Fruit at the Edge of Rotting

The papaya sat on the counter, slowly surrendering. It had been two weeks since I'd bought it, since I'd stood in the grocery store with Martin's hand on my lower back, him whispering something about how papaya was an acquired taste, like everything good in life. Now the fruit was softening, dark spots blooming across its yellow skin like bruises, and I couldn't bring myself to touch it, let alone eat it.

The cable guy came at 3:47 PM. Martin had always handled these things—the appointments, the passwords, the negotiations with strangers entering our space. I watched from the window as the van pulled up, then let him in, gesturing vaguely toward the living room where the coaxial cable hung limply from the wall, a dead snake.

"Lightning got to it," he said, kneeling beside the entertainment center. "Strike three blocks over. Fried half the neighborhood's boxes."

I nodded, standing in the doorway. Martin and I had been together three years. We'd taken up padel last spring, something to do on weekends that wasn't drinking or talking about work. We were terrible at it, laughing as we missed easy shots, the ball ricocheting off the fence. But the last time we played, the weekend before he left for his conference and never came back, I'd noticed how his serves had gotten sharper, more precise. How he'd stopped laughing at his own mistakes.

"You got it," the cable guy said, standing up and wiping his hands on his pants. "You're all set."

"Thanks."

He left, and I stood in the living room where the television flickered to life—some talk show, people discussing their failed marriages with the casual tone of weather forecasts. Outside, summer heat pressed against the windows. The papaya on the counter had ripened past the point of redemption, its skin mottled and weeping. I cut it open anyway. The flesh inside was perfumed and soft, and I ate it standing over the sink, letting the juice run down my chin, tasting something sweet and strange and entirely mine.