Page 4 of Aftertaste

When he finally grew unsettled enough to tell his mother, to confess how he’d tastedpechonkaand thought—known—that it had come from his dad, he’d been hoping that she might understand. Might reassure him. Part of him was even hoping that this might resurrect her, snap her out of her distant stares and frequent sighs, give her a reason to leave her bed. A year had passed, and she still wore the weight of loss around her shoulders like a stone. Kostya thought that maybe, if he needed her, arealneed, the kind only she could fill, she might finally decide to set down her load.

Plus, she was uniquely qualified.

Vera Duhovny was the most superstitious person he had ever met. She had talismans and taboos and countless compulsions that she employed to navigate around and over and through life’s many wrong turns. She knewnever to sweep while a loved one was traveling, how to dispel an evil eye, that you should never gift knives. She greeted guests with bread and salt. She welcomed good spirits and warded off bad. And if she had been unfazed by Kostya’s revelation, had heard of this sort of thing, it would have diffused the growing uncertainty that accompanied each new sensation in his mouth.

Instead, when he told her, her face curdled.

He could see it in her eyes—fear, doubt, dismay. She didn’t believe him.

She asked him, again and again, to repeat it. To explain.

Only, he couldn’t explain. Not what these flavors were, or how he managed to taste them. Not the ease with which he identified their ingredients, like reciting a recipe. Not how he knew—like an expression of terroir on his tongue—that they had come from the Dead.

Instead, he tried again to explain the pool. The boys and their dads.Pechonka.

His mother nodded slowly, twice, and sent him to his room to lie down.

Then she called an ambulance.

No one else believed him either. Not the EMT who insisted they bring him in for a psych eval. Not the skinny intake nurse who popped her gum. Not the staff psychiatrist in the children’s ward of the Gravesend Psychiatric Center, her pen clicking as she took down notes.

Two weeks, he slept on a white cot with itchy sheets, naked beneath a hospital gown. No socks.

They fed him tablets three times a day, anonymous white tranquilizers in paper cups, the kind kids filled with ketchup in the school cafeteria.

He’d never learned to swallow pills, gagged as he tried, so they watched as he dissolved them beneath his tongue instead. They melted into chalky chunks—bitter, foul—awful enough that he would have thrown them up if they hadn’t made him so numb he could barely feel.

The next time the doctor evaluated him, in an office that reeked of Cup Noodles (Beef Flavor), he lied his way out of it. Said that he’d never actually tasted thepechonka. That he knew his dad wasn’t haunting him. That ghostsweren’t even real. That he’d made the whole thing up because his mother had ignored him after his dad died, and he’d been angry, and wanted to scare her. That he took it too far. That he was sorry.

There was a thick satisfaction to the way she believed him, to the way his distortions put her at ease, to the way fiction protected him from the repercussions of the truth. Lying was carving into a roast, and he savored it, sank his teeth into each bite.

He maintained his deception even as another aftertaste spread over his tongue, right there in her lifeless office—her photographs sepia, her plants artificial, her smile placating, never reaching her eyes.

A thick, chargrilled patty—medium-rare, oozing juice. Smear of special sauce. Butter lettuce; beefsteak tomato; white onion, lightly fried. Crinkle-cut pickle chips, Kosher dill. Toasted sesame seed bun.

The air went still around him as he tasted, the edges of the world softening away, the flavors of the Dead more real and alive than anything else in the room.

SOUR

YEARS TRICKLED BY,his life fermenting.

HE WAS FIFTEEN,walking home. Fat textbooks slung across his shoulder, pounding into his hip. His stomach clenched and unclenched, a fist. Empty.

His mom had blown the grocery money, traded their neighbor the food stamps Kostya had painstakingly applied for—hours of bureaucratic paperwork—in exchange for six cartons of Virginia Slims. He should have smoked them himself out of spite, or resold them cheap in the school parking lot, but he didn’t like the taste, and didn’t need any more help becoming a social pariah, thank you very much.

His abdomen moaned as he passed the Russian store—the smell of Rizhsky rye and loops of dry salami such exquisite torture—and the McDonald’s—oh God, fries—and stopped at a traffic light on the corner, beneath the awning for the Olympia Greek Diner.

Kostya peered inside long enough to confirm that it was busy, most of the tables occupied, waitresses whizzing in and out of the kitchen. He pushed through the door and beelined to the coffee station, a table betweenthe bar and bathroom that housed pots of coffee and sugar and sweetener and single-serve pods of half-and-half.

He shoved the creamers into his bag, followed by Dominos packets, and—his lucky day—a stack of individually wrapped saltines. Breakfast of Champions.

When he got home, he was so hungry that he dumped it all into a mug, mashed the saltines and sugar and creamer together before he realized that—no!no!—the half-and-halfs had turned.

He stared at the concoction, at the white chunks dotting the crackers, at the thin, sour whey pooling in the bottom of the glass.

He was so hungry he ate it anyway.

HE WAS EIGHTEEN.

---