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Kala’s father offers her a perfect little square of coconut burfi while she’s standing in the kitchen one evening after the restaurant has closed. She bites into it and sighs with pleasure. It’s sweet and clean on her tongue, and the texture is just rich enough, not too dry and not too sticky.
“What is that?” Sun says, suddenly next to her. “It tastes like… coconut?”
Kala would offer her a piece, but like a good scientist, she has discovered through trial and error that it’s simpler just to eat it herself. The other sensates can still taste it, if she shares, and her father will not walk back into the kitchen to see his daughter holding her hand out and offering food to someone who isn’t really there. So she takes another little bite, savoring it, and then says, “It’s a sweet. We call it burfi.”
“I like it,” Sun says. She smiles a little, just one corner of her mouth, and then stops. “The food in the prison,” she starts, and then decides not to continue.
Sun doesn’t like to complain, so Kala will do it for her: “Is terrible?”
“It is not a five-star hotel.”
“Do you like to cook?” Kala asks.
Sun shakes her head. “I can’t cook or sew,” she says, and she looks rueful. “But I like to eat. I miss going out for bibimbap or barbecue.”
“You can come over for dinner any time,” Kala says. She smiles at Sun, at their private joke, and then feels sad. It would be nice if Sun really could come for dinner, if they could visit in person. But Sun is in prison. She can’t go anywhere, not really.
“Thank you,” Sun says, and is gone.
Later, before she goes to bed, Kala opens her laptop. She can’t get Sun out of prison, at least not tonight. And she is not the cook her father is, having spent more time concocting things in laboratories than in kitchens, but she can follow a recipe. She types ‘bibimbap’ into her browser and smiles.