CHAPTER 5 SOLENE #3
He stares at me. That same stunned expression from the farmer's market. The two-by-four-to-the-sternum look.
"How do you know what mugwort tastes like?"
"I use it in a smoked mushroom broth. The bitterness complements umami the way acid complements fat." I move the second mug closer. Take another sip. "This is good, Cleaver."
The words cost me something. A toll extracted at the back of my throat.
"It's not refined. The chestnut integration is uneven. You're getting hot spots in the secondary ferment, probably because your temperature control is a damp towel over the barrel."
"It is a damp towel over the barrel."
"But the base culture is extraordinary. Six generations of wild yeast adapted to cold ferment. You could build an entire beverage program around this."
Boris leans both hands at the bar. The wood creaks. His face is close enough that I can see the grain of his skin, the texture like fine sandstone, the way the candlelight catches in the amber of his eyes.
"You just complimented me."
"I critiqued you. There was a compliment embedded in the critique. They're different."
"You said 'extraordinary.'"
"I said the yeast was extraordinary. The yeast is not you."
He laughs. Deep, seismic, starting somewhere below the floorboards and rolling upward through him and out into the empty tavern where it moves off the stone walls and comes back softer. My sternum vibrates.
He pulls a third keg from the back. This one is smaller, painted with crude symbols in red ochre. He cradles it like a child, moves it to the bar with both hands.
"This is the one I don't serve."
"Why?"
"Because it's not ready. Because I've been working on it for two years and it's never right.
" He pulls the bung gently, reverently. Pours into a clean mug.
The liquid is nearly black, with a violet sheen at the edges.
"My grandmother's funeral ale. Every Orc brewer makes one.
You spend your life perfecting it. When you die, they serve it at your wake. "
The tavern goes quiet. Even the embers stop crackling.
I wrap both hands around the mug. The warmth seeps into my split knuckle, into the thin pink line that his spice healed. I drink.
Smoke. Dark fruit. A tannin structure so complex it reads like architecture, vaulted ceilings and stone arches and rooms I've never entered. Underneath, something bitter and green. Grief, maybe. Or just mugwort.
"It's unfinished," I say.
"I know."
"The mid-palate drops out. You lose the fruit and the smoke doesn't carry it. There's a gap."
He nods. Slow.
"Have you considered a fruit addition at the tertiary stage? Something with enough acid to bridge the tannins. Sour cherry. Or blackcurrant."
Boris pulls a stool around to his side of the bar and sits. The stool groans. His knees press against the bar's lower panel. He is, even seated, enormous, a mountain range arranged on furniture.
"Blackcurrant," he repeats.
"Fermented. Not fresh. You'd need to lacto-ferment them first to develop the acid without adding sugar. I have a culture."
"You have a blackcurrant culture."
"I have thirty-seven active fermentation cultures in my walk-in. I'm a vegan chef, Cleaver. Fermentation is half my toolkit."
He rubs his jaw. His thumb drags across the scar tissue, tracing a line from his ear to his chin.
"Would you let me try it?"
"I'll bring you a jar tomorrow."
The word "tomorrow" hangs between us in the warm air. It implies continuation. It implies I will cross this street again, enter this tavern again, sit on this ridiculous stool with my feet dangling like a child on a dock. It implies something ongoing.
I drink the funeral ale again. The gap in the mid-palate yawns, an absence shaped exactly like fermented blackcurrant.
Boris opens his mouth.
Headlights sweep across the tavern's front windows. Both of us turn. A black town car, polished to a mirror shine, rolls to a stop directly outside. The engine idles. The rear door opens and a shoe emerges. Black leather, pointed toe, polished to the same oppressive shine as the car.
Then the leg. Then the man.
Tall. Thin. A charcoal suit that costs more than my monthly lease.
Silver hair swept back from a forehead so high and pale it looks like it's receding from his own face in disgust. He stands on the sidewalk, adjusts his cuffs, and surveys the street with the expression of someone who has just discovered a stain on the universe.
He carries a notebook. Thick. Leather-bound. Bristling with colored tabs.
My hands go cold around the mug.
"Cleaver."
Boris is already standing. The stool clatters backward.
"Is that—"
"Reginald Vance."
The name drops like a meat cleaver on a cutting board.
Reginald Vance. The critic who shuttered fourteen restaurants in two years.
The man whose one-star review of Maison Bleu sent its head chef to a monastery in Provence.
The writer who once described a soufflé as "an edible apology for the chef's existence. "
He stands between our two restaurants, head swiveling slowly from the tavern to my darkened dining room and back, and he writes something in his notebook.