The Last Papaya

The cat knew before I did. Barnaby — this ornery, orange tabby I'd inherited from Mark — stopped eating three days ago. Just sat by the door, staring at nothing, like he was waiting for someone who wasn't coming. I'd check my iPhone compulsively during meetings, thumb hovering over Mark's contact, even though I knew. Dead people don't text back.

The office had become a landscape of corporate zombies. We shuffled between conference rooms, eyes glazed, coffee in hand, reciting the same scripts about synergy and deliverables. I caught my own reflection in the bathroom mirror once — hollow cheeks, dull eyes — and wondered if the virus had already taken me. Mark would have laughed. He always said we were the walking dead, just better dressed.

That first weekend after, I found myself at the grocery store at 11 PM, pushing a cart through fluorescent-lit aisles like a ghost haunting its own life. My hands moved on autopilot until I stopped in the produce section. Papaya. Mark's obsession. He'd go on these kicks where he'd eat nothing but papaya for weeks, claiming it was cleansing his soul, whatever that meant.

I bought one. Cut it open in the silent kitchen, the knife sinking through flesh the color of a bruised sunset. The smell hit me — musky, sweet, impossibly vibrant. I took a bite and burst into tears, standing there in my underwear, papaya juice running down my chin, because it tasted exactly like that afternoon we sat on his fire escape, drinking cheap wine and talking about the lives we'd live someday.

Barnaby appeared then, rubbing against my leg, purring for the first time in days. I set the papaya on the floor. He ate it.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I whispered. "He'd hate that you're eating his papaya."

The cat looked up, eyes knowing, and I realized: Mark wasn't gone. He was in the papaya, in the cat, in the way I still checked my phone. In the way I walked through zombie days carrying something alive inside me. Some friend. Some love. Some stubborn, persistent pulse.

I wiped my face and finished the rest of the papaya. It was terrible. It was perfect.