Page 17 of Aftertaste

EN FLAMBé

A DINER BAR is an odd place to drink. Especially before noon. On a Tuesday.

But there Kostya was, seated at the bar of a greasy spoon called The Flame, sandwiched between Fordham sweatshirts debating a problem set and an early-bird geriatric considering the crossword, nursing a pale ale and soggy fries by the dawn’s early light.

February had eighty-sixed, and after a month of service at Hell’s Kitchen Supper Club, he had, too. What began as a home run (Sister Stacy! Buffalo soup! Easy-peasy!) had quickly devolved into a series of swing-and-a-miss. Night after night, diners arrived at his apartment aching to see their Dead, and Kostya struggled (and usually failed) to reunite them. He was burnt out. (Emotionally. Spiritually. Physically. Not to mention financially; the pay-what-you-can model had turned out to be kind of a money pit.) He was frustrated. (Who wouldn’t be after twenty-eight consecutive dinners—no nights off; no breaks; no life outside death—with a measly six ghosts to show for it?) He was concerned. (No shit.) So while he knew he’d live to regret the morning booze, last night at Hell’s Kitchen had been another flop, and he just needed something to soften the blow.

The customer had been a young guy, a freshman at NYU double majoring in history and East Asian studies. He’d wanted to see his granddad, to show him that he was finally learning Cantonese. The request was so sweet and simple and uncomplicated that it made Kostya smile. There was no grand drama playing out here. No high stakes. Just a kid, wanting to see his Yé ye , who had passed peacefully in his sleep a few months prior.

Except, after nearly an hour of romancing an aftertaste, Kostya hadn’t gotten so much as halitosis. He felt awful. Not only a failure but a fraud.

Frankie had been helping in the kitchen—sometimes, on days off, he stuck around in hopes of feasting his own eyes on the mysteries of the unknown—and attempted to cheer him up.

“Don’t sweat it, Bones,” he said, wiping down the counter. “There’s always next time.”

Kostya slapped lids onto a half-dozen plastic containers—the remains of his untouched mise en place—and labeled them with the date.

“Except I’m on a losing streak, so next time’s probably gonna flop, too.”

“Always looking on the bright side.”

“I just thought it would get easier with practice.” He shoved the containers dejectedly into the fridge. “I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.”

“Maybe it’s not you.” Frankie finished with the counter and dried his hands on his apron. “Maybe it’s them. Maybe not every spirit wants to come back.”

“But these ghosts are supposed to be suffering! Sister Stacy said so. Don’t they want my help?”

“ They probably do, but how do you know they’re the ones you’re getting?”

“What do you mean?”

“Take this kid tonight. All he wanted was to show off his homework, right? And Grandpa died peaceful, from what he said. No regrets. No big deal. Doesn’t sound like suffering to me. So maybe he didn’t need to come back.”

Kostya frowned. “Maybe. But if you were dead and had the chance, need or not, wouldn’t you just go?”

“If it were me,” Frankie said, untying his apron, “I’d just stay dead.”

“Bullshit. You’d be first in line to get back here!”

“Not a chance! There’s some things I won’t fuck with.” He reached into the fridge for a bottle of Coke—the good kind, Hecho en México —and popped the cap on the edge of the counter. “Know how many stories my ’lita ’s got about spirits who fucked around and found out? One for every damn day of the year.”

He handed the Coke to Kostya and got a second for himself.

“And yet”—Kostya took a sip—“you have no problem helping me bring them back.”

“That’s just cooking.” Frankie swatted the thought away. “Same as any other kitchen. I don’t gotta eat tripe to be able to serve it.”

“Oh.” Kostya laughed. “ Okay. So it’s fine for everyone else?”

“Look.” Frankie held up his bottle. “It’s like Coke. You got Diet; you got Zero; you got Freestyle if you’re nasty. Call me a purist, but I like it classic. Everybody’s gotta make up their own mind about what they want. And me? When I’m dead, I wanna stay dead.” He took a long sip of soda, smacked his lips. “Matter of fact, gimme your word.”

