Page 22

JUST DESSERTS

IN THE MORNING, still intoxicated—his liver and his mind—and hoping it wouldn’t be an absolute creeper move if she woke up and caught him, Konstantin watched Maura sleep. It was like staring into the sun—mesmerizing, blinding, an image with an afterburn.

Her hair glowed against the pillowcase, pooling like spilt ink. He wanted to bury his face in it, to breathe in the scent of what he imagined would be sugared violets, grape soda, blackberry jam. Her roots, up close, surprised him; they weren’t bleached white but grew in that way, as if the shock of something had blanched her follicles.

Her eyeliner was smudged, everything softening in the dusty light. Her mouth was smudged, too, last night’s lipstick faded, patches of it smearing her pillow.

Her skin was dotted with constellations, so many marks he hadn’t noticed in the dark. She had a tattoo on her collarbone, a tiny skull. Another on her shoulder, beneath a thin slip of plastic, raised and red around the edges—Cal’s work from yesterday—the words Memento Mori in slender black strokes. A larger, more elaborate design that began just beneath her breasts and curled down her side toward her left hip—a skeleton hand holding three cards: Death, The Lovers, The World. There was a galaxy of freckles across her waist. A small, straight appendectomy scar. Another series of tattoos on her thigh—three jagged strokes of ink in ballpoint blue, as if she’d done them herself—like a tally being kept.

Maura shifted in her sleep and Kostya caught sight of her forearm, her wrist, drank in the scars there for a long time. A failed attempt to meet her maker. He wondered why, and then, like a cord being pulled, an answer spread across his tongue.

A candy cup so soft it barely qualified as chocolate, warmed and half-melted in someone’s hand. Peanut butter so sweet it hurt his teeth.

“Hey, stranger.” Maura stirred awake then, smiled.

“Morning.” He grinned back, the taste of Reese’s circling his mouth.

“How’s your arm?”

“Never better.” It felt like the flesh was congealing, actually, but who needed arms?

“I’m glad.”

“What time is it?”

“Time is a construct.” Maura felt around on the nightstand. “But in this reality? Ugh. Six thirty. Whoops, this one’s yours.”

She handed him his phone, which displayed (5) missed calls from some 917 number. He flicked it off silent.

“So, you really a chef? Or was that just a line to get me into bed?”

“Hey, you took me home. But I am a chef. At least, I was. My place—my supper club—it shuttered.”

“Bummer. Sorry to hear that.” She sat up, pulled a T-shirt on. “But my kitchen’s still open, and I’m starving. Coffee first. And then, Chef, come show me whatcha got.”

HER KITCHEN WAS a disaster. Instead of utensils, one whole drawer housed restaurant matchbooks, half of them from places that had been closed for years. She owned only one frying pan and every knife in her collection was dulled to the point of futility. Her oven—this really took the cake—was storage, but not for shoes or sweaters or any of the other things New Yorkers lacking space might put in there. It held a laptop, two landline phones ( Did we time warp to 1999? ), and a half-dozen paperback editions of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul .

“That stuff’s for work!” she said defensively.

“What, for a junkyard?”

“Suicide hotline,” she informed him. “For teens. One of my side hustles.”

“Shit. Well now I want to crawl into a hole.”

“Think you could make me some coffee first?”

Kostya messed with the coffeepot while Maura frowned into her fridge and began pulling ingredients out of it—leftover slices of salami, half a container of strawberries, a jar of gherkins, three brown eggs.

“You gonna put all that in a mystery basket?”

She looked down at the counter. “Julia Child I am not.”

“Julia? The school lunch lady wouldn’t touch that combo.”

“Don’t make me deduct points.”

“Oh, so there’s points now?”

“Obviously.”

“What about prizes?”

Maura slapped two Kraft singles onto the pile, gave him a mischievous smile.

“You make all that into something edible and I’ll see if we can top last night’s performance.”

Kostya processed this a moment. Holy cannoli, Batman.

“Set your timer.”

