Page 20 of Aftertaste

CHEF’S KISS

LAST RITES TATTOO is cramped and dark and probably a gateway to Hell.

It’s in a basement sublevel beneath an old meat plant, and while the street above has long since been recast as a gleaming mecca of trendy nightclubs, gimmicky eateries, and unattainably beautiful people, the tattoo parlor looks like something out of Satan’s sketchbook.

The walls are covered in thick, grainy plaster, out of which skulls and bones and whole skeletons protrude. The lighting makes everyone look kind of undead. The tattoo stations are fashioned after old-school electric chairs, with belts and restraints and a place to bite down, so you know right away that it’s going to hurt.

Kostya was sitting in one of these chairs, unrestrained but squirming, while Cal, an overly effervescent tattoo artist, burned a chef’s knife onto his left forearm. Frankie had had one just like it, in the very same spot. It had been his first tattoo, the start of a sleeve he was working on, accumulating ink like belt notches—a knife covering an oil splatter, a sprig of rosemary reconfiguring a kitchen cut, a flame-kissed sauté pan in the place where steam had rubbed his skin raw. Kostya had wanted a tattoo for a while, and though his right arm still hadn’t healed to the point where he could handle blistering needles with ink inside, he couldn’t wait anymore, and offered up his left.

He had thought—somewhat delusionally—that if he just came here, sat where Frankie had sat, chatted up Frankie’s tattoo artist, got the same damn thing seared onto his body that Frankie had, Frankie might feel him on the other side and consent to sending him a sign. To let him know he was okay, wherever he was.

It was a long shot, but Kostya was getting desperate.

That first night, the apartment stone cold and empty, he’d hung up the phone with Frankie’s mother and stood in their kitchen—his kitchen, now—in the dark, waiting. He closed his eyes, felt the raw opening inside of him tearing at its sutures, felt the notches in the countertop where Frankie had banged scaloppini thin with a mallet, felt the air around him shift and maybe—maybe—maybe—

But no.

Frankie didn’t show up that night. Or the next. Or the next.

He didn’t show up in his old bedroom, Kostya sitting on his stained— ew —comforter in eerie silence. Or at his own funeral, when the Wolfpup staff cut through the grieving crowd to present Frankie’s knife set—salvaged from the fire and wrapped in white linen—to his mother, who cradled it to her chest and wept. He didn’t make an appearance when Kostya helped ease his casket—featherlight; there was so little left to bury—down into the ground, like slipping sage into the cavity of a fish. He didn’t even show up at the charred ruin of Wolfpup, where Rio held a candlelight vigil in his memory.

Kostya had stared into the flame of his votive, willing Frankie to appear, send a smoke signal, something . Make some sort of contact to stop the awful thoughts that kept creeping into his head. Thoughts about how Frankie’s death had been his fault.

A couple weeks before the fire, Frankie told Kostya that he’d seen something strange in the Wolfpup dining room.

“A face, man.”

“A face?”

“Yeah. You remember that ghost we did a couple Fridays back? Real skinny? Sad turkey meat loaf?”

Kostya did remember. No salt in the mix. No pepper. No seasoning at all. Baked just till it was cooked through—nothing brown or crispy about it. A gross, flesh-colored mound of meat.

“The dancer,” Kostya said. “From Julliard.”

“Yeah. Right. So it was definitely her—I don’t forget a face.”

“And she was in the Wolfpup dining room? Doing what?”

“Straight-up lurking.”

“Why?”

“I dunno, man.” Frankie hesitated. “I’m not even sure I really saw her. I been pulling graveyards all week, then camping at the bar, partying with Delia, downing espressos, and doing it all again.”

“Delia’s the artist?”

“That’s Celeste. Left me for that ball player, remember? Dee’s an heiress.”

“You should get some rest.”

“I’m hustling, Bones. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

And then, just like that, Frankie was gone.

Was it really such a stretch to imagine that Kostya had somehow been responsible? Guilt rose in his throat whenever he considered the possibility that a ghost—one of his—had done this. The other possibility, of course, was that it was just an accident—a horrible, freak, life-altering but totally explicable accident—like the cop on the phone had claimed. And either of those theories was still better than the other alternative, the truly unhinged notion Rio had posited at Frankie’s repast.

