He took the offering. He put it in his mouth.

Pat began to play. It wasn’t a tune. It was a lament. A guttural, squalling thing that sounded like a train derailing into a deli. He called it “Bacon of the Rar.” As he played, he lifted the bacon-laden ladle and, with a theatrical groan, draped the first strip over the bell of his saxophone. The hot fat dripped onto the floor, hissing like a snake.

A woman in a feathered hat fainted. A man in a bowling shirt wept.

The door burst open. Standing there, silhouetted against the rain-slicked street, was a man in a pristine white suit. He carried a piccolo and a cold smirk. It was “Clean” Gene Fontaine, leader of the smooth-jazz fusion band, The Al Dente Men .

The neon sign above The Velvet Swine flickered, casting the alley in a sickly pink glow. Inside, the air was thick with three things: cigarette smoke, the wail of a broken soprano sax, and the distinct, artery-clogging perfume of frying pork.

Pat grinned, revealing a gold-capped incisor. He put the sax back to his lips and launched into a ferocious, greasy solo. The Bath of Bacon Rar would live on. And somewhere, a cat—or perhaps a ghost of one—meowed in approval.

Pat stood over a cast-iron cauldron the size of a dwarf planet. Inside, a symphony of pork belly, chorizo crumbles, and smoked lard bubbled in a shallow, amber-hued pool. This was the "Bath." The "Rar"—Pat’s own idiosyncratic spelling of rare —was a lie. Nothing about this was rare. It was a crunchy, salty, umami apocalypse. The recipe, scrawled on a napkin stained with valve oil and pig fat, was legendary: render the fat of five heritage hogs, add the tears of a jazz critic, and simmer until the moon howls.

“You think this is about music?” Gene continued, approaching the cauldron. “This is about sanity. You can’t keep bathing the world in bacon. People are dying. Your last fan had a cholesterol count of ‘yes.’”