What the Papaya Knew

The papaya sat on the white plate like a severed organ, glistening with lime juice. Elena prodded it with her fork, watching the juice bleed onto the porcelain. She was forty-five, and this was what her marriage had become: room service fruit and silence by the resort pool.

Her hair, once the color of burnished copper, now leaked silver at the temples. Richard had loved her hair — he'd said it was the first thing he noticed, that day at the gallery opening. Now he noticed nothing.

The pool reflected the Cancun sky, an impossible blue that felt like a lie. Couples lounged on chaises, hands touching, laughing. Elena felt like a specimen in an aquarium of happiness.

"Still picking at that?" Richard's shadow fell across her. He'd been at the business conference for three hours. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the thin skin of his neck.

"It's ripe," she said. "Unlike us."

He sat heavily, sighing. "Not this again."

"What? The truth?"

Richard looked at the pool, where children shrieked and dove. "I saw Sarah from accounting. She asked about your hair."

"What about it?"

"She said it looked expensive. That salon in the city." He didn't say: Sarah's hair was still blonde, Sarah's husband still held her hand in public, Sarah's marriage wasn't a carcass rotting in the Mexican heat.

Elena pushed the papaya aside. It smelled sweet and faintly of decay. "Do you remember the first time we had papaya? That backpacker hostel in Costa Rica?"

"We were twenty-two," he said, but his eyes were on a woman by the deep end. A woman with hair like Elena's used to be.

"You said it tasted like sex," she continued, though she knew he wasn't listening. "Do you even remember what sex tastes like anymore, Richard?"

He finally looked at her — really looked. His expression was that of a man seeing a stranger where his wife should be.

"We need to talk," he said.

"No," she stood up, gathering her hair in one hand. "We needed to talk five years ago. Now we just need to not."

She walked toward the ocean, leaving him with the papaya, leaving him with the pool of all their wasted hours, leaving him with the silence that had become their only shared language.

Behind her, she heard him say her name once. Then the water sounds swallowed everything.