FORTY-TWO MINUTES LATER, Maura was moaning.

“Oh my God. Oh my God .” She took another bite of strawberry soufflé. “This is some next-level tantric Kabbalah shit.”

“That’s supposed to be dessert,” Konstantin tsked.

“Life is uncertain.” She wagged the spoon at him. “Eat dessert first.”

“Try the Benedict.”

He slid the plate over, watched her crack the crispy salami basket with the edge of a fork, the yolk of the poached egg beneath oozing out, mixing with the Hollandaise, five stars for the preparation. She closed her eyes as she chewed.

“I think I love you,” she said, swallowing. “Where’d you learn this?”

“Saveur Fare, mostly.”

“ Saveur Fare? ” she repeated. “As in three Michelin stars, exec’d by culinary legend Michel Beauchêne, reservations six months out Saveur Fare?”

“You side hustle as a food critic, too?”

“Just as a foodie.” She dug her fork back into the eggs. “Saveur’s been on my bucket list for ages. Look at you, fancy pants.”

“It wasn’t like that. I was a glorified dishwasher.”

“Isn’t that how all apprentices start?”

“That makes it sound more… intentional than it was. I just—I got lucky. Guys on the line quit, I moved up. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful. Saveur taught me everything about how a restaurant works, how a kitchen operates, how to make something out of just about anything. But the flavors—the spices, the combinations, the mouthfeel—that education, that’s mostly the ghosts.”

He said it without thinking, without any reflex to hide or deflect or explain it away, because Maura already knew. There was something so freeing in being able to tell her, in having someone he could confide in again, confess what it felt like to live with the Dead. It made him realize, with a pang, just how much he missed Frankie, how alone he’d been with his secret since he died.

“You must taste them a lot, if they changed your palate.”

Yes! It was like she understood him.

“All the time. But, I mean, can’t complain, right? Gave me a leg up over all the culinary school snobs.”

“It must be exhausting, though, communing with the Dead like that.”

“You get used to it. Sort of.”

“And cooking,” she went on, “becoming a chef—that’s been your release for it all?” She shook her head in awe. “Pretty brilliant. Getting the aftertastes out of your system without messing with the Dead.”

Wait… what? No . She didn’t think…

“I mean that is what you’re doing, right?” She gave him a look he couldn’t entirely read. Expectation? Suspicion? Hope? “You’re not still… experimenting?”

This felt like a trick question.

“Uh, well…”

He wanted to tell her the truth. He should have told her the truth. Fess up. Admit the whole thing. About his dad at Saveur Fare. About the revenant souls over at Hell’s Kitchen Supper Club. About the fact that he hadn’t left his clairgustance behind. Instead, he hesitated. Because she’d warned him. Months ago. Had told him that he should not, under any circumstances, keep messing with the Dead.

“You know, it’s actually kind of a funny story?”

She raised one eyebrow. “Funny how?”

He swallowed.

If he came clean, this thing between them—whatever it was, whatever it could be—might be over before it even began. It had only been a handful of hours, but he already felt more spark, more thrill, more desire with Maura than he’d felt in years of fruitless dates and passionless relationships. He couldn’t just let her go. Not without giving her the whole picture. He would find some way to show her all the good he was doing, all the people he was helping, that it was safe, that he was figuring it out, then maybe—

“Konstantin?” she prompted, and he Animorphed from a man into some invertebrate jelly.

“I… um… well … remember at Seyoncé, when I told you about that drink?”

“The one that brought back a ghost?”

“Uh, yeah. That drink. Well , I thought a lot about what you said at the party.” He chose his words very carefully; this was all technically true. “If I’m being honest, it was hard to hear. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping you’d say.” Also true. “And I was pretty pissed that you rained on my parade. So becoming a chef, opening my own spot—in a way, that was my big F you. To, um, to you.” He was practically Abe Lincoln, with all this honesty.

Her expression softened. “Look, I know I came on strong. My delivery was… unkind. But that had nothing to do with you. I—I actually tried to find you that night. After you left.”

