" The market smelled of hay and roasted nuts; she bought a newspaper cone of almonds from a woman stirring them over an open fire. She bought thick sandy leeks, a rope of garlic and a pound of tomatoes; she bought a long batard of sourdough bread, a dozen bluish speckled eggs, a jar of cream, because now she had a refrigerator and could keep such things for more than an hour or two. She lifted the paper lid of the cream and tasted it, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand; she remembered the pillowy clouds of Gruyère grated onto her piece of waxed paper at Les Halles, the cheese maker young and handsome and milk-fed himself; he tried to teach her the French for being in love with him: mon cocotte, mon chouchou, ma petit lapin, Madame, s'il vous plaît.
She walked the stalls, and on the edge of the market, a fishmonger laid out his catch on two blocks of ice: strange curled squids and spider crabs, silvery piles of sardines, their eyes still sparkling, thick slabs of some white-meated fish, its head as big as a dinner plate. "

― Ashley Warlick , The Arrangement