Page 9 of Aftertaste
MIXERS dishes stacked in the front-of-house; his beautiful cocktail napkins ruined), and left an irate voicemail on Kostya’s cell telling him not to bother showing up to work anymore.
Kostya told himself to let it go, that there would be plenty more dishwashing jobs, that Frankie might even be able to hook him up at Wolfpup, but the more he tried not to think about it, the more it pinned itself to the top of his mind. Not the job, exactly, but how he’d lost it.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the ghost. About the drink that brought her back. About what he’d done. At first, he’d been afraid, horrified by this unexpected punch line to decades of aftertasting. But once the fear subsided—once Kostya grew used to the idea that he had, in fact, summoned the Dead—what remained was a frenzied itch to understand how .
Were his aftertastes shortcuts to another dimension? Could any one of them summon a ghost, or was it a Goldilocks thing, where the conditions had to be just right? Could he bring back anybody, anytime? Or were there expiration dates? Statutes of limitations? And what about Charlie? If he hadn’t been there to see it, Kostya might have believed he’d snapped, that years of ghost tasting had finally rotted his brain. But with a witness—an accomplice —the only things he questioned were the rules. Charlie had been the one to drink Anna’s cocktail, but did every aftertaste need an eater? Could Kostya step in as pinch hitter? And if it was his own Dead he was trying to bring back—he barely let himself consider the possibility—if he ate the right thing, could he bring back his dad?
Kostya squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will the taste of cheap gin and imitation lemon off of his palate in lieu of a memory: thick, rich chicken liver; onions on the edge of caramelization; the faintest hint of dill . There had been an acid, too, something citrusy. He’d just started to recollect it when a new aftertaste kicked him in the mouth, pushing every other sensation away.
It was so simple—so basic —that Kostya wondered whether it was for real.
Soft milk chocolate. Peanut butter, whipped with powdered sugar and a hint of vanilla. The slightest trace of residue from the wax-paper wrapper. A Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
He barely had time to consider it when Frankie appeared in the crowd, his captain’s hat missing, sailor shirt untucked, a get-some grin on his face.
“Lemme tell you something, Bones.” He wrapped a muscular, tattooed arm around Kostya’s neck. “We oughta get down on our knees right now and pray to the God of Bathroom Sex, ’cause he just did me a solid party favor!”
Kostya smiled weakly and disentangled himself.
“Hey, man, you think I can get your keys? This isn’t really my scene.”
“Nah. Nah nah nah. No more moping.” Frankie frowned at him. “Listen to me, my guy. DJ Skull’s about to spin downstairs. The rooftop’s got this foam toga thing going on. Let’s get you shit-faced—feeling so good you forget all about Alexis. It’s been months, man! I hate to see you all wrung out. And who knows? Maybe you’ll meet someone tonight. My Little Seahorse by the stage is looking fly. Or how about Octopussy, over at the bar? Or— yes . Upstairs! There’s this dime psychic, doing readings. Go turn on the charm, ask her what’s up.”
“I’d rather take my chances with Octopussy.”
“You don’t even know what she does! She’s like straight-up mystic.”
“Lemme guess,” Kostya said dryly. “She already knew I was coming?”
“Always the cynic.” Frankie nudged his shoulder. “You’re not even a little curious what she can tell you? This is Seyoncé, bro. Shit’s authentic.”
Something shivered inside Kostya at the thought, a seed planted. He had never seriously considered consulting a psychic. He’d always waved them off as money-grubbing phonies, had never even entertained the possibility that there might be someone genuine, someone who might understand what had happened that night at The Library of Spirits, what had, in fact, been happening inside his mouth for nearly twenty years.
“You really think she’s legit?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Before he could change his mind, Frankie grabbed Kostya by the elbow and, his protests drowned out by the death metal band, dragged him through a bloom of human jellyfish, past an indoor hedge maze, and up a staircase that looked like the Cheshire cat’s throat—enormous candy-striped canines baring down from the ceiling and floor, framing a sticky red carpet that led up, up, up to an enormous, sequined uvula dangling in the doorway.
