The Pierogi

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“I think it’s a pierogi,” Peter said as he kneeled in front of the glass display case that dominated the front of DeeLite Donuts.

“I thought those were fried, Jean, his wife and co-owner said.

“They can be. But not always.”

The single boiled dumpling sat on a shelf between a tray of raspberry jelly filled and chocolate cake doughnuts. Peter stood, wiping imaginary crumbs off of his pink polo shirt emblazoned with the store’s logo. “And, you are sure you didn’t put it there?”

“Yes, Peter, I am sure I didn’t put a pierogi in the display. I would remember that.”

Jean and Peter were the only people working that Tuesday morning. Tuesdays were slow, so the extra help was not necessary. Still, Jean opined it was possible that Monica or Darren had slipped it in over the weekend and it had just gone unnoticed. That would, Peter supposed, be possible on a Monday morning, but there was no way a pierogi would have escaped notice for two days.

Still, Jean felt it best to call the off duty employees to confirm. Monica and Darren denied their culpability in the situation. Darren claimed he did not even know what a pierogi is. Jean was not sure he was being truthful on that front, but she could not point to any evidence that Darren did, in fact, have prior pierogi knowledge.

Despite the disappointment and being unable to solve this mystery, Jean and Peter decided the best course of action was to simply throw out the enigmatic dumpling.

The matter was forgotten - or at least not talked of again - the next day.

The following Tuesday, there was another pierogi in the display case. It was in the same spot as before. Jean and Peter were convinced their employees were pranking them. This time Peter took a picture of the pierogi with his cell phone, and sent it to Monica and Darren to ask if they recognized it.

Monica denied it. Darren said he didn’t know what it was. When Peter informed him it was a pierogi, Darren informed him that he was surprised, because after the call last week he had decided that pierogi’s were those sausages in puffy pastry. Peter informed him that those are sausage rolls, and that was beside the point.

Again, Peter and Jean tossed out the pierogi.

The next Tuesday, it appeared again. This time, Peter pulled up the photo from the prior week. He and Jean compared the newly appeared pierogi with the picture. And, while neither of them claimed to be experts in forensic pierogi investigations, they determined it had to be the same dumpling based on its shape and the pattern of lumps and bulges under the boiled white dough.

This determination ratcheted up the anxiety. It was obvious that somehow someone was retrieving the discarded pierogi from the trash and returning it each week.

But who would do such a thing? Was it a silly prank or something more sinister? They had no answers. In an effort to prevent the prodigal pierogi from returning again, Peter shoved the mysterious small pie into the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. This matter was - in his mind - resolved.

Until the following Tuesday when the pierogi returned to its usual spot.

By this point, there could be no doubt that it had to be Jean or Peter who was placing the pierogi. When they arrived together at the store at 4 a.m., they both had checked the case and saw no pierogi. At 5, just as Jean was about to flip the sign on the door to “Open” she saw the pierogi nestled between the doughnut trays.

She accused Peter. Peter accused her. The recriminations continued until the first customer arrived, at which point the argument, along with the pierogi, was disposed of.

The small pierogi loomed large in the minds of Jean and Peter. Neither believed the other was telling the truth, and more nights than not that week they went to bed without more than a mumbled goodnight. By Saturday, Peter determined that he could not allow his marriage to fall apart due to a Polish pastry. If Jean was doing this, he would catch her and congratulate her on a joke well played.

Over the weekend, he covertly adjusted the store’s security camera so that it focused on the display case.

On Tuesday morning, the pierogi made its now expected appearance. Peter declined to engage with Jean on the matter, but instead went to the closet that they called an office and scanned the video. The pierogi was, indeed, visible in the display case at 5:00 a.m. He pushed the button that scrubbed the video backwards ten seconds. The pierogi was still present. He did this three more times before landing on a spot where there was no pierogi. From there, he pushed play. A few seconds later, the pierogi just appeared. One second there was nothing, the next there was the dastardly dumpling. No one had put it there.

Peter watched this segment several times, look for a glitch or signs of chicanery. Neither was present. Peter called Jean in to watch the video. She was reluctant, but she agreed to. She watched several times as well, and in the end she and Peter agreed that no one had placed the pierogi, and that they were damnable fools for blaming each other. They hugged and apologized, and then the front door rang signaling the first customer of the day had arrived.

They did not dispose of the pierogi that day. They placed it on a dish and put it in the store refrigerator.

It was gone the next day. But it came back on Tuesday.

Peter and Jean were at their wits’ end. The pierogi had led them to accuse each other of lying, and had dominated their lives. But they knew they could not call the police. What would they say? That a vandal was breaking into the store and leaving a boiled dumpling. Was there anything stolen? No. Was there any damage? No. This was simply not an appropriate matter to engage law enforcement over.

Jean came up with an idea the following Tuesday. What if the pierogi simply wants to be eaten? Peter said that was a terrible idea on a number of levels. First, pierogis are no more sentient than crullers, he argued. Secondly, they had no idea where the pierogi had been. He himself had thrown it in the garbage and sent it down the sink’s disposal. There was no way it was edible.

Jean sniffed it. It smelled fine. It had no signs of mold or debris. It simply looked like a freshly boiled pierogi.

Jean declared she was going to eat it and that Peter could not stop her. Peter knew she was resolute. With that in mind, Peter also knew he could not let her face the peril alone, and said they should split the pierogi.

Jean placed the dumpling on a napkin from the counter dispenser, and grabbed a white plastic knife. She divided the pierogi, which they now saw was filled with mushrooms and cheese. Peter asked if they should heat it, perhaps as a stall tactic, but Jean said no. “It came to us cold, and that’s probably how it wants to be eaten.”

Faced with this unassailable logic, Peter shrugged and picked up half of the pierogi. Jean picked up the other half, and tapped Peter’s half with a wry “Cheers!”

They ate the pieces.

The pierogi was nothing extraordinary. It was savory and tasted fresh. They both agreed it would have been better hot, and would have probably been well served with a dollop of sour cream. But all in all, it was fine.

Neither of them suffered any ill effects from the pierogi, and the following Tuesday, the dumpling did not appear. Nor did it do so at any time thereafter.

Peter and Jean never could figure out how the pierogi appeared in their store, and, more importantly, never figured out why. After a few months, they stopped thinking about it altogether.

One Sunday morning, about a year later, Darren was opening the store and getting ready for the big rush. By then, Monica had moved on. She had recently been replaced by Jennifer, a high school senior whose level of interest in her work could not be perceived by the human eye, or possibly even laboratory equipment.

Darren was about to flip the sign on the door to open when he looked back at the display. “Hey, Jennifer, did you put this sausage roll in with the doughnuts?”

She denied it, but Darren had a measure of pride knowing that he had properly identified the pastry.

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