The Last Papaya

The papaya sat on the counter for three days before Mara finally cut into it. She'd bought it on impulse at the Korean market on Sunset, remembering how Julian used to eat them every morning when they lived together in that cramped studio apartment in Echo Park. He'd claimed they helped with his joints, a remedy from his grandmother in Oaxaca, but she suspected he just liked how exotic it made their breakfasts feel.

Outside, the first serious storm of the season was moving in. The sky had turned that bruised purple color that made the whole city feel trapped underwater. Mara watched a fox — scrawny, mangy, improbably urban — skulk along the top of the wooden fence that separated her yard from the abandoned lot next door. Its tail dragged through the mud.

"You again," she said aloud.

The fox paused, regarded her with eyes like old coins, then slipped into the weeds.

Lightning struck somewhere nearby. The kitchen went white for a heartbeat, then the thunder rolled through, rattling the windows in their frames. Mara's phone buzzed on the counter. Julian's name lit up the screen.

She hadn't spoken to him in eight months. Not since the night he'd packed his things in boxes she'd helped him tape shut, neither of them crying, both pretending this was just another logical life decision, like refinancing a car or switching insurance providers.

The papaya flesh was shockingly orange, perfumed and strange. She lifted a piece to her mouth and tasted summers she hadn't thought about in years. The papaya soap they'd bought in Mexico. The papaya-scented lotion he'd given her for Christmas one year, always too sweet, always making her feel like she was wearing someone else's skin.

Another call. Then a text: "I'm outside."

Mara set down the fruit. She went to the window and there he was, standing in the rain by her gate, looking smaller than she remembered, his hair plastered to his forehead. He looked up at her window and lightning flashed again, turning the moment into something photographed, something preserved.

The fox emerged from the abandoned lot, sat on its haunches, and watched them both — the woman at the window, the man in the rain, the papaya on the counter growing warm and strange in the sudden darkness.