Feeling as if he’d actually been swallowed, Kostya ducked past the uvula (a bedazzled boxing bag), and into a room that felt like the first sip of bourbon after a long day. It was smaller, dimly lit, the walls covered in deep, mossy velvet and lined with bookcases full of crumbling old books. Frankie hustled him toward a striped tent in the corner, an ornate sign out front announcing:
THE SPIRITUAL ARTS BY MADAME EVERLEIGH
Tarot Readings $15 | Palmistry $25
NO Ouija, NO Seances, NO Refunds
“On second thought, no thanks.”
Kostya turned to retreat, but Frankie halted him.
“Get in there, Bones. You’re gonna have some fun if it kills me.”
“Not if it kills me first.”
“Hey, you guys coming or going?” a voice from inside the tent asked.
“ Go! ” Frankie breathed, giving him a push. “All else fails, at least try to get laid.”
Kostya flipped him the bird, pulled the flap of the circus tent open, and stepped inside.
THE SPIRITUAL ARTIST, Madame Everleigh, reclined on a cheap, peeling love seat, an issue of Game Informer propped open on her knees. She had flickering, wide-set eyes and sharp, intelligent features. Elaborate hair—long, wavy, dyed violet at the ends and silver at her roots and lavender in-between. A slender frame made slighter by so many shades of black—black Converse and black jeans and a black hoodie (in this heat?!) that read: More Freddie, Less Retrograde. A careless hand held up a finger—one sec—then turned the page of the article she was reading.
Frankie hadn’t lied. She was a dime. The most beautiful woman Kostya had ever seen. So far out of his league that he wasn’t sure they were playing the same sport.
He cleared his throat and Madame Everleigh lowered her magazine just enough to peer over it at him. She registered his presence and gestured to a table and a couple of folding chairs to his right, and then lifted the magazine back up, her gum snapping noisily at him from behind the cover. Kostya nodded and sat down, deeply regretting the shirt he’d worn—a too-snug aquamarine number to which he’d taped some badly cut construction-paper fish—as it stretched across his gut. He sat up taller and sucked in.
“You seem tense,” Madame Everleigh noted from behind the magazine. “Try and clear your mind before the reading or you might get mixed messages.”
Kostya frowned. It wasn’t his mind that needed clearing, he thought mutinously, but his mouth, his tongue, the taste buds that seemed to tingle, even now, with restless energy. He was having second (third?) thoughts about coming in here, and shifted in his seat, about to stand up and abandon the enterprise, when she suddenly lowered the magazine.
“And… done!” she announced. “Sorry. There was a piece on the new Zelda, and I couldn’t stop once I started. Like Pringles. You ever get that?”
Kostya nodded, gaping at her and trying to remember to breathe and swallow. Holy smokeshow. It almost hurt to look.
She rose and tossed her magazine onto the floor.
“So, you a virgin?” she asked, crossing the tent and taking the seat opposite him.
“Um, no?” Was she planning on sacrificing him to a demigod? “Why?”
“It’s totally okay if you are.”
“I,” Kostya scoffed, “am no virgin. I’m extremely experienced. An expert.”
“Oh.” She looked surprised. “Okay. Cool! In that case, do you have a favorite way in? Or should we just start slow? Sometimes you can get deeper that way.”
Kostya gulped. “Deeper?” Maybe he’d sacrifice himself.
“I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’ll never get an accurate reading otherwise.”
Was she saying what he thought she was saying? Did this spiritual experience come with a little something else? This was Seyoncé; anything was possible.
A bead of sweat ran along the back of his horrible shirt.
“Are you… I mean, is this…?” He lowered his voice. “Are we going to… because I didn’t bring protection.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Excuse me?”
“You just asked if I was—and I’m not!—but… deeper ?”
“Oh my God.” She threw her head back and laughed. “I meant was it your first reading!” She pulled a ragged deck of cards from her back pocket and set it between them. “You know, tarot? Like the sign out front says?”
“Oh! No! Yeah! Obviously. ” (Sweet relief! But also… definite disappointment.) “My bad. Yes. In that sense—and that sense only—total virgin territory. Please be gentle.”
