Page 32

FLEUR DE SEL

THE LEASE WAS signed.

In a few shorts months they’d have menus. Dinner service. A bona fide grade A (Viktor would make sure) from the Health Department. They’d have butts in chairs. A bar with bartenders. A reservation book. A kitchen spitting tickets out for orders and waitstaff and Konstantin helming it all. It would be an actual restaurant. Made to bring back actual ghosts.

It almost didn’t feel real.

Maura was coming over to help him celebrate ( This calls for a toast! Dinner at your place? ) and Kostya was peering into his fridge (someone had to come resuscitate this thing; food was rotting by the hour), trying to determine what to make her. He’d asked what she was in the mood for, and the answer was typical Maura: Something that thrills me.

Their relationship didn’t quite feel real to Kostya either.

Since the tattoo parlor, they’d spent most of their free time together, hours of witty banter and great food and multiple—ahem—courses, with no indication that Maura wanted to slow down or just be friends or see other people. It was almost the opposite; she couldn’t get enough of him. If he were a different person—someone allergic to commitment; Frankie, say—it would have shot up red flags, triggered an analysis of her as a Stage-Five Clinger, a plan for escape, but Kostya reveled in the attention. He’d never felt so wanted.

They traded secrets, shared parts of themselves other people never saw. He, peak boyfriend material, had brought her kid sister back from the Dead. Sure, he still had no idea what had happened when she returned—but then, he hadn’t asked. Because he respected Maura’s privacy! He trusted her! She’d tell him when she was ready. Which would probably be any day now; she had a drawer of things at his place, after all. And he—the height of intimacy!—had left several knives and a carbon steel pan in her kitchen.

He was falling, hard, and he wanted to tell her. To show her.

What he cooked tonight had to be special. Food that would let him reveal himself to her, not just the chef part, but all of him. Who he was. Where he came from. What he believed in.

Food could do that. It could tell stories. Not just cuisines or component parts, but histories—of the people who’d prepared the dishes, the way they evolved them over time, the way they made them theirs. Leaving behind a recipe was a way to be remembered and savored and loved even after you were gone. A way to live forever.

When Kostya ate the food his dad had made him as a kid, it always felt like he was still there, right in the room, his hand guiding Kostya’s as he chopped dill or scooped sour cream, his bright laugh just out of earshot, ringing out behind a door. A meal could contain so many things he couldn’t say, every bite a way to travel through time.

He shut the refrigerator and opened a cabinet.

There was an embarrassment of spices, assorted cans (tuna, black bean, coconut, condensed milk), a half-dozen dry grains. And then he saw them—Morello cherries in a jar.

In their current form, they were too sweet for anything other than an old-fashioned, but before they were preserved, they’d been sour. Deliciously tart.

He knew immediately what he should cook for Maura, the journey he would take her on.

They could make them together— varenyky . Thin-skinned dumplings bursting with lightly sugared sour cherries, their warm, dark juice flooding your mouth. Or the cheese kind—soft, sweet kernels of curd luxuriating in a pool of liquid butter. The meat ones, his dad’s take on pelmeni, beef and pork and black pepper and onion, boiled first and then pan-fried, brown and crispy, doused in a poultice of white vinegar and sinus-clearing Russian mustard and thick sour cream.

Hell, he’d cook all three.

They used to make them in the summer, Kostya and his father and mother together. A weekend-long event, kneading the dough, mixing the fillings, shaping and pinching and sealing the delicate pouches by hand. They used to make hundreds of them the first hot weekend of the season, freeze them in bags to eat year-round. An assembly line—his dad rolling the dough into rounds the size of his palm; a small Kostya spooning fillings; his mother’s fingers white with flour, her fingertips flitting in and out of a water bowl, crimping the sides. He hadn’t thought about it in years.

It was the sort of thing that might not have moved the needle at Zagat, that Michel Beauchêne might label quaint or homespun, but it was honest. His best memories of childhood, on a plate. He hoped Maura would like it.

He wanted so badly to impress her, to astonish and electrify and awe her, to see that look on her face when it tasted good, to hear that little moan, her eyes half-closed. He still had trouble wrapping his head around the two of them, how someone like her could be interested in him, but his food, the way it felt to feed her, to watch her eat—that was the real thing.

AROUND FOUR, HE started prep.

Huge pot of water, salted, set to boil. Ground beef and pork coming to room temperature on the counter in trim, brown-paper packages. An onion, peeled. A bag of frozen Montmorency cherries draining in a colander, a bowl beneath catching their acrid juice. Another colander lined with cheesecloth, white vinegar and salt and lemon juice curdling hot whole milk, the start of a soft farmer’s ricotta. Flour and salt and oil from the cupboard, measured out in cups, plus sour cream. An egg. Whole milk. The entire countertop cleaned and floured, lined with parchment.

Cooking this food—his dad’s food—sent a dull ache through the center of his chest. He still hadn’t tried to trigger the pechonka . Not yet. Not even after Everleigh. Kostya knew it would work; Everleigh’s return confirmed it, though deep down, maybe he’d already known. Faced with the reality of seeing his dad again, he’d hesitated. Was he really ready for a reunion? Did he know what he wanted to say, how to express all the things he needed his dad to understand? They’d have one meal . An hour. Maybe two, if he took tiny bites. And that conversation would have to last him the rest of his life. He couldn’t squander it.

Kostya had just begun mixing the dough, his hands sticky, kneading and folding on his counter, when Maura buzzed.

FRAMED BY THE threshold, she was like one of Mucha’s Seasons : the tingle of Winter, the seduction of Spring, the kiss of Fall, the warmth of Summer. She shrugged out of her coat, her violet hair spreading like ink across her loose white tee. Her lips were so red, stained like cherries, the tart kind that grew by his father’s childhood home. Vishnya —the word came back to him, his dad handing him a newsprint pouch, soft fruit inside.

