The Papaya Last Supper

Mara stood by the hotel pool, nursing her third vodka soda, watching her coworkers float like oversized bath toys in the chlorinated water. She felt like a zombie — not the brain-eating kind, but the corporate kind: eight years at the same firm, and she'd forgotten how to want anything that wasn't a promotion or a weekend.

"Join us, Mara!" called Greg from the water. He was doing a backstroke, his pale chest reflecting the fluorescent pool lights. Greg, who'd stolen her baseball metaphor in that client meeting last month. Greg, whose bonus had been triple hers.

"In a minute," she lied.

She turned toward the buffet instead, where the papaya sat untouched in a silver bowl. Her father had loved papaya. He'd taught her to hit a baseball at six, the same summer he'd left. "You've got a swing like your mother," he'd said, like it was a compliment. It wasn't.

The papaya was perfect, ripe and yielding under her thumb. She cut into it, the juice running sticky down her wrist. Sitting alone at a table for four, she ate it with her fingers, letting the mess happen. Her phone buzzed — Greg again, probably, wanting her to come admire his cannonball. She turned it off.

"You missing someone?" It was the bartender, young enough not to know better. "You look like you're saying goodbye."

Mara laughed, a startled sound. "I think I am."

She thought about tomorrow, about the strategic plan she was supposed to finalize, about the baseball tickets her ex-boyfriend still hadn't picked up from her desk. About how papaya tastes like forgiveness and all the things you can't say out loud.

"What do you recommend," she asked, "for someone who's done being a zombie?"

He grinned. "The zombie apocalypse. Double rum, fast."

She ordered two. One for now, one for the morning after, when she'd finally clean out her desk and maybe learn to hit a baseball again.