Page 51 of Aftertaste

FEAST YOUR EYES

THE FOOD HALL is a feast.

For the eyes. For the tongue. For the mind.

It is vast as desire, an ocean of food. Its edges a horizon you could approach for all eternity and never actually reach.

It’s also really freaking fun.

There are groves of sun-ripe fruit, air thick with the scent of peaches and plums, lemons and limes, deep-jungle soursop, grapes on the vine, pitaya and stink nut and green mangosteen, pomegranates descended from Persephone’s own pips.

There are city-sized mazes of street meat, umami smoke rising in columns, the sizzle of griddles and grills caramelizing everything from anticucho to bún cha, lamb gyro to pani ca mèusa , dodo wing to Tyrannosaurus thigh.

There are islands of cheese—actual islands—afloat in whey, burrata barges shuttling souls through a paneer pass to an ivory ibérico coast, an isthmus of ricotta connecting it back to a Muenster mainland.

In the Food Hall, the world is an oyster! A Kushimoto white as sky, an undiscovered varietal untouched by human hands. A bowl of cherries! Amarainier, Montmorello, cross-bred juices sluicing down your chin. A box of chocolates! Clustered coconut, stickjaw caramel, a heart-shaped Whitman Sampler Wonka Wonderball Surprise.

But amid all this magic, all the tastes and smells and flavors of fantasy available to the deceased, when Konstantin Duhovny arrived, when he squinted, blinking, into a band of unflattering fluorescent light, he found himself standing before a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

He was in the food court of a mall—was this Hell?—only impossibly large, so big he couldn’t fathom where it ended or began.

His first and only thought was that he had to get cooking.

He started down the linoleum tile, passing two Starbucks, a Panda Express, a cupcake vending machine, a soda fountain (a real, working fountain spouting cola through its pump), a Fifty Shades of Gray’s Papaya, a trio of breakfast joints, and an appetizing counter called Goldie’s Lox, a dancing salmon flapping back and forth across its sign. These places might have had some rudimentary reheating capabilities (microwaves, toaster ovens, maybe a fryer), but he’d need a full kitchen, and real ingredients, if he was going to cook half the meals on his list.

He spotted an Exit door (small miracles!) and pushed through it to find himself in a sort of restaurant row, the chains and fast casuals giving way to an alley of Michelin stars, glamorous dining rooms flanking lamplit streets, linoleum swapped for cobblestone. This was more like it.

Kostya stopped before a window to gape at a knock-off Saveur Fare, the likeness so uncanny he half expected to see Michel excoriating a busboy. He went inside, looking for a waiter, a hostess, someone to lead him back because here, surely, was a kitchen! But the restaurant was unmanned, the dining room deserted. Kostya made his way through the space, trying every door he saw, but instead of a kitchen, he only found shortcuts, pathways to other places in the Hall, more ways to eat. Almost like the kitchen didn’t want to be found.

Finally, he chose a door, stepping through into a tent at dusk, a lively night market sprouting up before him like a cluster of chanterelles.

“Kitchen?” he asked at a Khanom Bueang stall, the crepe shells folding themselves up in response.

“ Kitchen? ” he begged pots of boiling ramen, water hissing as unmanned chopsticks scooped noodles into bowls.

“ Kitchen?! ” he tried at the kaitenzushi , the conveyor zipping a little plate over to him with a placard reading: No soup for you, Rulebreaker.

The Afterlife, apparently, had his number.

Everleigh had said it would be easy. That there were stalls and restaurants all over the Hall that he could cook in; that getting ingredients was just a matter of thinking of them. But she, apparently, wasn’t on the naughty list.

Okay , he thought mutinously. Fine.

If the Hall wouldn’t help him, he’d help himself. Eating was kind of the point of this place. There was food everywhere! He’d just steal some ingredients and make it work.

He pushed through a beaded curtain and into bright, Marrakech daylight, the smells of kefta tagine and raisin-studded couscous, spicy harissa and skewers of lamb, saffron-stranded b’stilla streaked with cinnamon sugar all beckoning him forward, mouthwatering.