After the fire, Rio had scrambled to get the insurance company to pay out damages so he could reopen Wolfpup someplace else, or at least pay his staff till they found other gigs. But they wouldn’t give him so much as a cent.

“You kidding me?” Kostya had asked, stunned. “Why?”

“They say they’re still ‘investigating the incident,’ whatever that means.”

“What’s there to investigate? There was a fire.”

“Yeah.” Rio took a long sip of coffee, waited for Frankie’s mother and aunts to get out of earshot. “Except they’re saying Frank mighta started it. Which, I know,” he added, catching Kostya’s expression, “I know —but if he did kill himself, set the fire on purpose, insurance won’t pay.”

“He’d never do that.”

“It don’t make sense to me either.” Rio looked away, at a photo on the wall, a five- or six-year-old Frankie on his father’s lap, his mother standing behind them, a grandmother on either side—one draped in patterned scarves, the other in clerical black—looking dotingly at their grandson. “But thing is, that walk-in? Lock’s got a safety release on the inside. Glows in the dark.”

“He could’ve gotten out?”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

Kostya sat with that information a moment, feeling a gnaw in his chest. He knew Frankie was far from suicidal. There were plans he was making, big things in his future.

“I just don’t get it,” Rio continued. “I mean—anyone who knew Frank, guy had the world by the balls. Seems stupid to end it. And he was no fool.”

NO FOOL AT ALL, Kostya thought to himself as he watched the shape of the knife being seared onto his forearm, the letters etched onto its handle— WTFWFT. What The Fuck Would Frankie Try.

Please , he thought at it, talk to me.

But all Kostya tasted was that morning’s breakfast.

“And… done!” Cal exclaimed, lifting his headlamp off and turning the machine down. He plucked the latex gloves from his thick fingers and grinned at Kostya through gapped teeth. “How’s it feel, champ?”

“A little sore,” Kostya said, flexing his forearm and wincing at the tingling sensation that followed.

“Lots of lube,” Cal advised, handing him a tub of Vaseline. “Ice if you’re itchy. Don’t scratch.”

Konstantin stared down at his new ink, at the raw, red skin around it, the pin-sized blisters puckering up around the edge of the blade burnt onto him. In this moment, he liked the pain; it was something to focus on that wasn’t the dead end he’d hit—Frankie gone, his supper club gone, his life back in the toilet.

“Hey,” he said to Cal, “how long to turn this bad boy into a sleeve?”

Cal surveyed him. “You got a design in mind?”

THEY STARTED WITH a sketch Cal had done for Frankie and made modifications, adding a little more Death and a little less Wolfpup. The tattoos were gorgeous. Cal was an artist, truly gifted; Frankie had done his research. By the time they’d finalized the art—Cal adding skulls and bones and cookware and tons of intricate detail, more than would fit on one arm—Konstantin had agreed to not one sleeve, but two, planning to go all in once the burns on his right arm had healed. Cal assured him that the ink would help camouflage his scar tissue, and besides, he couldn’t just look badass from one side, after all.

For now, Cal detailed Kostya’s left arm with an undead cornucopia—flowering skulls surrounded by fruit and grains and veggies, their eye sockets and mouths and nose holes all blooming with herbs—rosemary and thyme, Thai basil and cilantro. The bones were nestled among other culinary delights— fruits de mer , oyster shells and curling pink shrimp, crab legs and lobster claws, cuts of meat, steaks and chops and poultry, dumplings and noodles, pastry and bread; and tools of the trade—knives and forks and spoons, spatulas, cleavers, balloon whisks, kitchen twine. The detail was otherworldly, each element real enough to touch, and, surrounding it all, the frothy flow of rich, dark wine—Cabernet, Petit Verdot—cascading down from an upended glass on his shoulder, dripping along the entire length of his arm.

It hurt like a mother—like his mother—having it done. But every moment of discomfort was one he spent thinking about Frankie, willing him to be okay, to be safe, swearing that he’d find out how he died, make it right however he could.

“Well, my friend,” Cal said as he put the finishing touches on the last layer of color, the red that made the wine shine, the tomatoes ripen, the apples glow, wiped the fresh ink smooth with his towel, “there… ya… go.”

Kostya turned his arm over and over in the mirror, feasting his eyes. Every inch had been illuminated, made new. The guys at Saveur Fare would have lost it if he strolled in with this ink. If he ever made it back into a kitchen, he’d be giving Cal’s number out left and right.

