Page 33 of The Pairing

She’s pretty the way Saint-Jean-de-Luz is pretty, breezy and sensuous, her brown face soft and relaxed. Her dark hair is in an informal knot at her nape, and the loose bits have the crispiness of sun-dried seawater. She’s holding a speckled green-red pear and a paring knife, a slice balanced on the blade. She has an air of wife about her. Maybe not my wife, but certainly someone’s.

“You want?” Fruit Wife says.

“Oui.” I nod eagerly. “Wow, yes, please.”

The petal-pink flesh of the pear melts on my tongue like butter with a kiss of cinnamon, and the woman watches me suck juice off my thumb. If my French were better, this is the part where I would go,Are we about to make out?

She points to a sign over the bin of pears.

DOYENNé DU COMICE.

Hiring a hot girl to feed fruit to customers is an excellent business model, because next thing I know, I’m being rung up for two pounds of cherries as Fruit Wife waves goodbye.

“Lining up number three already?” asks Kit, who has apparently witnessed the whole thing.

I shake my head. “I think I just got hustled.”

“Understandable,” Kit assesses with a nod. “She’s lovely.”

“What’d you buy?”

“Fromage de brebis,” he says, holding up a chunk of wrapped sheep’s milk cheese. “The guy at the stall was hot too, but I can’t sleep with any more cheesemongers. Trying not to pigeonhole myself.” I open my mouth, but Kit has a hand raised. “Theo.”

“Don’t use words that end in ‘hole,’ then.”

He huffs out hisoh Theolaugh. I’d forgotten how nice it sounds.

“There’s a sexy fishmonger,” he says.

“Ooh, show me.”

We loop the market, admiring glossy pastries and dishes of stuffed peppers, ribbing each other. Kit’s laughing, I’m laughing, the air between us is fresh and light. We feel like friends. My sex competition idea is fixing us. I am, I decide, a genius.

At the back of the hall, the fish counter is as pungent and glistening as an oyster shell and as busy as the Grande Plage. Bins of ice brim with gleaming prawns, scallops in brick-red shells, deep ruby cuts of tuna, slender little silvery-pink fish and flat fish and fish with stripes. Customers line up three bodies deep and point at squids.

Behind the counter, a strong-nosed brunette in coveralls heaves fish onto the bar, wrapping and weighing and taking orders in a crisp, friendly voice. A man lobs a question at her; she punctuates her answer with the crunchy thump of her cleaver on the chopping block.

“That’s her,” Kit says unnecessarily.

When the crowd clears, the fishmonger cleans her hands and turns to us, addressing Kit in French. I understand just enough of Kit’s response to know he’s telling her I don’t speak the language.

“Ah.” The fishmonger switches effortlessly to English, confident but with a light, unplaceable accent. “Sorry, I didn’t think you were American!”

“Thank you,” I say, meaning it. “You’re very good at your job.”

“I’ve had this job since I was twelve. I very much hope I’m good at it by now.” She grins, flashing a gap between her front teeth. “He says you’re on a food and wine tour? What will you eat in Saint-Jean-de-Luz?”

“Lunch is at a restaurant in a hotel on the Grande Plage,” I say. “Do you know it? It has a Michelin star.”

“Ah, Le Brouillarta.” She does a begrudging frown of approval, and I get the sense that nothing short of a fresh-caught fish roasted by a local grandmother would have satisfied her. “And where will you go after you leave here?”

We take her through the destinations ahead. Along the coast and over the Spanish border to San Sebastián, across Spain to Barcelona, back up to the southern coast of France and east until we hit Nice and Monaco. After that, it’s Italy the rest of the way: Cinque Terre and Pisa on the northwest coast, inland to Florence, south through Tuscany to a villa in Chianti and on to Rome, further south to Naples, and a ferry to Palermo for the final stop. By the time we’re done, she releases a French swear so colorful it surprises a laugh out of Kit.

“Lucky bastards!” she says, patting her stomach through her coveralls. “My mother was born in Barcelona. I’ll tell you where to go.” She goes on to describe in detail, with total confidence, the precise and mandatory experience we are to have in Barcelona. The only bar for vermouth, the only tapería for patatas bravas. “And then, if you like pastry—do you like pastry?”

“I do,” Kit says.

“He’s a pastry chef in Paris,” I add.

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