by Adam Sidwell
“Excuse me,” said Mariah, taking a few steps backward. She must have been so focused on putting distance between her and Aunt Priscilla she did not notice him standing there.
“You’re excused,” he said quickly. He did not take a second look at her. His eyes were focused on the back of the head of the twenty-something boy in front of him. In fact, there were about thirty or more people standing in front, and another thirty more waiting behind him.
Altogether it was a wall of middle-aged men in green fedoras, businessmen, moms with a kid strapped to their fronts, tattooed ladies with pink tank tops, stock brokers, elderly men with straw hats, and dudes dressed in checkered shorts—almost every type of person Guster could imagine, all waiting in one long line that blocked the entire sidewalk.
“What’s the line for?” asked Mariah.
The man in the business suit turned to her again. “For Bubalatti’s, of course!” he said, his face brightening in, if not a smile, at least a glow.
Guster stepped closer so he could hear. He knew that name. It was a faint memory from something a long time ago. “I think I’ve heard of that before,” said Guster.
“Of course you have,” said the man. “Everybody’s heard about Bubalatti’s. Franco Bubalatti is the finest pie maker in all of New York. I’d say even the East Coast.” He pointed up to the store’s front. It was dirty red brick, with a big window in front with the name “Bubalatti’s” spelled out in gold lettering across the glass. There was a pie twice the size of a manhole cover turned up on its side. A glowing hour hand and a minute hand were fixed to its center, tick-tocking away the minutes on the tasty pie-face clock.
“The key lime is to kill for,” said the man.
Of course. Last time they visited Aunt Priscilla, she’d served them a raisin-rhubarb Bubalatti pie. Guster had only gotten through one bite before he’d realized that it’d been laced with enough cinnamon to burn a hole in your cheeks. That had been the fault of one of the Gastronimatii though, not Bubalatti himself.
Aunt Priscilla had called Bubalatti the finest pie maker in all of New York City. Guster would love to try one for real.
“How much money do we have left?” Guster asked Mariah.
She stared him in the eyes. Please, thought Guster, this is something I need.
Mariah’s face softened, just for a moment. “Enough,” she said.
“And we have to eat some time,” said Zeke, darting toward the back of the line. Guster, Gaucho, and Mariah followed him. It was so long, it bent around the corner. They found the end and lined up behind a young woman who was dressed in a trim black suit with a skirt.
They waited more than a half an hour, Gaucho humming a tune, and Zeke reading his field guide. Mariah studied the maps. Guster fumbled his thumbs in anticipation. He tried to keep his mind off the pies, but they smelled so good! When they finally got inside the door, it was well past dinner time.
Bubalatti’s glowed with a soft yellow light as the last of the sun’s rays bent through the glass. But instead of shining on fresh-baked pies behind the counter, it shone on several barrels of frozen ice cream.
Amid all the shouting and ordering and customers, there was not a single person eating pie. Instead, each one of them held a crispy brown waffle cone with a scoop of the most delicious-looking ice cream that Guster had ever seen.
Customers were ordering it by the second. There was cookies and cream with chunks of crumbly cookie dropped like black rocks onto a blanket of thick snow. There was a strawberry flavor so pink, Guster had to turn his eyes away before it blinded him. There was a rocky road with marshmallows and nuts and chocolate chunks arranged in a pattern so beautiful and complex, they could’ve been the jewels on a king’s crown.
It was wonderful and beautiful and luscious all at the same time, and Guster wanted to eat every last flavor.
But one thing still didn’t make sense. Bubalatti was known for his pies.
“Excuse me,” said Guster to the woman in the black suit and skirt. “When did Bubalatti’s start serving ice cream?”