“Right.” She laughed again, swiping a finger beneath one eye and smearing black liner. “Okay. Well. Here’s how it works. I’m going to shuffle the cards, and you’re going to think of the question you want answered. Meditate on it, put your energies into it, and just give me a nod when you’re ready. Cool?”
She offered him the deck to cut and Konstantin watched as she manipulated the cards, her slender fingers pulling the past, present, and future into complicated bridge shuffles and mesmerizing flourishes. He wasn’t thinking about the aftertastes at all now, or about any of the questions that normally plagued his thoughts. Kostya was busy feasting his eyes on Madame Everleigh—the curve of her face, the tilt of her shoulder, the tiny dots of lint caught on the collar of her sweatshirt, the freckles in her eyes like the jackets of bees, dusted with gold, the shade of lipstick she wore, the shape of her mouth—
“How you comin’ on that question, champ?”
Kostya’s eyes darted to the tabletop, his thoughts yanked back to what he was supposed to be doing there.
“Actually,” he said, shifting slightly in his chair, “I’m not really here for a reading.”
“Okay?” She placed the deck on the table between them. “So what are you here for?”
Your phone number. Your hand in marriage. Just one night, gimme just one night….
“Information.”
She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Information?”
“Of a mysterious nature.”
“Okay, Deep Throat. Think you can be a little more specific?”
Kostya exhaled. “I need to know if it’s normal—or, I guess, I know it’s not normal normal, but is it a thing to be able to taste the Dead?”
Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. She uncrossed her arms.
“Taste them how? Like their body parts?”
“No! No. Ew. No. Their food. Like… like tasting something you haven’t eaten. That’s not in your mouth. But that you think—you know—is coming from someone who’s died. I’m asking for a friend.”
She sat up straighter, leaned closer, her whole body at attention.
“Uh-huh. Well, you can tell your friend that yeah, it’s possible. Not very common, but it’s definitely a thing. Taste is one of the Psychic Clairs.”
“The who?”
She smiled. “It’s shorthand for the psychic senses. Everyone’s heard of clairvoyance, but that’s just seeing. Some spiritualists can smell or touch or hear from the other side. Tasting’s called clairgustance.”
“Clairgustance,” he repeated, trying it on.
“Mm-hmm. But, like I said, it’s not typical.” She hesitated for half a moment before adding, “What was your name again?”
“Konstantin.”
“I’m Maura.” She reached her hand out across the table and he took it. Her touch was like candy, a sugar rush.
“I thought you were Everleigh.”
“Ev’s been dead awhile.”
“Funny.”
“I wish I were kidding.” Her mouth gave a slight twitch, which she recovered with a smile. “But hey, maybe your friend can taste her. How often does it happen? The clairgustance?”
He opened his mouth to answer and, right on cue, the familiar sensation burst over his tongue. He arranged his face into a blank stare that quickly turned to surprised confusion, followed by déjà vu.
The subtle grit of smooth, sweet peanut butter. Soft milk chocolate, so pliable it seemed half-melted. The texture of the ridged edge on the tip of his tongue, like the teeth of a comb, but with a sudden break, like it had been dented. No wrong way to eat one.
Kostya rarely tasted the same thing twice. There were many similar dishes, though there were always distinctions—Nonna’s meatballs versus Great-Grammama’s; a sprig of basil versus a handful of parsley. But this Reese’s Cup was identical to the one from downstairs. A packaged good, not a prepared one. Too close in timing to be purely coincidental.
Someone was dying to break through. Throwing themselves at him, practically. All he had to do was get his hands on some candy, figure out who at this party had to eat it, and Trick-or-Treat.
“Hey, uh, you okay?”
“Is there a vending machine?” Kostya blurted out. “Or a bodega? I—I need a Reese’s. Right now.”
He started to push himself out of the chair, but what she said next made him sit back down.
“Over my dead body.”
“Oh, um, sorry? You allergic or something?”
“Or something.” She frowned at him. “What the hell, Konstantin?”
“That—the Reese’s Cup—I just tasted—it just happened .”
“You tasted that ? Just now?” She cast around the tent as though trying to catch a ghost in the act, to witness a vanishing limb or a disembodied face.
