Page 26

ANOTHER ROUND

KOSTYA MET MAURA an hour later, at an address she texted him in Alphabet City.

“I was thinking,” she said instead of hi , “you should call him back and demand a do-over. Musicman, I mean.”

“Uh, hey. Hi. Nice to see you, too.”

“I’m serious!”

“Look, you didn’t meet Viktor. I just… It’s over. It’s done.”

“Nothing’s done until you’re dead, and even that might be negotiable. Convince him to try your food!”

“Can we talk about something else? Like why we’re in StuyTown?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “You sounded really down. I’m cheering you up.”

“Here?”

“Uh-huh. I’m gonna show you the city, Stan.”

She swept her arm out before them. A rat skittered out from beneath a dumpster.

“You know I live in Hell’s Kitchen, right?”

“But you don’t walk around with your eyes open.”

NO TWO PEOPLE, it seemed, experienced Manhattan in quite the same way, and the places Maura frequented, all her beloved haunts, made him feel even less cool than usual. Her version of the city was a different world. Full of nooks and crannies, holes-in-the-wall, secret entrances, spaces you’d never see unless shown.

SHE TOOK HIM for zombies (warning: one per customer) at Fuego’s Shrunken Head, a Polynesian tiki bar above a laundromat, carpets sticky with decades of syrupy rum.

“They’re limiting the signature drink?” Kostya asked. “Tough look for a bar.”

“I don’t think they have a choice,” Maura said, plucking a paper umbrella from the rim and skewering a cherry. “These things are deadly. I sweet-talked the bartender into sneaking me a second one once. Blacked out an entire weekend.”

AFTERWARD, THEY STUMBLED around the corner to Big Apple Handyman, a hardware store wedged between a barbershop and nail salon.

“Our next stop,” Maura announced as she led him down the paint aisle, toward a door marked Danger: High Voltage . “Courtesy of my former employer.”

“You worked here ?” Kostya asked.

She nodded, entering a four-digit code on the door’s pinlock. “In art school. Before I dropped out.”

“You went to art school?” Lord, he knew astonishingly little about Maura.

“For visual effects and 3D animation. Lots of coding, logic, world-building—which is why I fought so hard for this job.” She turned the handle down slowly, felt the lock click open.

“In a hardware store?”

“No.” She pushed open the door. “In High Voltage.”

It was a private arcade—ten or twelve video game cabinets lining the walls of a small room, a machine in the corner that traded bills for quarters, and a tiny (no liquor license, surely?) bar in the back. It was an insider’s place, and, unlike The Library of Spirits, an actual secret. A few groups huddled around two of the older-looking consoles, the players focused, the spectators watching, breath held.

“You play?” Maura asked him.

“Never had the money.”

“Well,” she said, loading a bill into the change machine and scooping out a fistful of quarters, “allow me to make up for your horrible childhood.”

MAURA CREAMED HIM at every game.

It wasn’t just that he was a novice, prone to button mashing; she was uniquely skilled, so good that other gamers paused to watch. Her eyes never left the screen, her fingers flitting across combinations of buttons, maneuvers of joysticks. It reminded him of the way she shuffled cards.

She moved to the next cabinet, sliding a quarter into a Japanese version of Ms. Pac-Man.

“This is the one I actually brought you here to play,” she said, her hands settling expertly onto the controls.

“You get this good just by working here?” Kostya asked.

“I’ve been gaming since I was a kid.” Ms. Pac-Man appeared on the screen, a maze loading, and Maura’s face shifted in concentration. “There was an arcade in town, and my sister and I—it was our happy place. We were safe there.”

Something about the way she said it unsettled Kostya.

“In a game,” she continued, “no matter how much you messed up, no matter how many times you died, you could come back. Play again.” On-screen, she chased down a set of flashing ghosts, swallowing them one by one, orange, then pink. “We spent hours playing after school. I loved everything about it. The puzzles. The levels. The way games follow rules. There’s a perfect logic to a game world. Orderly. Predictable. Not like real life.”

“You can see the bad guys coming.”

“Exactly.” She ate a cherry, then a Power Pellet, then swallowed the cyan ghost, sending him back into his little box. “And if you get really good, you can learn which rules to break. Unlock secret levels. Have an experience the creator intended only for a select few.”

She took her hands off the controls and turned back to Konstantin. He watched as the last ghost—the one she hadn’t yet eaten—stalked closer and closer.

“Watch out!” he warned, but it was too late.

The red ghost overtook Ms. Pac-Man, sending her spinning. Dead. The maze went blank, all the little pellets vanishing at once. Some Japanese characters flashed across the center of the screen. Game over, he figured.