At a spice stall, he ran his fingers through sacks of coriander, cumin, and clove. He palmed a handful of cinnamon, but as soon as he stepped back from the stall it vanished. He tried again with turmeric. Gone. Black pepper, ditto.

“Oh, come on!” he shouted. “What do I have to do, huh?” He kicked the wooden table, the spices gasping in a rainbow cloud. “What’s it gonna take?!”

He kicked it again, one of the sacks toppling over in a puff of red.

He opened his mouth to shout something else, but a hand on his shoulder silenced him.

“Bones,” a voice whispered, the syllable tempering Konstantin like chocolate. “Keep it down, bro. You’re Public Enemy Number One. Keep drawing attention and it’s over before it even starts.”

EVEN DEAD, FRANCIS K. O’Shaunessey looked like about a billion dollars.

“Frankie!” Kostya threw himself at him.

“I missed your dumb ass too.” Frankie laughed, hugging him back. “And I do mean dumb. Come on.”

Worry flicked across his face as he turned and started zipping through the marketplace, Kostya in tow.

“Fucking with the Dead, bringing people back—we messed up, man.”

Frankie turned down a street lined with bread stalls, then cut through an alley of—were those bricks of compound butter ?

“ I messed up,” Kostya corrected. “ You didn’t do anything.”

“That’s… not exactly true. Did my fair share over on this side, too.”

“But you wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me! It’s my fault you’re…” Kostya slowed, the word like wet cement. “Dead. You should be alive , Frankie. Fuck. Was it the ghost? That girl at Wolfpup? I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Wait, what ? No. That ain’t on you, Bones.”

Frankie waved him forward, barely pausing.

“Of course it’s on me! I brought her back.”

Kostya shimmied between the bricks, the lane narrowing around them, the butter softening, greasing his arms.

“Wasn’t the ghost that killed me”—Frankie shook his head—“it was the hustle.”

“I—what?”

“It’s a fucking stupid story. I’m embarrassed to tell it.”

“Well, swallow your pride. Not knowing is killing me.”

“Just don’t judge, alright?” Frankie sighed, stepping through an archway toward a stand of unusual fruit. “Round that time, I had a hundred balls in the air, remember? There was Keller calling. Delia all up on me to commit. And Wolfpup. James Beard noms. My mama pushing me to settle down. Student loans. Nights out. You and the Supper Club. I was burning it at every end.”

“That’s just what you do when you’re young and hungry.”

They passed an arrangement of square watermelons, blue raspberries, electric plums.

“Maybe, but none of it felt good enough. Not after I saw what you got up to.”

“Me?”

“You were doing the real thing, man. Food that meant something. Special. Least that’s how it felt at the time. Hindsight’s a bitch.”

Frankie squeezed past a cart of sour grapes, stopping at the entrance to a fish mart.

“Sure is,” Kostya agreed, following. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

“Way I remember it, Bones, I dragged you . You were ’bout ready to do the smart thing and give up. But me? I dragged you to Wolfpup to experiment. Dragged you to Saveur for that job. Dragged you—”

“—what? No! You encouraged me.”

“—out of bed to start Hell’s Kitchen,” Frankie continued. “And it wasn’t just ’cause we were friends. I wanted fame. Glory. So bad I didn’t care if I had to ride your coattails to get it. My priorities were that twisted. Right up till the night I died.”

They passed a table of rainbow trout, their gills fanned in prismatic color. A display of lobsters—red, green, blue. A tray of uni , their insides like fire.

“What do you mean?”

Frankie exhaled. “I was hustling, trying to get my own spot open. I’d been up so many nights that I lost count. And there I was at Wolfpup, testing menus after hours.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I poured myself a drink to mellow out, and started prep. But the booze made me woozy, so I took some of Ale’s uppers. Started feeling good then— too good—so good that when I was done tweaking recipes, thought I’d keep it going. Stay and experiment. I thought”—he looked over at Kostya, an apology on his face—“I ain’t proud of this, Bones, but I thought that what you had going on, with the ghosts? That I could do it, too. Maybe even do it better. Steal some thunder for myself.”