“Yeah. But it was”—he shook his head—“weird.”
“Weirder than when you normally taste the Dead?”
“No. I mean, yes? It’s—I tasted the same thing just a few minutes ago. Downstairs. Someone’s really trying to get my attention.”
She blinked at him for a moment, her mouth going taut.
The aftertaste was already starting to fade. Maybe he could try again later. Maybe the ghost would hold on until he could get to a grocery store or a newsstand; he thought he’d seen one when they were pissing around in that interminable entry line, a couple blocks back, near an overpass—
“How come you wanted it?” Maura asked cautiously. “The candy?”
There was a strange tone to her voice, like she’d guessed the answer and didn’t like it.
“I just—I wanted to try something.”
“What happens when you make the stuff you taste? If you eat it?”
Well wasn’t that the million-dollar question, the peanut-butter-cup-shaped elephant in the room?
“I don’t really know.”
She raised one incredulous brow. “You’ve never tried it?”
“Well, not never . I did it last week. With a drink.”
“And?”
Kostya’s head gave the tiniest shake, more reflex than response.
“Konstantin, look, you don’t have to tell me—”
“It’s going to sound crazy—”
“ — but maybe if you do, I can help you. We can figure out what they want. And if I help you, maybe you can help—”
“Oh, I know what they want.” He gave a desperate, manic, half laugh. “Isn’t it obvious? They want to come back.”
Somewhere inside, in that chasm he tried so hard to keep shut, to block out with binge-eating and heavy drinking and dead-end jobs and women he didn’t love and parties he didn’t want to go to, maybe he’d always known. If he didn’t admit it to himself, maybe he could have unknown it, or convinced himself that there was nothing he could do but taste what they sent through and be on his way. But he’d proven that more was possible, hadn’t he? He’d brought someone back, pulled a spirit through a loophole across a plane she was only supposed to have crossed once, in a one-way trip.
“What happened,” Maura asked slowly, “when you made that drink?”
Kostya picked at a gash on the surface of the table.
“At first, nothing. It was just a cocktail. But when her husband drank it, she—the ghost it belonged to—she came back.”
Maura’s eyes grew round.
“Came back? Did she stay? Is she still here?”
The mood in the room was different now, colder, the air contaminated with something.
“No. When the drink was done, she disappeared.”
Maura closed her eyes and released a breath.
“Thank fuck. Okay. Listen to me. You need to tread very carefully.” She spoke softly, as if afraid someone would overhear, but her voice was serrated, dangerous. “You’re dealing with hungry spirits and capital- D Death and the Hereafter. That’s not stuff you just casually mess around with.”
“I know that—”
“There are balances involved,” she continued, “and systems that’ve spent eternities calibrating themselves. You got lucky once, but that was just dumb luck.”
“It wasn’t luck,” he protested. “It was instinct.”
“You got lucky,” she repeated. “Because no one got hurt.”
“How could anyone get hurt? The ghost was already dead, and raising the Dead isn’t exactly—”
“You’re not listening!” Madame Everleigh—Maura—shouted. “Let me be as idiot-proof as I possibly can here. Don’t ever make their food again.”
“Wait, what ?”
“Quit while you’re ahead.”
“No way!” His voice rose now, too, his arms crossed over his chest like a petulant kid’s. “A second ago you were all Let me help , and now, what, the kitchen got a little too hot for you?”
“I was offering to help you stop it. Because what you’re doing? Screwing with ghosts? You have no idea what you’re tasting.”
“And you do?”
“I’d have to kill you to explain.”
“You’re a real treat, you know that?”
“And you’re no match for the Afterlife.”
He stared at her in disbelief, as if she’d just pushed him. A part of him that wanted to push back.
“You know what?” he said slowly. “Forget it. Forget you. I’m the one with the magic tongue. The one who’s been tasting the Dead for twenty years. And it was me— not you—that brought one of them back. What’ve you ever done, Spiritual Artist? Burned some incense? Shuffled some cards? Made a snap judgment about someone and used it to give them bad advice?”
Maura glared at him for a deafening moment, something hot simmering behind her eyes.
“You have no idea the things I’ve done.”
