The Peach Stone

a short story

I felt something small skim my shoulder and fall down to the floor, then heard a clang. By my shoes, grooved and furred, I saw a fruit stone wobbling between the grating of a drain cover. I was in the middle of a narrow London crescent, with white Victorian town houses terraced to my right, and a chicken shop buffered by trees to my left, the other side of a private garden that was gated and seemingly unused.

Before I could confirm the identity of the fruit stone, I felt another brush against the side of my face this time, like the calloused hand of a hardworking person in construction. I felt it stroke by my cheek, fleeting, goodbye-like. Another stone hit the ground. I looked up.

Half-out of a top floor window stooped a woman with two red plaits and contentment on her face, arms bent into the wooden frame around her. Up with her, the sun was, too. I hadn’t seen any warm light all day and yet she was soaking in it, chewing and nodding her head to music I couldn’t hear. Eyes closed, the hair on her forearms hummed in the quiet breeze as a trail of fruit juice slipped from her thumb all the way down towards her elbows. I stood and watched her for a while.

Eventually, after the chews slowed, she opened her eyes and rounded her lips, before taking a large breath through her nose and shooting another stone from her mouth, across the street and into the garden where this time, it made no sound on landing.

YES!

she said, darting her eyes to me - I must have appeared as small as a coffee cup from where she was looking - and puckered her lips, offering me a quick kiss through the air, before ducking out of sight.

---

As the days passed, I contented myself with things that sequentially entertain me, though I couldn’t help but spiral toward thoughts of her. On the bus home from work, passing her window from the road behind that unused garden, I would take to the top deck, hoping to see her red twisted hair framed by the curtains of her window. The window was open every time, but no light or movement shone from it.

As the days became weeks, I felt a sort of despair. A tearing up of hope and disappointment in equal parts. I resented this pathetic affection I was harboring after a kiss through the air - such a minor offer of attention - and resisted my concrete desire to go back and stand under that same window, hoping to see her again.

Until one morning I surrendered and walked to the crescent before my eyes had adjusted to the light or my mind had adjusted to the day beyond dreams and darkness. I decided to wear the same clothes as the ones I had worn all of those months ago. Maybe if I walked by in the same clothes and in the same manner, maybe if I averted my eyes, she would appear again, or the day would transform into that day, again, with another chance to, this time, pucker my lips in a kiss back, accept the offering and show bravery. This time, though, I was the one to fall to the floor, not a fruit stone.

I must have caught my foot on a dislodged cobble, or a mulched piece of earth, slippery in its waterlogging, and lay with my face pressed against that very same drain I had looked to at my feet, the last time I was here. A familiar sense of unshakeable disappointment rattled in my throat. I lay there for as long as it took for the traffic lights on the other side of the garden to beep three times, then propped myself up using the drain nooks for leverage, only to notice under my right palm, a warmth unexpected of cast metal on a cold day. Not too large, and softer, smoother than usual metal, was a piece of paper, rolled around a spoke of the drain, no wider or longer than a domino. I pulled the edge and up it coiled, away from the ground and into my hand.

I stood, gravel on my face and knees with this scroll of paper unfurled in my palm. Though the outside of it was smooth - dirty yes, but soft - the underside was stuck together with a sort of orange-tinged adhesive. I worried that by unrolling the coil of paper I would damage it or rip it into pieces, but I didn’t, and saw that, in thin green ink, fine enough to be almost transparent, were the numbers

10 15 25

I rolled the paper tightly around a pen I had in my pocket, and began to brush myself off, bending to reach my knees, tapping at my chest and rubbing over my shoulders, until I felt a sharp tap on the very top of my head. Quick, pointed and bold. I immediately looked up to the window I had been imagining, dreaming and watching for weeks, and saw one long red plait slip as quick as a lizard, away from my view.

---

I had surrendered my temptation that morning partly out of the sort of curiosity that’s bred from an open afternoon on a Saturday in early spring. I knew that, if I were to go and visit the crescent, I would need to return home quickly, to ensure I had enough time to lay out towels, toiletries and bedding for a visiting friends arrival that evening. A slight, slow-moving accountant I’d grown fond of through loneliness rather than any inherent familiarities or mutual interests, our conversation was always rotary. We rarely sharpened focus, and instead maintained a level of momentum that ensured neither of us were exposing our honest selves or opinions to, or of, one another. Because of this, I needn’t have wasted much time concerning myself with zinging anecdotes to tell her, but did so anyway, as I folded the towels in my living room.

Through a drawling of time that dragged more stubbornly than usual on those first weeks of her stay, I would take us out on a routine visit to the nearby delicatessen, taking us the long route so as to avoid the crescent and my receding sanity. Surrounded by durum wheat in a festival of shapes and twists, we would choose three of the most arrogantly red tomatoes and an ominous mass of cheese in its own murky pool. The queue this one particular day was long, and my friend was entertaining herself by acquainting the sliced ham vendor with a stilted Italian accent she wore like a carnival queen tiara at a local fete; with a mislead level of confidence and pride. I was rummaging for my purse, knee up with my bag balanced against my thigh for a while before she came over to help me. She took my bag, which allowed me to properly find my purse, and pay. We walked by those behind us in the queue as she apologized to them, each, and they did nothing to respond or reassure us in return.

Outside in the street, I put myself back together, rearranging my scarf, tucking my card back into its pouch and arranged my various talismans for daily errands into their rightful places, only to notice that the pen I had rolled that piece of paper around, wasn’t in my coat pocket anymore. Then, just as I began to redden, my friend questioned, assertively -

Oh Joy, why’s your name written numerically on this? Don’t tell me it’s a password? It’s not is it? The letter to number cipher is the most unsafe format. I’ve told you about this time and time again.

I asked her what a numerical name was, and she reeled in pleasure;

If A is 1, then B is 2, and C is 3 and D is 4 and E is 5, F is 6, G is 7, H is 8, I is 9 and so you see, that means that J is 10, then it keeps going, so K, L, M is 14 so, Joy, are you following? O is 15, and then -

I took the piece of paper from her hands and raised it to my mouth, letting my tongue brush, slowly, against the numbers.

Peach juice.

I gave my house keys to her and walked away, over the crossing and along the street until I came to the lip of the crescent, where the white houses throbbed in the sun. I was quick this time, as fast as a set of hungry teeth, and I walked right up to the door. With my reflection warped in the numbered brass buttons by the bell, I counted out my name, made sure of it, sounded each letter under my breath.

If J is 10, then O is 15, and Y is 25

I pressed the numbers firmly and watched my finger ease into the metal grooves.

1 0 1 5 2 5

The door clicked, and jolted only slightly, revealing a sliver of light and a tiled wall. I pushed a little, and looked inside. Surrounded by dark shadows and reflections from glass frames, sat a bowl of mottled peaches, soft.

Rolling down the staircase, hollow over the hallway, a voice called out, blazing;

Yes?

Images: Still life paintings by Adriaen Coorte (1683-1707)