Page 60 of Aftertaste

That they can smuggle you through.

HOW THE OTHER HALF EAT

VIKTOR WAS BACKin. Sort of.

There was a dinner—short notice; no notice—at his place, and he wanted Konstantin there, a final hoop to jump through. One that may or may not have been set on fire.

“You want prove yourself,” Viktor asked without asking. “Tonight big chance. I hosting small circle friends for dinner. They interesting in restaurant. You impress them, we in business.”

Kostya’s mouth went sour. “I thought we were already in business.”

“These just discussions, Kostik! Not business yet. See, for you, no risk. But for me? Is big investment. Maybe five hundred thousand, half lemon, to build space, hire staff, make marketing. But no problem, I pay. We make beautiful. But I must be sure what I pay for.”

KOSTYA SPENT THEmorning trying not to panic.

He’d been an idiot not to anticipate some sort of test—Viktor wasn’t just going to hand him a restaurant,obviously—but now his future depended on schmoozing a bunch of New Moneybags for their glowing endorsements.What could he say to gain their approval? What did people with money even talk about?

His immediate instinct had been to call Frankie. He’d unlocked his phone, his thumb hovering over the speed dial before he remembered. It hurt every time his mind slipped back into old habits, into a world where Frankie was still alive. He’d been gone two months, but Kostya still couldn’t bring himself to remove Frankie’s name from his favorites list, to trash their text chain with the record-breaking number of eggplant emojis, to delete the handful of voicemails he’d left.

What he wouldn’t give, just then, for another taste of that rum cake.

Instead, insult to injury, his phone buzzed through a message from his mother.

Kostya, call me.

He locked it without answering, and she dinged through another text.

Is important!!!

Frowning, he set his phone to silent and went to take a scalding shower. His apartment was still freezing, and Kostya had to find some way to decompress before the party. If he didn’t get out of his own head soon, he was going to have a nervous breakdown before he even had the chance to die of shame.

THREE HOURS LATER,a thick film of sweat undoing all his ablutions, he stepped out of the elevator into Viktor’s Tribeca penthouse.

Opposite the elevator doors, taking up an entire wall, were two enormous pencil drawings, one depicting a twisted Hermès scarf, which barely earned a cursory glance from Konstantin, and the other immortalizing a six-foot-tall strap-on, which triggered a wave of nervous laughter so violent it prompted the arrival of a thick-necked, Soviet-issue bodyguard.

After several deep breaths that enabled Kostya to finally gasp out his name, his new Comrade issued a stern grunt and led him through a sprawling living space—two-story windows overlooking the Hudson, everythingshiny and modern and the color of Candy Buttons—where he poked a meaty forefinger into Kostya’s spine and prodded him toward a library. Kostya gaped at the floor-to-ceiling shelves—wall-to-wall built-ins in high-gloss lime, hundreds of tomes cased behind doors of iridescent glass—so absorbed by the psychedelic effect that he didn’t immediately notice the copper French doors at the end of the room, a dinner party in full swing on the other side.

But they noticed him.

The sounds of their cocktail hour—pockets of laughter, chittering talk, the rattle of ice in shakers—dwindled to silence as he came into view.

Kostya peered through the glass panels in the door. Viktor scowled at him from the head of the table. His friends, six of them—posh, polished women, nipped and tucked and sheathed in brands Kostya could barely pronounce; titanic men, flushed and vodka-faced, ties coming loose—drank him in, head to foot—his scuffed black shoes, his off-the-rack jeans, his wrinkled Gap button-down with the ghost of a sauce stain on the collar—before spitting him back out, unimpressed, their gazes tennis-balling back across the polished chrome dining table toward their host, waiting for an explanation because this guy, surely, wasn’t here to sit with them?

It felt like fifth-period lunch.

Normally, Kostya would have made himself small, as invisible as possible. Instead, on a mission to impress, he forced himself to grin broadly, wave, wrap his fingers around the handle of the door. At this, The Comrade death-gripped his upper arm. He hauled Kostya away, muttering a string of colorful Russian endearments (What the dick kind of cock-braiding?), and hustled him through a small passage to the right of one of the bookshelves, a corridor that spat them into an enormous, double-island kitchen, where three chefs—two women, one man—were already in the throes of prep.

“I think there’s been a mistake,” Kostya began. “I was invited to dinner.”

“You”—The Comrade slapped the unoccupied side of the second island—“work here!”

“But I’m not cooking tonight! I was just supposed to meet his friends.To—to talk to them. To get them interested. In me.” Kostya looked imploringly at the other chefs, as if one of them might intercede on his behalf. “I’m a guest!”

Even coming out of Kostya’s mouth, it sounded stupid. The people in that dining room had looked at him as if he were a piece of primordial ooze that had washed up on the shore of their private island, an aberration they hoped the next wave would dispose of before anyone stepped in it by mistake.

The Comrade began to laugh. Kostya gave a nervous chuckle. One of the chefs—beak nosed and too skinny to be trusted—snorted. The other two—one with perfect posture and a plait of black hair escaping a silk kerchief; the other with a shaved head, brow ring, and mermaid pinups tattooed on her forearms—exchanged wry looks from their territories on the adjacent isle.

“You,” The Comrade choked in English, the laughter flooding out now, tears streaming from his eyes, “a guest? You!” He gasped for air. “A guest!? You an asshole!” He steadied himself on the edge of the counter. “You serving last,Dîner de Cons!”

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