“On what? That I won’t bring you back?”

“Yup.”

“Okay? Sure. You have my word.” Kostya frowned. “But what if something happens? What if you’re suffering? Don’t you want to at least—”

“Nope.” Frankie shook his head. “Save your hocus-pocus for the other guys, Bones. Folks with baggage.” He polished off his Coke. “I plan on dying without any.”

“Right. Naturally.”

“I got it all figured out.” Frankie grinned. “I’ll win a James Beard or three. Couple Michelin stars. Get famous. Make a name. Open my own spot. Fuck around until I do because, well, when you look this good—but once it’s set? Settle down. Give my mama her grandkids. Live a nice long life and die in my sleep around ninety. Before I need Viagra.”

“Sounds pretty nice. We still living together in this scenario?”

“Oh, no, you’ll be out on your ass. Better start looking for a new place to raise the Dead.”

“Gotta keep my kitchen open that long first.”

“Ah, shit. Speaking of kitchen”—Frankie checked the time: nine o’clock—“I gotta head back to Wolfpup.”

“ Now? I thought you were off.”

“I am. But we’re wrapping spring menus tomorrow, and I need to test a few more recipes. And then I’m going by Delia’s.” He winked at Kostya. “Don’t wait up.”

“Jeez, when do you sleep?”

“I run on hustle, baby, not sleep. But look. Don’t worry so much. The aftertastes—an answer’ll come. Don’t overthink it.”

BUT OVERTHINKING , KOSTYA thought now, finishing his beer and signaling The Flame’s grizzled waitress for another, is my Olympics.

He had analyzed and dissected and pondered the problem all morning. How come Sister Stacy came right back, but NYU kid’s granddad didn’t? How come he vomited up that meat-headed rock-climber as soon as his yogi sister Om Shantied through the door, but couldn’t get so much as a whiff of that nice widow’s husband after three hours of tearful reminiscence?

His customers had all been understanding about it. Some even got competitive, making another reservation right away, determined to make it work. Still, Kostya knew that eventually people would grow tired of waiting.

He picked at the label on his beer.

Why did some spirits show and others—pun very much intended—ghost him? Were his taste buds off? Were his diners out of sync? Did they need a special way of connecting with the Dead that he couldn’t seem to tap into? Or was it like Frankie had said, that not every spirit wanted to come back?

“Hey,” he asked the old-timer to his right, “can I borrow a pen?”

Kostya fished a notebook from his coat pocket (an Italian leather order pad he’d lifted from Saveur Fare) and began a list. The dates, locations, foods, conversations—all the details he could remember about every ghost he had managed to resurrect.

He was looking for patterns, or at least clues.

The first few were easy to recall. Steven Tyler’s ghost bride, Anna. His dad (sort of) at the Bouche de Noel. Sister Stacy his first night at the Supper Club.

The most recent one was easy, too.

Tad, that California bruh in climbing gear, who’d died when the rope snapped ( eeesh ), retrieved by a sardine sandwich and his yoga-pose-for-a-selfie sister. That left four more, Kostya straining to remember.

There’d been that bland turkey meatloaf the night Frankie was helping out—a Juilliard instructor, Marguerite, bringing back a dance protégé, her pupil dead from diet pills. There was Jaden, a high school senior whose Captain Crunch and Cheerio blend had produced—it made Kostya ache—his little brother Michael, a wrong place, wrong time, should’ve-been-me-instead tragedy. There was Erica, the mom who had wept on Kostya’s shoulder, who blamed herself because she’d held on too tight, had never let her daughter live, was so stifling that Ashley snuck out one night to meet a boy she’d met online, who turned out to be a man, a terrible man—carrot cake smothered in thick, cream cheese frosting.

But the last one really stumped him.

It was the second ghost at Hell’s Kitchen, the one he’d used to convince himself that the lull following Sister Stacy’s resurrection was just a fluke, opening-week jitters. What’d he make the night after that string of failed services, his confidence shaky?

When he finally remembered, he was ashamed to have forgotten.