Sure, he’d still have to hide it from his mother. He could practically hear her now, shrill in judgment— What you thinking, getting tattoo? Is for rest of life! What if you drop cooking? You see, Kostya! If you only talk to me, I tell you all this before too late, but you say nothing and now is forever! Ever since the pechonka incident , his mother had always leapt to the worst possible conclusion. Which was exactly why she didn’t get a say in anything he did.

This wasn’t just some frivolous decoration. He needed this. A memory of Frankie. His friend, his best, one he’d never let himself lose. Frankie was part of him now. Indelible. Wherever Kostya was going, Frankie would come, too.

The front doorbell—reminiscent of the bowels of Hell—shrieked through the room.

“Ah, my eleven’s here.” Cal stood up. “I’ll go let her in. Meantime, you take a good look. Let me know if there’s anything you want touched up. I think it looks pretty sick, myself.”

Kostya’s eyes traced the River Wine, part vintage and part blood. Yeah , he silently agreed. Sick. So sick.

And then, amid the appraisal of his own illness, there came something actually infirm. Off. Not like it should be. The burgundy rapids foaming around his elbow—where an elaborate fish with iridescent scales dove into the flow—seemed to be growing, expanding, engulfing the fish’s head. His whole arm now, in fact, seemed to be swimming in pink, tingling, and—his eyes began to water with pain—burning. His skin was swelling like a balloon. No.

No-no-no-no-no.

“Uh, Cal…?” Kostya asked, voice rising an octave. “Cal?! ”

“Yeah, champ?” Cal bounced down the steps, someone trailing behind him, only her black boots visible on the stairs. “I miss a spot?”

“My fucking arm’s on fire.”

“Oh. Um… shit.”

Cal bent over Konstantin’s ink—which grew more painful by the moment—tsked, shook his head, started to mutter something that sounded like Yeah, that doesn’t look good but was drowned out by the woman who’d arrived downstairs just in time to witness the inflation of Kostya’s arm and the air being let out of his ego.

“Oh! Hey. It’s… Konstantin, right? What are the odds?”

Kostya looked up, saw her, and thought to himself, Figures.

Madame Everleigh—Maura—looked far less psychic without the striped tent and tarot deck of the Seyoncé party, and far more beautiful, even, than he remembered. Her hair was longer now, strands of silver fading to periwinkle, then plum. She wore boots and jeans and a slouchy black sweater. A grey scarf covered in little skulls. Also, a frown.

“Um”—she waved a hand in front of his face—“you okay?”

Kostya swallowed.

He wanted to say something venomous to her, to pay her back for all those months ago, the way she’d shat all over his gift, everything he’d gone on to do since she’d tried to talk him out of it. But he found, face-to-face now—and oh , what a face!—that he couldn’t.

It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous, or that he’d thought about her an inordinate amount. It wasn’t that, of anyone he’d ever met, he thought she might know something—like, really know—about his aftertastes. It was simpler than that, just something in his gut—a strange intuition, a funny feeling—like this couldn’t be coincidence, meeting her again. After all, what were the odds that on the same day Kostya got the sleeve Frankie was supposed to get, by the artist Frankie had handpicked, he’d suddenly see her again, the girl Frankie had nudged him toward?

It was almost like someone was sending him a sign.

Yes , Kostya thought suddenly. YES.

Maybe this was the contact he’d been waiting for, Frankie giving him a fist pump from the other side! It seemed exactly like the kind of thing he’d do—play wingman, shoot Kostya a second chance, force him to face his fears, prove to his biggest critic that she’d been wrong about him.

Kostya wouldn’t let him down.

“Uh, sorry. Yeah. Konstantin. Hey. Hi. Ouch! ” Cal had poked something on his arm that felt like the flesh was melting off. “You’re… Maura, right?” he added, wincing, trying to sound nonchalant about it, as though he’d nearly forgotten (as if he could ever).

“Good memory.” She smiled, genuinely surprised. “You were at Seyoncé, right?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. I didn’t think you’d— yow !”

Maura glanced at Cal, who was gingerly probing Konstantin’s ballooning skin. “What’s with his arm?”

“Allergy to the ink, I think.” Cal shrugged. “Nothing my house special won’t cure.”

She turned back to Kostya, one eyebrow arched. “A whole sleeve, huh? Can’t say I pegged you for a tat guy.”

