Three Citrons [2020 short fiction story competition]
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It was my roommate who showed me how to take nudes like a sensible person. There’s this trick, where you bend your knee so your calf and thigh form a juicy bulb of cleavage. It’s an easy way to get things going without giving yourself up. Flesh is interchangeable, but virtue less so.
I talk to strange men when I can’t sleep. We use each other, like cats brushing up against one another in the dark. It’s comforting to know these men do not care about your secrets. But also horrifying when you realize that they’ll run off with them and maybe tell them to someone else.
I like her, the roommate. Her name is Paloma. We stream old reruns from when we were kids and make elaborate pasta dinners together. She calls me Dia, which is better than my actual name. Sometimes we fall asleep in the same bed together. Our apartment is high up in a building. There’s a view of a little park.
I kinda think I won’t find anyone and that this is just a loop of time that repeats unending until I’m 35. Then everything will settle in the right places and I can move on, penance complete, glass hill climbed. My mother doesn’t approve though.
–– Have you met anyone? she asks on the phone.
–– No, mom. I don’t think I will here. I’m focusing on work.
–– Can’t you do both? How is Paloma? Is she seeing anyone?
–– No. She’s focusing on work too.
–– When I was young, women didn’t need to focus on work. They had to find husbands first.
On these phone calls, I feel glad I left. If I had stayed I might’ve gotten married to my high school boyfriend Matthew who still goes to church with my parents. But I miss the rituals. My mother has an old orange tree in the backyard. Every Sunday my father turns the fruit into juice. It takes four oranges to make one glass of juice and it’s all sugar.
Paloma also likes to ask me when I’m gonna give up and just pick a guy already. She doesn’t like finding random men sitting at the dining table in the morning. Last time she asked me, I was brewing coffee in the kitchen for us. I told her something like when I find a man as dark as my coffee, then I’ll marry him. She said that was kind of racist and I told her that as a white woman she didn’t know what racism meant. She looked at me seriously then laughed. I tell her often we should both stop trying and just date each other. She winks at me when I say this. I think about it seriously sometimes, though. It wouldn’t be so bad. The next time my mom calls, I’ll tell her Paloma and I have begun a sordid affair together.
#
Paloma was leaving for the weekend to go upstate with friends I don’t know. I kinda hate when I have the apartment to myself––everything gets quiet and eerie like I’ll walk into a room and see someone sitting there who doesn’t belong.
She was still in bed when I got up. There were three Saturn-shaped oranges on the dining table. I knew they were hers but they were going soft. One drunk fly buzzed around them like a vulture.
–– Paloma, I’m gonna eat your oranges. Before they get bad, I called to her.
–– Fine, just stop talking, she said with her voice muffled by the pillow.
I tried to uncurl the skin of the first one in a single try so it’d come off in a tight spiral. My father likes to pull the halves of oranges apart with his thick fingers, then he’d separate each slice carefully and offer them to me. They fit the curve of my mouth before disintegrating. I scrolled through my dating apps and wiped my hands on my pajama pants while I ate the first orange. I got a match. He was an All-American-looking kid. Tall with a brush of blonde hair that fell into his blue eyes. Not my usual type and almost immediately he asked me for nudes. I finished my orange before I sent him the one of my knee. He sent me back a fire emoji but nothing else. I moved on.
I ate the second orange in the shower. It was tarter and I could feel its enzymes carving their way into my gums. I cut the acid with a mouth full of shower water. Paloma knocked on the door before she opened it.
–– I’m leaving now, she said.
–– OK. By the way, your oranges are shit. This one is sour as fuck.
–– You didn’t have to eat them.
I felt hurt by this, like a kid. So I stuck my head out from behind the curtain and spat water at her. She jumped back and yelped
–– You’re so gross.
–– Good thing you’re not dressed yet, I joked.
–– Good thing.
When I stepped out of the shower later, the apartment was completely empty. I called to make sure Paloma was gone before walking through the place naked. On my phone was another match. He had olive skin and brown hair. His pictures showed him climbing a cliffside and wading into the ocean. I wanted to ask him where they were taken but he followed up his opening line with a weak innuendo so I blocked him.
I needed to get out of the apartment. I put the last orange into my pocket and walked to the park ten blocks down. There were people laying on their stomachs with their bikinis untied. I sat in the shade and watched till I felt hungry again. As I dug my finger between the slices, a man dressed all in black sat down next to me. His dark hair curled on his forehead, stuck down with sweat. He had a little dog on the end of a thick rope leash who was laying in the shade under the bench. I waved my orange at him and asked if he wanted a slice.
