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HAU(N)TE CUISINE

IN THE SEVENTIES, Swingline was a glitzy, superfly spot, a boutique hotel far downtown, catering to the grooviest cats and foxiest kittens, the kind of beautiful people who shook their asses and snorted their drugs in Studio 54 and Max’s Kansas City. In the twenty-teens, not so much. Now it looked old. Run-down. Decidedly—Kostya frowned at the peeling gold siding and mirrorball door— retro . And not in a good way, like a first-press vinyl or vintage tee. More of a should-have-died-with-disco vibe.

Inside was worse. The walls were wood paneled, a take on somebody’s uncle’s basement; the carpets red shag, a communal grave of Elmo dolls. The reception desk—which you got to by trudging through a sunken seating area (more shag, puce velvet sofa, vomit-inducing floor pillows)—was mirrored, scuffed, and tagged with graffiti. It was also the last resting place of a dead mouse—one look at the lobby must have killed it—and an ominous pile of lease paperwork, some of it already bearing Viktor Musizchka’s signature.

Kostya shoved his fingers into his eyes, trying not to judge this dumpster fire by the height of its flames. He hadn’t seen the main attraction yet—Viktor said this place used to have a restaurant—but Kostya could already imagine what “charming, period brasserie and commercial kitchen” translated to if this pimply ass-cheek had been passed off as “seventies glam Manhattan legend, nostalgia chic” by the fast-talking broker.

It almost didn’t matter what they did to fix it up either. Even if Viktor was willing to throw money at the obvious problems, it still couldn’t fix the biggest issue of all: a restaurant located right in the sphincter of Manhattan dining.

Swingline straddled the border of the South Street Seaport and Two Bridges, right at the tippity top of the Financial District. This was the dead zone bordered by the NYPD, County Supreme Court, and Metropolitan Correctional Center, a culinary wasteland that barely attracted leisurely lunchers during working hours and was cursed, like the rest of FiDi, to become an absolute ghost town after 6:00 PM, when all the Wall Streeters emptied from its bowels. They’d be the only sit-down for blocks, which Viktor saw as a first-mover advantage, and which Kostya knew was the first nail in the inevitable coffin.

There was a reason all the hot restaurants clustered in certain locations—Soho, the Village, the Upper East and West, Gramercy and Flatiron and the Meatpacking District—and it wasn’t because they all wanted to be next door to their competition. They went where the people went, where other restaurants had had a good run, or at least an enviable sprint. It was no big secret that most restaurants shuttered within the first six months; the big-deal places, the success stories, those you could count on one hand. In this business, the only surefire option was a deal with the Devil, and Restaurant Satan was booked three years out, last Kostya had heard.

“Kostya, privet ! Thanks you for coming.”

Enter Viktor, stage left, materializing from a room behind reception. Dressed as if his stylist had the day off.

Like all new-money Russians, Viktor liked his luxury brands—Gucci and Hermès, Armani and Prada, Burberry and Louis V—but Viktor donned his attire a little too enthusiastically, from head-to-toe, the more expensive, the better to see you in, my dear , which sometimes, like right now, wound up looking like the storefronts along Fifth Avenue had gotten into a brawl.

“Viktor,” Kostya said, “hi. So this is the place, huh?”

Kostya was hoping Viktor would confess he’d just been screwing with him, take him by the arm, and whisk him into a private car, to another location far, far away. Instead:

“Well, what you think? You like or you love?”

“Love’s a strong word.”

“Love, yes? Me too. Very much.”

He removed a Tiffany lighter from the pocket of his slacks, lit a cigarette, and exhaled smoke in the direction of an exasperated No Smoking sign, its peeling paint—like the rest of this place—having given up long ago.

“I think we make lobby into cocktailnaya. ” Viktor took another drag. “People come in, drink while wait for table.” He exhaled. “I thinking black glass here. Obsidian. Modern. Very clean. We put hosts in front by door. Sexy girl and guy, dress in white for kontrast . What you say ? ”

“I think we should see the kitchen first.”

“Okay dokey. Follow me, is downstairs. Very cool features. I think you be surprised.”

“Well, if it’s anything like that lobby…,” Kostya began, inhaling Viktor’s secondhand smoke and heady eau de cologne as he followed him through the little door behind reception, past a couple of administrative offices, and into a cramped stairwell, “… then it’ll take a lot of dough to bring it up to code. Maybe more than you want to invest. Might be worth seeing what else is out there. We could even look in Brooklyn. Or Astoria’s got a solid food scene….”

They took the steep flight down, passing evidence of several infestations—gnats, rats, cockroaches—on the steps.

“Man,” Kostya said, making a show of squelching a roach beneath the heel of his sneaker, “this place looks like a plague hit it. I mean, are we gonna have to give up a firstborn? ’Cause I left my lamb’s blood in my other pants.”

Viktor—either not following or not interested—ignored him and waved his phone around, searching for the light switch. He found it, and Kostya braced himself for the shock of fluorescents and whatever other horrors awaited this kitchen reveal. But when the bulbs blinked awake, when the generous space expanded before his widening eyes, when he took in the high ceilings and wide prep areas, the industrial beams, the cement floors, the enormous arched windows on to—was that a subway station, visible on the other side of the glass?—he grinned despite himself.

Kostya felt it in his gut; there was something here, a diamond in the rough.

“It need update, of course,” Viktor said quickly. “We can lay out any way you want. But space, I think, is good.”