He’d been nervous, afraid he’d lost his touch, and the diner who shuffled in was an old man in a baseball cap. He didn’t speak much English, and had pantomimed alongside slow, enunciated Spanish, as though lengthening the syllables would somehow make Kostya understand. The language barrier made it difficult to warm the guy up, to ask the questions that might have prompted the ghost to reappear, and in the end Kostya just sat down across from him and took his hand, squeezed gently, said something like, “Let’s see if they show.”

When the aftertaste hit him, it was unmistakable, though for a second he did the lingual equivalent of a double take.

It was a memory from Kostya’s own childhood, the year after his dad died, when his mother fell into a depression so dark she spent weeks on end in bed, covers drawn, shades dampening the room. Kostya had kept them fed then, had trudged twenty minutes to the only grocery store that took their food stamps, had hauled home milk and bread and cheap orange cheese in a tearing plastic bag, its yellow smiley stretching to a frown by the time he huffed through the door. Anything they couldn’t afford on the stipend, he supplemented with freebies: sugar packets from the bodega on the corner, ketchup and mustard from Burger King, oyster crackers abandoned by the people who could afford the overpriced soup at Hale and Hearty. There were weeks when their food ran out before their next set of food stamps arrived, and Kostya had survived them with what he was about to make for this spirit.

Seven Heinz packets dissolved in boiled New York tap. Mix with a plastic spoon in a Styrofoam cup. Serve with broken saltines, if available. Ketchup soup.

He sucked back tears as he stirred.

When the ghost materialized, a kid in his teens, Kostya just wanted to hug him.

That dish was proof—the aftertastes didn’t have to be sophisticated. They didn’t even have to taste good. To anyone who tried this Campbell’s Tomato knock-off without knowing what it was, it probably ranked somewhere between awful and inedible. But that was the thing about food you ate when you had nothing: the smallest things—warmth, crunch, calories, someone making it for you, taking care of you even if only in some small way, or making it for yourself, proving that you could survive even when the world didn’t want you to—could make it the best thing you ever ate.

Something in Kostya’s gut lurched.

The best thing you ever ate.

Anna, his very first ghost—the drink that brought her back had been a cocktail she and her husband had shared, from a night they’d both agreed had been special.

The best , she’d called it.

And hadn’t Sister Louise said something similar, when Kostya was clearing her plate?

That soup was the one meal we shared that hadn’t come from the convent. A taste of what might have been. The best things.

Kostya read his list again. Reread. Summoned back the aftertastes that had flitted across his tongue over the decades, across space and time, across death. It struck him, suddenly, how specific each one was; not always delicious, but always distinct. Even the Reese’s at that warehouse party, he’d be willing to wager, had a story behind it, something that made it unlike every other Reese’s Cup the good people at Hershey mass-manufactured. Unique enough to trigger an individual moment, some unmistakable instance in a person’s life, strong enough to reach across the Afterlife and yank them back.

Madame Everleigh—at that party—had accused him of having no idea what he was tasting, and maybe he hadn’t then, not really, but Kostya felt sure now. This was what the flavors in his mouth were: the single best thing any spirit could remember consuming. But the reasons for a food’s greatness were as personal as a fingerprint. That, maybe, was the point. What they were eating didn’t matter nearly as much as why . If he could just figure out the why , understand it, find some way to prompt it for the Living reaching out for their Dead, maybe that could trigger the spirit to come.

It still didn’t explain why sometimes he got an aftertaste and sometimes he didn’t, unless not every spirit had a memory like this to guide them back. Something powerful. Life-changing. Linked, inextricably, to food. Something they needed to taste again, a craving that demanded satisfaction.

A sort of suffering only he could relieve.

Kostya closed the notebook and slipped it back into his coat. His hand twitched as he felt his phone there, and he pulled it out and stared hard at the screen.

He was itching to make the call but fighting the urge.

No. He shook his head. Uh-uh. It was too painful. Every conversation with her was excruciating.

His hand hovered over the screen, about to slide it back into his coat.