The woman turned, surprise on her face. “You haven’t heard? Bubalatti stopped making pies more than a month ago. So you haven’t had the ice cream?” she exclaimed. “It’s been the summer sensation across Manhattan since the middle of June. Sure he was known for pies, and they were remarkable at that, but no one can stop thinking about this ice cream—I mean no one. It’s been written up in the New Yorker twice. And me, well, I can’t help myself. I stop here at least twice a day: once on my lunch break, the other on my way home. Bubalatti won’t say how he makes it. Just says it’s made fresh every day, right here in the shop. He’s very tight lipped about it, though every reporter in the city’s tried to get it out of him. Says it’s some kind of secret recipe or something. Me? Well, I think someone cast a spell on it, it’s that good.” And then suddenly she turned and zipped her lips, like she was embarrassed for talking so much.
Guster felt a thrill rise inside him, the same one that came right before Christmas, or before riding a waterslide. This was secretly one of the things he’d hoped for in New York: to find the tastes that people always talked about.
“I’m getting a double cone,” he said.
Gaucho clasped and unclasped his hands, twiddling his fingers nervously as a bead of sweat dripped down his forehead.
“What’s wrong?” Guster asked.
Gaucho shook his head. “Nothing, amigo. This place, it’s just fine. Lovely in fact. Maybe too lovely.” He turned to go. “I’ll wait outside.” And with that, he dashed out the door and hid behind a big blue mailbox.
“What got into him?” asked Zeke. Guster shrugged. He didn’t know, but he would make sure to find out after all this was done.
When they got to the front of the line, Guster pressed his face up to the glass so he could see the flavors more clearly. There were several flavors, each one packed into its own wooden barrel with an open top. He could see the rough texture where the scoop had scraped along the cream. He could see the strawberries like little smiles peeking out of their pink burrows.
“Sample?” asked a fat man from behind the counter. His curling black mustache hairs were as thick as pasta noodles and sprouted out from under a large round nose that looked like a brown tomato stuck to his face. A gold chain hung down over his hairy chest, framed on either side by the V in his open-collared shirt. He smiled, revealing a set of tiny white teeth. He struck Guster as the exact kind of guy you’d see tossing dough on the front of a pizza box.
“There are samples?” Zeke said, his mouth open in awe. He was staring at the cookies and cream.
“Of course!” said the fat man. “You don’t-a think Fatty Bubalatti’s going to make you guess which one’s da best! You have to know which one to put in your scoop!” His big round cheeks jiggled as he talked.
“This one,” Guster said, pointing to the strawberry.
“Oh, Pink Shining Summertime on a Spoon?” said Bubalatti. “I think you’ll be happy you made such a choice!” He pulled a small plastic red spoon from a bowl behind the counter and scooped up a morsel of ice cream the size of plump cherry. He handed it to Guster.
Guster could not stick the spoon in his mouth fast enough. The lump of strawberry ice cream softened as soon as it hit his lips, sliding through them and filling his mouth with succulent smooth flavor. It was cold and refreshing, like a dip in the pool on a boiling summer’s day, and as the morsel melted in his mouth, the strawberries took the stage, whirling across his tongue and bouncing between his cheeks and teeth in a symphony. He smiled as it slid down his throat and soaked his brain with happiness.
And yet . . . it was odd. It was unlike any ice cream Guster had ever tasted. He could not tell this time where the cows that gave the milk had grazed, or where the strawberries were grown. Even the sugar inside seemed foreign, unlike any he had ever tasted. The sugarcane was not gro
wn in the Pacific, nor did the vanilla come from Indonesia.
And there was something more: the ice cream was made with the pride of generations of confectioners honing their craft. It was made with the allegiance to an ideal, the taste of men and women and children all dedicated to a common, higher cause. Like a national anthem, or a pledge of allegiance.
Mariah shook Guster gently. “Guster, he’s waiting for your order,” she said. Guster tried to clear his head, like waking from a daydream. He looked around. The line was starting to press in behind him, and there was even more commotion than before.
“Make your order!” someone shouted from behind him.
He clenched his eyes shut and opened them again. He had to know. “Where does this ice cream come from?” he asked Bubalatti.