“What are you talking about?”

Frankie wove through an aisle of oysters—shells of every imaginable color and size—and took a hard right turn into another large tent, this one crammed with sacks of rice.

“You’d been complaining how you couldn’t get it right. Couldn’t figure how to bring those spirits back. And I was a cocky motherfucker, so after half a bottle of Barcelo and two more pills, I decided I would bring back your pops. Do what you couldn’t. Liver, I figured—how hard could it be? Well. I put it on the stove, but the uppers and the rum and no sleep were a nasty combo, and I passed out on the line. When I came to, kitchen was full of smoke. And I was so loaded I didn’t know which way was up. Climbed in the walk-in thinking it was a way out. By then, it was so thick in there I couldn’t see straight. Or breathe. So I stayed put, hoping help would come.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Came too late.”

Kostya gaped at him.

“ Fuck , man.” It was the saddest thing he’d ever heard. “Dying like that, when you had the best life of, like, anyone I ever met.”

“That really how you think it was?” Frankie zigged and zagged around the bags of grain. “It looked good from the outside, but none of it was deep. Just surface. The parties, the crew. They were good to fuck up a Saturday night, but that’s all it was. You and Rio were the only ones who actually cared.”

“That’s not true! Women loved you! You had more game than an arcade.”

“Game,” Frankie repeated, bitter. “I was young. I looked good. The women—I got lucky. I had some fun nights. And days. And mornings.” He cracked a small smile, remembering, then wiped it away. “That’s all it was, though. Nothing real. I was so caught up in myself and my spot that I never let anyone in. I never loved anybody. Not like you.”

“Please. What did I know about love?”

“Plenty! When I died—I felt you. Right here.” Frankie tapped his chest. “Holding on. So tight I couldn’t set one foot out the Hall.”

“ Fuck , Frankie, if I made you Hungry—”

“You didn’t.” Frankie cocked his head. “Least not for long. When you met your girl, that grip you had on me? It let go.”

“Leftovers,” Kostya whispered.

“But being Hungry,” Frankie continued, “even for a little, made me see how bad others were hurting.”

“So you started the tour.”

Frankie nodded.

“I’d seen you do your thing, so I thought, hey, I can help folks. Give you a little help from the other side. Make those aftertastes easier to come by. Finally get that chance to make my name, too. Get famous for the good I did.” They came to the end of the tent, and Frankie shoved through it into the freckled light of a grove of trees, their sweet, fermented smell hanging in the air. Apples. “Joke’s on me, huh?”

He strode through the orchard, Kostya jogging to keep up.

“I tried reaching out so we could sync up, but you kept your word, Bones. Let me stay Dead. Which, in retrospect, was damn lucky. Kept me from going Hangry.”

“Shit.” Kostya panted, realizing. “You were waiting on DUH because there was no other way to get in touch. You didn’t know the spirits I brought back were getting stuck.”

“Wouldn’t have done any of this if I had. Definitely wouldn’t have brought the whole tour to your big opening night. I just thought I was serving closure. Same as you. We wanted to believe it so bad, man. Both of us. That we were the good guys.”

“I wanted to make things better.” Kostya kicked hard at an apple on the ground, sent it flying. “Turned out like always.”

“Well, there’s still time. C’mon. We got an Afterlife to fix.”

Frankie sped along the row of trees, through a garden gate, and toward a fork in the road, evaluating the options before heading down a path Kostya hadn’t even seen—an aisle of Granny Smiths.

“I don’t see how. I can’t get within ten feet of an ingredient. And I bet the kitchen’s gonna be uphill, too.”

“The Hall can really hold a grudge. But I know a spot you can cook. And the ingredients—won’t be easy, but there’s a work-around.”

“Okay?”

“See, most of the food here?” Frankie picked an apple off a tree, took a bite. “It’s just for show.” He tossed it to Kostya, who startled at the strange nothing beneath its skin. Air, where there should have been flesh, pith, seeds. “It’s just there to make you hungry. Sights. Smells. Hocus-pocus. For food you can eat—it’s made to order. From your memories.”

