Page 41 of Aftertaste

PREVIEWS

THERE WERE WHISPER-THIN crepes spread with translucent smears of butter. There was sinigang , blistering hot and bracingly sour, tamarind and bilimbi and mangosteen lip puckering beneath fish sauce and prawn. There was tangy, creamy, homemade skyr, topped with good olive oil and flakes of hand-harvested salt, smoked sturgeon roe, garnished with dill. There was spicy chorizo on crisp, toasted bread, fennel sliced thin over top. There was a T-bone cooked medium-well (making everyone wince) but also seared octopus, deep caramel brown, its tentacles a Fibonacci dream, and olive-and-rosemary leg of lamb, and oysters Rockefeller, Ritz crackers subbed in for the crumb. There were charred vegetables, peppers and eggplant and whole heads of garlic spooned over grill-marked Halloumi. Eggplant another way, caponata, piled atop shallot-rubbed toast. Eggs, deviled with caramelized onions and just a kiss of mayonnaise, and Whampoa-style, creamy, with cornstarch and fish sauce, and scrambled in a bacon-egg-cheese-salt-pepper-ketchup on a hard roll. A bowl of Lucky Charms with all the marshmallows picked out, then added back in once the cereal got soggy. A peanut butter and pickle sandwich on white bread, the crusts cut badly, uneven, like a teenager’d done it.

And there was something else Kostya noticed now, his focus sharper than it had ever been. The way emotions hit his tongue—not just something that he witnessed between the Living and the Dead, but feelings he could taste right in his mouth. The unabashed joy of spaghetti carbonara. The absolute abandon of a triple-decker turkey club. The particular sadness of lemon cake. When the ghosts appeared, Kostya could see it in their faces—the sentiments he’d tasted, seasoning the memories that shepherded them back.

He wished he could watch forever, every reunion, every tearful or uproarious or tender goodbye, the way he’d been able at Hell’s Kitchen. But he was booked solid. Previews were busy, seatings slamming them every hour from noon to four and again from five to eight, reviewers and VIPs whisked through DUH’s black mirrored entry to an aperitif at the rib-cage bar (two if they were behind) before being escorted to their private chamber, a server waiting inside to explain the menu.

In the dining room, Kostya saw the effects of his talents for the first time, the light show as the spirits arrived eliciting gasps and awed applause. (Stella had totally nailed it.) Downstairs, there was a steady churn of chits, the ticket machine sputtering as diners sampled the regular menu (which expanded nightly to include the latest aftertastes) in preparation for their main event. The kitchen hummed, everyone cooking not only with technical skill but with care, their hearts clearly in it.

It wasn’t like at Saveur Fare, where precision demanded silence and the tension was thick as Texas toast. At DUH, the noise and chaos mutated into a calm, easy focus. With the occasional dirty joke, because it was a kitchen, after all, but still, there was reverence here. The knowledge that what happened in these rooms was a miracle.

BY THE END of the first service, they’d worked out a rhythm.

Once he got an aftertaste, Kostya would return to the kitchen and hand out assignments— Listen up, everybody: Room Three’s got apple tart. I need someone mincing McIntoshes, and I mean mince, not dice—Tony, that’s you. I need a pate sucrée , but the butter’s gotta be by hand—Stephanie, go. And Mica, I know you just walked in, but I gotta send you out again—Bourbon Vanilla Extract; we only got the regular stuff.

That was one liberty they’d taken with the Escoffier method of kitchen labor. Unlike restaurants that served off of a standard menu, they found it hard to stock everything they might need to get through their Chef’s Tastings—the ghosts could, and quite often did, order anything— so Mica, the youngest guy on the line and the greenest, became their runner, on standby to get any ingredient they were missing, a map pinned to his station with the nearest bodegas, supermarkets, specialty stores and restaurants, and the fastest bike routes to each.

Once they got that going, aside from the usual kitchen shenanigans—servers getting antsy ( I need my apps out yesterday! ); someone slicing their hand open ( Yo, man, pass me that stack of towels! Now, now, now! ); or the occasional small fire or burnt dish ( Ain’t no saving that. Do it again! )—things were basically butter.

