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Small Stakes: The Takeaway Menu

On Fridays the flat above the launderette had takeaway, and the takeaway was decided by a game.

Sim had invented the game in their first week, when he and Kezia had stood in the kitchen for twenty minutes saying "I don't mind, you choose" to each other until they were both too hungry to choose anything. The menu from the Golden Lantern on the corner was pinned to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a lemon. Its dishes were numbered, one to twenty-one, from the spring rolls at the top to the prawn crackers at the bottom.

"Here are the rules," Sim said, the first time he explained it to a guest.

The guest was Wren. She taught Year 2 at Kezia's school and had been there since September, and this was the first time she had come round. She had brought a bottle of lemonade and a tin of shortbread and had apologised for both of them in the doorway.

"Each turn," said Sim, "you tick one, two or three dishes, in order, starting at number one. So I might tick one and two, then you might tick three, four and five. Whoever ticks number twenty chooses dinner. Whoever's left having to tick twenty-one does the washing-up."

"Oh," said Wren. "That's fun."

"It's very fun," said Sim. "For me."

Sim's secret

Kezia had played the game perhaps thirty times, and she had chosen dinner perhaps twice.

The trouble was that Sim had solved it. He was a trainee electrician and he counted everything twice, and it had taken him about four Fridays to see what was going on. If you went second, he had explained to Kezia one evening, you could always win. Whatever the other person ticked, one or two or three, you ticked enough to make it up to four. Then up to eight. Then twelve, sixteen and twenty.

"Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty," he had said. "Five stops. If I land on every one of them, nobody else can land on twenty. They can't stop me. Whatever they tick, I can always make it up to the next four."

"So why do we still play it?" Kezia had asked.

"Because it settles things," Sim had said. "Nobody has to decide. The menu decides."

Kezia had thought about that for some time afterwards. It was true that nobody had to decide. It was also true that they had had chicken in black bean sauce eleven Fridays out of the last twelve.

Wren's turn

"You go first," said Sim to Wren, generously.

Wren ticked number one, the spring rolls, with a pencil, very neatly.

Sim ticked two, three and four.

Wren hesitated, and ticked five and six.

Sim ticked seven and eight.

Kezia, who knew exactly what was happening, went to put the kettle on. When she came back the pencil was going down the menu in a steady rhythm: twelve, sixteen. Wren ticked seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, and looked pleased, and Sim ticked twenty, the chicken in black bean sauce, with a flourish.

"I choose," he said. "Chicken."

"That's fine," said Wren.

She picked up the pencil and ticked twenty-one, the prawn crackers, which meant the washing-up was hers.

"That's fine," she said again. "I like washing up. Honestly."

Kezia looked at the menu. Then she looked at Wren, who was smiling the polite smile of a guest in a new place, and holding the shortbread tin a little too tightly.

"Wren," said Kezia. "Do you eat chicken?"

There was a short pause.

"I'm vegetarian," said Wren. "But it's fine. I'll have the rice. I really don't mind."

What the game was about

Sim put the pencil down.

He was not unkind. He was the least unkind person Kezia knew. He had simply been playing a game, and he was good at games, and he had won it.

"I didn't know," he said.

"How would you?" said Kezia. "The game didn't ask."

She sat down at the table and turned the menu round so that all three of them could see it.

"I've been thinking about this for weeks," she said. "It's a good game. It's fair. Same rules for everyone. And it never once asks anybody what they want to eat. It asks who can count to twenty in fours. Sim can. So Sim chooses. Every Friday, for the rest of our lives."

"It does settle things," said Sim.

"It settles them without anyone having to say anything," said Kezia. "Which is lovely, if nobody has anything to say. Wren has said 'that's fine' four times since she came in, and she hasn't said what she'd like once. The game doesn't help her. A game you play for nothing ought to turn towards the person opposite."

Wren had gone pink. "I really don't mind," she said, but more quietly.