“The food here eats memories?”

“The food here is memories.”

Kostya stopped walking. It made sense, like something he’d known way down in his bones. Every aftertaste he’d ever cooked had been like that—a shorthand for something else, each dish a memory shared by the Living and Dead.

“So then, can memories be food? Like—like raw ingredients?”

“That’s how the Hall cooks.” Frankie nodded. “It translates memories into meals, so we can process. But the hard stuff, like aftertastes—it doesn’t always have the chops. And you’re a real chef, a better one. You channel the Dead and you feel what they felt. Taste it. Pour your soul into every dish you make. The Food Hall can’t do that. So if anyone can cook with memory, my money’s on you.”

Kostya gave a half smile, despite himself. “I bet you say that to all the cooks.”

“Only the ones worth their salt.”

“But if the food is memory, then when you eat it, what? It’s just… gone?”

Frankie shook his head. “Forgetting’s not the same as closure. You remember; you just… don’t crave it anymore. At least”—he gave Kostya a meaningful look—“that’s how it works when they’re your own memories.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The spirits you’re tryna help, Bones,” he said gently, “they’re not in the Hall now. You can’t use their memories as ingredients.”

“But then how do I—”

“I think”—he looked unspeakably sorry—“you gotta use yours.”

Kostya swallowed, his mouth dry. “And when they eat my food? My— my memories —what happens to me?”

“I dunno. Not for sure. But if I had to guess? You’ll forget.”

It hit Kostya like a bag of ice. What he stood to lose. All the things that could vanish. All the people. He thought of Maura, waiting for him on the other side. Of his mother. Of Rio, and his kitchen staff. He thought of the memories it would take, every moment of the life he’d finally begun to live.

He didn’t want to give it up.

But he had done this. Had caused these spirits harm. He owed them.

“There’s no other way?” he choked out.

“Not unless the Hall decides to forgive and forget. And from what I’ve seen, it’s a petty little bi—”

As if it’d heard, the ground beneath began to quake.

“Watch what you say!” Kostya yelped, trying to keep his balance.

“That wasn’t me!” Frankie grabbed the trunk of a nearby tree. “The Hall’s been out of whack since the veil burst. That’s why it’s so pissed at you.” As soon as the tremor went still, Frankie hustled Kostya through the grove and toward a wall of rock candy, a tunnel visible in its face as they drew near. “I been keeping us moving, but we gotta set things right while it’s still standing. It falls apart, the whole Afterlife goes Hungry.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Yep. And long as the veil’s open, Hungry Ghosts will keep pouring into Manhattan. Looking for closure, blood, or both.”

“Maura.” Kostya suddenly remembered the pufferfish, Saveur Fare, his body in another world. “She was gonna come through and try to close it.”

“She’ll need help. Hangry spirits will put up a fight.”

“Fuck.”

“But one thing at a time.” The tunnel led to a half-rusted door, and Frankie wrenched it open, revealing steps. “We need to get you cooking.”

“What’s even the point?” Kostya whined, making his way down. “The Afterlife’s fucked, and the Living are fucked, and the Dead are fucked, and the Food Hall couldn’t help even if it wanted to because it’s fucked, and it’s all fucked because of me, so what’s the point of going anywhere and doing anything? I’m the King Midas of fuckery. Everything I touch turns to fucks.”

Frankie laughed, his voice bouncing through the dark. “You ever oversalt a dish? Overcook spaghetti? Make something that tasted bad ?”

Konstantin thought horribly of Christmas at Saveur Fare, that ill-fated holiday party and badly sauced cavatappi.

“Hasn’t everyone?”

“What separates the good chefs from the bad is whether you can take that mistake and make lemonade.”

“How do you make lemonade out of fucks?”

“I really gotta spell it out? Right now, the Food Hall’s just your dining room. You’re the pantry. The stations. The fucking Chef . Make those ghosts a meal they can’t resist, and meanwhile, we’ll seal the veil. Maura have a plan?”

“Something about dough.”

“I knew I liked her.”

They came to the bottom of the stairs, and Frankie stopped before a subway turnstile, the entrance to the 6.

