October Third: Avocado Noodles?

Zhou stepped onto the bus, slumped into the seat adjacent to the door, and fixed his eyes on the floor. As the bus rumbled down the street, Zhou reached into his right pocket and felt two items: four fingers ran over the glass screen of his phone, while his thumb brushed an index card. Before he could decide which of the two to pull out, his phone buzzed. Zhou took out his phone, leaving the index card in his pocket, and considered Hu’s text.
***** “Hey Zhou! You down for some gaming tonight?”
***** Zhou knew he should decline. He didn’t need to pull out the index card to see its reproachful red ink: “experiment with mango noodles”. But of course he didn’t even have a mango, he had been too busy to go shopping yesterday. “Sure, meet at my place in 30 minutes?” Zhou typed. “I’m almost home.” Zhou shoved his phone back in his pocket and shut his eyes.
***** Zhou and Hu played deep into the night. At some point Zhou went to the bathroom where he further crumpled his index card and dropped it in the trash can.

The next day, Zhou ate his eggs and burnt tomatoes in silence. Why can’t I even do eggs and tomatoes right? He’d been sure that the thick sauce he’d soaked the tomatoes in would prevent them from burning when subjected to a longer cooking time. Eventually Zhou took out his index card and crossed out “thick-sauce tomatoes” leaving only “review calendar” at the end of the list. Zhou returned the index card and began cleaning up. As Zhou scrubbed the frying pan his phone buzzed. He dried his hands and looked at the text, which was from Hu.
***** “Are you ready for Ascent VI tonight? I know how to defeat the rain demons now.”
***** Zhou tapped his phone’s suggested response “Sure, come over whenever”, and returned his phone to his pocket where it rested against the day’s index card. Something felt off to Zhou as he continued to clean the dishes. Then it struck him: Today was the last day of the month, the day he was supposed to review his progress on his cookbook during the past month and plan what new recipes he’d try making or recording next month. But what’s the point of calendar review? To count how many days I’ve created an inedible dinner? To confront the number of days I’ve been too tired to even try? Why do I cling to this silly tradition? And then he remembered why: it was because of Lin. He got out his phone and texted Hu again.
***** “Oh, sorry, I just remembered I can’t play tonight. I need to do some laundry and stuff.”
***** Zhou silenced his phone to evade Hu’s inevitable complaint, and returned to washing the dishes. Zhou wondered how Lin was doing. Had it really been four years since Lin had left Boston to attend graduate school at CMU? It felt like a lifetime ago that Zhou and Lin had been roommates while attending school at MIT.
***** At first when Lin had left for Pennsylvania they had called each other weekly. Lin would ask about every new dish that Zhou had tried to make that week and would drag a large number of details out of Zhou. Lin always would say it was so sad that Zhou wasn’t in Pennsylvania to help him cook real food, so Lin just had to eat eggs, sandwiches, and pasta every day. But, then life got busy. They only called rather sporadically. Zhou remembered the last time he had seen Lin, now nearly two years ago on Zhou’s birthday. Lin had visited Zhou in Cambridge and they had made xiaolongbao dumplings.
***** “You know, next time it’s my birthday or New Years or whatever you should mail me some of these”, Lin said as he slurped the steaming juice from inside another dumpling and then popped the dumpling into his mouth.
***** Zhou smiled. He hadn’t felt the dumplings were particularly good. There was too much salt and they were a bit soggy. But Lin always found something to praise whenever Zhou cooked.
***** “Nah,” Zhou said, “they’d get cold in the mail, and it’d be a sin to microwave them. But I’ll give you something even better: I’ll give you the recipe! I’ve actually always wanted to make a cookbook, but I’ve never been able to find the time”.
***** “Oh yes, that would be so cool!” Lin said. “You gotta put those noodles we made up in the book too. You know, the ones with the avocado?”
***** “Of course”, Zhou said, smiling.
***** “Oh, and the sliced potatoes with mushrooms? And the avocado pizza. Oh, and…”
***** As Zhou walked Lin to the train they animatedly discussed the cookbook. After seeing Lin off to the train, Zhou bought a calendar at the train station, and rushed back to his room. Lit only by his desk lamp Zhou set dates to record recipes, and dates to try new recipes.
***** Time and failure had tempered Zhou’s initial enthusiasm for the project. But, of course, that was why Zhou had calendar review days: to recenter himself on the path towards his goal. Zhou dried off his hands and resolutely headed to his bedroom to review his calendar.

The calendar was a battlefield: a few lonely blue checkmarks resisting hordes of red X’s on all sides. Zhou reached down and extracted a small black notebook from the pile of books beside his desk. He opened the book reverently to the first page which was titled “Avocado Noodles”. He slowly turned the pages, smiling fondly at his creations. All too soon Zhou reached the end of the filled pages. Zhou shoved away the stream of negative cognitions, instead filling his mind with fond memories of cooking. Zhou took September in both hands and gently lifted the page to reveal October, on which he found the date he had long waited for, and sometimes dreaded. The square of October third contained the text “Lin’s Birthday!” in precise black letters.
***** Zhou got out his phone and typed “Hey Lin! Want to make dinner this week at your place? I’ve always wanted to visit Pennsylvania!” His thumb hovered above the send button as if repelled by a magnet. What would Lin think when he saw Zhou’s half-blank cookbook? When he learned that Zhou was often too tired to try new recipes and even when he did try he burned the tomatoes? Zhou could just leave Lin to his life in Pennsylvania, send a “happy birthday” emoji, and hide for another year.
***** Zhou almost deleted the text. But staring at his calendar, the cookbook on his desk, and his day’s index card, he admitted to himself that Lin would probably be happy to see him, and would likely fawn over his half-full cookbook. Zhou remembered back to Lin’s 21st birthday dinner, when Zhou had thought it would be a good idea to make beans with cocoa powder.
***** “Ugh, this is literally the worst thing I’ve ever eaten,” Zhou said, choking down a spoonful of the cursed meal.
***** Lin somehow choked down a spoonful of beans while snorting in laughter.
***** “Remember when I was trying to solve the linear hashing conjecture?” Lin said, “I had this super awesome idea. You view cyclic groups of numbers as being in superposition across space-time… Anyways, I spent the next couple months exploring this idea. I made some very cool plots, but, ultimately, it didn’t actually help me prove any theorems. But I don’t regret those months. Because getting to think of weird ideas is the most exciting part of doing math anyways. So I say, these beans are good! Not because they taste good. They taste awful! But they’re good because we created them.”
***** Zhou added to the text “I can bring an avocado”, sent it, and went to bed.