Page 27 of Aftertaste

“Papa?” he asked, his voice on the edge of a sob.

The lights at the very top—the ones that were just now forming a forehead and jaw and oversized ears that were so excruciatingly familiar—gave an eager nod.

?????.

He heard the word like music, his dad’s voice telling him to eat. He shoved another bite of liver into his mouth, found it hard to chew and swallow around the lump welling in his throat.

His dad got brighter, his edges more defined. He could see his face now, aglow in warm citrine light, like a prism passing through topaz. Every line in his forehead and eyes was exactly like Kostya remembered them. He felt his heart flutter in his chest, lifting him up as though he weighed nothing at all.

“Papa,Papa!Oh, God, it’s so good to s—”

“Duhovny!”

Both Kostya and his father jumped in response to their name.

Michel burst violently through the kitchen doors. His face was rabid,flecks of spittle lining his mouth, eyes absolutely enraged. He pounced purposefully from station to station, scanning the room for Konstantin, the other chefs on the line all keeping their heads down, the work going. Whatever this was—though they’d gossip and shit talk and bust Kostya’s balls endlessly about it afterward—they wanted no part now.

He shoveled more liver into his mouth, hoping it was enough to keep his dad materializing, and wove through the kitchen toward Michel. They met in front of the fry station.

“Here, Chef,” Kostya said meekly.

“Instead of where you’re supposed to be! Why aren’t you at saucier?”

“I—uh—”

“You know what, I don’t even care. What I really want to know is what the hell this is.”

He held up a thin glass vial—plucked from one of the Medusa-headed candelabras—with spiral pasta curled inside, coated with a white Alfredo sauce, dots of black sesame visible in the garnish on top.

“The cavatappi, Chef?”

Michel shoved the vial at him, his furious face inches from Konstantin’s, a vein in his neck throbbing.

“Eat.”

Kostya nodded nervously, his mind a horrible blank—had he really fucked this up? given the wrong order?—and tipped the shot of pasta into his mouth.

The taste was instantly overpowering. Discordant. Wrong. It was bad. The creamy smoked salmon clashed horribly with the dough, which had been infused with truffle,notonion, offending his whole palate. In short order, it overtook the liver and onions, wiping the aftertaste entirely from his mouth.

Before he even realized what he’d done, the light in the room blinked, a bulb burning out, and Kostya whirled back toward the pastry station to find shadow.

“No!” he gasped.

“You shit the bed,” Michel snarled. “The most important night of the year, and—hey! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Kostya was darting back to pastry, bobbing around the stunned cooks at a half-dozen stations as he hurled himself toward the plate of liver, Michel hot on his heels. He shoveled it into his mouth with his bare hands—flatware be damned—but no matter how quickly he chewed, how completely he coated his mouth with the taste, the sparks didn’t flicker back.

He had lost the tenuous connection, had severed the tie. His dad was gone.

Kostya felt the blood rush to his head. He grew faint and swayed on his feet. The kitchen was so hot, suddenly, so suffocatingly hot.

“I was speaking to you, Duhovny.”

Michel’s voice simmered, nearly a whisper. Kostya thought he looked mad enough to slug him, and he stared at Michel’s thick, kitchen-scarred hands, waiting for them to clench into fists. Instead, he snatched the plate of chicken liver away.

“What is this garbage?” he asked, smelling it, sampling a tiny morsel on the tip of his tongue, his eyes growing wide, flashing dangerously. He strolled back through the kitchen, the plate held high. He wanted everyone to see this.

“Oh, I think I understand. We’re getting creative now. We’ve somehow grown the balls to come intomykitchen during the most important service ofmy year, and fuck upmypasta course—so badly, I might add, that the president of Gild just told me he thinks I might be losing my touch—and in the meantime, we think we’resobrilliant that we’re coming up with our very own recipes, testing them out in the middle ofmyevent, instead of doing our fucking job and overseeing every fucking bite of food that comes out of this fucking service like we were fucking supposed to. Fuck you, Duhovny. You’re a waste of fucking talent. Now get out of my kitchen.”

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