Evertaster

by Adam Glendon Sidwell

  The Master Pastry Chef laughed a laugh that quickly turned to a cough. “Food should never stick to your ribs Madam, so much as it should linger on the tip of your tongue — like a butterfly kissing a flower.”

  “I need some new recipes, you see. It is very difficult for me to find something that my boy likes. He tells me that he tastes things — things that are impossible — like the size of a sugar grain, or which part of the country oranges were grown in.”

  “Indeed?” said the Master Pastry Chef. “So he does have such clever and discerning buds?” He leaned on the counter as if to get a better look at Guster. “Would you like one of my specialties?” he asked.

  “Please,” whispered Guster.

  The Master Pastry Chef turned his back to them and rummaged through a cupboard. He turned around and placed a small tray on the counter in front of Guster with two identical, crescent-shaped cookies dusted in powdered sugar.

  “Go ahead. Choose one,” he said. Guster took the one on the left and placed it in his mouth. It was dense, but sweet.

  “You like it?” said the old chef.

  Guster nodded, then swallowed. Of course he did.

  “Good. Then have another,” said the old chef, pushing the tray toward Guster.

  Guster took the second cookie and bit into it. It would easily be as good as the first. But then — there was a foul, sour taste at the back of his throat — he spat. “What’s in this?”

  “Aha!” cried the Master Pastry Chef, throwing his arms into the air. “So it is true! I knew it! This is wonderful! So wonderful!”

  He hopped around the counter and took Guster by the shoulders. “Just one extra drop of lemon, my boy, and nothing more. But that’s too much for you, now isn’t it?”

  Guster was annoyed. He’d done it on purpose.

  The chef peered down at Guster. “Some have the eyes of an eagle. There are others who can hear a pin drop in a crowded shopping mall. But there are few indeed who can taste the stories of the world with their tongues. You have a gift,” whispered the Master Pastry Chef.

  Zeke could crack jokes, and Mariah was really smart. But him? A gift?

  “And that is why I need a new recipe,” said Mom. “Somehow I have to make a meal that he’ll eat.”

  “A recipe!” hacked the Master Pastry Chef. He hobbled over to a cluttered book shelf, shuffling his slippers as he went. “Very well! Let me see!” he said and pulled a yellowed piece of parchment from the shelves. He peered at it in the low light, muttering to himself, then tossed it aside.

  “No, that won’t do,” he said. He opened a drawer, yanked out a scroll and untied the ribbon around it. The scroll unrolled across the floor. He turned it over then tossed it aside too. Next he limped to the book shelves, and while standing on his tip-toes, ran his finger across the titles written on their spines. The Creams That Crippled the Crown, read one. Tastes and Treachery, read another, The Forbidden City of Flavor and Pain, read a third. He stopped at a large, red, leather bound volume as thick as his head. His finger lingered on the title, The Final Season. He turned to face Mom, taking his shaking hands away from the book. “I don’t know if I have what you are looking for.”

  But he had to! As strange as the Master Pastry Chef was, this was one of the few times Guster had tasted something that did not hurt him. It was his one hope. If anyone could give them a worthwhile recipe, it would be this chef, and now he was saying he couldn’t help them?

  “Those tarts, you like them, don’t you?” he asked Guster.

  Guster nodded. He liked them very much indeed.

  “It took me years to find the perfect combination of ingredients. Thousands of trials before I finally made them into the mouthwatering treat they are. You may eat one hundred in a row, savoring every particle.” He shook his head, “But alas, you would even tire of them. Their taste too, would fade. And so it is for all cuisine.”

  There was sadness in the old pastry chef’s voice. Those tarts were the best taste Guster had ever had. He wanted to help the chef somehow, tell him that it wasn’t true, that his tarts would never grow old.

  “Except, there is —” the old man shook his head, “No, I shouldn’t. I cannot tell you. The burden would be too great,” he said, then bent over in a fit of coughing. He coughed for over a minute, sucking in great a lung full of air. Sweat poured from his face and his cheeks turned deep red until he finally collapsed in an easy chair in the corner.

