Gastronomie Morte

The restaurant is shuttered, the only illumination the light from the street—not that I need light. Vampires live in the shadows, darkness our natural home, and this place is familiar to me now.

I move through tables in a dining room no longer packed with customers. My stilettos click only because I spent a fortune on them and like to hear the sound. When I step into the kitchen, for a moment I pause and just...smell.

So many scents: a world of them colliding and transcending anything I could ever smell as a human. Food smells so good when you no longer need it

Blood, you see, has no taste—not to me now anyway. The copper tang I remember from licking a pricked finger when I was a human is gone. Pulsing in a neck, blood smells like heaven, but in the mouth, it becomes tasteless. Food is the same: it smells divine but even dunked in blood, it only adds texture, not flavor.

I'm pragmatic enough to settle in for what I can still experience, opening the refrigerators, sniffing this or that container, letting the scent of a fresh strawberry transport me to a time when I wasn't this way.

Too long ago.

Not long at all.

Not so long ago that I can't still mourn the loss of things like brunch and cookouts during the day. But too long to remember how champagne bubbles taste when they flitter across the tongue, how painful an ice-cream headache could be, or the sated drowsiness  of a post holiday meal.

I hear footsteps only seconds before someone calls out, “Who's there?”

The chef who lives upstairs is back. I've let myself become so lost in scents and memories that I didn't hear her come in, didn't smell her blood over the other aromas.

I slip into the shadows as she moves deeper into the kitchen.

She seems more curious than afraid. “You've been here before. I've smelled your perfume.”

It's another thing I pay a fortune for so it's not a common one.

“I can make you food—if you're hungry.” She sounds...lonely as she flips on a light that illuminates one of the cooktops.

I've watched this place many times after the sun goes down. It's nothing but chaos during the dinner hour, and she's always at the center of it. How can she sound so alone?

I move so I can see her better, but I'm still shrouded in shadow. “I like the smell of your food, but I'm not hungry.”

Technically accurate, but oh what I'd give for one true taste.

She looks around but of course doesn't find me—she'll wait forever if she's trying to hear me breathe or move. Finally, she whispers into the silence, “How did you get in?”

“Picked the lock.” Which is true. Breaking windows is for amateurs. Besides, I want to be able to come back.

“All to smell my food?”

I decide to give her a version of the truth. “I can smell but not taste.”

“Normally it's smell that's crucial to taste.”

“What can I say?”

I should leave, should come back some other day and not let my stilettos snap in the same way she snaps her knives when she chops and minces—did I want her to find me?

But before I can flee, she pulls out a pan. “What are your favorite dishes?”

I want to tell her: halibut cheeks in butter and lime; chicken simmering in pineapple and chilies; lamb, savory with cumin and coriander. But to what end?

“Sit,” she says and I finally come into the light.

For a moment she stops at the sight of me. I am beautiful but also so pale—the color of egg whites or mushroom flesh or a lacy meringue.

I can tell she knows what I am. And we stand, waiting, until she says, “Did you come to kill me?” She even reaches for a wooden spoon, and I laugh because it's so charmingly brave.

“No, I really did just come to smell the food.” I sit on a stool, near enough that she can study me more easily, but not so close I'll unnerve her more than I already have.

She's clearly unsure, but then she puts the spoon down and smiles. “So...nothing with garlic then?” Before I can answer, she says: “Food allergies are a bitch.”

“I miss garlic,” I say as she begins to chop.

“I bet you do. It's delicious. But there's a world of flavors out there.” She passes me a bowl of a crumbled tan spice and asks me to guess what it is.

I smell savory and citrus, and she seems delighted when I say that. She also enjoys that I fail to identify it as ground dried lime and explains with passion why and how she uses it.

She holds out another bowl and when I fail again, her smile grows.

The evening passes, as she cooks and I move from the stool to stand beside her, looming over the pans, inhaling the aromas of the dishes she makes and then sets aside to cool.Until I feel the dawn approaching.

“I have to go. Thank you for this.”

She eyes all the things she's made for me. She hasn't tasted—perhaps out of some form of solidarity.

“A waste,” I whisper.

“I'll taste them once you're gone—see if any are good enough to end up on the menu.”

I turn away but before I can get to the door, she asks, “Same time tomorrow?”

That would be a mistake. My life requires me to remain unknown and unknowable.

And yet I turn to her. “Yes, tomorrow.”

“Any requests?”

I smile in a way that I haven't for a very long time. “Surprise me.”

© 2021 Gerri Leen

About the Author

Gerri Leen lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. In addition to being an avid reader, she's passionate about horse racing, tea, and collecting encaustic art and raku pottery. She has work appearing in Nature, Strange Horizons, Galaxy's Edge, Deep Magic, Daily Science Fiction, and others. She's edited several anthologies for independent presses, is finishing some longer projects, and is a member of SFWA and HWA. See more at gerrileen.com.