He had a way with choosing apples, my boyfriend had told me. So when he gave me free reign of his fruit bowl, it was the apples that drew me first. There were five of them, mostly red with erratic yellow stripes, and they were very large. I ate one while waiting for him to finish lunch, but it wasn’t up to his usual scratch.
“They’re not actually very good. Throw it away if you don’t like it.”
I dropped it in the trash on my way to the bathroom. I could still hear him singing in the kitchen, falsetto thirds and fourths wondering whether the avocado was ripe.
“Is this one soft enough, no, not quite yet, this one, but this one is soft enough.” When I re-entered the kitchen he was scooping out the flesh with a spoon, standing over the sink, growing old.