We Won't Feel a Thing by J.C. Lillis

said Peter (Pierre).
    Rachel shook her head. “This smells like…”
    “The asparagus fries at Trail’s End?”
    “Yes,” said Rachel and Riley. Trail’s End was their favorite roadside produce stand.
    “How did you know?” said Riley.
    “Chef Antoinette knows all of Puckatoe’s special secrets,” said the waiter. “She’s been cataloging them since childhood.”
    “She grew up here?” Riley loosened his tubes to sniff at the plate again.
    “And then moved to Paris to pursue love and schooling, but thankfully returned to bless us with her gifts!” Peter (Pierre) indulged in a worshipful sigh. “Her cuisine is a unique love letter to her two favorite cities. She calls it Paris/Puckatoe fusion. The world’s first!”
    “Do you remember,” said Rachel.
    “That day in Solomon’s Woods,” finished Riley. “Percy.”
    “YES.” Rachel turned to Peter (Pierre), who was listening with his hands crossed over his heart. “The Solomons have this three-legged black dog.”
    “It’s pretty slow but also really mean,” said Riley. “Like, legendary meanness.”
    “So three years ago—”
    “Four.”
    “We were walking to Trail’s End on his birthday for asparagus fries, and we took a shortcut through Solomon’s Woods, and Percy chased us—”
    “Like, a low-speed chase.”
    “—through the woods, and it was almost like a game until finally we got tired and climbed a tree to get rid of him.”
    Riley walked his fingers on the plate. “It didn’t get rid of him.”
    “It just made him madder, and he sat at the base of the tree snarling and snapping…”
    “And we got hungrier and hungrier, and there was this warm breeze and we could smell the asparagus fries on the Trail’s End grill.”
    Rachel dipped a breaded spear in hollandaise. “I told you it was lucky to get chased by a dog on your birthday, and you could have three extra wishes.”
    “I wished for my own art gallery, and also a refurbished ice-blue 1967 Austin Healy convertible, which made me feel a little bit gross.”
    “And what else?” said Rachel.
    Riley propped his chin on his hand. “Guess.”
    The nook felt smaller then, intimate as a honeymoon suite. Grinning, Peter (Pierre) slipped through the curtains and stole away.
    On the console between Rachel and Riley, the red line stopped blipping in even peaks. It began to curlicue as they talked, up and up and up, like a plume of smoke on a birthday candle sending up a wish.
    ***
    “…oh, oh, OH.” Rachel drummed her hands on the tablecloth. “And what about the time we were in the back booth and that clown came in and ordered fifteen pizzas, and he had on that giant rainbow wig and glitter suspenders, and—”
    “Banana peel pants.”
    Rachel gasped. “I forgot the banana peel pants.”
    Riley made an at-your-service gesture.
    “And then he played ‘American Pie’ on the jukebox like five times in a row, and then—what did Papa D say? Like, the exact quote.”
    “Hey! Funny clown!” said Riley, in his best Papa D voice. “You play it again, I’ll Chevy your levy!”
    Laughter burst from them both. The room swayed like a birdhouse in a rainstorm.
    “…What made us talk about Papa D’s?” said Rachel.
    Riley held up an empty plate scattered with crumbs. “Fancy little pizza tartlets.”
    “Riiiiiight.” A goofy grin broke out on her face. “Tartlet. That’s an amazing word. Tart-let.”
    “It’s like, a very small strumpet.”
    “A pocket jezebel, if you will.”
    “Une petite floozy.”
    Nearly two hours had passed. Chef Antoinette’s petite works of art had kept coming, all of them sprinkled with the same tinted salt. Rachel and Riley were trapped in a giddy haze, lost in the smells of Puckatoe places they’d discovered as a twosome on weekends and long summer days, when Mr. Woodlawn was working his second job at the supermarket and Mrs. Woodlawn was writing behind a locked door. The Twinema Popcorn Souffles brought up the buttery salty-sweet smell