“Wait,” Kostya said slowly. “Where are we going?”

“To your kitchen. At DUH,” Frankie said. “Duh.”

DUH IN THE Hereafter was, down to the bathroom tile, the same as DUH in the Heretofore, except for two things. It was missing its people, and it was missing its food.

This had a strange effect. As though the restaurant itself were on the brink of death, the soul that had given it life abandoning its body.

Kostya gathered supplies at his station—knives and cutting boards, pans and pots and kitchen towels—and took a deep breath, trying to exhale his nerves. He needed ingredients now. Would have to make them. Find them in himself. Frankie had explained this part to him (twice), but Kostya still wasn’t entirely sure how it worked— if it would.

“Remember,” Frankie reminded him.

Kostya nodded, trying to look braver than he felt. Death was one thing. Forgetting was another.

“I better get started. While I still know what I’m doing here.”

“Shit, Bones.” Frankie pulled him into a hug.

“Frankie, if—” The words caught in his mouth. “If, in the end, I’m not all there, I just want you to know: you were the best friend I ever had. Thanks for pushing me into the kitchen.”

“Thank me again when this works.”

They pulled apart, Kostya’s hands still clutching Frankie’s shirt.

“Come back, okay? Soon as you find Maura. And close that fucking veil.”

“You got it, Bones. I’ll see you soon.”

“But seriously? Hurry.”

“SERIOUSLY, HURRY!” MAURA had shouted into the phone, and left it there, dangling down the wall, knowing the dispatcher would trace the landline to Saveur Fare’s address.

She was trying to remember if she’d given them enough detail—pufferfish, toxin, respirator, dying—as she raced back down the steps to the kitchen, down the hall to where the walk-in was, where Konstantin’s body had betrayed him.

Something had gone wrong.

The poison had hit him faster than expected—she’d started the timer on her phone once he stopped responding to her voice—but barely two minutes into his death, he’d begun convulsing. Vomiting. Foaming at the mouth.

He was ice-cold to touch. Impossible to wake.

She’d sprinted up the stairs to call an ambulance, far earlier than they’d planned, and she was supposed to wait for the paramedics now. To abandon her trip back. They’d agreed: only if it was safe. But looking at Konstantin, the edges of his lips turning blue, his fingers, the frost forming in the pool of sick at his feet, she couldn’t do the safe thing.

She had to find him. To save him.

For the real thing, you hold on , she thought as she swallowed the other half of the pufferfish liver.

THE KITCHEN WAS still as Kostya closed his eyes.

He began at the beginning, with the first spirit he’d ever raised.

Cava , he thought at the Food Hall. Gin. Lemon juice. Luxardo cherry.

He repeated the names of the ingredients over and over, the words stretching thin, until the syllables barely made sense.

Nothing.

What had Frankie told him? That every memory carried a particular flavor. A taste. That the Food Hall just needed to know what to serve him.

He tried again.

Cava , he thought. I need Cava. Bubbly. Dry. Slight tang. Acidic, but with a sweet resolution. Warm in the throat.

And this time, he felt it, a voice like honey, coming from somewhere inside him. What does that feel like?

Kostya hesitated for only a moment before offering it up; he hadn’t thought of it in years.

The time he’d gone into Olympia Diner to steal sugar and half-and-half, had been stuffing packets into his backpack when a waitress caught him, a girl he knew, Demi Papadakis, who’d switched schools in sixth grade but remembered him, and instead of kicking him out she’d given him a burger on the house, said sorry about his dad, told him she’d lost her mom that spring.

The Food Hall took it—he could almost feel the way it left his mind, like being sucked through a straw—and a moment later, a bottle of Cava appeared, its bubbles so delicate, impossibly fine. Sweet resolution. Slight tang. Warm in the throat.

The gin took a night he spent camping with his dad, mosquitoes biting through his sleeping bag.

Lemon was when Alexis dumped him, standing there in the threshold, the way she’d yanked Freddie Mercury’s leash from Kostya’s hand.

Luxardo cherry was the first time he had sex.

