I stood at the kitchen counter eating a whole grapefruit. Initially I had thought it to be rotten; it had been sitting in the catacombs of my fridge for the last two and a half weeks, and part of the yellow skin had turned brown. But it was only a speckled, birthmark-like brown, not a furry or malevolent brown, and so just as I was about to toss it into the trash I reconsidered.
"Here, I'll just open it and settle this once and for all," I told myself. Miles Davis and John Coltrane played their trumpet and saxophone, respectively, in the background. I took my sharpest knife and sliced it vertically, and saw a flawless thicket of golden pulp. Then I cut it sideways and got the same result, and finally carved it one more way, to make six perfect juicy wedges. Don't judge a book by its cover, friends: the grapefruit was still good.
I took my box of Domino sugar and poured it all over the grapefruit, then began the feast. I had a sore throat and could not believe how good the grapefruit's copious, tart discharge felt when it flooded my esophagus. With each piece, before plunging it into my gigantic mouth I dipped it into my plateful of sugar particles that had missed the first time. By the time I finished the entire fruit I was crying tears of intense, bitter joy. O Grapefruit! There was stickiness on most of the exposed parts of my body. Juice ran down from my forearms to the insides of my elbows, from my mouth down my neck, onto the floor.
I paused to catch my breath, wishing I had another. I recalled a fruit stand three blocks away. This would be a night to remember.
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