“Try me.”
“Hard pass.” She gave a small, mean smirk.
“Fine. Whatever.” He slid his chair back, stood up.
“But if it’d been me,” she added, “tasting those spirits? I sure as hell wouldn’t wait twenty years to do something about it.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No? You just said you didn’t try anything till last week . And the result got you so spooked you’re, what, consulting a party psychic? Well. You already got my advice, so here’s a snap judgment. You’re a coward, Konstantin. Afraid of your own potential. More interested in self-preservation than making any sort of meaningful connection. You’re paralyzed by—oh, I dunno?—something in your past? Death of a loved one? Am I warm? Yeah. And now you think this ghost thing makes you special. That messing with the Afterlife can somehow undo all those shitty years you’ve chosen to have instead of just moving on. But it won’t. It’ll only make it worse. So you need to just stop.”
Kostya stood there, dumbstruck.
Of all the things to happen at this seizure-inducing party, this felt the least like reality—not the Under the Sea flash mob or the salmon spawn dancers or the piranha pinata whose boxcutter teeth had drawn Kostya’s blood— this . If someone had told him that a sideshow psychic would be the first person to see him clearly, to peer through his bullshit and call him out on it, he’d have asked for a dose of whatever they were on. And yet, here she was—barely ten minutes of conversation between them, not even a card reading to help her along—getting it so on the nose she may as well have been a whitehead, a giant pimple on the face of everything that had held Kostya back his entire life: fear and denial and self-doubt. The inertia that had plagued him since his dad died.
“I should go.”
He found a twenty in his wallet, dropped it on the table. Then he took one last look at Madame Everleigh—painfully beautiful, emphasis on pain—and shoved his way back through the tent.
Kostya had miscalculated. It cost him twenty bucks (should have been fifteen, but there was no way he was asking for change), all of his pride, and more than a little dignity. In return, he’d gotten part of what he came for—clairgustance, the name like a small ray of light—though everything else she’d told him he’d have to work to compartmentalize, another dense box of himself to stack in front of that chasm inside.
MAURA ELIZABETH STRUK— Madame Everleigh—watched him go, her heart pounding. She felt badly about how it had gone, how cruel she’d been to make him leave. But she couldn’t have him around her, not if he was tasting that , not if he was some sort of gateway, a conduit back to where she wasn’t ready to go.
It wasn’t like she didn’t mean what she’d said; it was just that she’d done it so tactlessly, so full of pointed intention, that she was sure it would leave a bruise, if not a scar. Then again, she had tried, at first, to simply warn him. But he’d blown her off. So he deserved what he got.
It was a shame. Aside from haphazardly summoning a Hungry Ghost, he’d seemed nice. Endearing. Cute, kinda. Not her type exactly (not nearly enough tattoos), but passable if he took a little more care of himself. Still, he’d been playing with fire. Not a single match at a time, but more like setting a flamethrower off beside a gas pump.
What she couldn’t understand was how he had gone beyond serving as a medium to bring an actual spirit back. From what Maura knew about clairgustance—which was, admittedly, more snackable summary than seven-course meal—most of the time, the tastings were just flavors associated with the Dead. Cigarettes if the deceased smoked. Chemical residue if they’d been poisoned. The taste of their lipstick, or the hot sauce they liked. More clues than cuisine, and certainly not bridges. But what Konstantin tasted—a specific drink with all its component parts; a specific candy, that candy—seemed different. Not something simply reminiscent of the Dead, but integral to them, to some experience or memory they still craved. And by making that food, it appeared he could lure the spirits in, bait the hook with their favorite chum.
Well, whatever.
This, at least, wasn’t her problem. And hopefully what she’d said had gotten through to him. Hopefully, it was enough to keep him from making a bad mistake. The Hereafter was an intricate balance—of famine and feast; of hunger and satiety; of emptiness and fulfillment. Screw with that balance and, sooner or later, you’d regret it.
Just like Maura.
Her body trembled, suddenly ravenous. When had she last eaten? She pulled open her backpack, found a bag of Cheetos, and sat down at the table to inhale them when she noticed the tarot cards still there.