The patchouli oil was harder, difficult to match until he remembered his first fatherless birthday, the bouquet that arrived—that his dad had scheduled—the way his mother had thrown it in the trash, but the scent still lingered, the smell of decay.

WHEN ANNA APPEARED, it wasn’t in a shower of sparks. Her light was dim now, cast in shadow. Her face hollow. Like there was barely anything left in her to save.

“Please,” Kostya begged, “forgive me.”

He handed her the glass.

Her sips were tentative at first, but with each one, light flooded back into her face. Halfway through, her cheekbones softened, grew less sharp. Her face filled out, to the way it had looked the first time she’d appeared, a ghost in The Library of Spirits. By the time she finished, she was beautiful, aglow, all emerald green, and as she set her glass down at his station, he watched his kitchen flood with brilliant, golden light.

It was coming from the windows. A train.

Not the 6, but something else.

Kostya watched her board the gleaming car, ride away through the tunnel. On to her next journey. Her next life.

Then he got to work.

ONE BY ONE, he brought the spirits back.

There were hundreds of ingredients, each a little piece of him.

An angry outburst at his mother traded for Tabasco sauce.

His first day stocking the bodega shelves became saltines.

The lie he’d told Maura—that he’d stopped with the ghosts, one and done—a greasy tin of smoked sardines, marinated in the time his classmates saw him dumpster dive for food.

He was frugal with his ingredients. Saved lemon halves to use again. Pinches of salt. Pats of butter. He tried to keep himself whole for as long as he could. But even so, after a dozen spirits moved along, he felt an emptiness press in, a dim ring haloing the edges of his mind, and knew that it was time. Ready or not. No more delays.

There was one dish he’d avoided out of nerves and insecurities, but it, more than any other, needed him coherent. Comprehending. There.

Because it wasn’t just closure for the spirit; it was Kostya’s closure, too.

When he summoned the ingredients of his father’s dish—his own death, and winning Viktor’s competition, lying in the grass with his dad when he was six, and how it felt at DUH, hearing Maura tell her truth—his breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know if he could face his dad now. If he could handle seeing what his grief, his refusal to let go, had done. Would he be angry? Hangry? A shell of a man, consumed by the Hunger Kostya had unleashed? Did he still carry scars, all these years later, from the words Kostya shouted as he left the house?

He cooked in silence, braced himself as he sprinkled on the dill.

But when Sergei Duhovny materialized before his son, he was smiling, pride shining through him like a beam.

The lines were deeper in his face now; Hunger lingered in his eyes, dulling their flame. The memories had dimmed in Kostya’s mind, so many precious moments with his father sacrificed for savory, for sweet, flavors he couldn’t access any other way. Still, he knew him. Recognized him. His heart did. His soul.

“Kostochka,” Sergei whispered, his name the sweetest in his father’s mouth.

“Papa.”

Sergei mussed his hair, held Kostya’s face in his penumbral hands.

“My son,” he said, tears welling in his sunken eyes. “My cherrystone. I knew you’d come. To play our game. To find my final taste.”

And Kostya broke down then, this answer too much, the key to all his doors.

He had held so tightly to his grief, had stoked his guilt for all those years, had prayed for his father’s forgiveness and yet had never seen his aftertastes for what they were. The answer he had needed. Not forgiveness, but acceptance. Proof that his father had seen him. Had understood. Not a gift, or a curse, but a game. Their game. Transformed by Death and sent him by his dad so they might meet again. Play one last round.

“ Pechonka ,” Kostya stammered through his tears. “Your taste.”

“ Nyet! ” his dad choked out, face streaked, too, with salt. “Love.”

It passed between them in a glance—the guilt and the apologies, mistakes they’d made, this love that had held fast through time, and space, and death. A hook. A tether. An unbreakable chain. A bond that would be something else now, leading Sergei to his future life.

“ Кушай ,” Kostya told his dad at last, handing him the plate of food, ready, after all this time, to let him go. “Eat.”

