"So how was your Thanksgiving?"
This after three days. Three whole days of no Simon. Which is not, of course, like three whole days without the sun rising, or the birds chirping, or any of that stuff that doesn't happen in a song by the Ronettes. But still.
"It was, you know, Thanksgiving," I told him. "White meat. Brown gravy. Orange yams."
"Sounds like a breakfast cereal."
"Doesn't it though?"
He was giving me this goofy little grin, one which I simultaneously felt like knocking off his face, and answering with an equally goofy grin of my own. And the worst of it was, I could tell he knew how conflicted I felt, that this was in fact the reason he was smiling in the first place.
"And what about you? How was your 'place'?" He started to answer, but I cut him off. "No. Wait. Let me guess. Black. Black. And ... I don't know ... Black?"
"Actually, it was green."
I'd wanted to stay angry. Now I was curious instead.
"Green?"
"Green." As I watched, the grin finally vanished, replaced by a pensive look. "So how do you tell when something's a memory?"
I sniffed at that, still wary. "What do you mean?"
"There's something floating inside your head. A beach at sunset. Somebody's face. Or maybe it's not a picture at all, an image, but a little snatch of music, or the way breakfast smells." He stared at me, his dark eyes suddenly haunted. "How do you know if you're remembering something that once was, or imagining something that could be? How do you know the difference?"
I wanted my mouth to open, to have some sort of pithy, intelligent and entirely lucid answer come spilling out. Instead I just sat there, as silent as the couch tucked beneath me. How do you know the difference?
"I'm not sure," I heard myself say. "Somehow your brain, or your mind, or whatever just knows which is which. It's automatic, instinctive. Like breathing." I paused, feeling the air move in and out of my lungs. "Only I guess it's not really that simple. They say people are always inventing memories, remembering things that never really happened, or remembering them wrong."
I watched as he mulled that over, black hair, dark eyes, furrowed brow.
"The reason I ask, I think I might finally have one. A memory, that is."
It was such an odd thing to hear someone say. Then again, he wasn't someone. Not really. "A memory? Of what?"
"An apple."
"An apple," I echoed back.
"It's there, just kind of floating right in front of me. This intense, vivid green. I can see the light reflecting off its skin, it's so glossy, so alive, and I can feel what it would be like to bite into it, the sound it would make, the feeling of my jaws clamping down, and then that first taste hitting my mouth, that incredible mix of tart and sweet."
By now I could see it. Taste it. Real or imagined, his or mine.
I stared down at the carpet, willing the image away. "And that's it? Just this apple floating there? Nothing changes, nothing happens?"
He shook his head once.
We both sat there a while - spat forgotten, allies now - determined to confront this small, green mystery.
"So what do you think it means?" he asked.
"It's your memory."
"And your imagination."
I felt something then. A power. A recklessness. Before I had a chance to think, the words were spilling out.
"Alright. Sure. Whatever. A green apple. It's Newton getting hit on the head. Divine inspiration, or seeing whatever's right in front of you. It's Eve tempting Adam, though I guess that's always a red apple, isn't it, because red is sex and sex is sin. It's one of those paintings by Magritte, the man with the black bowler, only you can't see his face because there's a giant green apple parked smack in the way. It's sitting around listening to the White Album freshman year, smoking hash in Tom and Brad's room, and hearing Lennon sing about being So Tired, and staring at the green apple logo in the middle of the black vinyl disc. And then suddenly twenty or thirty years have gone by and there are no more black discs, or people getting stoned, because now we're all staring at the screens on our iPads, with the little logo on the back that - surprise surprise - is supposed to a green apple too. And maybe that's what this is telling you, or me, or us, is that you're nothing more a painting in a museum, or a song on a record album, or a file on somebody's Mac. A figment. A fiction. Not real."
I stopped.
Caught my breath.
I was staring at an empty chair. My words had shattered the spell. Whoever, whatever, had been sitting there was gone. Banished. For three hours, three days, the rest of my life.
After a time, I left the couch, seeking a glass of water, not because I was thirsty, but because I needed to do something, anything, besides just sitting there, looking at nothing at all. I walked into the kitchen. Filled a glass under the tap. And as I drank, I let my eyes wander idly along the countertop. Perched on the microwave was the porcelain bowl where I usually kept stray fruit, destined for the cereal bowl, or inclusion in a smoothie. When I'd woken a few hours earlier, the bowl had been empty. Or at least that's what my memory kept insisting. And now, somehow, a single piece of fruit lay there, taunting me, tempting me.
It was not an orange.
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