“Really? Why?”

Maura shrugged in a way that tried—and failed—to appear nonchalant.

“To apologize. I could tell I’d crossed a line. You were cute, and sweet, and clueless about what you were getting into. And you didn’t deserve that.”

Cute? Kostya was about to levitate off the kitchen tile.

“Anyway,” she added, “I’m kind of surprised you took my advice. About the Dead.”

“What makes you so sure I did?” he asked, trying to stay on the right side of history while keeping it fun and flirty. “I mean, I’m a tat guy now. Maybe I live on the wild side. Maybe I’ve brought back hundreds of them.”

Maura fought to suppress a laugh. She slid her hand up his arm, pressed a little piece of plastic wrap back down against his elbow, where the edge of his bandage had come up. It hurt and he wanted her to do it again.

“Okay, Wild Thing. Sure. You screwed with the cosmic order and walked off without a scratch. Get real! If you’d really been fucking with the Dead, after all this time…”

She trailed off, that ellipsis like a death sentence.

“After all this time what?”

“I dunno? They’d probably come for you.”

“I take it you don’t mean that in a sexy, Patrick Swayze–pottery wheel kinda way.”

“I was imagining more of a ‘There is no Dana, only Zuul’ sort of scenario.”

“Oh. Cool. Cool cool.”

She laughed. “But you just did it the one time, right? With that drink?”

“Uh, yeah.” He nodded, unable to meet her eye. “More or less.”

“And you’re gonna keep it that way?”

“That… that’s the plan. One and done.”

He told himself it wasn’t an outrageous lie. More like a fib. A fiblet. And he hadn’t prepared a dish since Hell’s Kitchen had been shut down, over a month ago. So who knew? Maybe he’d never bring another ghost back. And he’d tell Maura the whole truth. As soon as they gave this a chance.

“Okay. Well. In my experience, it’s repeat offenders that get on the naughty list.” She gave him a decidedly subject-changing look. “Speaking of which”—she nudged him back against the counter—“winner, winner, chicken dinner, I think I owe you a prize.”

A tingle went up his spine, his pulse blending through his body—mix, stir, liquefy. She leaned in, kissed him like she meant it. His hands slipped beneath her shirt. She gave a little moan. Check please.

And right on cue, his phone exploded, a badly digitized rendition of “Afternoon Delight” (Frankie’s idea of a joke that Kostya couldn’t bring himself to deprogram) belting from the speaker.

Seriously!? He tugged it from his pocket. That 917 number again.

His immediate instinct was to chuck it across the room, but a small voice in the back of his head wondered if his mom was okay, if Lower Manhattan was underwater, if some apocalypse had befallen the world while he was over here acting out several fantasies.

He groaned. “Sorry. I better get it.”

“Should I start without you?”

“Don’t you dare,” he told her, and picked up the call. “Hello?”

“ Da , hello,” the voice on the other end said, in an accent so unmistakably Russian it could have been a Bond villain. “I looking for Konstantin Duhovnik.”

Oh, come on!

His mother was probably behind this, trying to get Uncle Vanya to give him his old trucking gig back. She never trusted him to figure things out on his own. Well—Maura fiddled with his belt buckle—this was not the time.

“It’s Duhov ny . And this is Kostya,” he said quickly, “but look, I told Vanya I wasn’t going to drive anymore, so—”

“Drive? Nyet, nyet. My name Viktor. Musizchka. I own Taina club Miami, Passage in Brooklyn, Russian Doll LA. You know these?”

“No.”

The belt clattered to the floor.

“I want you be chef.”

“Thanks anyway, but I don’t really do Russian cuisine—”

“No Russian. New place. I hear about Hell Kitchen Supper Club. Ghost food, yes or yes? I want make restaurant like this. In Manhattan. High-concept. High-end. Five-star. You interesting?”

Maura was kissing his neck. Somewhere, Satan was cackling.

Kostya gave her a stricken look, mouthed, One sec.

“Yeah,” he said into the receiver. “Very interested.”