Bubalatti looked down over the counter at him, raising his one big black bushy eyebrow that spanned his forehead. “I make it here of course,” Bubalatti said.
“No, it comes from somewhere far away. A place that no one has ever been,” said Guster. He knew he was speaking the truth. The ice cream was placeless.
Bubalatti’s lips wrinkled, his eyebrow bending in the middle. He looked nervous, like he’d been caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. “What? Everyone knows that I make-a my ice cream here myself! It’s my secret recipe!”
Guster knew what he knew. “No,” he said. “It has a history.”
Two short men with stubby limbs came from the kitchen in the back of the shop. Each one carried a wooden barrel in his arms. They looked like brothers, each with a pointy black beard that made it look like they’d sharpened their chins, and a threadbare mustache that slanted out from under their noses. One was slightly taller than the other, and they both wore hairnets. Worst of all, they each wore a red apron tied around their waists.
Gastronimatii? thought Guster. It couldn’t be. They had all been arrested and locked up. Or so he’d thought.
They set the wooden barrels of fresh ice cream down behind the counter.
Bubalatti took one look at them and a bead of sweat formed on his greasy forehead. “You can’t say these things!” Bubalatti shouted at Guster. He looked back at the two short men. “This ice cream is my family recipe, homemade righta here! If you don’t-a like it, you can get out of my shop!”
The line behind Guster was starting to bulge as people pressed closer, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the commotion.
Mariah slapped some dollar bills down on the counter and grabbed Guster by the arm. “You’re making him angry,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She pulled Guster toward the front door. “But Guster didn’t get his ice cream,” said Zeke with a mouthful of rocky road, a waffle cone in one hand and his face smeared with chocolate.
“Later Zeke,” said Mariah, nearly shoving Guster through the door.
“And don’t come back!” shouted Bubalatti. Several customers stared at them as they left, clearly annoyed.
As he left, out of the corner of his eye, Guster noticed the two men with the sharp beards and red aprons whispering to each other and pointing in his direction.
Mariah hurried them along the sidewalk, rushing to get out of sight of the shop and the stares of the customers that had been forced to wait for them. “That was a mess,” she said. “I have never been so embarrassed in my life.” She shot a disapproving glance at Guster that looked exactly like one Mom would have used.
Guster barely noticed. Mariah wasn’t Mom, and he had more important matters on his mind. He kept his eyes on the sidewalk, his head down, not really caring where they went, or noticing the streets as they passed by. There was something strange about those two men, and the shop, and Bubalatti’s defensive nature. Most of all, there was something strange, but wonderful, about that ice cream.
“Where’s Gaucho?” asked Zeke. They hadn’t seen the little man since he’d hidden behind the mailbox. He hadn’t been there when they came out.
Mariah turned the next corner. Someone came around the corner from the opposite direction and bumped into Guster so hard he fell back onto the ground. He dropped the cooler onto the sidewalk. Standing above him was a man with a brown tattered trench coat buttoned all the way up to his chin, a wide-brimmed green felt hat bent down over his ears, and a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses that hid most of his face.
“Excuse me,” muttered Guster, shaking off his surprise. The man picked Guster up by the backpack with both hands and set him on his feet. He straightened Guster’s backpack, then patted him on the shoulder and strode away without a word.
“Rude,” said Mariah, glaring after the man.
They spent the next few hours on the edge of Central Park, Guster eating what was left of Mom’s lasagna from the cooler, and Mariah and Zeke chewing on hot dogs. Their money was starting to run low. The train tickets had been very, very expensive, and, as best as Mariah could figure, they only had a few more meals before they were broke. Not to mention they had no place to stay, and sleeping on the streets of New York was a far cry from camping in the backyard of the farmhouse.
All in all, things were not turning out at all like Guster had hoped. He couldn’t get his mind off that strawberry ice cream, and Zeke was complaining about his feet being sore. Mariah stuck her earbuds in her ears and turned on her music.
The sun was getting low, and the frequency of people walking through the park was getting less and less.