The aftertastes came in without hiccups, no missing pieces or lost connections. Kostya knew what to do now; he had learned. His movements were so assured in the kitchen, so intentional, that he overheard the garde-manger whispering to Rio, wondering if this could really be the same guy who’d been here just days before, messing up dishes.

He still got the occasional diners who couldn’t generate an aftertaste, but that wasn’t a problem, exactly. Kostya had agonized when it happened in Hell’s Kitchen, but he saw it differently now. So did his patrons, once he explained. The realization had come from something Maura said: Hungry Ghosts are the kind that come back. The spirits who returned were ones without closure. The kind still searching for peace. The Living who couldn’t feel their departed—it was because their Dead were full. Which, while disappointing for their dining experience, was a pretty good thing, generally. (Still, to soften the blow, Kostya threw in dessert on the house.)

Big picture, it was all much simpler than he’d built it up in his head to be. Almost like the ghosts who wanted dinner had been there, waiting nearby for Kostya to open DUH’s doors. Like they’d been in line, just itching to cross. Maybe he’d somehow made a reputation for himself on the other side. Maybe there was an otherworldly reservation system that tapped into his. Maybe, he flattered himself, his name was over there in lights, being hailed in ghost newspapers or whispered in phantom bars.

And (bonus points) since they’d opened, nothing bad had happened! No darkness had followed anyone across the border. No one was coming for anyone else. It was Only Dana , it turned out, and no Zuul . And Maura had been fine—perfectly conscious—this whole time. What a relief! Finally, finally , after all he’d been through, everything was going right.

FRIDAY WAS THEIR last service of the week, and the final preview seating before their official opening to the public on Saturday. It was nearing close, and they’d had a full house save one no-show (the nerve!). The kitchen was winding down, the dishwashers elbow deep in suds, Big Mike scrubbing down the sauté station. Kostya had notes for the team—new aftertastes he wanted to include in the standard rotation, a happy-dance-inducing pork belly bao bun and a fully loaded (with cornichons and anchovies and seared tuna and cheddar) baked potato that was like Nicoise salad’s sexier cousin.

“Gather round, everybody!” he said. “We got updates. Opening night tomorrow. But first—I gotta tell you. You all kicked ass this week. Made me proud.”

“Don’t get soft, homie,” Rio said, grinning, but Kostya could tell he felt the same way. Their kitchen had absolutely killed.

The crew assembled around garde-manger, Rio at his side with a notebook, a few of the guys still wiping their hands on towels, Steph honing a knife at the counter, the zip and clank of steel.

Kostya was in the middle of the ingredients list for the pork belly when Allison, the hostess, sprinted down the steps, her face flushed, fear in her eyes.

“He’s here!” she panted. “The no-show? It’s the Times ! Wants the full menu in thirty minutes.” She turned to Kostya, mortified. “And he said to tell you he wants a word.”

WHILE THE KITCHEN returned to a rolling boil, the language decidedly saltier than during the other seatings that week, Kostya buttoned a clean chef’s coat and ascended the stairs.

Dan Evans, MFA, CWPC, FU Very Much, was an unflattering caricature of food critics. The kind of guy who had been known to make chefs cry, to fold restaurants over his knee for a spanking, to take them from toast of the town to just, well, toast. His bad reviews had doomed Angelique in Midtown, Meat Market in Bushwick, and the entire Duck Duck Goose chain (may their commoditized confit rest in peace). To top it all off, he was notoriously shitty to waitstaff, purposefully abusing them just to see if they’d stay polite, to make them, in his words (June 11, 2017, “Aria—More like Recitative”) “sing for their supper without souring the notes.”

Viktor’s publicist had briefed Kostya on him, a whole half hour filled with headshaking and hand-wringing and you-better-nots.

“He will hit right where it hurts,” she informed him. “Gird your loins.”

