Page 30 of The Perfect Ingredient
Sweet and salty. Heavy and floral. Human and beyond human. I can taste Hessou’s aftersmoke, the creamy weight of Jean, the bright note of myself.Alchemy.
My knees almost buckle.
That’s it.
The taste I’d been looking for all along.
5 Grams
The kitchen is a sweltering pit by midmorning, despite the windows flung wide and the back door propped open with a fifty-kilo sack of sugar. The breeze carries the scent of horses and early summer, but in here it’s purechaos.
I’ve been at it for hours.
My apron stained, sleeves rolled past the elbow, batter halfway up one arm, my left hand sticky with something I no longer remember the origin of. The marble counter is unusable—covered in bowls, trays, knives, cream, piping bags, raspberry seeds, caramel shards, and a vaguely obscene pile of fresh eggs. Some cracked. Some not. My hair has fallen from its knot again and I don’t have time to fix it.
I’m trying to perfect a crème pâtissière that tastes the way skin feels—warm, salty-sweet, and obscene. A filling that mimics the texture of sweat-slick skin, the consistency of a wet dream you can barely remember—like lust itself, I announced to the empty air a moment ago.
Somewhere behind me, Hessou turns a page.
He’s sitting on a high-backed wooden chair imported from his estate, a piece that has no business being in a kitchen, angledperfectly by the window. Barefoot, in a silk robe patterned with indigo cranes, he looks utterly out of place in this village—like a figment conjured by someone too poetic for their own good. But there he is, legs crossed, reading Rimbaud in a liquid voice while I mutter about the temperature of my sugar.
“—J’ai tendu des cordes de clocher à clocher; des guirlandes de fenêtre à fenêtre; des chaînes d’or d’étoile à étoile, et je danse—”
“Don’t recite Rimbaud inthat voicewhile I’m watching this caramel,” I snap, glaring at the pot of molten amber threatening to seize and then at him. “I’ll burn this whole place down with us inside.”
He hums. Smiles without looking up.
“I like when you threaten arson.”
I glare at him, turning off the stove before the caramel can scorch. And that’s when a sudden clang makes me jolt, nearly sending the pot flying from my grip.
Jean’s somewhere in the cellar—I can hear a curse in that low, polite voice of his. The lead water pipe that runs from the cellar up to the kitchen sink burst last night near the junction. The whole corner of the room smells of damp stone and wet metal. I told him to leave it, that we’d just use buckets for a while, but Jeaninsisted.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be quick,” he said, blushing.
It’s been three hours.
Hessou closes the book with one hand and stretches his legs out like a cat. I glance at him. He’s watching me now.
“I’m going mad,” I say, throwing a handful of flour into the air for no reason at all.
“I noticed.”
“I can’t think! I have too many ideas. Too many ingredients. But the flour is wrong, the butter is too soft, the milk is from yesterday—yesterday, Hessou, it’s practically curdled—”
He raises an eyebrow. “It smells fine.”
“That’s not the point! The ratio is off, the humidity is obscene, and—” I whirl back to the counter, flicking a spoonful of ganache into my mouth mid-rant, “—Jean hasn’t come for the second time yet and I’m running low of cum!”
He laughs.
“I’m serious!”
“You always are.”
I slap my hands against the counter and let out a groan. Then a sigh. Then a moan, letting my head fall between my arms.
“…We should take Jean to Lyon.”
