comforted by the thought. The awning features Chinese characters and the restaurant’s telephone number, both of which are faded, making them illegible.
“I can eat Chinese food at any time of day, but it’s the best late at night,” she explains. “Hence why I call them The Dumpling Hours. I swear dumplings are even more flavorful and chewy after midnight… Okay, yep. Let’s order a lot of them.”
I hold the door open for her as she continues to talk. “Besides corner bodegas, diners, and bars, not much else is open this late. Chinese restaurants are like the North Star. They’re always there when we need them. Constant and dependable. They guide us when we’re lost, hungry, or just need to get our bearings.”