When Kostya opened the door to Tasting Chamber No. 4, he recognized Dan from the grainy photo the publicist had slipped him. He wasn’t supposed to know what the critics looked like—they were supposed to be anonymous, to dine just like everybody else—but this guy had become so notorious in food circles that people passed around stills to warn one another.

Beyond being generally loathed, he was aggressively unappetizing. Short, squat, his face wide and jowly, with bags beneath his eyes and thick folds in his forehead. Kostya was reminded (a little pang hit him) of Freddie Mercury, his ex’s Frenchie, only Dan Evans was far less cute and certainly less friendly. He surveyed Kostya with beady brown eyes, artificially magnified by expensive glasses, and cleared his throat.

“Good evening, sir,” Kostya said carefully. “Our hostess said you wanted to speak with me?”

“You”—he frowned—“are the executive chef? Oh dear.”

Michel wouldn’t have taken that. Even Frankie, after a drink, might have offered him the door. Kostya only nodded.

“I take it you know who I am?” Dan asked.

Kostya nodded again.

“Then you’re less of a dolt than half the people I review, at least.” Dan removed his glasses, examined them in the dim light, then put them back on. “I don’t like bullshit. You like bullshit?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So why don’t we cut right through? This isn’t going to be a rave, pal. No Disney movie happy ending where I eat your ratatouille with tears in my eyes. I despise gimmicks; you should know that. Consequently, I refuse to participate in the farce that is this restaurant. I’m here only because my editor insisted and I didn’t feel like a fight tonight. So here is my proposal: I will order from your standard menu only. I will skip the Chef’s Tasting—I’m not ingesting some parboiled dish you’ve got waiting in the wings, pretending it came from my great-aunt Mabel. And I will judge DUH by the same standards I use to judge every other establishment: on the merits of your food.”

Kostya let this wave of disdain wash over him.

“We don’t prepare any of the Chef’s Tastings in advance,” he said carefully. “Only made to order. Based on what the spirits feed me.”

“Speaking of your menu,” Dan continued as if Kostya hadn’t spoken, “and I say that in the most elastic sense of that word, what sort of cuisine is this, would you say? Bastardized American?” He perused the sleek sheet of black vellum, the dishes printed there in silver. “Knock-off Japanese? Some sort of Mediterranean fusion, heaven forbid? I mean, pick a lane.”

It took every ounce of Kostya’s restraint not to break something.

“What we serve at DUH goes beyond any one culinary tradition. We help people say goodbye. That’s the cuisine. Grief, and closure.”

“Didn’t I just say I don’t appreciate bullshit?”

Kostya looked at Dan, at the meticulous white button-down that had been tailored to fit his proportions, at the fancy fountain pen laid neatly beside him, its nib already inked with venom, at the way his face arranged to form the nastiest version of himself. Something had hurt him. Someone. Kostya could see it.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said slowly.

“What loss?”

“Patrons come to DUH because they’ve lost someone special to them. I only assumed the same was true for you, Mr. Evans.”

“You assumed wrong. My old man died in May”—he barked out a laugh—“but quite frankly, good riddance.”

Kostya looked at him differently now. For all his bluster, Dan was just like him. A kid without a dad. Lashing out.

“I see. When I lost my dad—it made me feel alone in the worst way. I’m very sorry.”

“Like I said, it wasn’t much of a loss,” Dan countered. “Now what do you recommend for starters? Nothing seems to appeal.”

And then Kostya tasted it.

Scorched. Bitter. Unpleasant. Just like its intended recipient. A once-flaky crust turned brittle with char. Inedible. The hint of cinnamon sugar not enough to resurrect this break-and-bake disaster.

“Thanks for your feedback,” Kostya said. “I’ll have the server bring you out some selections.”

KOSTYA SPRINTED DOWN the stairs.

“Mica! I need a run! Pillsbury dough—the crescents. Get every kind they make. Go, go, go!” He turned to Rio. “Get all the ovens preheating. Four-fifty. We’re gonna burn ’em.” He stopped his lead server on the stairs. “And Mikey! Slow down service. Tell everybody. One dish at a time. Crawl. We have to keep him here until his aftertaste’s ready.”