–– Thanks, he said.
–– No problem. Aren’t you hot in that? I pointed to his black jeans.
–– I’m fine.
I shrugged. I kept looking at this guy out of the corner of my eye. I liked his round wire glasses and his dark skin. I liked the way his hands lay on his knees unmoving.
–– Cute dog, what’s her name, I ask him.
–– Thanks. Sandy.
–– Can I pet her?
–– If she’ll let you.
–– Oh. Never mind then.
–– You didn’t ask my name. It’s Suresh.
–– I’m Dia.
–– Where’s that from?
–– My roommate made it up.
–– Oh. Do you want to walk with us? We have to finish our round before I take her home.
–– OK.
Sandy pranced when she walked and she panted heavily. We stopped to let her sip from a stone basin under the water fountain. Suresh asked me about my job and where I lived. I asked him about his job and where he lived. When we left the park I gave him my number. He texted me immediately when I got home and we made plans to get dinner the next day.
He wore all black to our date too, but we sat in an air-conditioned Greek restaurant so it was fine. When we had sex he grabbed my waist and my thighs and looked at me intensely. He held me through the night but he left before I woke up. There wasn’t even an indent in the bedspread next to me. He smoothed it out and I thought he must be a psychopath to do that, like he wanted me to think I dreamed it up or something. I texted him this but he didn’t respond. I then sent him one of my nudes, one of the real ones. I got nothing back.
He still hadn’t texted me by the time Paloma got home a day later. I tackled her onto the couch when I saw her. Grabbing her hips was just as good as the time I accidentally cupped her tit when I hugged her from behind. I kissed her full on the mouth. It was a little instinctual to kiss her when our faces were close together. She kissed me back on the cheek and then we broke apart giggling. She went to the kitchen and pulled our fish pan out. Shrimp linguini, she said. I told her about Suresh while we cooked and she said it was good riddance. When we sat down to eat I let her put her legs in my lap.
–– Maybe we should just date, I tell her.
–– You always say that when you get dumped.
–– I didn’t get dumped.
I took the long way to work the next day, through the park and out to the other side. It was migration season and birds flew in Vs over my head. I dreamed for a second that Suresh was one of those birds, transformed back into his raven-self and leaving this world behind. This was the kind of shit I loved thinking about when I was a kid.
My mom called at lunch and handed the phone to my dad. I wanted them to ask me to come home but they never did. I passed by a cafe and saw Suresh inside sitting next to a woman with long blonde hair. I froze. Which was stupid because he saw me in about a second and I must’ve looked dumb holding that phone to my ear and staring into the cafe. I waved at him when he saw me, because that’s what Paloma would do, and told my dad I’d call back later.
The woman turned around to look at me. She put something in Suresh’s hand and then got up. He walked her outside and stopped next to me. My skin was crawling. He tried to hug me but I side-stepped him. The conversation went like something something I’m sorry about not calling you. Then I called him a psychopath again and he laughed and showed me the pearl ring in his hand. The woman was his fiancé and they just broken up.
–– That’s why I didn’t call, he said.
–– Wow.
–– I know.
–– Wow, dude.
He looked relieved that I didn’t run away or hit him. He kept rolling the ring in his hand.
–– Can we try again? he asked.
–– Excuse me?
–– Can I take you out again?
–– Buy me a coffee.
–– Right now?
–– Yes.
We went back inside the cafe. I told the barista my order and Suresh brought it over to me with a small tangerine when it was ready. He asked me what I was thinking about. I considered telling him something that would make him feel better. I could tell him about how I imagined him turning into a raven and flying away. Or I could tell him that Paloma and I were in love. I stuck both my thumbs in the tangerine, through the skin, and tore it in half.
–– My roommate thinks you’re a dick. Also, I might move home next month, I told him.
He looked surprised and asked me where home was but not about Paloma. Far away from here, I said. On another coast. I gave him all of the tangerine slices one by one. He put them in his mouth obediently.
— My mom has an orange tree and my dad makes orange juice. I might marry my high school boyfriend.
–– That sounds pretty happy, he said.
–– It’s the happiest.
Nadya Agrawal came 2nd in Burnt Roti’s 2020 short fiction story competition. Agrawal retains rights to this story. Please do not reproduce without contacting Burnt Roti.