“Ouch. Didn’t think I’d get to see you lose.”

“You didn’t.” Maura tapped the bottom left of the screen with her finger, pointing out the two life icons still displayed. “Watch and learn.”

The maze reappeared, in ghostly blue this time, the pellets punctuated by countless miniature foods—not only fruits but pixelated pizza slices, tiny sushi rolls, petite hamburgers. Ms. Pac-Man faded onto the screen, not in the bottom half, where she usually started, but in the central box, where the ghosts usually did. Instead of her trademark yellow, she appeared blinking, in blue.

“She’s—she’s one of the ghosts?”

Maura took up the controls again. Kostya watched her move through the maze, eating everything in sight.

“It’s a secret level,” Maura told him. “Only available in the 1983 rerelease of the Japanese cabinet. It’s called the Hungry Ghost Maze.”

“So it’s a bonus round? The point’s just to… get more points?”

“The points don’t matter in the ghost realm. To clear this level, you have to find the Happy Meal. Hidden in one of these fruits is a portal that gets you back to the real world.”

“But there’s no opponent!” Kostya balked. “No timer. This seems too easy.”

“It would be, without the second player. Get ready.” She nodded at him. “You’re almost up.”

“Wait, what?”

“On the floor, to the right. There’s another controller.”

A handheld joystick was jerry-rigged to the back of the cabinet, a thick black cord tethering it in place.

“But I don’t know—”

A moment later, the screen divided, Maura continuing to eat in the ghost realm on the left and a new maze appearing on the right, the original Pac-Man in his first level, caged ghosts breaking free one by one to chase him. Kostya fumbled with the joystick, running Pac-Man straight into an oncoming ghost and losing one of his lives.

“Careful! Ms. Pac-Man only gets to stay on this side as long as Pac-Man survives on his. True love, right? If I don’t find the portal before you die,” Maura warned him, “I vanish. Literally. We’ll have to reset the game to get her to show up again.”

“Happy Meal, huh? To bring a ghost back from the Dead?” Kostya maneuvered Pac-Man around a corner. “That’s kind of on the nose.”

“Well, Hungry Ghosts are the kind that come back.” Maura grinned. “Feeding the Dead to help them cross—it’s a whole thing in, like, a dozen different traditions. Japan. China. Mexico. Ancient Egypt. I figured it’d be up your alley.”

Another ghost attacked then, catching Kostya in a pincer. Womp-womp.

“Except you really suck at getting away,” Maura scolded, snatching his controller. “Here. Let me.”

AFTER THE ARCADE, they wandered through Tompkins Square Park, darkness falling around them. Maura’s hand laced through his felt so right, a warm feeling gathering in Kostya’s belly like a big bowl of soup. She led him along a dim, tree-lined path, finally stopping at a bench where they sat, his arm draped around her shoulder.

“So,” he asked her, “there some secret in the park, too? Some tree branch you pull to get into a rave?”

She laughed. “I just used to come here a lot. Most of my classes were across the street.”

“Visual effects, right?”

“Yeah.” She gave a tight smile. “I really thought I was gonna make games for a living.”

“What happened?”

Maura sighed, her eyes carefully fixed on the ground. “I made it through fall of senior year. Started my big thesis project. But then I dropped out. Because Everleigh died.”

“Everleigh,” Kostya repeated. “Like Madame Everleigh?”

“My sister.” Maura nodded. “Spiritualism was always her thing. The psychic stuff, for me, that…”—she gave an ironic laugh—“ career path ? It’s just one of the ways I try to keep her alive. After she died, I couldn’t let her go. I did a lot of stupid things, trying to hold on.”

“Holding on isn’t stupid.” Kostya had been doing it his whole life—was, in fact, trying to make his own career out of it. “How did she—was she sick?”

Maura shook her head. “A car crash.”

The air went out of his chest. He thought of his dad. The bus. That phone call.

The sharp knife of sudden loss.

“I’m—God, I’m so sorry.”

“Ev crashed it on purpose.” She sounded numb as she said it, like it was something she’d relived a million times, the memory threadbare. “I was away at school, and she needed me, and I wasn’t there.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Maura shivered beside him. “I didn’t even see it coming. I couldn’t understand why. Like, our dad has issues. He’s bipolar, and our house was never really stable growing up. One day there’d be food in the fridge, lights on, and the next he’d be slamming a wall. Losing his job. Or catatonic, barely there. We never knew what we’d find when we walked through the door. I took the brunt, I guess, when I was home. But for Ev to be hurting that bad? To feel like her only choice was an ending?” She dug the toe of her shoe into the ground. “She never even said anything.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s what people say to make you feel better, but honestly? Our mom was gone, and then I left, too. I was her big sister. I should have stayed home. I should have—” Her voice cracked, and Kostya pulled her closer. “She must have lived with so much darkness. And now I’ll never know.”