“Some psychic,” he shot back, and she laughed.

“Let me see.”

Maura leaned across him for a better look. She smelled incredible, like oranges and eucalyptus and cedar, and Kostya tried not to look like he was inhaling her.

“That looks nasty. Does it hurt?”

Cal poked him again, and Kostya gave a little shriek.

“Nope,” Kostya said, his voice like helium. “Feels awesome.”

The pain was really spectacular now, his whole arm dancing with it. It felt like he was blistering from within, like thousands of tiny water balloons were bursting through his skin.

“This might sting a little,” Cal warned him, unscrewing the lid of some foul-smelling mystery goop, the stench from the jar like something had drowned in it.

“More than it’s stinging now? I’m gonna pass out.”

“Hey.” Maura bent down to Kostya’s level, her eyes locked on his. “Here. Focus on me.” (No arguments here.) She took his unswollen hand, turned it over, traced her fingers over the lines of his palm. “I’ll distract you.” (You sure will.) “I’ll read your fortune.”

“Here we go,” Cal said, and Kostya braced, tunneling his focus into Maura’s wide brown eyes.

“What do you see?” he gasped.

“Okay, interesting! Your love line—it’s really pronounced. But short. You love deeply, but it doesn’t last.”

Cal dabbed the wound, the feeling like spreading acid over a swarm of bees. Kostya forced himself to breathe, to squeeze Maura’s hand, to not look at what might be an ER visit in the making.

“That’s… depressing,” he wheezed. “What else you got?”

“Your life line—here. It’s superlong, but it sort of breaks in two. Like a before and after.”

Cal was sealing his arm with gauze now, tight, the pressure like being stabbed.

“Ow! Ow! Ow ! Fuck! What else?”

“You’re doing great, champ!” Cal said, way too cheerful for how much pain he was inflicting. “Just gotta get the plastic wrap.”

“ Plastic wrap?! Tell me more!” Kostya begged Maura, his eyes streaming.

“Your—your head line—that’s this one. See how it breaks? It’s all dashed.”

“Nervous breakdowns?”

Cal began embalming him in cling wrap.

“Epiphanies! Aha moments. You have a lot of them.”

Kostya released a long, painful breath.

“All right, my dude!” Cal exclaimed. “All set!”

Kostya took a reluctant look at his arm. It had gone from sick ink to sad deli sandwich faster than you could say “antihistamine,” which felt like some sort of metaphor.

“Just breathe,” Maura said, and he did, slowly. “It’ll heal. Eventually.”

“Pain before beauty, right?” he choked out.

“Totally. You’re gonna be a priceless work of art.”

He stared at his arm again. (Well, what was left of it.)

“Thanks.” He looked back at Maura. “For um, yeah.” He waved his palm at her.

“No problem. That’ll be twenty-five bucks. Cash or check?”

“Wait? Are you—you serious?”

“Of course. I charge for my services.”

“But you just—”

“Or”—she shrugged a shoulder—“just this once, maybe you can pay me in drinks.”

He nodded, not entirely believing his luck.

AFTER MAURA’S TATTOO— which only took a few minutes in a back room—they left Last Rites and wandered southeast, which led them on a meandering tour of the Village and Soho, and a long conversation about restaurants. Which led to Maura raving emphatically about her favorite spots, some of which, to Kostya’s surprise, were solid recommendations ( I’ve never heard anyone who wasn’t on a line talk about Frenchie’s! ), which led to Kostya revealing that he’d become a chef ( Seriously? Wow. That’s… unexpected. ), and to him dishing out what he’d heard went on at this oyster bar she swore by ( So steer clear on Tuesdays unless you’re into casual hookups. Actually, wait, what are you doing Tuesday? ), which led to Maura turning an endearing shade of pink, and to her shoving Konstantin, in the painful arm by mistake ( Oh, shit! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean—wait, are you crying? ), and to him doubling over and needing to sit down, which led them to duck into the nearest bar ( Booze! Need booze! ), a spot called Mother’s Ruin, which served unexpectedly good old-fashioneds, and shots of tequila, and, because Maura was a bully, a flight of cheap champagne. That led them to a trash can on Crosby Street, where he held her hair back ( This has never happened to me before —reeech— I swear to God! ), and then to greasy burgers at Soho Park to absorb the rest of the liquor, except she wouldn’t let him pay ( I owe you, for what I just subjected you to! ), which led Kostya to figure that any minute she’d tell him he was such a nice guy, a great friend , that she’d love to grab breakfast sometime, or coffee, the kind of thing women always said when it fizzled, but instead her eyes lit up and she grabbed his uninjured wrist, asked if he wanted to have some real fun, which he thought was code for sex, but which wound up leading them to Chelsea, to a warehouse along the High Line, to No Turning Back , four stories of immersive theater ( … Oh. A play? Yeah… sounds, um, great. ) from the people who produced Sleep No More , and to silver plague masks hiding both their faces, to the embrace of the velvet dark as they wandered the levels of an Afterlife ( Okay, fine, this is pretty cool…. ), to Maura’s hot hand in his, leading him through secret passageways, each intricate space filled with the most amazing things: dancers in flight, books stained with blood, Orpheus and Eurydice singing and falling and fucking and drowning in an indoor swimming pool, a masquerade ball, Hades and Persephone in a palace of fire, Hermes at a card table ( Place your bets! ), but despite the miracles of light and costume and set design around him, the visual feast, Kostya’s eyes were otherwise occupied, fixed only on Maura.

