He saw my unhappy face as we entered back into the bright hazy afternoon.
“Look,” he said, “just…try a few more times. It’s not difficult what my father does, believe me. It just takes a bit of practice.”
“Except I don’t have the genes.”
“You don’t have the genes to invent it,” he said. “But a monkey can copy a recipe eventually.”
I gave him a look.
“I think that just came out ruder than I meant it to,” he said, a look of apology in his features.
“Well, wouldn’t be the first time,” I said.
“Do you need a lift?”
“No, thank you,” I said stiffly.
We stood looking at each other, both cross.
“Send my love to your dad,” I said. “Let us know how he is. Frédéric is climbing the walls.”
Laurent half-smiled. “Yes, he would be. But Benoît’s the one you have to watch for.”
I nodded. “Yeah, well, thanks for all the advice,” I said sarcastically.
And he got on his scooter and sped away.
The next few nights, as the shop closed over what happily turned out to be a bank holiday weekend, I stopped going home at all. I stayed. And I cooked and I stirred and I experimented and I added and took away and did the bloody conching, over and over and over again. I tried the pistachio—a disaster—-and the violet, and the hazelnut. In fact, anything including nuts was a consummate failure.
Eventually, after working until I fell asleep in the workroom, on the fourth night I finally got it figured out. If I stuck to just a couple of things—no nougatine, no caramel, no sculpture, no drinking chocolate, or experimenting with dark chocolate, which I simply didn’t have the palate for—I realized that if I stayed simple—very, very simple—and with the right ingredients, which Benoît had already sorted out, I could do it. Well, I couldn’t do it; that wasn’t the case at all. But I could produce the two simplest chocolates we did—an orange and a dark mint—that tasted almost, but not quite, as good as the real thing. Good enough, at any rate, to pass most of the tourist palates who were looking for a souvenir rather than a gourmet item.
I melted and mixed and poured, over and over again, leaving the radio on and downing endless amounts of espresso to keep me awake. By Monday night, I was as exhausted as I had ever been in my life. My phone rang, unexpectedly, at three o’clock in the morning.
“Allo?”
“You live! You are alive! I can call off the fire brigade and Interpol.”
“Sami?” I said, realizing I hadn’t spoken to anyone all weekend. “Is that you? You haven’t really called Interpol, have you?”
He chuckled on the phone.
“No. I assumed you were off discovering Paris and your first taste of erotic adventure.”
“Ahem,” I said. “You’re very rude.” Then I looked around at the workroom. “What are you doing?”
“We’re at the Cirque du Soleil after-party. The gymnasts tend to get a little wild.”
“Oh,” I said. “You could stop by here if you’re hungry. I have a lot of taster chocolate left over.”
“Vraiment?”
And that is how, half an hour later, I found myself drinking something entirely suspicious out of a bottle that Sami told me was pastis. It reminded me of Laurent’s chocolate in that at first it was horrible, then almost immediately delicious. It also, given my exhausted and underfed state, got me incredibly drunk very quickly, as I watched beautiful young people whose genders I couldn’t exactly ascertain descend on the chocolate with the enthusiasm only people who hang upside down from a roof for four hours a night can gather. It was nearly all gone and the room clean and tidy as the sun started to come up from outside and I realized there was no point trying to get any sleep today either.
- - -
The scent of Frédéric’s cigarette coming up the rue Chanoinesse scattered the beautiful golden circus creatures like some kind of dream, and he sniffed suspiciously as he entered.
“How long have you been here?” he asked suspiciously.
I shrugged. “I wanted to practice over the weekend,” I said. He glanced around.
“I’ll clean it all up,” I said defensively and he raised an eyebrow. Then he advanced on the latest tray in the cooling rack. I stared at him anxiously. Of course the dancers had loved it, but they would love any chocolate at that time of day. Frédéric was the one who really knew.
He took a long pull of water from an Evian bottle to clear his palate, then took a small piece from the baking sheet on the tray. He held it up to the light, then crumbled a little between his fingers to check the consistency. Finally, he popped the whole piece inside his mouth. I held my breath. I had tried everything I could and this was…well, if I was totally honest, this was as good as I could do. I waited as he waited, for the chocolate to melt and the full richness of the underlying taste to come through. As he did so, Benoît startled me by turning up silently beside him and watching the process.
Gradually Frédéric turned to me. He wasn’t over the moon. I wasn’t a hitherto undiscovered genius. But he gave me a tight, trim little nod.
“We can…we can manage that,” he said in a quiet voice.
Exhausted as I was, a huge smile spread across my face.
“Merci,” I said, delighted. And, completely out of the blue, Benoît grabbed a piece, swallowed it quickly, then came up and, without saying a word, kissed me on both cheeks.
- - -
“This is all you have?” said Frédéric.
“Yes,” I said. “I figured I’d just try to get one or two right.”
“Good idea,” he said. He checked his phone.
“Alice hasn’t called you?”
I shook my head.
“Or Laurent?”
“I don’t think Laurent wants anything to do with me,” I said ruefully.
“Well, we’re only keeping their businesses alive,” said Frédéric. “Why would they want to tell us anything?”
I thought, though, if Thierry had deteriorated, we would definitely know about it. Which was something, I suppose. I went through to the front of the shop to get some fresh morning air and wash my face in the bathroom and to check if Alice was coming. There was no sign of her.