HE RESCUED EVERLEIGH, who hugged him tight, told him he’d better be good to her sister or she’d haunt him into the next life. He returned Baba Fira, who insisted that he try her borscht, a babushka until the end. He righted Dan Evans’s father. Stella’s mom.

Countless others that he didn’t know by name.

More than Kostya had anticipated.

Swarms of Hungry Ghosts had flooded through the tear, and Frankie tried to track them all now, keep them away from Maura as she fought to patch the veil.

“Like herding cats, man. But worse,” he told Kostya. “She’d better hurry.”

Kostya rushed to make their dishes, trying to staunch the bleed, these sharp new aftertastes assaulting him like chits on a Saturday night—overwhelming, relentless, no end in sight.

He cooked fried chicken. And congee. Schnitzel, and vegan Bolognese. Khasiko Bhutan. Salmon en cro?te. Sawagani. Paella. Ptitim. So many dishes, so many ingredients, so many spirits waiting for his aid that he lost track of what he’d used. How little he had left. How few memories remained.

He was making birthday cake—an agony of ingredients, taking so much from him that he shuddered as he stirred—when he realized he’d forgotten his own name.

How strange, he thought, to have lost himself but still know this , how to cook, how to feed. Was there some dish, he wondered, somewhere, that might bring him back? A morsel to remind him? Perhaps on the other side, where he had come from.

The Living, after all, ate mostly to remember. They marked their lives in food.

In birthday cakes, and champagne toasts. In bowls of ketchup soup and Michelin-starred menus. In cups of coffee. In Happy Meals. In sides of fries. In Sunday dinners with Gigi or Yaya or Nǎi Nai or Ba.

To eat was to celebrate. Food was living, after all; food was love. It was how the Living coped. How they kept going. Shorthand for their entire lives.

But the Dead? This place? The Dead ate to forget.

To let go.

To taste, for one last time, that vivid spark of Life before they left it all behind. There was no more for the Dead, no second helping. Only a record that they might leave. A recipe.

A recipe could tell you who someone had been, what they had loved, the things that sustained them. It was a way for others to carry them along, to bring them back, to keep them close once they had gone. A way to never really die.

He could feel them now, the spirits yearning for his food. And he obliged, nourished them with dishes even as their preparation ate his memories away.

He gave so much to feed them. Everything.

He lost the wonder of his childhood, the years his father was alive.

The devastation of his death.

The pain of high school, its acrid humiliations, its bitter defeats.

Every small triumph—his first kiss, first job, first apartment.

Those years of driving Vanya’s truck (though maybe that was for the best).

The last months of his life—his happiest—when he discovered all that he could do.

He lost Frankie, painfully, his final memory the first time they met—to discuss living together after Kostya replied to that Craigslist ad—at an East Village café with pornographic wallpaper, where Frankie’d given Konstantin his name—Bones—once he learned what Kostya meant.

He lost Maura, her love like salt, though he tried desperately to hold on, to save her for the very last, to stretch the time until she made it back, until he could see her. Until he could save her. But most of the dishes he made required the flavor of her memories, not bitter or acid, which he had in spades, but kinder tastes, addictive ones, heat and salt, sweetness, umami, and he’d already sacrificed his dad, and Frankie, the greatest moments of his life, as seasonings.

He lost himself.

Loses.

Making the aftertastes takes everything out of him.

AND THEN, THERE’S just one memory left.

A last tendril to life, delicate as silk.

A memory he both clings to and aches to cast away, a moment of shame, of pain, in early morning light. Papa… give me a taste! and There’s never a later! and Go to the Devil!

He doesn’t know what will happen if he lets it go. If he empties himself. Becomes a vessel instead of an urn.

He licks his lips, gazes around the kitchen, at its gleaming surfaces, the bits of food dotting the counter, a mess someone has made. This place feels important, meaningful, though he no longer knows why, can’t fathom what he’s doing there. There’s a knife on the counter like the tattoo on his arm, but he isn’t sure why, in another life, he would have chosen it.

He reaches for the answer, screws his eyes tight, wills himself to remember, but it doesn’t come. It is painful to forget. A wound that won’t close. Emotional. Mental. An ache in his head, pounding.

