After their routine, Jeremy clothed and rode his Dutch-style ladies bike back to his apartment block. He liked to think of where he lived as a bowl of fruit. In this bowl were fruits of different shapes and sizes, like those from a still drawing class, but none of these hideous creatures from his apartment bowl were worthy of wasting a 2B on. All were fruit, and all were too acidic for his fragile stomach to process.
There was Sophie, the peach. Soft, pink, round, from the outside she was totally edible – but there was always the lingering fear of choking on the hidden pip. Then there was David, the tall, half asian taxi driver who refused to pick up other Asians as passengers. He was a banana, for another reason other than his complexion and impressive height. When questioned why he wouldn’t pick up other Asians, David said: “Because they aren’t like me. I am half. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. I just wear this yellow skin.” Hence David was a banana, a racist banana. Lastly, there was Rosemary, who smelt nothing like rosemary. She was scabbed and incontinent. Jeremey liked to think of her as the lockeroom live-in apple. He had never spoken to Rosemary, well, not after the mints incident.
Jeremy thinks about the girl he has just made love to / exercised with. He thinks about her as he scales the stairs of the fruit bowl to his humble apartment. Rosemary hears footsteps and enquires from behind a half-open door. She smiles a toothless smile and Jeremy steps over the puddle leaking into the corridor. As he settles down with a book on his two-seater couch he hears David screaming, probably racist drivvle, so he puts on lounge music. As he flicks to the next page of The Leopard he starts to choke.
Concetta, with all the beauty and innocence of a virginal peach.
