The Last Papaya

The zombie wasn't the flesh-eating kind. She was thirty-two, an accounting manager who'd been running on fumes and three hours of sleep for four years straight. Her eyes had that glazed, thousand-yard stare you see on people who've spent too much time looking at spreadsheets while pretending to care about quarterly projections.

I found her in the breakroom, staring at a single papaya on the counter like it was a religious artifact. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead—that particular sound that makes you question all your life choices at 2 PM on a Tuesday.

"My grandmother used to eat these," she said, not looking at me. "In the village. Cut it open, scoop out the seeds. Said it tasted like hope."

I leaned against the fridge. My iphone burned in my pocket—three unread texts from my wife asking when I'd be home, two from my boss about the Richardson account that could sink us if we lost it. The bull market had been good to our firm, but good times make for desperate people holding on tighter.

"You okay, Maya?" I asked, even though we both knew the answer.

She laughed, and it was the saddest sound I'd heard in eleven years of corporate drudgery. "I'm not okay, David. I'm dead inside. I died around the same time you did, we just haven't laid down yet."

She picked up the papaya, cradling it like something precious. "I'm going to do it. I'm going to quit. Move to Costa Rica. Grow these. Actually live."

"You have a mortgage," I said, the responsible zombie to her waking dreamer. "A car note. That promotion you've been working toward."

"That's the point." Her fingers traced the fruit's curve. "We're all just waiting to die while pretending we're building something. I saw the projections for next quarter. The Richardson deal is dead regardless. So's the division, probably."

She sliced the papaya open right there, juice dripping onto her quarterly reports. The seeds spilled out like black pearls.

"Try it," she said.

So I did. And in that breakroom, at 2:17 PM on a Tuesday that was supposed to be like every other Tuesday, something in me woke up.

"I'll text my wife," I said.

"Do it tomorrow," she said. "First thing. While you still remember what hope tastes like."