  The Master Pastry Chef seemed like he’d grown older, as if decades had passed since they’d come to the Patisserie. He breathed slowly, muttering, arguing with himself. “But they’re here, and I don’t see any other way. No, no other way.” He paused, turning back to them with a piercing glare. “Are you sure you want a dish so exquisite, so luscious, that, once you taste it, you will never care to eat anything else again?”

  Guster looked to Mom. He couldn’t cook. She had to be the one to agree. She wiped the last of the tart from his cheeks, sadness in her eyes. “Yes,” she said.

  “Very well,” sighed the Pastry Chef. “I am about to tell you a secret you must take to your grave. Do I have your word?”

  Mom hesitated. “Yes,” she said.

  “Any gourmet historian will tell you how merchants risked their lives to sail their ships around the horn of Africa just so they could trade spice. They will tell you that tea was the final straw that started the American Revolution. They know that Kings define their countries by the dishes they eat! They know the power of flavor! They know that history hangs in the balance, and taste will tip the scales! Since the day Paris was founded, gourmets everywhere have been seeking — baking, cooking and experimenting endlessly.

  “See these books?” he nearly shouted, pointing to the hundreds of cookbooks stuffed into his shelves. “Across the world there’s a trillion more! Why write them?” he shook his head and threw up his hands. He wasn’t making eye contact anymore, like he was talking to himself. “Why make yet another recipe? What is it that they want to find?

  “ It of course! The One Recipe.”

  The rain pounded on the roof like bullets as the Pastry Chef’s eyes grew wide. “I will tell you this night that the legends are true! The One Recipe exists! The One that is delicious beyond compare. It is shrouded in legend, but as real as you and I. The One Recipe that none have tasted, but men have killed for in hopes that they might be the first to savor just a teaspoon of it.” He coughed, then leaned dangerously close, “And those killers are among us!”

  Mom clutched Guster’s hand. She was trembling. “Zeke, will you please go get the car?” she said, handing him the keys. He was stuffing tarts into his mouth with both hands. Mom must have been as scared as Guster if she was letting Zeke drive again. Zeke tip-toed carefully out the back door, taking a look back before he closed it.

  “That One Recipe, as they tell it, is the Gastronomy of Peace,” said the Master Pastry Chef.

  He motioned to a large red cake high up on the shelf behind the counter. It was several layers thick, like a tower, covered in a smooth frosting, with intricate designs across the borders. “Boy, would you be so kind as to get that cake down from the shelf?” he said.

  Was that it? thought Guster, the Gastronomy of Peace?

  “Go ahead honey,” Mom said without taking her eyes off the Master Pastry Chef. Guster squeezed his mother’s hand before letting go, slid a stool up to the shelf, and started to climb — keeping an eye on the chef all the while.

  Shiny pearls of sugar shined across the cake’s edges in the dim light. On the top was an intricate drawing in frosting of a dove on a spoon with an olive branch. The smell was so heavenly that the strange chef, the dark alleyways outside and his talk of killing for food didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. The frosting would be perfect; there was no doubt about that. Guster lifted it down from the shelf and stepped to the floor carefully. It was much heavier than it looked.

  “Bring it here,” said the Master Pastry Chef. Guster took it to the old man. �
�Now drop it,” he said.

  “No!” Guster cried. He couldn’t destroy a dessert as beautiful as this one — not without tasting it.

  The Master Pastry Chef looked pleadingly into Guster’s eyes, the veins on his forehead throbbing like they were about to burst. “Please,” he said.

  The old man was so pitiful, so frail and weak he seemed like he could die at any moment. Guster could not refuse. He dropped the cake.

  It fell to the floor and broke all over, smearing bits of frosting and sponge everywhere. Something hard clanged against the ground. In the middle of the mess lay an old, oversized metal eggbeater with a long wooden handle. A faint hint of pickled ginger seeped into the room.

  “Take it!” The Master Pastry Chef stood up, grabbing Guster by the shoulders, his aged eyes popping from his skull. Guster reached for the eggbeater.

  His fingers almost touched it when lightning flashed and the electric lights in the glass case went out. There was a crash of shattering glass and a grunt, then more smell of pickled ginger. Guster turned. The lightning flashed again, and standing next to Mom was a man dressed as red as the devil himself.

