Riddle of the Produce Aisle

Marco stood in the produce section of Whole Foods at 7 PM on a Tuesday, holding a papaya like it was an artifact from another life. The fruit's mottled skin reminded him of Elena's hands — the way they'd looked the last time he'd seen her, veined and aging, pressing against the glass of her office door while she told him she needed space.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. The baseball scores. He'd stopped caring about the Giants somewhere around the same time Elena had stopped wearing her wedding ring to work, but old habits were the worst kind of ghosts. The produce misters hissed, releasing a fine water spray that smelled like chlorine and lost weekends.

"You're going to stand there all night?" The stock boy's voice cracked with that particular cruelty only nineteen-year-olds possess. He stacked oranges with aggression, like each piece of fruit owed him something.

Marco almost apologized. Then he remembered what his therapist said about how he'd spent twenty years letting people — his father, his boss, Elena — treat him like cattle. No more. He straightened his spine. "Actually, I'm deciding between this papaya or leaving my marriage."

The kid's eyes widened. Marco walked away, papayaless.

Outside, the heat had broken. The moon hung over the parking lot like an unblinking eye, or maybe that was just the sphinx-shaped sign for the Egyptian restaurant next door. Riddle me this, it seemed to say. What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening, and still doesn't know how to be happy?

A horn honked. Someone in an SUV yelled something about learning to drive. Marco felt something crack open inside him, warm and terrible and maybe a little like hope.

He got in his car and drove toward the ballpark instead of home. The game had ended hours ago. The stadium lights were dark. He sat in the parking lot and listened to the radio announcer recap the ninth inning anyway. Sometimes you needed to hear the story of the game you'd missed to understand the one you were still playing.