Page 34 of The Pairing

Kit casts me a look, his eyes bright and curious. “And Theo is a sommelier.”

Finally, we’ve impressed her. She leans over a bin of pearly anchovies, examining us with renewed interest, before concluding, “I like you.”

I’m not easily thrown off my game, but something about herkeen gray stare makes my face warm. Kit’s elbow nudges mine.

“So few travelers respect food and drink the way they should!” she goes on. “Oh, you must see the port, where we buy our fish. I can show you after the market closes, if you want? My name is Paloma, by the way.”

Which is how we leave Les Halles with two pounds of cherries, a hunk of fromage, and directions to meet a sexy fishmonger named Paloma at sunset.

“I’m gonna be honest,” I say. “I love a menu that’s just a list of nouns.”

Kit and I are sitting together in Le Brouillarta, soaking in the ocean breeze through the open window as I study the menu. Lobster cake. Bergamot, mint, cucumber, and citrus. Foie gras. Smoked eel, chanterelles.

“You could be orderinganything.Look at the tuna—leek, fir, marigold! Is it a dish? Is it a community garden? Is it a candle? Do words mean things? Can’t wait to find out.”

The smile tugging at Kit’s mouth makes something flare in me.

“You said the wine yesterday smelled like worn saddle, right?” he says.

“Honestly, it was more like assless chaps. I was being polite. Why?”

“Illuminating, is all.” He doesn’t begrudge me for it. We’re the same way about food.

Kit and I have always shared a need to know what we’re getting into. Kit takes leaps, once he’s confident he can control how he’ll land. I generally prefer the ground. But what’s on the plate—what’s in the glass, what melts into the palate, what plays nicely together in the pan—that’s where we both like to be surprised.

It started with Del Taco.

We were ten, and I was sure an American fast food culturaleducation would help Kit fit in. That was the fall my sisters got their first gig together, so I was having all my dinners with Kit. One afternoon when his mom asked what we wanted, I said, “Miss Violette, can we get burritos?”

Frankly, Del Taco isn’t evengood. But I watched Kit across the back seat as he took that first bite and slipped into another dimension. One mediocre mouthful of refried beans and he was hooked on discovery. He had to know what other wild and astonishing shit was out there. We worked our way through every shape of french fry at every major fast-food chain, until Kit’s mom told us we were frying our taste buds with American sodium and plonked a pot of coq au vin in front of us. Then it was my turn to be astonished.

While my sisters were making a divorce drama with Willem Dafoe, I was at Kit’s house, discovering French cuisine. Kit’s mom was a garden fairy, a kitchen witch, and everything she cooked was some great-great-grandmother’s jealously guarded recipe. She introduced me to the five mother sauces, let me caramelize onions at her stove, and made what I still think of as the platonic ideal of bœuf bourguignon.

And so, Kit and I became curiosity gluttons together. Fifty percent of our friendship was sitting at tables going “ooh!” and shoving bites at each other. When we exhausted every cuisine in the Coachella Valley, we drove all over the state for roadside stands and chili festivals and beachside fish shacks. We’d take any risk, as long as it was something you ate or drank.

We were twenty-one when we first started daydreaming of a restaurant of our own, a small bistro with a simple, seasonal menu and new cocktails every week. We’d call it Fairflower. And from then on, everything we tasted had a bright, new tang of possibility.

I miss that flavor sometimes. I haven’t been able to find it since.

“Do you remember the fancy-ass restaurant in LA?” I ask Kit. “The one we went to for your birthday?”

I know not to bring up our relationship now, but this wasbefore, when I was still in what I thought was unrequited love. It was Kit’s twenty-second birthday, and he wanted to try this restaurant he’d read about. God, we both wanted to like it so much more than we did.

I watch his face, waiting for the shadow I saw when I mentioned the breakup yesterday, but he brightens.

“Oh my God. The molecular gastronomy place.”

“Nowthatwas a nouns-only menu.”

“It was less of a menu and more of a poem.”

“All the portions were, like, microscopic.”

“Theoctopus foam.”

“Who thought of octopus foam?” I say, the same thing I said when it arrived at our table that night.

“Octopus should never be foam!” he says, the same reply he had then.

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