Noelle had only considered it at this very moment, while eating her umpteenth croissant since moving to Paris. That consideration arising when, also for the umpteenth time, she watched the excess flakes of the croissant fall onto her hair and chest, after which she brushed the flakes away and then watched them fall to the ground instead. Maybe a perfect visual example of “transference.” Or even “passing the buck.” And in that instant, for the first time since eating a croissant here, she wondered how it was possible that the entire city wasn’t one giant ocean of croissant flakes, ebbing and flowing, taking on a life of their own.

Though Noelle was aware that there were “cleaners,” people who washed or swept the streets regularly, it didn’t seem “regular” enough to polish the concrete entirely of these endless amounts of flakes. And even the many bird “cleaners” of the city, particularly pigeons, didn’t seem up to the task. Because, as far as Noelle could see from the sheer volume of croissants and other assorted flaky pastries consumed each day on the streets of Paris, it didn’t seem like there could possibly be enough “cleaners” on deck to ensure the city didn’t transform into one giant mound of fallen croissant debris. In fact, it truly amazed her that such a phenomenon wasn’t the case. It was, somehow, like a miracle to her. Or at least a marvel. Or, the more she kept thinking about it, maybe even a conspiracy. How was it possible that the ground wasn’t completely covered in croissant resin?

She understood that perhaps not everyone was as “messy” as her when it came to eating this particular food item, but she also knew that it was impossible not to be, to some degree, “sloppy” while consuming this totem of French culture. One would have to be either superhuman or the daintiest bitch in existence to avoid, in totality, the croissant’s “skin shedding.”

Of course, it is said that the croissants of the most superior quality don’t “flake” so easily. That one can bite into such a varietal without worrying about the likelihood of flakes spewing everywhere (but, most notably, into hair and onto clothes). Noelle had yet to encounter such a version of the croissant. Though she suspected it might be a myth, like true love or Marie Antoinette saying, “Let them eat cake.” Or maybe she was simply still “too green” in her knowledge of the city to figure out where the best, most “flake-free” croissants could be procured.

Regardless, it didn’t change the fact that there were tens of thousands of other people just like her who were eating presumably “inferior,” mess-making croissants every day. Even though the worst croissant in Paris was like the best anywhere else. (Noelle imagined the same was probably true of any piece of pizza consumed in Napoli.) This she knew for certain…even if she hadn’t been to many other cities to compare. But it was just one of those things a person ought to feel in their gut (apart from the croissant itself). Though what she didn’t feel certain of at all was where the infinite crumbs, the debris—whatever the French wanted to call it—really went at the end of the day. And unearthing the answer so started to plague her that it was all she could think about, even at her so-called job. A job that, predictably, entailed babysitting children. For that was the job for any and every fresh-off-the-boat English speaker in Paris.

What’s more, since the prospect of ever learning to speak French fluently seemed like an ever-distant possibility the more she tried to speak the language with actual natives, it didn’t appear likely to Noelle that she would ever find an escape from this hellish “profession.” And though “they” say that having a job is supposed to give a person less time to “think” (which should really tell you something about the intentional mind-numbing nature of what “work” is), Noelle found her mind wandering endlessly while babysitting. This is perhaps how, looking back on it, she was “allowed” to become so obsessed with figuring out where all the croissant flakes went when they fell to the ground en masse like that.

Constantly studying the sidewalks more fervently with each passing day, Noelle also enlisted her “charges” to do the same. In this regard, babysitting actually did become quite useful to her, for all the children were so willing to treat her fixation like a “game.” In a sense, she supposed it was. Even if not to her. To her, it steadily became the thing that lulled her to sleep at night and compelled her to wake up in the morning. She could no longer give “reason” to the “why” behind her near monomania.

Yet the more she fixated upon the flakes, going so far as to photograph some of the larger ones for an art exhibit she hoped to have one day, the further away from an answer she got. Though there were days when she felt absolutely sure she had the answer. Like the day she decided that what happens to the flakes must be tantamount to what happens when gum is smushed repeatedly into the sidewalk by foot traffic and eventually blackened. But no, that theory about the flakes didn’t track either.

On a different day, Noelle might speculate that the flakes must surely get embedded into the bottoms of people’s shoes and tracked into their apartments. This meant transference must be the way of these flakes’ “disappearance” from the streets, as if by magic. Another day, that theory became incongruous to her too, and it went on and on like that for months. The back and forth of speculating about where and how. That is, until one day, her focus on studying the ground for croissant flakes became too intense, too all-consuming and she forgot entirely that she was supposed to be minding the five- and seven-year-olds that were next to her only a second ago. But, as she found out about an hour later, they had managed to wander over to the Seine and fell right in. The five-year-old drowned; the seven-year-old was fished out in time to be spared. Even if shocked and waterlogged.

Noelle felt bad about the five-year-old, but she maintained that what happened to the seven-year-old could at least be considered “character-building.” At least, that’s how she tried to spin it when the parents and the agency she was employed by threatened legal action against her. And then went through with it, reporting her to the authorities and kickstarting the process of her deportation for involuntary manslaughter.

Noelle wanted to tell them that the work she was doing was very important. It was the real work—not the babysitting—that had distracted her from these “precious” children. And it was far more important, more meaningful. Even if she hadn’t been permitted to stay in Paris long enough to figure it out. How the city could contain so many flakes, both croissant- and people-wise.