Sim looked at the menu for a long time. Then he did the thing Kezia liked most about him, which was to treat a problem as a fault to be found rather than an argument to be won.

"Then it's a wiring fault," he said. "I solved it, so now we change it. The fault is that you can win by counting. You never have to look at the food. So make the moves about the food."

Sim's new rule

He thought out loud, the way he did when he was tracing a circuit.

"Same menu. Same one, two or three a turn. But you don't tick them in order. You cross them out, from anywhere on the menu. And you can only cross out a dish you wouldn't eat."

"What if there's nothing left you wouldn't eat?" asked Kezia.

"Then you pass," said Sim. "And the last dish nobody's crossed out is dinner. Nobody chooses. Nobody washes up alone. We all do it."

Wren looked at the menu. "So I'd be crossing out the meat," she said slowly.

"You'd be telling us what you won't eat," said Kezia. "Every move. That's the whole game now."

"Can I cross out the prawn crackers?" said Wren.

"If you wouldn't eat them," said Sim.

"I would eat them," Wren admitted.

"Then they stay," said Sim, and grinned.

The thali

The new game took three minutes and was completely different from the old one.

Wren went first, and this time she did not hesitate. She crossed out the chicken in black bean sauce, the sweet and sour pork and the crispy beef. Then, on her second turn, the duck, the lamb and the spare ribs. She did it without apologising once.

Kezia crossed out the very hot curry, because she had made that mistake before, and the dish with the squid in it, because she had made that mistake too.

Sim looked down the menu. He looked at every dish that was left. He would eat every one of them. He had never in his life found a dish he would not eat.

"Pass," he said.

He passed again on the next turn, and the turn after that, and started laughing.

"I can't do anything," he said. "I'd eat all of it. I've solved it, and the answer is that I've got no moves."

"That's a good answer," said Kezia.

Wren crossed out the beef noodles and the two other dishes with meat in them. Kezia crossed out the egg fried rice, because they always had too much of it, and the tofu, which she had never liked. Sim passed. Down the menu, one dish at a time, the choices narrowed.

When it got to the last two, Wren held the pencil over the menu for a moment.

There were the prawn crackers, and there was number fourteen, the vegetable thali.

"I'd eat both," she said. "So I have to pass."

Kezia would eat both too. So, of course, would Sim.

"Then we're stuck," said Kezia.

"Then it's the rule's fault again," said Sim. "Last two, and nobody can move. I've passed more than anyone. I say whoever crossed out the most chooses." He pushed the pencil across. "That's Wren."

Wren crossed out the prawn crackers.

Number fourteen was a vegetable thali, with three curries, a dal, rice and two breads. Nobody in the flat had ever ordered it, because nobody in the flat had ever landed on number fourteen.

"It's my favourite," said Wren. "I didn't think they did it here."

They ordered it, and two portions of chips, because Sim insisted. It came in a tower of foil trays. Wren explained which of the curries was which. Sim ate a great deal of all of them and announced that he would never order chicken in black bean sauce again, which was untrue, and everyone knew it.

They did the washing-up together.

Afterwards

When Wren had gone, Sim took the menu off the fridge and looked at it, all crossings-out and pencil.

"The first game was better maths," he said.

"It was," said Kezia.

"The second one was better dinner." He pinned it back up with the lemon magnet. "With the counting, you never have to look at anybody. With the crossing out, every move tells you something about the person who made it."

"Small stakes," said Kezia.

"A thali," said Sim. "Not that small."

The question for your own table

When your house decides something by a rule, a rota, a coin or a game, does the rule ever ask anyone what they want? Who always seems to win it?

Something to do

Number the dishes on a takeaway menu, or the films in a list, or the walks you might take on Sunday. Play the 21 game first: tick one, two or three in order, and whoever ticks the last but one chooses. Then play Sim's way: cross out one, two or three you would not choose, from anywhere, and pass if you can't. See what is left, and who it was left for.

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