“Better than good,” Kostya said. “Those windows, what do they—”

The answer came barreling past them. The 6 Train as it made its loop through this defunct stop onto the uptown track, its strobing light bathing the shuttered station in momentary illumination, like a flashbulb from the past. Kostya took in the soaring half-moon archways, the braided tile, the art deco stained glass, all blinking like stop-motion as the cars advanced, souvenirs of another era. He could almost picture New Yorkers of yesteryear waiting on the platform, all trenchcoats and wool, briefcases and newspapers, cigarettes and handkerchiefs. Ghosts only the track remembered.

“We can Sheetrock,” Viktor offered. “If is distracting.”

Kostya could see it so clearly, what this place could be. The way even the walls had history.

“It’s perfect,” Kostya breathed. “It’s all perfect. Where do we sign?”

OTHER THINGS IN his life felt perfect, too.

When Kostya got home, still riding the high of his new kitchen, he found Maura sitting on his stoop, nursing a coffee and an almond croissant, a paper bag fat with pastries on the step beside her.

“Hey, Chef.” She grinned, wagging the bag at him. “I went to Balthazar.”

“I have never been more attracted to you.” He kissed her, tasted the sugar and butter and almond paste coating her lips. Yum . “What’s the occasion?”

“Oh, just your average Tuesday morning bribe.”

“Oh, yeah?” He unlocked the entryway door. “And which of my many services are you trying to buy? Because there aren’t enough croissants in the world to get me to clean your kitchen.”

She laughed, the sound thinner than normal. “Guess again.”

“Well, if this is about using me for some sort of kink,” he continued, letting her into the building and unlocking his apartment, “like really dirty, filthy stuff, then save the pastries. Truly. I volunteer.”

She gave a queasy smile. “Maybe after.”

“ After? Don’t tell me we’re assembling IKEA furniture.”

She followed him inside, something definitely off. She twisted the top of the pastry bag so hard it threatened to tear.

“Maur?” he asked, rescuing the bag. “Seriously, what is it?”

“I—” She looked petrified. “I’m ready.”

“For…?”

“I want you to bring back my sister.”

“Oh!” Kostya laughed with relief. “Is that all?”

Her eyes were enormous, full of emotion that threatened to spill into tears.

“You’ll do it?”

“Of course! I gave you my word. I just need to run to the bodega.”

“Why?”

“For the Reese’s,” Kostya told her. “I’ve tasted them around you since the night we met.”

BACK IN HIS apartment, a dozen packages of peanut butter cups cluttering his counter, Kostya coached Maura through the visit. He explained about the memory she needed, about sitting in her grief, about reaching out with it. He told her about the rules—that Everleigh would only stay as long as Maura ate. He promised to be with her the whole time.

“Actually,” Maura said, her eyes not meeting his, “if you you don’t mind, I’d rather see her alone. In private.”

“Oh.” He tried not to sound hurt. “Sure. Totally. It’s such a personal thing. I’ll, um, I’ll get things started and then I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you.” She took his hand, kissed it. “You have no idea what this means to me.”

He gave her a sad sort of smile. “Actually? I really do.”

MAURA ELIZABETH STRUK sat at her boyfriend’s dining table, an empty white plate before her. She reached for Everleigh, through the otherworldly Hunger writhing inside her, through her endless regret and guilt, through all the risks associated with raising her sister from the Dead. She combed the tendrils of her mind for the memory, the one that hurt the most. That made her feel her grief most profoundly, just like Konstantin had said. It was obvious, once he mentioned the Reese’s.

Halloween night, a decade ago.

Maura was fourteen, and Ev was ten, and they were both still alive. They’d been trick-or-treating. For the very last time, only Maura didn’t know it then. They were on the porch, combing through their candy, taking inventory. Ev loved Reese’s, hoarded them every year, kept them under her bed to eat at night, especially on their dad’s bad days. Sometimes, in the dark, Maura could smell it from the other side of the room, chocolate and peanut butter, and she’d roll out of bed and curl up with her sister, saying nothing, just listening to Everleigh chew.

But that night, that Halloween, Ev didn’t hoard them. She didn’t ask Maura to trade—an even swap for Snickers or those paper packs of M then to the box of her ashes; and then to the memory of Ev herself, her funky clothes, her violet hair, her brief, passionate, glittering life. The sugar laced everything like poison, like all the things Maura had pumped into her own body afterward—booze and drugs, pills of every color, anything to keep herself from feeling—until that time it went too far and she’d seen, firsthand, how Ev had suffered. And as she swallowed, the cumulative effect of the Reese’s Cup—how you couldn’t stop at just one bite; how it tasted fake, manufactured, but you wanted to finish anyway; how there was a second one waiting to follow up the first—became that loop of addiction, of lying, of one thing leading to the next, the avalanche she had found herself in, Maura’s slippery slope, the one she’d been trying for so long to outrun, and which this last, desperate attempt—right here, right now, Everleigh, and her, and this fucking piece of candy—might finally bring to a close.

KOSTYA WAITED UNTIL Everleigh appeared. Her lights—he should have guessed—materialized in lilac, delicate orbs that arranged themselves into someone he almost recognized. Like a younger Maura—those same wide, flickering eyes; the same stance; the same (he smiled when he saw it) purple hair. He kissed the top of Maura’s head as he left, squeezed her shoulder.

“I won’t be far,” he told her, “just in case.”

But she didn’t call.

Instead, an hour and a half later, on his second milkshake at The Flame, Kostya tasted something strange.

A Reese’s. Another one. That same notch in its side, like a calling card.

Everleigh’s.

But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Especially since—he checked the time—no matter how slowly she had eaten, surely Maura had finished that Reese’s by now.

Surely, Everleigh was gone.