- - -
Thierry was fastening his tie in the mirror. For the first time in a very long time, he seemed to have space in the collar. Alice came up behind him and smoothed down the shoulders.
“Ah, don’t fuss me.”
“No,” she said and looked away. “I shan’t fuss you.”
He looked at her. He had slept so well and woken up feeling better than he had in years. He found it annoying on a very deep level that less wine and pastis was making him feel this much better.
“Alice,” he said, his voice softening. “You know in my life I have loved three women. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, and one of them is you. So please, do not be cross with me today.”
Alice came back up behind him and ran her hands through his still thick hair. She burrowed her face in it.
“I can’t lose you,” she said.
“You won’t,” said Thierry. “You won’t. I promise.”
He twisted himself around, carefully, to face her. She could see the scar, still angry-looking, through his unbuttoned shirt.
“I have done so many…well, no. I have not done many things in my life. I have made chocolate and thought that that was enough.”
Alice blinked hard.
“I have not looked after my toys like a good boy,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Can I make it up to you now?”
Alice thought of the years she had spent loving him, even when he was old and fat, even when she had shelved her plans for children, knowing they were too busy, seeing how he was with his own little boy, who hero-worshipped him so painfully. Some people always sacrificed more, she knew.
“Yes,” she said, kissing his head.
“But I must also…”
“Do this. Yes. I know.”
She drove him to the hotel as he requested, to see the woman he had never forgotten, the slender Englishwoman who had shaped his taste so very much…but she did not stay.
- - -
I had seen him in the kitchens at his hotel, but not here. I knew my place; I sat at the back out of the way, my arms around myself, as if I was hugging a secret too good to hold. He knew his way around it, though; of course he did, probably better than anywhere—he’d played beneath it as a boy. He looked at the plants along the back walls as he set the vats churning in motion, husked faster than anyone I’d ever seen, doing the conch like an artist, his arms moving with the same graceful flow as his father’s, taking yesterday’s batch, adding cream and testing, taking it away. Then he went up to a high store cupboard and found what he was looking for: a large pepper grinder Benoît used sometimes to season his lunch when he brought it in. He seized it in triumph and bounded back down the stepladder, winking at me as he did so. Then he went to the lemon tree and stripped it completely of all its lemons. We’d never used them; Frédéric said they were only for nougatine. Laurent chopped them roughly, then stood over the churn, squeezing and tasting again.
“This is the only way,” he said to me. Well, I suppose it was for him. I wouldn’t know what I was tasting for. Until I learned, I supposed. He added more, then lifted the pepper grinder.
“M’sieur!” protested Benoît, but it was too late. He unleashed the ground black pepper directly into the chocolate mix.
“That,” I stated, “looks like it’s going to be disgusting.”
“We will make a gourmet of you yet,” said Laurent, grinning. He tasted a little more and made a face.
“Yes, you’re right. It is disgusting. You have to balance. Without balance, it is just horrible. With balance, you can do anything.”
He looked at me.
“When you lost your toes, could you balance?”
“No,” I said.
“But now you can do anything, right? You compensated and made it better?”
I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Well. Just like that. And I will hold up this chocolate just like I will hold you up.”
“I’m not sure this metaphor is really hanging together,” I said, smiling, but he hushed me and kept on working feverishly.
Finally, he tried one last time, then immediately stopped the paddles from turning.
I opened my mouth obediently.
“That’s what I like to see,” said Laurent, then let a drop cool and rest on my tongue.
I’d expected it to be awful, just weird, but it wasn’t. The depths of the chocolate base were deepened by the pepper, giving it a dark edge, but then shot through with a sublime light sharpness. It was clean, delicious, and utterly moreish.
“Oh my God,” I said. “I have to eat more of that.”
“Yes!” said Laurent. “That’s right.” He tried some himself. “Yes, exactly. Perfect. I am a genius.”
“Can you teach me how to make it?”
He looked me up and down. “Two months ago, I would have said no. Now, I think you can do anything.”
Frédéric interrupted us kissing to say that there was going to be a riot in the queue lining up outside and did we want him just to call the Bastille now? Everyone left in Paris knew that we reopened today and there was a rumor that Thierry was on the mend and would be here too—I knew the hotel was going to call a taxi for Claire and Thierry, but I wasn’t sure when. I felt a momentary stab of concern, before remembering Claire chiding me to get on with things. They would be all right.
Frédéric set the chocolate in the freezer double quick and started slicing, as Laurent twirled off to start another batch of mint and bitterest aniseed. I started to clean up, then out of interest, went to see what happened when the lemon went on sale.
The first person to try some was M. Beausier, one of our regulars. He was small and slight, considering the amount of our chocolate he put away. Perhaps it was his staple diet. He took one bite and his eyes popped open.
“Mon Dieu,” he said. “Is Thierry back in the kitchen?”
Excitedly he turned around to the queue and started handing out little squares for people to taste.
“Try this, try this,” he was saying excitedly. “I must have some more!” he called over to Frédéric, who raised his eyebrows and sighed in a dramatic way. The people in the crowd who’d tried it started muttering excitedly and placing large orders.
“I think you’d better make some more,” I said, coming back to Laurent. “They’re going to start a stampede out there.”