Papaya Season

The papaya sat on his counter like an accusation. Len had bought it on impulse—Elena used to love them, cutting them open with surgical precision, sprinkling lime, eating them while watching morning talk shows before the world got loud. Now the fruit sat there, growing softer, a small生命 preserver he couldn't bring himself to touch.

The cat, Barnaby, wound between his ankles. Elena's cat, technically. He'd moved out three months ago; the cat stayed. Len sometimes wondered which of them was the zombie now—he, shuffling through predawn streets to the subway, or Elena, somewhere in an apartment he'd never seen, moving through rooms he couldn't picture.

Thursday nights were for baseball, a ritual from before. He'd watch on cable, the flicker of the screen illuminating his takeout, his beer, his solitude. The Yankees were down by three when his phone buzzed.

"I saw that thing on Netflix," Elena's text read. "The zombie one? Remember how we used to mock people who binged shows instead of talking?"

Len stared at the message. Outside, rain streaked the window like motion lines on a bad television.

"I bought a papaya," he typed, deleted. "Barnaby misses you," he typed, deleted. "I miss you," he typed, deleted.

The Yankees tied it in the eighth. Len found himself in the kitchen with a knife, the papaya split open, its orange flesh gleaming like something secret and alive. He ate it standing up, juice running down his wrist, and it tasted like Mexico, like 2019, like forgiveness he didn't know he needed.

His phone lit up. "I'm at that dive bar on 4th. The one with the baseball stuff on the walls."

Len wiped his wrist, grabbed his jacket. Barnaby followed him to the door, then turned back to the apartment that was suddenly too quiet without him. The cat would wait. Some things did.