"In the macronage phase, you need to incorporate the tant pour tant with the meringue."

I nodded, scribbling each word in my notebook. The tant pour tant... The tant pour tant...

Digging into my memory from the third year, I unearthed the distant recollection of a paragraph about macarons. The tant pour tant was a mixture composed half of almond powder and half of powdered sugar, hence the name: tant pour tant, so much for so much.

"And then there's the pochage phase. Po-cha-ge. It's French. Can you write it?" Cesare, the head pastry chef, leaned over my notebook. He had been very enthusiastic when I'd told him that I wanted to take notes, and now he was making sure I wrote down every word correctly.

He nodded at my hurried scrawl and continued preaching. I bit my tongue to hold back a snarky reply. I was doing great so far, I had only made two snarky responses, and both said so quietly that no one had heard me.

I was in almost out of highschool, for heaven's sake! How could I not know how to write sac à poche? And I knew it's French. What was it supposed to be? Mandarin?

"At this point, you have to wait half an hour, and during this time, a thin film will form over the macarons, which will become crispy and shiny at the end of baking. This phase is called croûtage. Circumflex accent on the u."

"Yes, chef..."

"Don't worry too much about the technicalities. Bianca will be with you the whole time."

"What?" I looked alarmed at the girl pretending not to eavesdrop on our conversation while she was checking for the second time that the refrigerator cells in the pastry shop were at the right temperature. "But I thought I was going to do it alone. I've already made macarons, I can do them alone!"

Cesare blinked his old, watery eyes as if he were trying to focus on me for the first time. He didn't smile, even though his words had a hint of mockery: "Not a chance. You're still a fiulin."

I was a what? That wasn't French.

"Don't worry, chef." Bianca materialized at my side. She was only a couple of years older than me, but she dared to address the chef as if they were cousins. "I'll take care of the newbie."

Cesare seemed satisfied with that arrangement. He said he would go to the chef's office to discuss the new menu, and if we needed anything, to ask Manuel.

As soon as we were alone in the pastry shop, Bianca dropped her act of devoted apprentice. She stared at me with a cold gaze. "Go fetch me a shallow baking tray."

I returned the same look. "I'm not your commis."

"I never implied that. It will take a while before you can become a cook helper in a third-rate dive, let alone here. And now get me a shallow baking tray."

"Oh!" I felt a sense of relief wash over me. "Thank goodness! You're a pain in the ass. I wasn't going to survive this without at least one jerk to tell off. You don't understand! I'm physically incapable of snapping at my roommate, it's like he's surrounded by a befuddling spell that makes me lose the desire to throttle people."

The girl blinked. "Fascinating story. Now would you mind fetching a baking tray?"

I would fetch her a shallow baking tray, of course... and I would slam it over her head.

Not literally. I wasn't a violent person. But in my mind, that scene would play out on loop all morning. The tray smashes and she crumples like an accordion, her eyes pop out like in a Looney Tunes episode, and three little birds chirp around her head celebrating her premature departure.

"Fuck off, Chiara."

"Bianca."

"Same thing."

I retrieved the tray and placed it on the table, maybe with a bit too much force.

Bianca shot me another fiery glance. "I know your type. You think you're all that because you've won a couple of contests at school. Well, things in the real world are different."

In the real world... She was nineteen! She finished high school last year!

"Now stop getting in my way and go get me some almond powder and powdered sugar."

Alright, alright... but in my mind, I was still slamming the tray over her head.

I left the pastry shop, passed by the refrigerated cells, and entered the warehouse.

Gioele was staring into space between two shelves, muttering to himself. Between mutters, he clapped his hands with all fingers extended outward.

Ahem, ahem...

I cleared my throat, and he jumped in the air. His hair was trying to escape from under the cap in every way, like little leaves crawling toward the light.

"Uh, sorry. I just need to grab a few things."

Gio watched me as I entered the warehouse. He still held his hands together. His eyes were soaked in moist redness. His lips trembled.

"Uh, everything... everything okay?"

He shook his head. "I need to prepare a ro." He said in a broken voice.

"A what?"

"WHAT THE HELL DO I KNOW?! If you don't know it, how could I ever know?!"

