CHAPTER 4 BORIS #2
We look at each other.
"Together?" I hold up the last empty sack.
She pushes her ruined hair out of her face and nods once.
We find the last four behind the hardware store, bouncing in a sad little cluster against the dumpster like they have given up on escape.
Solene bags them without ceremony. I carry the sack back to the tavern.
We dump the full haul into the ice bin, the overflow tub, and a repurposed beer cooler that Tavvi dragged out from storage.
Seventy-two mushrooms. Accounted for. Still.
Solene stands in my bar, golden spore dust settling in her hair, her chef coat looking like she rolled through a pollen factory, and does something I do not expect.
She says thank you.
Quietly. Almost under her breath. Then she grabs the handle of the beer cooler and starts dragging it toward the door.
"Rostova."
She stops.
"Those mushrooms. The enchanted ones. What were you planning to do with them?"
"A terrine. Layered with black garlic mousse and a smoked kelp reduction. For the festival."
I lean against the bar. "That sounds..."
"If you say weird, I will put this cooler through your front window."
"I was going to say ambitious."
Her grip loosens on the handle. Just slightly.
"Let me ask you something." The leather apron creaks. "You think your food is better than mine?"
"I know my food is better than yours."
No hesitation. Not even a blink.
"Prove it."
She turns fully. "Excuse me?"
"Saturday. Farmer's market. You set up a booth, I set up a booth. Right next to each other. We cook, we serve, and the crowd decides."
"That is the most juvenile, transparent, absurdly reductive measure of culinary merit I have ever heard."
"So you are scared."
Her nostrils flare. The golden dust on her cheek catches the light.
"What time does the market open?"
"Seven."
"I will be there at six." She grabs the cooler, kicks my front door open with her heel, and drags seventy-two enchanted mushrooms into the street.
Saturday morning. Six fourteen. I am already behind.
Solene's booth is immaculate. She has a portable induction station, three cutting boards arranged in descending size, a magnetic knife strip mounted to a polished steel frame, and a row of small glass jars filled with oils and vinegars organized by color gradient.
A hand-lettered chalkboard sign reads: Verdue - Plant-Forward Cuisine.
Beneath it, in smaller script: No Animals Were Harmed. Several Vegetables Were Destroyed.
Funny. I hate that it is funny.
My setup is louder. The portable smoker sits on a reinforced steel cart, chimney pumping a thin blue thread of applewood smoke into the morning air.
I have my heavy iron cutting block, a cleaver that weighs more than most people's laptops, and a five-gallon bucket of my grandmother's brine.
My sign is a slab of charred pine with the words CLEAVER'S TAVERN burned into the grain.
The crowd starts arriving at seven sharp. Families. Couples. Dog walkers. A pack of college kids who smell like last night's bad decisions. They fill the market lane between our booths, heads swiveling back and forth like spectators at a tennis match.
I pull a pork shoulder from the smoker. The bark glistens, black and lacquered, cracked along the grain lines to reveal pink, trembling meat beneath. I grab my cleaver.
Solene reaches for her knife at the same instant.
We lock eyes across the six-foot gap.
Then we start chopping.
My cleaver hits the iron block with a sound like a church bell. The pork shoulder splits along the bone. I strip meat in thick, ragged sheets, pile it onto fresh-baked rolls, and drench each one with a ladleful of vinegar slaw. The crowd surges toward my booth. Hands reach. Mouths open.
Solene moves like a machine. Her knife barely touches the cutting board.
She juliennes carrots into threads so fine they float.
She slices radishes into translucent coins that she fans across ceramic plates in precise spirals.
A cashew cream sauce ribbons from a squeeze bottle in her right hand while her left hand plates microgreens with tweezers. Tweezers.
"Tweezers, Rostova? At a farmer's market?"
"Precision is not a crime, Cleaver."
"It is at a barbecue."
She ignores me. A woman in a sun hat takes a plate from Solene's booth, bites into a mushroom tartlet, and her eyes go wide. She turns to the man beside her.
"Oh my God. Try this."
I chop faster. My cleaver is a blur. Pork sandwiches fly. A kid reaches up on tiptoes and I hand one down to him, sauce dripping through the wax paper. He takes a bite and punches the air with his free hand.
Solene plates a deconstructed beet carpaccio in eleven seconds. I know because I count. She dusts it with something shimmery, one of those enchanted spices, and the surface of the beet shimmers like a ruby under candlelight.
The crowd splits roughly down the middle. My line is loud, jostling, people talking with their mouths full and reaching over each other for seconds. Her line is quieter, reverent, people holding their plates with both hands and chewing slowly.
Two different religions of eating. Same congregation.
I am reaching for a fresh roll when I hear it.
A sharp, metallic click.
The kind of sound that precedes paperwork.
A woman in a charcoal gray blazer steps between us. She is maybe five foot three, and every inch of her radiates bureaucratic authority. Wire-rimmed glasses. A clipboard, not paper, but a flat enchanted tablet that glows faintly blue. A municipal seal embroidered on her breast pocket.
"Boris Cleaver? Cleaver's Tavern, operating permit seven-seven-four-one?"
The crowd goes quiet. Solene's knife stops mid-julienne.
"That is me."
The inspector reaches into her blazer pocket and produces a coiled measuring tape.
It is not a normal measuring tape. It is silver, segmented, and it moves.
The moment her fingers release the housing, the tape unspools on its own, rising into the air like a chrome serpent, its flat tongue tasting the smoke.
It circles my smoker once. Twice. On the third pass, it cinches tight around the chimney, coiling in precise loops, and the blue thread of applewood smoke chokes to a thin wheeze.
The tape squeezes tighter.
"Mr. Cleaver, your ventilation output exceeds the arrondissement's outdoor food preparation threshold by approximately fourteen percent." She taps her glowing tablet. "I am authorized to bind and seal this unit pending a formal review."
The measuring tape hisses against the hot metal and tightens another notch.