He chewed his lip, the answer right there between them, close enough to touch.

“What if you could?”

The aftertaste had thrown itself at him the very first time they met. He could almost taste the chocolate on his tongue now, the peanut butter, the memory a ghost of a ghost. All those times, all those Reese’s, only and always around Maura.

Everleigh had been there all along.

“I could help you,” he said slowly. “You could see her again.”

Maura turned toward him, her mouth so close. Her lips. Her warm breath.

“I—I thought you said you were finished. One and done.”

There was something different in her voice. Not accusation, or anger, like he’d expected, but possibility. Hope.

“I know what I said.” He slid his arm from her shoulder. “But it wasn’t true.”

His heart was sprinting inside him. Was he really doing this? Here? Now? He looked at Maura, into her eyes, and he couldn’t lie anymore.

“My supper club? The one that closed? It was a ghost kitchen.”

She scanned his face, as if trying to read something, but said nothing.

“And this restaurant with Viktor? It was going to be the same thing,” he continued. “Channeling spirits. Cooking their aftertastes. Trying my best to bring them back.”

“Why’d you lie?”

“I’m sorry I did. Really. It’s just, the other day, when it came up—I panicked. Because I like you. A lot. And I thought it would fuck things up between us, the ghost stuff. I know how you feel about it.”

Her face gave nothing away. All he could see was a flicker behind her eyes, like she was thinking very fast.

“You know how I felt ,” she said at last. “During one snap judgment at a party. A lot’s changed since Seyoncé.”

“So all that stuff about ghosts coming for me? No Dana, only Zuul. You didn’t mean that?”

“Oh, no,” she relented. “I totally did. If you keep fucking around, sooner or later, something’s gonna give.”

“Then nothing’s changed.”

“ I’ve changed.” She found his hand and traced her thumb across his palm, along one of the lines there. “And on some reflection, I think the benefits might be worth the risk.”

He stared at her, unsure if he’d heard right.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“What, um, brought you around?”

“The restaurant.”

“The… the one I lied about?” He didn’t follow.

“The one you took the trouble to open when you didn’t have to. You could have just brought back your own friends and family. Left it there. Instead, you raised the Dead for people you barely knew. Strangers.”

“Yes?”

“Why?”

“I—” Kostya chewed his cheek. “Because of my dad? I guess? Because I know how it feels to need more time? When I lost him, it was sudden. He was in an accident, and we’d—we had a fight that morning. A fucking stupid fight. And I spent my whole life wondering if he died mad at me. If the very last thing I ever did was hurt him. I’ve been there, wanting so badly to make things right. Thinking I might never get the chance. So if I can help someone not feel that way? It’s worth it.”

“You’re a good person, Konstantin. Selfless.” Maura stared down at his hand in hers. “Even if you are a liar.”

“Does that mean I get a second chance? Or does lying trump selfless, so I can still go fuck myself?”

She smiled at him. “Did you mean it, about Everleigh?”

“Of course.”

“And you wouldn’t think I was a hypocrite?”

“I mean, I totally would. But that’s being human, right? You’re allowed to change your mind.”

Frankie flashed through his head then—his wish to stay dead; his sudden, contradictory aftertaste.

“I’d like to see Ev again,” Maura said softly. “To help her.”

“So let’s do it.”

He started to rise, was mentally mapping their path to the nearest candy aisle, but Maura reined him back.

“No! Not yet. I just—I need to be sure it’s the right thing.” She looked away from him, at a cluster of trees. “Every time I try to process her death, it only makes it worse. Grief’s like leftovers that way. Like you made this four-course meal out of your love, but they only got to eat one little bite. So now you’re stuck with all this food you can’t bear to throw away, and all you can do is shove it in the back of the fridge to rot, or make yourself sick trying to binge it on your own.”

“Or maybe,” Kostya said gently, “you could invite someone else to dinner. Someone hungry.”

She looked at him for a long moment, the way you look at something you can’t have.

“Just… I’m here, okay?” he said, breaking the silence. “If you ever decide you do want… leftovers. I get it.”

“I know you do. It’s just that—” She started to say something else, the words right there, tongue tipped, but her stomach gave a roar, and she laughed instead. “Apparently, I’m still starving. You up for some food?”

Kostya blinked at her, amazed. No, impressed.

He was still stuffed from the tiki bar, from the dozen apps Maura insisted they order there, and from the beer and pretzels at High Voltage, and the jumbo package of Nuts4Nuts she’d bought on the walk over to the park. He couldn’t imagine consuming so much as a cocktail cherry.

