The Last Papaya

The papaya sat on my breakfast plate, scandalous pink and black-seeded, like something that should still be inside a body. Elena would have made a joke about it—something clinical, something that made the waiter uncomfortable. That was her gift.

I'm staying at this resort alone. The reservation was for two, obviously. The woman at check-in gave me this look—pity with a side of judgment—when I said my wife wouldn't be joining me. Then she upgraded me to a beachfront villa, because that's what you get for being the kind of person whose honeymoon becomes a solo trip.

Outside, a storm is brewing over the Pacific. Lightning fractures the sky, that sudden electric violence that always makes me think of revelation. Like the universe could just reach down and unhinge your jaw with the truth if you stood still long enough.

A stray dog wanders past my patio—some sad, golden mutt with ribs showing. It looks at me with eyes that have seen too many tourists, too many empty promises. I toss it a piece of papaya. It eats without enthusiasm. We have that in common.

The palm fronds are thrashing in the wind now, doing that frantic dance before a storm. I watched palms do this same dance the night Elena told me she'd been sleeping with her thesis advisor for six months. We were in Key West then. It was raining. She said the words like she was reading a grocery list: milk, eggs, infidelity, bread.

"It just happened," she'd said, as if betrayal were something that occurred to you, like weather. As if she'd been walking along and suddenly—lightning!—now she's naked on someone else's sofa.

I take a bite of the papaya. It's sweet and musky and entirely too much like flesh. The dog has moved on to the next villa. Probably smarter than I am.

The first heavy drops of rain hit the patio. I should go inside. I will, in a minute. I want to feel this—the storm coming, the papaya turning to acid in my stomach, the absolute certainty that I will never again be the kind of person who believes in forever.

Some things, once broken, stay broken even in paradise.