"Okay, okay..." I approached slowly and took him by the shoulders, feeling them swell under his heavy breaths. "Calm down, it's not a big deal. Can't you ask your chef...?" Before I could finish the question, Gio's terrified gaze answered that no, he couldn't ask his chef.

"I already asked her three times how much béchamel I need to make, and the third time she started screaming: start with the ro, start with the ro! But what the hell is the ro?!"

"The roux. You mean the roux. It's the base of many sauces, including béchamel." And I swallowed the second part of that sentence, where I asked him how he couldn't know, that was first-year stuff.

"Don't lecture me! Just tell me what to do!"

"You have to mix butter and flour in a small pan, over low heat. When it thickens, you've made the roux, and you can add it to the hot milk."

"Okay." Gio muttered, turning towards the shelves. "Butter and flour. Flour and butter. Butter and flour. Flour and butter." He grabbed the bag of flour and dashed towards the door.

"Do you know the proportions?"

"The proportions!" He froze in the doorway and walked backward to return to where he had come from. "I don't know the proportions. What proportions?"

"You need seventy-five grams of flour and seventy-five grams of butter for every liter of milk."

"Seventy-five... seventy-five." Gio nodded to himself, observing the free hand that showed five fingers to two. "Seven, five, seven five... and the butter..."

He pointed back down the aisle, holding the bag of flour close to his chest like a newborn, and muttering numbers to his hand.

I knew Bianca would eat me alive for that delay, but I wanted to make sure Gioele could handle it. I followed him out of the warehouse and found him already in front of the five refrigerated cells. Now he was holding the bag of flour with both hands, and his head was darting from one door to another with no order.

When I approached him, I heard him repeating the word "butter" to himself with increasing dismay.

"It's the second door."

"The second door," he repeated without looking at me. He grabbed the handle of the cell and slipped inside. I followed suit, anticipating his desolate wanderings among the shelves of the refrigerator cell.

"Here it is." I grabbed a block of butter and handed it to him.

"OH, thank you! You're an angel!" And he dashed back out again.

The door slammed shut, sealing automatically, and the lights went out, leaving me in total darkness. I waited about five seconds, thinking Gioele would come back after realizing he had locked me in. By the sixth second, I decided he probably hadn't realized, so I groped for the emergency handle that opened the door from the inside.

As soon as I stepped out, I paused for a moment to shake off the cold of the refrigerator cell, and then I noticed Gio rapidly ascending the stairs.

When he lifted his eyes from his feet, he seemed instantly relieved to see me. Was it because he hadn't frozen me in the cell?

He hurried to approach, and he didn't stop until he was close... very close. I could see a bit of fluff on his eyelashes.

"What... what were the measurements... the doses? I mean... the proportions?"

"Seventy-five and seventy-five for every liter of milk."

"Right... right..." And he turned again to leave.

"Write it down if you forget."

"Write it down..." He paused and turned again. "Right, right..." He began looking around as if hoping to find a piece of paper and a pen right there, in the middle of the immaculate warehouse aisle.

I pulled out my notebook and quickly scribbled down the doses and the few steps of the procedure. I tore the sheet out and handed it to him.

He stared at it with his mouth open. "Oh, THANKS!" And, still with his hands full of flour and butter, he lunged at my chest and hugged me. I just stood there doing absolutely nothing, while his stray hairs brushed against my neck.

"You're saving my life." He let go of me and snatched the paper from my hand.

When my intellect returned to function, Gioele had disappeared, and Bianca was peeking down the hallway from the threshold of the pastry shop.

"Your friend is a disaster."

"He's not a disaster!" I spat acidly for no reason, even though, yeah... I had to admit Gio wasn't doing very well.

"Did you manage to get me the almond powder and powdered sugar?"

"Ah... I'm working on it." I turned back to the warehouse, while Bianca muttered indefinite insults.

...

We spent the whole morning making macarons. Bianca didn't let me handle the sac à poche even once; she shaped all of them herself, muttering to each one: "Watch and learn, watch and learn." As if I didn't know how to use a sac à poche!

As soon as we put the three trays of batter in the oven, it was a competition of who could be more useful when there was nothing left to do. I took over the small fridges under the work table and sanitized every corner.

