Page 81 of Aftertaste

Would she smile politely, then say something soul crushing in return, likeawworthank youorthat’s so sweet? Would she just rush in—oh yeah, me too!—without so much as a thought, a perfunctory exchange no more meaningful than adding fries with that? Would she go the opposite direction and tell him he was rushing things, his feelings completely out of sync with her own? Or, worst of all, would she say it back—I love you, Konstantin—in a way he’d believe, that felt real, but then not actually mean it?

Kostya didn’t know if he could handle that kind of blow.

He was deeply in love with her. Truly. Madly. A kind of love he’d never dared fathom. It hadn’t happened in an instant—a flash in the pan, quick sear, raw within—but over time, his initial wallop of attraction so thin and bland beside the concentrated feeling that consumed him now, this love that had simmered slowly, sauce marrying over long, low heat.

Maura with the tarot, shuffling his cards, dashing his dreams, telling him to quit in a way that only drove him to think about her:the tartness of tomato, stewing over flame.

Maura in the dark, pulling down his mask, kissing him in the stairwell of that strange immersion theater:the heat of hot pepper flakes.

Maura in his bed, in his T-shirt, eating grilled cheese in the middle of the night, feeding it to him, crumbs on the comforter, her fingers in his mouth:the sweet emulsion of butter.

Maura arguing with him, one hand on her hip, pissed the hell off:basil, torn.

Maura working through a problem, her forehead furrowed, eyes in such sharp focus:the concentration of tomato paste.

Maura walking into a room, the air shifting, his eyes finding hers:garlic, caramelized.

Maura when she said his name, when she whispered it, when she tracedit into his shoulder, gasped it, screamed it, held it in her mouth like a secret:pepper—red and black and white—grinding in a mill.

Maura in the world, living with so much life, so much yearning, so much hunger, that all he ever wanted to do was feed her, satisfy her, love her, make her feel as full as she made him:streams of salt and salt and salt.

It had all stirred together inside him until there it was—love—and everything else he’d ever tried just fell away, tasteless.

Hence the opera and the uncomfortable shoes and the anxious scanning of the crowd to see if she’d arrived.

When he finally saw her, every other person in that plaza seemed to vanish, his gaze tunneling toward her, the way she looked getting out of the cab, pulling a stray strand of violet hair away from her face, crossing the sidewalk in this unbelievable dress. Having no idea how beautiful she looked.

She started up the ivory stairs—layers of pale lavender tulle floating around her, a long skirt she had gathered in front—like a living confection, a cotton candy dream. The crowd milled, smoking final cigarettes, taking selfies. He was grinning, and when she caught his gaze she beamed back, mouthed,Hey, Chef.A taxi honked and a dozen birds flew overhead. He was making his way toward her across the square, rounding the fountain, snaking past theatergoers. A wind kicked up in the courtyard, unseasonably cold, and as it ruffled the fabric of her dress he saw her stumble, not just her feet but all of her. His heart began to pound and he moved faster, something clearly not right, clearly very, very wrong. And then he saw it—the stutter in her eyes like they were going dark, the same way they had that first night in her bed.

He sprinted down the stairs to catch her as she crumbled.

Instead of a night at the opera, they spent the evening in the ER.

In a moment of adrenaline-sponsored heroism (or rash bravado, depending how you looked at it), he’d scooped her into his arms and sprinted three blocks south to Mount Sinai West, screaming at pedestrians to get out of his way.

“God, please,” he panted as he ran. “Wake up, Maura! Wake up!”

She weighed barely anything, like a bird, all fluff and feather and frail bone beneath. She wouldn’t open her eyes. He was terrified of letting her go, his whole body numb as they wheeled her into the ER and out of sight.

He worried a hole in the lining of his pocket, anxiety manifesting in his fingertips. He tried to get tea from a waiting area vending machine, his normally steady hands—hands that sliced things with sharp knives for a living—trembling so badly he spilled scalding water all over himself. He was reading and rereading the same sentence of a magazine, none of the words coherent, when a nurse came to inform him that Maura was conscious.

SEEING HER INthe hospital bed—a paper gown replacing her dress, an IV braceleting her wrist, the little oxygen tubes dipping into her nose—undid him.

“But what happened?” he asked her again and again. “What do you remember?”

She didn’t have an answer.

The doctors said she had probably fainted. Her glucose levels had been low when he’d brought her in, and it was possible her blood pressure had dipped, and they’d said something about testing her inner ear for vertigo blah blah blah blahblah, but none of them had paid any attention to what Kostya had told them, what he’d shouted as they hovered around her, about the way her eyes had just blinked off, not unconscious but dead.

It had scared the hell out of him.

He held her hand on the thin hospital blanket, tracing his thumb over her fingers, along her wrist, over the old scar tissue there, one of the many things about Maura he still didn’t know, had been too afraid to ask.

“Listen,” he told her, “if there’s something wrong—you can tell me, okay?”

She stiffened.

“I just fainted, Stan. It’s embarrassing. But that’s all it was.”

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