  He wore a tall, red, cylindrical chef’s hat pulled over his face with two eye holes cut in it like a mask. His red apron was as long as a snake, streaming out the window through which he’d come. His chef’s jacket was red as blood. He pulled a giant shining metal meat cleaver from his belt and raised it into the air.

  Guster was too scared to scream. He was too scared to move. He felt Mom grab his hand and drag him to the back door where they had come in. The lightning flashed again. In that split second Guster saw more than he wanted to. The old Master Pastry Chef coughed one more time, “Get it to Felicity!” he said, then fell back into his chair, clutching his chest. His eyes rolled back into his head as the red-aproned chef sprang toward him.

  “The eggbeater!” cried Guster as he realized what was happening. He lunged for the eggbeater, scooping it up as Mom pulled on his shirt and dragged him from the room. The doorframe of the back door bumped his shoulder hard as she yanked him into the alleyway.

  The old Suburban screeched to a halt in front of them, knocking over a trashcan.

  Zeke honked the horn. “Let’s get out of here, Mom!” he yelled. Guster had never been so glad to see Zeke in his life. He jumped into the back seat, slammed the door shut behind him, then smashed his hand down on the lock as the Suburban accelerated. The red-aproned chef burst into the alley, his cleaver wound up and ready to throw.

  Guster ducked as the red chef hurled the giant knife. It flew, spinning straight toward the back door of the Suburban. The engine roared then metal clanged where the knife struck the car as they zoomed off into the night.

  Chapter 4 — The Eggbeater

  “We’re safe now. We’re safe now,” Mom breathed over and over as they drove home from the city. Guster could tell that she was crying, and it scared him. She reached behind her seat, put her hand on Guster’s knee, then moved it to Zeke’s shoulder, then back to Guster’s knee again, as if making sure her boys were really there.

  “What happened?” Zeke yelled.

  “Zeke,” said Mom — Guster could tell she was trying to keep calm — her voice cracked anyway, “The Chef in Red is real.”

  The words sent a wave of cold fear through Guster. It had all happened so fast.

  “What?” Zeke screamed. The car swerved violently, then straightened again. Zeke seemed so terrified, he hadn’t noticed he’d cranked the wheel. “What did he want?”

  Guster cradled the eggbeater in his lap. Perhaps this was the answer.

  “I don’t know!” cried Mom. Her eyes darted around the car. “I’ve got to call Dad,” she said. She flipped open her phone and started punching keys.

  “Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no no no no,” Zeke muttered. His eyebrows wrinkled, like he’d done something to feel guilty about.

  “Henry, Henry! We need you!” Mom hung up. “It went straight to voicemail,” she said.

  “Mom!” Zeke yelled at the top of his lungs.

  She put up her hand to silence him. “Not now. I have to call the police,” she said. The car swerved again.

  “I left my learner’s permit in the pastry shop!” he cried.

  Mom closed her phone. She turned to Zeke and looked him carefully in the eye, as if studying him. “You what?” she said calmly.

  “I didn’t mean to. I just set it down when I was putting cookies in my pocket!” he said.

  Fear crept from Guster’s chest up into his neck. Zeke had shoved that permit in his face every day since he’d gotten it. The address to the farmhouse was printed on it, for anyone who picked up the permit to read. This changed things. Two seconds ago, they’d merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Going home was supposed to fix all that. Now nothing was certain.

  “We can’t go home,” breathed Zeke. “We can’t.”

  “Henry Junior,” Mom muttered to herself. Her round face bent with worry. “Zeke, drive as fast as you can.”

  “But I don’t have my permit! I’ll get a ticket.”

  “I’ll make a ticket look like a piece of candy if you don’t step on it right now!”

  Zeke smashed down the gas. The Suburban’s tires burned into the asphalt as they sped along the highway. Mom was quiet the rest of the drive home.

  Guster watched the shadows beside the road pass, the memory of the shining cleaver gleaming in his mind. How long did they have until the Chef in Red came for them? An hour? Two?