Clap-clap-clap.

So loud he can almost hear it.

Clap-clap-clap.

There it is again.

Not in his head but against the window. Tapping.

“Stan! Are you in there?”

The voice goes through him like water, comes back again, louder. Closer.

“Konstantin!”

And she sweeps over the sill, violet haired, wide-eyed, breathless.

The most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. She throws herself into his arms, clutches him like they know each other. Like they’d been something, once.

“We did it,” she says into his shirt. “The veil—what you taught me about dough, Frankie and I—it’s closed! It was just like varenyky , pinching and crimping; you have to see—”

She looks up into his eyes, the world there, in her smile, and he watches it wither as he gazes back, his face a question, a blank plate.

“No. No. Oh, Stan.”

“Do I know you?” He wants to, very much. Wishes that he did.

She presses her lips together like it hurts. “What do you—how much do you have left?”

“Just…”—he shakes his head, not knowing how she knows—“just one last thing.”

She takes his face into her hands. They’re so warm he almost shuts his eyes.

“Don’t let it go,” she whispers. “Hold it tight. Stay with me. We—” Her voice is breaking. “We’re going to be okay. Please, just stay. I’ll figure it out. Get you back somehow. All of you. I love you, Konstantin. I love you like salt. And I’m going to fix this.”

Salt.

More than salt.

Morton’s. Himalayan.

Sweat. Blood. Capers. Roe.

Maura.

So much more than salt.

Something shakes loose inside of him. An instinct to feed her.

He only has one memory left, enough for a single ingredient. Something salty—he was salty in it—all attitude. But with an undertone of regret, a dash of guilt. A longing for affection.

He recalls it— the kitchen, the refrigerator door, the way the cold air felt along his skin —lets it travel along his tongue— his father and that awful tie, the kids and all of their unkindness, his own fear and shame and loneliness —rolls it like a marble inside his mouth— the anger that exploded from his chest, his dad’s defeat, his own terrible regret —and feels it harden, rough and textured, crystalline, saline, its nooks and crannies and hand-harvested flakes seasoned to taste, flavored by this memory— the ache for attention, for connection, for love .

It’s a subtle salt. Delicate.

Fleur de sel.

And for one brief, brilliant moment, in the time it takes to taste, he remembers.

Understands.

Decides.

He knows he can’t return. His body is poisoned now; his memories gone. And even if he could, he’s needed here. For other souls who need release. Those many Hungry spirits that the Food Hall cannot feed. But he can. So he’ll stay. He’ll help.

And maybe one day, in return, he’ll get to see her again.

Because Maura can still live now.

Without Hunger. Without Everleigh. Without the constant draw of Death.

He can’t let her follow him, not when most of him is gone, will vanish again in a moment’s time. Not when he knows she isn’t done being alive. Isn’t done playing, and finding, and feasting.

All he wants now is to let her.

To send her back.

To love her enough to let her go.

THE FLEUR DE SEL is melting in his mouth, vanishing fast, and he reaches for her— I’ve seen a lot of crazy things— presses his parted lips to hers— you’re extraordinary —kisses her with abandon— more than salt— tongues the taste, their aftertaste, his final memory, into her mouth— so much more than salt .

This—this salt, this kiss, this love—is the greatest thing that either of them has ever tasted, and in this moment, it reminds her. Takes her back. Hitches her to Life.

“I love you,” he whispers now, “like salt.”

She gasps as silver mist begins rising from her skin, as she glows, as she feels the pull back to her body. Back to Life. Her eyes search his, fill with fluorescent tears.

“What did you do?”

And he wants to tell her, to explain, but the words are falling away, beyond his reach. She takes his hand into her evanescing palm.

“Wait for me, Stan,” she pleads. “Don’t forget. Please don’t forget.”

She kisses him again, a kiss goodbye, the kind of kiss he should remember, except he has already forgotten.

It’s on the tip of his tongue, who she is, who she might be, what she means to him, but he cannot recall, can no longer taste, and it doesn’t come back even as she vanishes in a twist of light, dissolves like salt in water, travels out of sight.