But then… he had to know. The why— only she could give him that.

His knee bounced as the phone rang. One ring. Two.

“Mama. Hey.”

“Kostya? Everything is okay?” She always jumped to the worst conclusion.

“ Da. Listen. I gotta ask you something, but I really need an honest answer. It’s important.”

“I always tell you truth. Maybe if you call more, you remember.”

He could feel the barbed edge to her voice but took a breath and pushed around it.

“When you cook pechonka , do you burn it on purpose?”

He heard her laugh.

“What’s a strange question from Mister Top Chef! I think you know all cooking already! See, if you go culinary school, they—”

“Mama!”

She huffed. “Okay. Nyet. I cook few minutes each side. Burnt pechonka unbearable thing. Everybody know this.”

“How about when you made it for Papa? Did he like it burnt?”

She got quiet then, so eerily silent he could almost feel his father there, hovering in the empty airwaves between their cell signals.

“Papa—I only made it for him special times. One,” she said slowly, “was when I make it to tell him about pregnancy. Oh, Kostya! He dance me through kitchen! It burn while we celebrate. He ate anyway.”

Kostya swallowed a lump in his throat. He wanted to ask more, to understand, to remember his father with the only other person in this world who could help him to, but his phone beeped through another call then, the ID flashing out a number he recognized instantly, one he’d memorized after staring at it for hours a day on the Restaurant Sanitation poster that hung over the dishwashing station at Saveur Fare. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“Mama, lemme call you back.”

THEY SHUT HIM down right over the phone. By the time he paid for his beer and walked home, there was a pink Cease and Desist notice taped to his door.

Turned out the fresh-faced yoga chick he’d pegged for an Instagram influencer (last Tuesday, sardines on toast with preserved lemon , resurrected the aforementioned Tad) had actually been an Instagram influencer, and she’d posted a picture of the outside of Kostya’s apartment, street number fully visible, along with a gushing entry about how excited she was to eat at the hottest underground restaurant in NYC— get in my DMs for deets!

All it had taken the City of New York was a casual message and a quick database search to confirm that he was, in fact, operating without a license.

Kostya was numb with rage. Angry at this stupid influencer (she had completely blown up his spot!) and at himself (would it have killed him to actually file some paperwork?!). He had been toiling all month, and now that he’d finally made the babiest of steps forward, he was back to square one.

He tried calling Frankie, hoping for a pep talk or at least some commiseration, and when he didn’t answer Kostya did the next best thing, and proceeded to eat his feelings. He had made his way through half their fridge and was just setting sights on the kitchen cabinets when his phone rang again—another 212 number that he could only assume was a Health Department lackey calling to follow up with outrageous, insult-to-injury-adding fines.

“What is it now?” he shouted into the receiver by way of greeting, his mouth half-full.

The NYPD officer on the other end cleared his throat authoritatively, and asked if he was speaking with a Mr. K. Duhovny, listed as the cosigner on the lease with Mr. Francis K. O’Shaunessey?

“Yeah,” Kostya said, swallowing. “I’m Frankie’s roommate. Everything okay?”

The officer cleared his throat. “There was a fire at Mr. O’Shaunessey’s place of employment. A—um—” Kostya heard papers flipping.

“Wolfpup?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What? When? ”

“Late last night. This morning, technically.”

“Well, where is he? Is he okay?”

The officer cleared his throat, and Kostya’s flesh went suddenly cold, goose bumps rising up and down his arms.

“Mr. Duhovny, do you have contact information for Mr. O’Shaunessey’s family?”

“Where is he?” Kostya repeated, his heart beginning to pound, adrenaline flooding his ears. “Which hospital?”

“A cellular or home phone number, maybe? Or an address?”

“No—you’re not hearing me. Frankie’s my best friend. Just tell me the damn hospital.”

“Mr. Duhovny,” the officer said after a long pause, “he isn’t in a hospital.”

Kostya couldn’t speak, was numb all over, was trembling.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you—Mr. O’Shaunessey is dead.”