03 Crème Brûlée

About a week after "Two Lies and One Truth."

Vincent sent a message: "There's a photography exhibit. If you're free."

When she came downstairs she saw his car—a black BMW, immaculately polished, parked beneath her building like a dormant beast. She got in, running her fingers over the leather stitching. "You make decent money." She said it casually, no prying.

"Perks of the job," he said. No further explanation. She didn't push.

The museum was downtown, a black-and-white documentary photography exhibit. They walked side by side past fragments of lives pinned to white walls, and she noticed the way he looked at the images—not appreciation, but analysis. He could read what a photographer was trying to hide from a single composition choice, from the way shadows fell, like a decoder who saw the entire world as a cipher that needed solving.

They stopped in front of a large print: a woman with her back to the camera, standing alone on a balcony, facing a vast gray sea. Her silhouette was cut thin and black by the backlight, her blouse billowing in the wind, but there was no sense of freedom in it—only a long, desiccated solitude, all the waiting drained out of her.

Gaby stood before that photograph for a long time. "She looks so free."

"She's waiting." His voice was very quiet. "For someone who isn't coming back."

She turned her face toward him. His expression hadn't changed, but she suddenly felt he wasn't talking about the photograph. He caught her glance, as if realizing he'd just said too much, and shifted his gaze away, moving toward the next print. "Come on. There's more."

She didn't press. But she memorized the side of his face when he'd said it—taut, like someone accustomed to hiding behind a wall of ice.

It was nearly dusk when they left the museum. He took her to a quiet little restaurant a few blocks away, tucked into an alley with no sign, just a single warm yellow lamp above the door. The proprietress nodded at him like he was a regular.

She ordered steak; he ordered salmon. While they waited she asked how he'd found this place. "After a job," he said. "There aren't many restaurants open at three in the morning." She didn't ask what "job" meant.

Her steak arrived sizzling, sliced to a perfect medium-rare, the tender red flesh laced with melted butter. But she didn't eat from her own plate first. She cut off the first bite—the fattest cross-section, the most tender piece—and reached her fork across the table, setting it on the edge of his plate with a soft clink of metal on porcelain.

"You have to try this."

He stared down at the piece of meat that had suddenly appeared on his plate like an archaeologist confronting an unidentifiable fossil. He looked up at her—not angry, more like puzzled. "Do you always do this?"

"Do what."

"Give away food from your own plate."

"Only to interesting people." She forked a bite of her own steak, chewed it, unbothered.

He was silent for a moment. Then he turned his fork over, cut the thickest piece from his own salmon, and placed it—gently, precisely—on the edge of her plate. His movements held no unnecessary expression, as if this were the final punctuation mark at the end of a precision operation.

She looked down, then up at him, and smiled. "See. You learn fast."

And then she saw the corner of his mouth move—not a smile, but some ancient curvature he himself probably couldn't remember the last time he'd made. It lasted about a quarter of a second.

"You almost smiled just now."

He lowered his head, setting his fork down beside his plate. "No."

"You did."

"No."

"I saw it. I have a witness—that piece of salmon is my witness."

He lifted his gaze to her. Her smile had spread across her entire face. He looked away, picked up his half-finished bourbon, but as the rim touched his lips that curvature surfaced again—a little longer this time. She tucked those fractions of a second into her memory, reined in her triumphant grin, and went back to her steak.

She shouldn't have ordered dessert. She was already full. But he said the crème brûlée here was worth trying—he didn't want any, he just ordered one for her. With a patience no professional killer had any right to possess, he explained: a good crème brûlée's caramelized sugar crust should crack cleanly under the spoon, not shatter into rubble. He handed her the spoon; his knuckle brushed the back of her hand.

Her hand paused for a beat. Then she flipped the spoon over and cracked the caramel shell with its back—a crisp, clean crack, the spoon sinking in half an inch, the shell splintering into irregular shards.

She took a bite, closed her eyes. "I'm ruined."

"Ruined how."

"I can never eat anyone else's crème brûlée again."

"Then only eat this one."

"This one isn't here every day." She set her spoon down in the empty ramekin. "So I'm giving the name to you."

"...What name."

"Pudding."

His brow furrowed. "No."

"You don't get a vote. I came up with it. You're Pudding now."

"I'm not—"

"You smiled just now, for point-two-five seconds. That was you agreeing. The smile has already transferred the naming rights."

He looked at her. She still had a fleck of caramelized sugar at the corner of her mouth, her eyes were far too bright, and she was leaning back in her chair holding a cup of cold tea with the posture of a victor. He wanted to argue, but his mouth couldn't assemble a single sentence sturdy enough to withstand that smile.

"...Finish your food first," he said. And he turned her cup a small circle on the table.

The car idled outside her apartment building. The streetlamp washed his silver hair a cold gray. His window was only half rolled down.

"Go inside," he said. "Stay safe."

She pushed the door open, one foot already on the curb. Then she turned back as if she'd just remembered something. "What are you doing tonight."

"Going back."

"That's it? Back to read? Stare at the ceiling? Sit alone waiting for the phone to ring?"

"Something like that."

She stood outside the car, bent down, folded her arms over the half-open window, and leaned her face close to the gap. "You're so boring, Pudding. You should get a cat."

"I don't keep pets."

"Then keep me." She said it. "I don't need a litter box. And I just gave you a piece of my steak."

He looked at her. Then he lowered his head, pushed the gearshift into neutral, but his fingers released the knob. His shoulders moved. He smiled—not a quarter of a second. A full, real, unguarded smile. Short, but all of it was real.

Gaby stared at him, stunned. She branded those seconds into her memory—the faint creases sinking at the corners of his eyes, the rare looseness in his shoulders. She wanted to say something to mark the occasion, but she was afraid if she spoke she'd scatter the smile into the air. So she just lifted her arms off the window and turned toward the apartment.

She went upstairs, pushed open the door, changed into her slippers. Then she walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside—he was still there. Leaning against the hood of his car, a cigarette burning between his fingers, orange ember rising into the night. He wasn't waiting for anything. He just didn't want to leave yet. She pushed the window open and yelled down, laughing: "That crème brûlée tonight was the best dessert I've ever had—tied for first with every dinner you're going to cook for me from now on!"

He lifted his eyes, looking up at her across the whole silent street laid out beneath the streetlamps. He took the cigarette from his mouth, head tilted back. He didn't smile. But he looked at her for a long time. Then he said, "Get some rest."

"You too, Pudding."

He crushed the cigarette out, turned, slid into the driver's seat. The engine rumbled low.

That night she lay in bed, opened her phone's memo app, and typed three characters between an old grocery list and her backlog of unchecked to-dos: Mr. Pudding. Then a comma. Then an em dash. Then three more characters: can smile.

Then she rolled over, pulled the covers over her head, and laughed out loud alone.