“We could go back to Aunt Priscilla’s,” said Zeke.
Mariah pulled her earbuds out. “You know that won’t work,” she said.
“This was such a stupid plan,” Zeke muttered. “I told you California would be better. At least we could sleep on the beach there, and there would be movie stars to hang out with, and they have so much fruit there, you can just pick the grapes off the vine and smash them into your mouth until all the juice runs down your chin.”
Mariah hit Zeke with her backpack. “Keep dreamin’ bumpkin. We wouldn’t even be there yet if we’d gone to California.”
“What about Bubalatti’s?” said Guster. He couldn’t get his mind off that ice cream.
Zeke looked at Guster like he was crazy. “What about it?” asked Mariah. “We can’t go back there.”
Guster shook his head. “No. I know. I just . . . those two men who were re-stocking Bubalatti’s ice cream, did you see their aprons?”
Mariah shook her head.
“They were red, like the Gastronimatii,” Guster said.
Zeke’s eyes widened. “Not possible,” said Mariah. “Or, at least, not likely. You remember they were all locked up last summer.”
“There could still be some out on the loose,” said Guster. Interpol had said they’d rounded them all up, but how could they know for sure?
“Maybe,” said Mariah. “But highly doubtful.”
“There was just something about that ice cream that tasted—well, far away,” said Guster.
Mariah rolled her eyes. “Did you taste danger too?” she said.
“That was real! You saw Yummy just as well as I did.”
Mariah didn’t have a reply for that. He knew what he had tasted, and his hunch turned out to be true. He was an Evertaster.
At least they were far away from New Orleans. From what little Gaucho had told them of Yummy, it would take at least a few days for Yummy to get to New York. They’d be safe until then . . . he hoped.
“I just don’t understand why Bubalatti got so angry,” said Guster. “Why would a world-famous pie maker suddenly switch to selling ice cream? I think he’s hiding something.”
“Could be,” Mariah said. “Or maybe he just wanted to expand his business. It makes sense. Pie goes with ice cream. But there’s not much we can do about it now anyway. Our first priority is to find a place to sleep tonight.” She stood.
“We could stay in the park,” said Guster. It would be just
like camping out. There were plenty of bushes they could hide in, and the summer night was warm.
Mariah turned, scanning the park. There were homeless people pushing shopping carts, and a few shady-looking men standing in the shadows of the trees. The sun was setting fast—it wouldn’t be long before it was dark.
“Too dangerous,” said Mariah. “We need to find someplace inside.”
“We could walk the streets all night, and stick to the well-lit places,” said Guster. It was possible, but even as Guster said it, he realized how tired he was. He needed sleep.
Mariah shook her head. “We need a place with seats or benches that won’t be conspicuous.”
“To the subway!” said Zeke, pumping his fist in the air.
Mariah pinched her chin. “Hmmmm,” she said. “You may be on to something, Einstein.” Her eyes narrowed, just like they always did when she was forming a plan. “If we ride it all night, we can sleep on the long trains, and switch between trains when we get to the end of the line. One of us can stay awake and keep watch. We’ll take shifts.” She shouldered her backpack.
“Oh,” said Zeke, his shoulders drooping. “I meant that sandwich place across the street. It looks like they have meatball ones.”
Mariah glared at him. Even if Zeke hadn’t meant it, it did seem like a good idea.
The three of them walked back toward Penn Station. This time Guster took notice every time they passed an opening in the sidewalk with stairs that led down to the subway. It bothered him how each one looked like a wide-open mouth, like a snake in a hole waiting to swallow whoever was stupid enough to walk down into its belly.
After several blocks, Mariah stopped at one of the stairways. She took one last look at her maps then waved them downward. “Right here,” she said. She tromped down the stairs two by two.
Guster hesitated. By now, it was getting just as dark outside as it was inside the subway tunnels. Zeke followed after her, and so Guster, not wanting to be left alone, went down the steps.