Her fingertips hovered over the deck, itching to read.
He’d already cut. It seemed like a waste not to divine when it was already primed. She flipped the top three cards over and studied them.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
She rushed out of the tent to see if she could catch Konstantin, but he’d already gone.
AROUND 4:00 AM, hunched over the peeling laminate counter in their cramped kitchen, Kostya and Frankie annihilated a plate of Disco fries and a platter of street meat without the use of a single utensil.
Konstantin shoved food into his mouth with his fingers, wolfing it down, swallowing so fast he barely tasted anything. It had been a long time since he’d gorged himself like this, but it came back like riding a bike.
This was comfortable; this was familiar.
Not raising glittering ghosts in some first-class a-hole speakeasy.
Not some unhinged party or vindictive psychic.
Not confessing his aftertastes for the first time since he’d been institutionalized for them, followed by having the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on blow it all up in his face.
This. Binge-eating his feelings in the form of a half-cold halal platter and its various accoutrements.
“Yo, uh, you good, man?” Frankie asked, watching him, a fry halfway to his mouth. “I seen that look before. Listen, I know Alexis meant a lot to you, but bro—”
Kostya shook his head, cramming more meat into his mouth.
“Not about Alexis,” he said, still chewing.
Frankie put down his fry and pulled the Styrofoam box out of Kostya’s reach.
“Well then what? ’Cause this ain’t healthy.”
Kostya swallowed and stared for a long time into Frankie’s face, deciding.
“Actually,” he said at last, “you wanna hear something crazy?”
FRANKIE TOOK HIM at his word.
It was how he was raised, to believe that the world was more mysterious and miraculous than most people ever saw. His Dominicana grandmother practiced Las 21 Divisiones and made daily sacrifices to the Loas for his protection. His Irish grandmother was as Catholic as they came and stronger than she looked, and had just about beaten the Lord into him as a kid. As a result, Frankie’s own belief system fell somewhere between spiritual and superstitious, gospel and Vudú and Jesus and the Diablo Cojuelo all sitting around, having a beer, and there was a lot he believed in that most people wouldn’t.
“That’s fucked up,” Frankie pronounced when he’d finished, handing Konstantin a beer. “I can’t believe Madame E did you like that.”
“She’s probably right.” Kostya took a long sip. Thinking. Wallowing. “I mean, I should just leave it alone, right? Let sleeping ghosts lie, or whatever.”
“Nah, man. Listen to me. Way I see it, they chose you . They’re all ‘Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,’ and you gon’ be like, ‘Sorry, no, I’m good’? You’re their dude . Maybe their only shot at a happy afterlife. Fuck what she said! Think about them .”
Kostya picked at the label on his bottle. Peeled it off.
“I only did it the one time. That’s not enough to be sure of anything.”
“All right, then. Come on. You’re gonna pick another recipe and we’re gonna hit it. We can use Wolfpup.”
“I dunno.”
“You really wanna spend your life standing still? Taking orders from people who don’t know you from Sunday?”
Kostya wasn’t sure what he wanted, but looking around their apartment—the mold-eaten brick, the watermarked ceiling, the pocked hardwood and saggy futon and greasy counter and ancient stove, the drafty bay window just threatening to glow with the first quivering rays of another new day of unemployment and self-loathing—it probably wasn’t this.
“I guess not.”
“Tell me something. How’d it feel when you mixed that drink? Before the ghost shit. Just the act of making it.”
“Pretty amazing.”
Frankie nodded knowingly. He talked all the time about how the kitchen called to him, about how he’d been applying to business schools until he picked up a chef’s knife for the first time.
“Then you owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot. Nobody likes regret.”
Kostya didn’t like it, exactly, but regret was a sort of personal comfort zone. He’d spent years familiarizing himself with its terrain, its streets and alleyways and all the doors of Opportunity that populated them, locked and dead-bolted against some stupid whim he might one day have, to try to open them.
But maybe this wasn’t like that.
He even knew what dish he’d try, the aftertaste that mattered more than any of the others.
“Okay.” He nodded at Frankie. “What do you know about liver?”
Frankie grinned back. “Enough to be dangerous.”