Baptiste stares at me.
“You would rather insult me than waste fish.”
“Yes.”
He looks disgusted, which in his case is approval.
“Four,” Baptiste says. “But you also take the sole.”
“I haven’t seen the sole.”
He pulls another crate forward.
“Because you talk too much.”
The sole is excellent. I take it. By the time I leave Baptiste, the cold has worked through my coat and settled into my hands, but the list is already improving. Turbot. Sole. Langoustines from a smaller supplier near the back because Baptiste’s were good but not alive enough to justify the price he pretended was reasonable. Sea urchin that I don’t need but buy because refusing it would be a failure of character. Clams that smell of clean water and nothing else. I move through the seafood pavilion with the ease of long repetition.
This place has its own map, and none of it is printed. You learn who lies about arrival time, who ices too heavily to hide age, who becomes careless after a good month, who saves the best for men who pay fast, who will punish you for rejecting a crate by offering you worse the next week, and who respects a refusal because the refusal proves you are awake.
Rungis is not sentimental. That’s another reason I trust it. A young vendor I don’t know tries to sell me scallops that look beautiful from two meters away and wrong at one. I stop at the edge of his stall and let him talk. He tells me the source, the time, the quality, the price. His voice is smooth. Too smooth. His hands never touch the product. That’s the first problem. I lift one shell, smell, and set it back.
“No,” I say.
He stiffens. “They came in this morning.”
“That was a long morning.”
“They are very good.”
“They were very good yesterday.”
His mouth tightens. “You haven’t tasted them.”
“I don’t need to taste fatigue.”
The older woman at the stall beside him laughs without looking up from the crate she is sorting.
The young vendor flushes.
“You chefs think you know everything.”
“No,” I say. “That is why I’m here before dawn.”
I leave him with that because I am not responsible for finishing his education. The produce pavilion is warmer, louder, and greener. Here the air changes from salt to earth. Wet leaves. Crushed herbs. Citrus oil. Mushrooms still carrying the smell of forest floor. Carrots in rough wooden crates, their tops dark and feathery. Fennel bulbs pale and tight. Peas, early and sweet, though I will not trust them without opening three pods from three different crates because hope is how kitchens get embarrassed.
A woman named Mireille sells me herbs from a stall that always looks chaotic until you ask for something and she finds it in two seconds. Mireille is broad-shouldered, black-haired, and brutal in her pricing when she thinks a chef has become impressed with himself. She wears red lipstick at this hour, which I respect because any woman who applies lipstick before handling wet crates of parsley has a relationship with dignity I don’t intend to question. She sees me and immediately reaches for tarragon.
“Opening week?” Mireille says.
“You remember.”
“I remember invoices.”
“How romantic.”
“Romance pays badly,” she says.
“Tarragon pays on delivery.”
