The Electric Taste of Startovers

The vitamin C tablets sat on his nightstand like a promise he kept breaking. Forty-two years old and suddenly single, Marcus had convinced himself that if he could just fix the small things—the supplements, the sleep schedule, the flossing—the larger structural damage of his life might somehow repair itself.

It was the bottom of the ninth when the first bolt of lightning splintered the sky outside his window. On television, the baseball game continued, players oblivious to the storm brewing in the real world. Marcus watched a batter swing and miss, strike three, the disappointment etched across the young man's face. God, he remembered being that young—believing that every failure was final, every missed opportunity catastrophic.

He reached for the orange on his desk, something Sarah had left behind when she moved out two weeks ago. It had started to shrivel at the edges, a small dying sun in his otherwise empty apartment. She'd bought them by the bagful, this vibrant explosion of color in their monochromatic life. Now it sat there, mocking him with its slow decay.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the room, and for a split second, Marcus caught his own reflection in the darkened television screen—hollow cheeks, eyes that had forgotten how to rest. He'd been taking the vitamins because Sarah said he looked depleted. He'd been watching baseball because it was the only thing they'd ever done together that didn't require talking.

The thunder that followed shook the windows in their frames, and something inside him unbuckled. Marcus stood up, crossed to the desk, and peeled the orange. His fingers came away sticky and fragrant, the citrus scent cutting through the stale air of his loneliness. He ate it in the dark, section by section, letting the juice run down his chin, not bothering to wipe it away.

The television announcer's voice floated through the room: "And that's the game, folks. Sometimes you swing, sometimes you miss, but tomorrow there's always another at-bat."

Marcus turned off the television. The storm outside raged on, beautiful and terrifying and completely beyond his control. He swallowed the vitamin C without water, feeling it dissolve slow and bitter on his tongue. Some small thing he could actually do.

Tomorrow, he decided. He would buy fresh oranges. He would call his mother. He would stop waiting for lightning to strike and start building his own fire, however small, however faint it burned in the dark.