Page 13 of Aftertaste

He knew all about the taste of lemon Pine-Sol, had been tricked into ingesting it once at another ill-fated party, the single time in his entire high school career he’d been invited anywhere.

When Kostya arrived at Anthony Russo’s house, the in-crowd had made a big deal of noticing him. They said they couldn’t believe that he came, that they didn’t think he’d show, that they’d been waiting for him—the VIP of the night!—and then they’d laughed at one another, exchanged coded glances, and shoved Kostya down into a club chair. They mixed him an enormous glass of the House Special—Popov, Pine-Sol, and Sprite, he’d later learn—an entire room of people chanting—Drink it down down down down! Down down down down!—as he struggled to chug the whole thing.

He spent the subway ride home vomiting shades of green all over the floor, the taste of lemon solvent so caustic he could feel it in his throat for days. Every aftertaste he got that month had an acid wash to it, the cleanser overpowering everything like too much salt. Each time he belched, it smelled like a mop.

Kostya took another sip of Seyoncé’s sad excuse for a sidecar, ran his tongue over his teeth, and abandoned it on a nearby octopus tentacle. No buzz was worth reliving the smug looks from Jack Stenger and Paul Rabinowitz as they deposited him onto the sidewalk, saliva pooling in his mouth as his body prepared to eject the offending contaminants.

“Thanks for coming!” Stenger had grinned at him. “You really madeour night. Paul and I got a hundred bucks each for reeling you in. Bigger the loser, bigger the payoff.”

Kostya left the safety of his corner to negotiate the gyrating throng, his eyes peeled, scanning the crowd for Frankie.

Frankie was his roommate. His best friend. The only person who could have convinced Kostya to brave this godforsaken ring of Dante’s Inferno. They’d met through a Craigslist ad Frankie had posted—SPLIT THE RENT, MIDTOWN—and had spent nearly six years together in their cramped Hell’s Kitchen apartment, the experience of navigating the highs and lows of their twenties basically bonding them for life.

Which was lucky, because if Kostya didn’t love Frankie so much, he would have totally hated the fucker.

All the things Kostya could only achieve through outlandish fantasy—good looks, social graces, copious copulation opportunities, a job he didn’t hate—Frankie possessed in excess. He was handsome, almost absurdly good-looking, half-Dominican and half-Irish, with the kind of body type that never put on weight no matter how much garbage he shoveled into it (for the record: lots). He had friends to burn, and made new ones all the time, everywhere. He was so damn affable—quick with a joke or a story so crazy it couldn’t possibly be true (but always was). People orbited him. Women loved him. So much so that most of them stayed friends long after the inevitable—since Frankie was too married to his job to commit to anything else—breakup. He worked as a sous-chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant uptown. He was a culinary juggernaut, if his own drunken boasts were to be believed, or at least someone to watch, ifTime Out New York’s restaurant column was.

Frankie had gotten Kostya through the Seyoncé door (“It’s like SeaWorld on acid, bro.” “Why would I want to be at SeaWorld on acid?” “Why you getting salty on me?”) and then abandoned him for a redhead he’d met in the entry line.

She’d come dressed as the Little Mermaid—long, poppy hair drippingwith strings of pearls, legs bound by an elaborate, iridescent skirt, naked on top except for two large shells that Kostya could only assume had been crazy-glued there. As they crawled toward the door, Frankie zeroed in and made his move, interrupting her conversation with a friend who was either a sexy tortoise or a sexy Bowser (or both).

“Ladies, I hope you can excuse the interruption, but I just gotta know—those clamshells real?”

It even sounded like a line coming out of his mouth, but Ariel turned around, took one look at him—six-two, brown-skinned, dreamy as a soap star—and giggled.

“I made them at my studio. They’re silicone,” she said, a coy smile teasing the edge of her mouth. “But they feel real.”

“That so? You an artist?”

“A sculptor.”

“I like a girl who’s good with her hands. And”—Frankie took her hand and lifted her arm to ogle from another angle—“by the look of it, you got talent.” He twirled her around. “They legit look like abalone. Last time I saw one of them was at the CIA.”

Kostya smirked, watching him work. The secret, Frankie had once told him, is to make them think they’re the most interesting person in the room, and then show them that, actually, you are.

The mermaid grinned. “Are you a secret agent?”

“Hell no.” Frankie laughed. “I’m slicker’n that. I’m a chef.”

The next thing Kostya knew, Frankie had his hand on the small of her back and was guiding her toward the bar, mouthing over his shoulder that he’d see Kostya later.

It wasn’t the first time Frankie had ditched him for a shot at lust, and it probably wouldn’t even be the last time tonight, so Kostya was debating whether or not to just bail on the whole thing and slum his way back to their apartment in Hell’s Kitchen when he realized that Frankie had the only working set of keys between them.

After his misadventure in bartending, Kostya had been so busy fleeing the repercussions of his actions that he’d left his keys at The Library, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that Kevin (Manager of the Year) came in the next morning, took one look at the sorry state of the place (broken glasses; dishes stacked in the front-of-house; his beautiful cocktail napkins ruined), and left an irate voicemail on Kostya’s cell telling him not to bother showing up to work anymore.

Kostya told himself to let it go, that there would be plenty more dishwashing jobs, that Frankie might even be able to hook him up at Wolfpup, but the more he triednotto think about it, the more it pinned itself to the top of his mind. Not the job, exactly, but how he’d lost it.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the ghost. About the drink that brought her back. About what he’d done. At first, he’d been afraid, horrified by this unexpected punch line to decades of aftertasting. But once the fear subsided—once Kostya grew used to the idea that he had, in fact, summoned the Dead—what remained was a frenzied itch to understandhow.

Were his aftertastes shortcuts to another dimension? Could any one of them summon a ghost, or was it a Goldilocks thing, where the conditions had to be just right? Could he bring back anybody, anytime? Or were there expiration dates? Statutes of limitations? And what about Charlie? If he hadn’t been there to see it, Kostya might have believed he’d snapped, that years of ghost tasting had finally rotted his brain. But with a witness—anaccomplice—the only things he questioned were the rules. Charlie had been the one to drink Anna’s cocktail, but did every aftertaste need an eater? Could Kostya step in as pinch hitter? And if it was his own Dead he was trying to bring back—he barely let himself consider the possibility—if he ate the right thing, could he bring back his dad?

Kostya squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will the taste of cheap gin and imitation lemon off of his palate in lieu of a memory:thick, rich chicken liver; onions on the edge of caramelization; the faintest hint of dill. There had been an acid, too, something citrusy. He’d just started to recollectit when a new aftertaste kicked him in the mouth, pushing every other sensation away.

It was so simple—sobasic—that Kostya wondered whether it was for real.

Soft milk chocolate. Peanut butter, whipped with powdered sugar and a hint of vanilla. The slightest trace of residue from the wax-paper wrapper. A Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

He barely had time to consider it when Frankie appeared in the crowd, his captain’s hat missing, sailor shirt untucked, a get-some grin on his face.

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