Page 67 of Aftertaste

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 rightnow, 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 intococktailnaya.” 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 forkontrast. 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 wavedhis 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 INhis 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.

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