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Tonight’s a great night to carve fruit, I thought, digging my spoon into the stringy ganglion of the cantaloupe. I can do it with a knife, but it’s more difficult to get all of the seeds in the garbage can; it’s much easier with a spoon.
I sit at the table with my cantaloupe on the plate and I cut it into crescents using Guillermo’s white handled Brazilian knife. I then lie it flat and quickly dice at it, like a cantaloupe chef, but not to cut through the rind, just enough to allow me to bend the slice against its natural propensity and see gaps between bite size orange teeth smile back at me. I suck so the juice doesn’t spill down my fingers and flecks of juice don’t fly onto the table but this proves useless and sounds unattractive. I sit back down with a paper towel in my hands. The fruit is succulent, ripe, sweet. I eat my fill and wipe the table down, put on a pot of water for tea and clean the kitchen.
I brought the plate with half a cantaloupe over near the sink, and collected the eaten canteloupe slices with difficulty – like wet fish they flopped and slipped through my hand. This is all that fit in the garbage. I unhooked the plastic bag from its holder and sitting it on the floor tied the handles, an angry up-facing cantaloupe stuck out at either gap. It would be too late to turn it over now, I thought. And I took out the garbage.
As I was walking back up the stairs I saw a girl who was with me yesterday on the subway. Watching me stare, she said “Hey.” I said “Hey,” in disbelief. It was not the girl.
Daniel the Writer 