He almost dropped the kitchen towel.

“Maura, hey. Wow.”

She handed him a chilled bottle of Moet the small, appreciative sounds she made; her smile, that smile; the way she wouldn’t let him take her plate until she’d savored every bite—it all made Kostya full in a way entirely divorced from food.

Maura inhaled the savory course, bathing the pelmeni in a spicy, creamy, soupy blend of mustard, vinegar, and sour cream.

She shook her head, ecstatic as she tasted the sweet ricotta variety, hot, pillowy dough smothered in butter, oozing sugar and light-as-air cheese into her mouth.

But when it came to dessert—the sour cherry varenyky , which Kostya served with hand-whipped cream—things fell flat. They were supposed to be the literal cherry on top, the flawless close to the meal. Maura was trying to be discreet about it, but he saw right away that it wasn’t cutting it. She ate slowly. Nodded. Smiled. But there was none of that sheer joy in her eyes. No gleeful abandon. No moan.

“Okay, what’s wrong with it?” Kostya asked, dubious.

“Huh? No! It’s delicious.”

He picked up his spoon. “Liar.”

He tasted, waited for the turn, for the flavors to develop in his mouth, to deepen, for the tart cherries and sweet cream to make magic. They didn’t.

“No. You’re right. Something’s off.”

“It’s a little too sweet, I think? Maybe?”

Kostya tried another spoonful. Cloying. Almost like the cherries had somehow fermented, turned, since he’d removed them from the stove.

“Yeah, that’s no good. But I can fix it. Gimme a minute.”

HE COMBED THROUGH his spice cabinet, fingertips strolling along grinders and shakers, vials and pouches, tiny tubes of ingredients you paid for by the ounce, until he came to the container he wanted, a palm-sized glass jar full of what looked like wet, grey sand.

“Open your mouth!” he called from the kitchen. “And close your eyes!”

When he came back to the table, seeing Maura in the candlelight, her eyes closed, a curious smile at the edges of her open mouth, a flutter went through him. He wondered if this was how he’d looked as a little kid, playing the tasting game with his dad. The absolute openness to any adventure that awaited. The flavors ready to transport him.

He tipped a small mound of fleur de sel into his palm and dusted her tongue with the world’s finest salt.

“Don’t rush it,” he told her. “Just let it melt. Taste the salt’s journey. The Atlantic, where it was born. The marshes, where it grew up. The things it met along the way. Fish. Eels. Snails. The channels it wound through. The sun that pulled all the water away, leaving just the salt behind.”

Maura was nodding slowly, her eyes still closed.

The look on her face shifted, curiosity into wonder. As though, behind her eyelids, she was there, standing on the edge of a salt flat.

“I can taste it,” she whispered. “I actually can.”

“Can you see them?” he asked, feeding her more. “ Paludiers in aprons? The same for hundreds of years. You know, they never let men do it? They didn’t have the right touch. Only women, harvesting the salt, stooping in the water. See the way they skim the surface with their rakes? Can you hear the way the crust crumbles? The scrape and crush?”

Maura was so still he could barely hear her breathe.

He spooned whipped cream into her mouth, a cherry varenyk , another sprinkle of salt. He watched the flavors marry as she chewed, saw the smile, that smile, spread across her face.

He wanted to kiss her, to taste what she tasted.

“There it is,” she whispered.

“ Fleur de sel ,” he said, holding up the little jar.

“Flowers of salt.” She opened her eyes. “That’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful. It’s just salt.” He felt his face burn as soon as he said it. He wasn’t good at this part. “And I, apparently, am mostly cheese.”

“I like cheese.” She pushed the crystals in his hand around with a fingertip. “And I like it when you get all culinary. Tell me more. How do you cook with it?”

“It’s finishing salt. You just use a pinch at the end, to elevate the flavors. This stuff—you wouldn’t believe the way it changes things. It brings food to life.”

Maura stared at him, something different in her smile. Unexpected.

“Sorry”—he flushed again—“I’m rambling. It’s just really special. Extraordinary.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things, Stan,” she said, reaching for his salt-covered hand. “Stuff you wouldn’t believe. And I wouldn’t call most of it extraordinary. But you?”

She lifted his hand to her mouth, watched him watching her.

“Your food? What you can do?” She ran her tongue across his palm, clearing a trail through the fleur de sel , sending a thrill all the way through him. “That’s extraordinary. You’re extraordinary. This?” She tasted it again, his heart hammering inside him. “It’s just salt.”

It was, suddenly, so much more than salt.

She licked it from the creases of his hand, from his life line, his love line, the crystals melting in her mouth, into his skin, fleur de sel blending with the minerals of his sweat.

So much more than salt.

He was dizzy with the things he wanted to feel. His whole body bent to her mouth, to how much he wanted to be inside of it.

More than anything.

More than salt.

He shivered as he pulled her close—nerves, he figured, or adrenaline. A rush of blood.

She got goose bumps when he kissed her, chills—a kiss that good, she thought, knee buckling.

Extraordinary.

Salt.

BUT IN FACT, the temperature in the room had dropped.

The whipped cream ceased melting in its bowl. The wine stopped opening, stopped breathing, its bloom stilled by chill. The silverware iced over, edges of cutlery and cusps of spoons overtaken by frost, their surfaces no longer reflecting the encounter at the table, or the new arrivals with their Hungry eyes, watching from above.

Shadowed faces pressed through the ceiling, hot knives through butter, hovering in obscurity, unseen by the Living at the table, too consumed, too insatiable, too absorbed in the pleasures of their mouths, to even register their presence.