Apricot Jam

As she came around the corner she saw immediately that he was there, as she feared, sitting on his low stool beside the barrow, smoking a cigarette. Too late, he’d seen her, so she had no choice but to keep walking.

He jumped up, grinding the cigarette under his heel, and picked up a paper bag. ‘Merhaba abla, one kilo, two kilo?’ He looked hopefully out from under his cap, his hair sticking out on both sides. ‘Yeni kayısı, cok guzel.’ And he kissed his fingers.

They did indeed look cók guzel, plump and golden in colour, the leaves still attached. What could she do? ‘Yarım kilo, lutfen’.

‘Ohhh,’ he said, hands clasped before him. ‘Bir kilo?’

‘Yok, yarım,’ she said firmly, as if half a kilo wasn’t already a lot. Every day she fell for this, feeling bad because she felt he relied on her, knowing that he charged her twice what she would spend at the market, feeling pathetic, but still buying.

He pursed his lips, his moustaches drooping. ‘Okay,’ he said sadly, disappointed in her.

She took the bag from him, paid her five lire, and went to catch the tram. Climbing up the steps to her apartment she cursed the extra 500gms of weight, added to her other shopping, and as soon as she went inside she dropped everything on the floor, hit by the stench of rotting fruit and a face full of fruit fly.

Every bowl was full, 3 days of apricots, a week of figs, as well as a large plastic bag of tomatoes from the previous week, now full of liquified rot and mould. As she picked up this bag it split and oozed all over the floor and all over her. Stepping back she slipped and fell, landing on the evidence of her mistakes.