“Who?” he forces himself to ask.
“Really, Kestenberg?”
“No.” I’m giving it space, or whatever the fuck you said, so…
Radhya lets out an enormous sigh. “She’s—” He braces himself for her to drop a momentous piece of Ari information. Seeing someone else. Marrying Gabe. Joining a cult in British Columbia. “—fine. According to her.”
Josh doesn’t respond. It always happens this way: Just as his feelings tip over from anger into acceptance, something reshuffles the whole fucking deck. He clenches his jaw, willing his face to maintain a neutral affect.
“Did you eat dinner?” Radhya asks.
“No.” Josh shakes his head once. He must really look pained. Pathetic. Friendless. “But I should get going.”
“I ordered Chuan Tian Xia,” she says. “Don’t pretend you don’t want it.”
And then a way-too-familiar voice from the other room: “He can’t resist Chengdu noodles.”
He glances at Radhya and then follows the sound around the corner to the small living room, where his sister （traitor!） is sitting on the floor in front of a coffee table, every inch covered by containers, dishes, napkins, lids, and beer cans.
If Briar was capable of shame, she’d be staring up at him with wide, apologetic eyes, but instead her face is calm, even pleased. Best to maintain power position since this is an obvious trap of some sort.
“What is this?” he asks, whipping his head between them. “An intervention?”
Radhya narrows her eyes and takes a seat. She’s always been good at maintaining a facial expression that simply dares people to question her further. She pushes the fortune pepper fish an inch in his direction—the Radhya equivalent of an olive branch. “This isn’t about Ari.”
“It’s business,” Briar adds. “I had an idea.”
Radhya fishes a package of chopsticks out from under a stack of napkins. “She thinks we should work together on a new pop-up.”
“This would be closer to a full-scale operation,” Briar says, opening a beer and handing it to him. “Like a trial run for the kind of restaurant Radhya wants to open. Gujarati-inspired with a…well, let’s call it a nod to traditional New York delicatessen classics.”
He raises an eyebrow. There’s something intriguing in the concept. His brain is already sifting through flavor combinations.
Radhya adds, “Briar assures me you can make a perfectly crispy latke to go with my cilantro chutney.”
“？‘Moisture is the enemy of a good latke,’？” Briar and Josh recite in unison.
“Do you have a location?” he asks after a beat.
The women exchange a look.
“Brodsky’s,” Briar says.
Josh takes a step back. “Absolutely not. We’re selling the building. It’s decided.”
“It’s not decided!” Briar jumps up and tugs on his coat. “It’s been sitting there empty for months.”
“Because it’s for sale.”
“Mom can sell any property in the city except an iconic Manhattan landmark? Do you honestly believe that?”
“It’s not a landmark.” Not after I took the blue neon sign off the fa?ade, he silently admits. “There could be squatters in there.”
“She doesn’t want to let the space go. Not really. And it’s a perfect solution for Radhya. And you.”
“That kitchen is not a solution, it’s an albatross. Or have you forgotten the last time I tried to reinvent Brodsky’s?”
“Exactly! There’s a built-in human interest story there,” Briar says. “Former rivals working together. Josh redeeming himself on the site of his spectacular failure—”
“Hey!”
“—Radhya finally getting her chance to shine. Food writers will show up because there’s a hook.”
The thought of inviting more scrutiny from journalists makes his stomach turn. Time had finally started to temper all those emotions knotted up in failure. Courting publicity in the kitchen where he has so much history? Where his misadventures with The Brod will be mentioned in every article, every review? After having spent the year not cooking?
“I don’t trust food writers,” Josh says. “And having me involved could be a distraction.”
“You’ll be in the background,” Radhya says. “I’m the captain, you’re the…whatever Gilligan is, and Briar is the cruise director.”