Maura’s metabolism was unreal.

Another mystery to solve, right up there with those scars on her wrists and that mid-coital blackout. Not to mention all the stuff she knew about the Dead. But that was probably just an occupational hazard of being a psychic. And she’d just let him in about Everleigh, so it was only a matter of time before she’d share the other stuff, right? Right?

Sure. Yup.

It was fine. This was fine.

Fine, fine, totally fine.

“Stan?”

“Hm?”

“There’s a good Cuban place a few blocks away. You haven’t lived till you’ve tried one of their cigars. Or we could go back to your place… order in….” She twirled a piece of purple hair around her finger. “Find some way to kill half an hour… Unless you’re not hungry?”

He was, suddenly. Very.

“I could eat.”

MAURA LEFT HIS apartment around midnight, her scent still lingering in the air, perfume and shampoo and sweat like olfactory ghosts. He’d wanted her to stay, had nearly begged, but she had work early the next morning, an aura cleansing for some celebrity— You’d die if I told you who— and needed to prep.

She’d liked his place, had asked for the grand tour— Oh my God, there’s another bedroom?— astonished by the square footage until he explained that he hadn’t always lived alone, that his best friend had been his roommate.

“Is he coming back for his stuff?” she asked. “Because you could totally sublet.”

“No, he, um… he died. Couple months back. He—he was a chef, too. There was a fire. At his restaurant.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah. Wolfpup. On the Upper West Side. Frankie was the sous.” Kostya pulled up a photo on his phone, Frankie in his chef’s whites, plating a dish with one hand and flipping him off with the other. “He ran that ship.”

“Whoa.” Maura stared at the picture for a long time. “Can you taste him?”

Kostya thought of the rum cake from earlier that night, the flavors appearing right there in the room.

“Sometimes.”

“It must be nice,” Maura said. “To know he’s there.”

“It is,” Kostya agreed. “But it’s hard, too. Most of my life, I’ve felt more connected to the Dead than the Living.”

Maura moved closer. “Maybe you just need to live a little more.”

He breathed her in, her smell intoxicating. “Maybe you can show me.”

She swallowed the space between them, kissed him slow. The sensation of her mouth was honey, sweet and sticky and thick. He kissed her back, and it was agony, this kiss, the way it consumed him. She pulled him in, close, closer, desire pushing every other thought to the back of his mind.

AFTERWARD, ALONE, KOSTYA stood in his kitchen, and stared at Frankie’s note, the menu he’d scrawled a message from beyond the grave. He read it again. The last line, over and over.

Special Seatings—Chef’s Tastings (Limited)

Yes.

This was it. Of course.

This was how he opened a restaurant—one that could seat lots of people while still raising just a few ghosts a night. This was how he solved Viktor’s volume problem.

He would offer a permanent menu of the best ghost flavors he’d tasted from beyond, prepped and ready for ordering à la carte. And then, for the more adventurous eaters, a special dining experience to reconnect them with their own personal ghosts, the seatings limited to a select few each night. Chef’s Tastings.

Chef’s After tastings.

Arranged in advance, with private rooms and a manageable number he could control.

Maura had been right, about needing a do-over. Giving this thing another chance.

It was late, but Kostya didn’t care. He picked up the phone, dialed the number. Viktor Musizchka answered on the fourth ring, voice thick with sleep.

“Viktor? It’s Konstantin.”

“Is one in morning. This spank call?”

“Don’t hang up! Please.”

He heard Viktor yawn. “I give ten second.”

“Ten se—jeez—okay. You were wrong. I don’t need a test kitchen. I’m ready. I can scale this. I figured out how.”

There was a moment of silence, and then, “Thank you for call, Kostya, but ship, I think, already on sale.”

“Just let me prove myself! Let me cook for you.”

“We already talking to other chefs—”

And, desperate, Frankie’s menu in his perspiring palm, Kostya played his card, the one he knew Viktor would fold for.

“But none of them would have anything like the buzz we could create. With the ghosts, with my concept—you’d make a killing. And we could seat as many people as you wanted. A full house every night. But the ghost experience—that would be exclusive. Like a club within a club. A restaurant within a restaurant. VIP rooms.”

Silence on the other end.

“Think about it,” Kostya pushed on. “What would you do, to see someone you loved again? Someone who died, someone you thought was gone forever? To have one last conversation? Ask their advice? Hear their voice?”

Viktor cleared his throat.

“What would you give,” Kostya pressed, “for one last meal together?”

An aftertaste shimmered into his mouth then— pickled herring, white onions, diced egg, grated beets, mayo, mayo, so much mayo, drowning in it— and he knew he had him.