"Uh-oh, this cream is from six days ago. Isn't it the commis's job to keep the fridge organized? And here it says the last cleaning was three weeks ago. Aren't you familiar with HACCP regulations, by any chance?"

Bianca didn't have much to retort; she just growled quietly under her breath while scrubbing the oven grates in the sink.

Every now and then, I saw Gio's lanky figure pass by the pastry shop door, so I found an excuse to intercept him in the warehouse. I handed him five sheets of mine, and we found an abandoned pencil near the vacuum sealer. Now that he could write down the sous chef's instructions, he seemed less panicked, more attentive.

There was no more hugging, but in its place I got a tiny octopus that Gio had saved from the seafood salad and asked me to keep for him. The little octopus was dead, of course, but according to Gioele, it was "too cute to end up in the salad". Bianca gave me a dirty look when she caught me pocketing a tiny dead octopus.

"That thing is going to start smelling very soon. And what about HACCP?"

I shrugged and didn't answer. There wasn't a section dedicated to what to do if an adorable guy gives you an octopus to save, so I would improvise.

The oven beeped; our macarons were ready to breathe some fresh air. Bianca grabbed an oven mitt and started pulling out one tray at a time, quickly placing them on the nearest table.

They were perfect. None of them cracked, they were wonderfully browned, both the tray of cream-colored ones and the pink ones. I watched the tray of blue ones making the short journey from the oven to the table to join their companions.

Bianca placed it on the counter and turned to close the oven; the oven mitt hanging from her apron hit the tray of blue macarons. I saw it waver toward the edge, so I reached out to grab it, yelping in pain when my hand touched the hot metal, and as I pulled my hand back, I knocked the back of it against the tray of cream-colored macarons.

The oven door closed just as two trays crashed to the ground. The absolute stillness of the following seconds was interrupted only by those silent "oh, fuck—oh, shit—oh, fuck—oh, shit" that both Bianca and I were fervently thinking.

There were about fifty cookies on the floor, some smashed, others hidden under the hot trays.

Bianca recovered from the shock first. She crouched on the floor and, with careful precision, removed the trays without burning herself and without destroying any more macarons.

"What do we do?" I whispered.

She looked up at me. I could rat her out and ruin her. The chef had given her the responsibility for that job. But I was also involved. Surely neither of us would look good in this story.

"Close the door," Bianca ordered, and without a second thought, I ran to obey.

"You don't really intend to serve them, do you?" I asked between statement and question.

"Come here and help me, instead of talking."

I crouched down with her behind the table. She had produced two airtight glass containers with lids and was filling the first one with blue crumbs and the second with cream ones. "The ones at the bottom always break, Cesare won't think there's anything strange." Bianca explained.

"I feel like a criminal." Yet, I started picking up one macaron at a time, carefully dusting them off and placing them in the container.

"They turned out so well..." Bianca whimpered, "and we spent the whole morning..."

"Come on, even if they're probably infested with pathogens, they're still cute."

Bianca chuckled. "These floors are disinfected twice a day. There are more pathogens on your hands right now."

"I always wash my hands."

"You have a dead octopus in your pocket."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

I never found out, because Bianca started laughing with a slightly hysterical edge until tears came to her eyes, and I had to ask her to take some deep breaths to recover.

We jumped to our feet with our full containers when the door opened, and a perplexed Cesare looked in with a confused expression. "Why was the door closed?"

Bianca and I began to stammer confused responses.

"Ah, you've finished them! Let's see." The head pastry chef pointed to the tightly closed containers and the tray of still intact pink macarons on the table.

The commis didn't hesitate to place her container and open the lid. I decided to imitate her confidence even though my knees were shaking like when I swore to my mother, in front of the literature teacher, that I hadn't cheated on the middle school exam. I had cheated, yes. But that teacher had been tormenting me from the beginning, so he would have given me a hard time anyway.

"They turned out well." Cesare picked up a blue macaron from the top of the box, where we had prominently placed only the intact ones. "They didn't crack, excellent work." He quickly glanced at the cream-colored ones and the pink ones too. Then he told us to put everything away because service was about to start.

Bianca and I exchanged a very quick glance. As soon as Cesare turned his back, we had to work hard not to burst out laughing.

We had dodged a bullet.