In the final scene, when Orpheus looks back and loses Eurydice forever, Maura leaned close and whispered, What an idiot , and Kostya grinned beneath his mask, nodded, breathed back, Punk move. If it’s love, you hold on .

They stayed so long the performance began again, looping anew, Orpheus playing his lute, wandering through a star-filled mist toward Eurydice, alive, resurrected, uplit in the next room, and Konstantin turned to follow them for a second time, but Maura squeezed his hand, pulled him into a stairwell instead, into a long kiss on the scooped stairs.

“Wanna get out of here?” she whispered, her breath hanging in the cold air.

It had been a long time since Kostya had been with anyone, since he’d felt the draw of desire for anything other than otherworldly answers, and he was so taken by it, swept up so completely by this impeccable moment, this sublime girl, that he dismissed the puff of cool air on the back of his neck, ignored the sensation climbing up the back of his throat, and barely registered the aftertaste spreading, for the third time, over his tongue.

The Reese’s Cup—the unmistakable texture of smooth peanut butter, of impossibly soft chocolate—should have given him pause, but nothing was going to stop the momentum of this night for him, especially not some needy ghost with a candy crush. He swallowed it back down, put it out of his mind, focused instead on Maura’s mouth as he kissed her again, the taste of her tongue, like beer, like butter, like salt, like everything he’d ever craved.

She kissed him back, deeper, hungrier, and he got the hint of something else, something familiar—delicious, smoky, sweet. Something indolent he couldn’t quite identify. It would be a long time before he understood what it was, why the death in her tasted so good to him, but here, in this moment, her fingers tugging his hair, her body pressed against his, he didn’t care what it was, only that he wanted it.

“Lead the way,” he whispered back, and followed her into the street, into a cab, into the perfect magic of a Manhattan night.

THE RIDE TO her place—city lights blurring through the windows as he kissed her mouth, her neck, inhaled the way her perfume mingled with her skin, like some kind of drug—was the longest seven minutes of his life.

They fumbled in the dark of her entry, kissed their way onto the rickety old elevator, tumbled through the wide mouth of her apartment door, insatiable along a never-ending hallway where they lost her sweater, his coat, her jeans, his shoes, and into the kitchen where she eased his tender left arm from his sleeve, the plastic still taut over his new tattoo, and paused for half a beat, tracing the scarred, glossy flesh of his right.

He scooted her onto the counter and she kissed him again, ravenous. He asked her what she liked and she whispered back words that made him see stars, blistering hot.

I want you to fill me up.

When she slipped his hand between her legs, made that sound, he stopped caring what room they were in, what city, what planet.

When he pressed his mouth there, to sweet, wet heat, when it traveled over his tongue, into his throat, the taste of her, he knew he’d never tasted anything—from this world or the next—that had ever made him as helplessly hungry.

In her bed, silk sheets, slick as glass. Skin damp. Hair sticking.

Konstantin. The way his name stops in her throat.

Watch me . He never wants to stop.

And in the dark, for half a beat, she’s gone, as if the life has left her eyes.

A trick of light, surely, this little death.

Because then she tumbles down beside him.

Gasping, laughing.

I want seconds.

Undeniably alive.