DAN EVANS ATE exactly one bite of each dish he was served. A spoonful of Sister Stacy’s buffalo chowder. A nibble of NamastayHigh’s sardine tartine. A morsel each of mini-wieners with sautéed sauerkraut, and Peking duck ragout, and jammy strawberry bread. By the time he’d shoved aside the spaghetti with peas (not even a sniff), the crescent rolls were beginning to brown.

Kostya had doctored them—cinnamon, sugar, a brush of egg white—and set them in the oven to burn. He sampled a roll every few minutes to get just the right level of ruin. When they were finally blackened to order, he pried one from the sheet pan with a butter knife, and carried it to Dan himself.

“What, and I mean this sincerely, the actual fuck?” Dan asked, squinting at the plate.

“A burnt crescent roll. From your father, if I had to guess. He’s knocking. It’s up to you whether you open that door.” Kostya turned to go, then added, “Oh, and for the record? I don’t adjust the aftertastes to taste good. Sometimes, spirits are bitter. What they need to return, that’s what I make. Down to the charred crust.”

KOSTYA WATCHED FROM the dining room, Rio by his side. For a while, nothing happened. Other patrons departed—raving! thrilled!—leaving the last tasting chamber in shadow, Dan Evans deciding what he wanted to believe.

When the mercury glass encasing his room exploded with light—orange strobes setting the dining room aflame—Rio threw his arm around Kostya’s neck.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Can’t nothing stop you now.”

KOSTYA RODE THAT high through midnight, when he sat alone in his kitchen, the restaurant empty, the staff sent home to rest (who was he kidding; they were almost certainly at a bar) before their grand opening the next day. He took a long swig of champagne from one of the two fizzing glasses he’d set out, and opened the plastic bag beside them, a dozen packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups inside.

Maura was on her way to meet him.

“I want to give you a tour of the restaurant,” he’d told her. “Just us. Before the insanity of opening to the public. I want to show you everything.”

“Can’t wait,” she said. “We gonna eat in your fancy kitchen?”

“Absolutely. I want you to taste the whole menu. And I”—he said it before he could stop himself—“I might even have a surprise.”

He’d decided it the night he’d come home to find Maura waiting for him. They had just experienced the euphoria of love, of confessing it and receiving it and making it, this incomparable feeling he had waited and hoped for, and then, right there in the room, practically climbing into bed with them, had been Everleigh.

Maura would never be free so long as her sister’s ghost held on. He would never be free either. Never be certain that Maura was safe. That Death wasn’t just around the corner, threatening their happiness. That they were truly alone together.

But he had the power to change that.

He was going to bring Everleigh back again. To give Maura and her sister another chance at closure. He wasn’t sure it would work; some of the ghosts he’d resurrected had implied that these were one-time trips. But unlike those ghosts, Everleigh was still here. Still sending him aftertastes. And if that wasn’t a sign of wanting more, he didn’t know what was. So he’d made up his mind to try. He’d gathered the Reese’s. He had everything he needed.

Everything except Maura’s permission.

And knowing how she’d hesitated before bringing Everleigh back, how secretive she’d been, how unwilling to open up about it, she would probably take some convincing.

Kostya puttered nervously around the stations, trying to keep himself busy. He arranged and rearranged the food he planned to serve, moved things out of the pantry (and back in), added oil to the deep fryer, washed produce. He refilled (then drank more of) their glasses of champagne. He was in the middle of changing clothes (nervous sweat had soaked right through his button-down) when Maura texted that she was a block away.

“Stupid stylist. Stupid tiny buttons,” he muttered, fumbling with the holes.

He wanted tonight to go right; he needed it to. If he could make it to opening night with Maura safe from ghosts and by his side, the culinary world at his feet, all those people he might help, both Living and Dead—it would be everything he’d ever wanted.

And then, at long last, he could do the other thing he’d been waiting for. The thing he’d been longing to do since that first ghost appeared in The Library of Spirits.

He could bring back his dad.

Here , Maura messaged him, and Kostya swallowed the flavor of chocolate in the back of his throat and rose to meet her.