Mireille wraps the herbs and says in French, “She improves you.”
“She is temporary,” I say.
Serena understands enough French to catch the meaning. Her expression doesn’t change, but the air between us does. I pay Mireille and take the herbs. Serena turns toward the next aisle without comment. I follow.
The market gets louder as morning pushes in. More trucks. More voices. More heat beneath the fluorescent cold. Paris is beginning to choose what it will become by lunch, and Serenais beside me, watching the machinery with a focus that makes every explanation feel worth giving. I have brought chefs here who saw inventory. I have brought investors here who saw cost. Serena sees origin. That matters more than I want it to.
She looks at a crate of figs, then at me.
“You’re going to tell me these are not ready.”
“They are not ready.”
She sighs. “I hate that I knew that.”
“No, you do not.”
“No,” she says. “I do not.”
I look at her then, under blue pre-dawn light turning slowly into morning, with coffee in one hand and her notebook tucked against her side, and I realize this was not a mistake. Bringing her here was a risk. It was also the only honest next step. The food starts here. Apparently, so does the trouble.
Serena follows me into the next aisle, notebook still in hand, though I notice she has stopped opening it. She watches a vendor unload crates of herbs, her attention fixed on the hands, not the display. That tells me more than any question could. She understands that food begins before it becomes beautiful.
She points to the herbs.
“Why that stall and not the one near the entrance?”
“Because the entrance stall sells to people who want to feel like they found something,” I say.
“This one sells to people who need the thing to be good.”
She looks at the crates. “That is brutal.”
“It is accurate.”
She glances at me. “You enjoy saying that.”
“I enjoy it when it’s true.”
She studies the herbs for another second.
“The mint is better here, but the parsley was better near the entrance.”
I look at her.
She lifts her brows. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” I say. “That is irritating.”
“Good,” she says.
I should be annoyed, but I’m not.
We move past mushrooms, citrus, and crates of stone fruit that will be useful in two days and dishonest today. She asks why I reject the peaches, why I take the smaller courgettes, why the mushrooms from one box are worth twice the price of another. I answer because the questions are clean. She is not collecting color for a paragraph. She is following the logic.
After twenty minutes, her notebook is closed. After thirty, it is inside her bag.
“You stopped writing,” I say.
