Dumpling diplomacy

"'You're the new smoking police,' I tell Thorne when he sits back down. 'From now on you can give out citations.'

'What is a citation?' he asks, and takes a drink of Sprite.

'A ticket,' Tony says. 'You can write up smoking tickets and hand them out on the street to anyone you see smoking.'

Thorne laughs, and then the dumplings come and they're boiled, not steamed or fried, and a little doughy on the outside and delicious. We dip them in a small round dish of soy sauce and vinegar that sits on the table, and our little ship is righted again."

Susan Conley, in "The Foremost Good Fortune: A Memoir."