Ari dries her hands on the towel, debating whether to take the bait. “Plato?”
“The Symposium? Aristophanes’s speech?”
“You’ll have to refresh my memory. I went to public school in Arizona.”
Josh reaches toward the counter and turns his neatly printed list to the blank side. “Plato says that the original humans were round creatures with four arms, four legs, and a head with a face on each side.” Ari watches his pen glide over the surface of the paper, producing a sketch resembling Violet Beauregarde turning into a blueberry in Willy Wonka’s factory. But this drawing has two heads, eight limbs, and a couple little scribbles above the legs.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the scribble on the left.
He glances down at the paper. “Genitalia.”
“Oh.” She squints at the drawing. “Yikes.”
* * *
“IT’S AN ABSTRACT representation,” Josh insists, darkening a few of the lines with his pen. “They could have any combination of…parts.”
“How progressive. This is not where I envisioned this story going.”
“You really haven’t heard this before? My dad always told me it was the inspiration for the black-and-white cookie.”
“Those shrink-wrapped things they sell at bodegas?” She shrugs. “Never had one.”
Josh jerks his head up. “But you live in New York. It’s basic cultural literacy.”
“I moved here four months ago!”
He takes a clearing breath. “One of my jobs at my dad’s deli was to ice the black-and-white cookies. No one else would make sure the lines were straight. It relaxed me.”
“Did you at least get to eat the imperfect ones?”
“God, no. They’re too sweet. Like spooning sugar directly into your mouth.” He grimaces, remembering the sickly sweet smell of fondant and royal icing.
“Your dad owns a deli?” Ari glances at his perfect mise en place. “Did he teach you to cook?”
“My dad taught me the fine art of assembling corned beef sandwiches and scooping cole slaw.” The sum total of his father’s culinary training had taken place at the deli, working his way from busboy, to prep cook, to grill man, to cutter. His father had never cooked in another restaurant. He’d barely cooked in his own apartment, aside from opening cans of soup. “He’s not a chef. That’s a title you earn in a real kitchen. Not Brodsky’s.”
There’s a glint of recognition in her eye. “Wait, your dad owns Brodsky’s?”
“That you’ve heard of?”
“I mean, it’s famous, right? It has a blue neon sign?”
Josh’s dad, Danny, inherited Brodsky’s deli in 1977 from his uncle with the tacit understanding that Danny was to be a custodian of a forty-year tradition. The name “Brodsky’s” doesn’t get mentioned without modifiers like “an institution,” “a classic,” “seen in such films as…” There’s not a single person in the East Village, downtown Manhattan, or possibly the tri-state area who wants a thing about Brodsky’s to change.
Except Josh.
He and his dad had butted heads since Josh was tall enough to use the stove.
As a child, Josh would spend hours in Brodsky’s, begging to do odd jobs, while his father grilled frankfurters or mixed up enormous batches of pickling solution. He soaked up every bit of his dad’s arcane knowledge—“moisture is the enemy of a good latke”—and studied the correct ratio of yolks to whites in a good egg salad. Then, one day, Danny decided Josh was old enough for the most important kitchen tools: knives and heat.
The element of danger unlocked something. Josh began cooking for himself—experimenting with new techniques, mastering challenging recipes, asking for Modernist Cuisine for his sixteenth birthday. When his little sister, Briar, refused to eat chopped liver, Josh made vegetable spring rolls for her school lunches. （It was a great way to practice his knife work.）
He was bursting with ideas—specifically, ideas for “improving” classic Brodsky’s dishes. Couldn’t they add caramelized leeks to the potato kugel? Some paprika in the egg salad?
His father’s response was the same every time: He’d point at the weathered, hand-painted sign that had served as Brodsky’s slogan since the 1950s: The Food You Remember.
“Food you wish you could forget,” teenage Josh had muttered.
And for several years, he tried to do just that. Instead of afternoons spent at the deli, Josh doubled down on academic extracurriculars. He became a star Mathlete, joined Model U.N. and the debate team. There was little reason for father and son to have more than a passing conversation on the rare occasions that they found each other in the same place at the same time.