  It seemed like days before Zeke finally pulled the Suburban into garage. “Mariah!” Mom called as she rushed inside. Guster followed, clutching the eggbeater in hand.

  Mariah came down the stairs into the family room. Mom grabbed her into a tight hug. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” said Mariah, her chin-length black hair still wet from a shower. She looked confused.

  “Where’s Henry Junior?” asked Mom.

  “Upstairs. Sleeping,” said Mariah.

  Mom bent down to her level. “You know that story Zeke told you about the Chef in Red?” Mariah nodded. Mom looked straight into her face. “We saw him.”

  Mariah’s eyes widened in horror. “Where? How?”

  Mom explained everything as quickly as she could. “Get upstairs. Pack your backpacks. We’ll go to Aunt Priscilla’s in Key West. We can drive all night. We’ll try calling the police from there. It’ll be safer than staying at home.”

  Suddenly, the farmhouse wasn’t the same anymore. It was as if the walls weren’t as thick, like anyone could see right through them; like someone had broken in.

  “Go,” said Mom. Her voice was shaky.

  It only took a minute for Guster to climb the stairs to his room, grab a jacket and throw a change of clothes into his backpack. Zeke was right behind him. Guster had never seen him so eager to obey. “You okay Capital P?” Zeke asked while they packed. Guster didn’t know what to do; Zeke had never talked to him like a human before.

  “Yeah,” Guster said and tromped downstairs, but he wasn’t so sure if he was. Zeke zipped up his pack and followed.

  When Guster got downstairs, Mom was in the kitchen throwing a loaf of bread, pickles, tins of sardines — whatever food she could find — into a basket with one hand while Henry Junior slept on her shoulder. The little toddler, with Guster’s same wispy brown hair and blue eyes, was practically a miniature version of Guster — brave and a little bit reckless. Guster felt a sudden urge to protect him.

  “Guster, I want you to go out back and throw that eggbeater down the well,” said Mom said to Guster when he entered the kitchen. It was lying on the kitchen table where Guster had left it.

  He opened his mouth to protest. Mom cut him off before he could. “Honey, I don’t know where that pastry chef got all those wild ideas about secret recipes, but I think it would be best if we got as far away from the whole thing as possible.”

  “But —” Guster said.

  “Go,” she said, cutt
ing him off again, then put her clenched knuckles on her hips. It was her Mom stance, and that always meant the argument was over.

  Guster slipped his backpack over his shoulders, took the eggbeater in hand, and trudged out the back door. The screen door banged shut behind him. He stopped at the edge of the porch, clutching the eggbeater to his chest with both hands and absorbing the night. The old stone well lay in a patch of weeds on the far side of the wide backyard.

  The Master Pastry Chef had promised so much — the perfect dish — a taste that could fill Guster’s aching, empty stomach. A reason to hope. The One Recipe he’d called it. He could have at least told them where to find it.

  Instead, all he’d given Guster was an eggbeater. But it was the last thing the Pastry Chef had done before he died. It had to be important for something!

  Guster stepped off the porch and turned toward a rusty spigot at the back of the house. Whatever Mom said, he couldn’t throw it away. Not yet. It was the only link to the Pastry Chef and the One Recipe they had.

  He pumped the spigot’s lever and rinsed off the cake. The eggbeater’s crank and metal beaters gleamed under the porch light. It was a strange contraption — the giant cylindrical handle was carved with irregular, tiny grooves. It was layered too, like an extra tall stack of wooden silver dollars fastened together in a column. There were five symbols skillfully imprinted around the edge of the crank that turned the beaters: a lemon, an olive, a pile of salt, a honeycomb, and a steak. Guster turned the crank. It clicked like a dial, spinning two dozen intricate gears fitted like clockwork between the crank and the beaters. They whirred.

  What if the One Recipe really was so delicious that if you ate it, you would never want to eat anything else again? He couldn’t even imagine what dish it would make. Was it a certain kind of filet mignon? Or A sorbet?

  He felt a sudden pain of loss, a longing to know. The Pastry Chef had promised so much, but it seemed so far away. Guster was empty inside, and now his poor, beanpole stomach was drying out. He needed that recipe more than anything.