It was a cold Friday evening. I braced against the biting Atlantic winds whipping up in the streets of the city. Work had been grim and it wasn't until past 7.30 that I had manged to escape and I was looking forward to a night in, far away from the realities of the world. Ten minutes from home, freezing cold, Sarah phoned me. She asked me to buy her a watermelon. Why? I asked. I fancy some melon tonight, she said. So, having walked off my route for another ten minutes or so I found a deli selling melon. The bags in the shop were not strong enough to cope with the weight of the thing so I was forced to carry it by hand, exposing my skin to the cold, while drawing looks from those I passed.
Eventually I made, it like an Iceman of the Arctic with my fingers rigid and my cheeks a rare shade of blue, and slumped into the warmth of the elevator, all the way to the 23rd floor. As I stepped through the door I noticed Sarah putting on her coat, and grabbing her car keys. I was perturbed to see this, having just tramped through the streets of the city with her melon, and asked her where she was going. She said a man had been in a car accident and had terrible spine injuries, so a specialist was needed. I stood there, not sure what to do, and before I could say a word she had kissed me on the check and left.
I walked into the kitchen and put the melon on the chopping board. I stared at it. This green giant of tough skin and fleshy insides, the psychedelic pattern scrawled around its protective hide, rocking gently under its own mass. I opened the fridge and realised it wouldn’t fit. I took a knife and started to cut it down into six slices. Each one a wide arc of the melon, dipping from the tip at the edge into the slope of red fruit, before rising to the corresponding tip on the other side. After I had placed five of them in the fridge, each one wrapped tightly in clingfilm, I decided I was owed a piece of melon, for my good, unprompted work. I started to munch my way through the melon, savouring its moist, juicy taste, enjoying the sensation of the juices rolling down my chin. I opened a bottle of wine that Sarah had got out, but never got around to opening, so took a the bottle-opener from the draw – one of those with two arms by the side that act as levers to remove the cork - and having opened it replaced the cork and the bottle-opener on the sideboard. I drank two glasses in 10 minutes and started on a third, numbing the boredom of the week with alcohol.
Soon I had finished the melon, right down to the very edge of its skin and with so much liquid in my body suddenly realised I needed the bathroom. Afterwards, while washing my hands, I noticed my red stained lips in the mirror staring back at me. It was funny to note the similarity they now bore to the melon, dipping and rising in the same way, marked with the vibrant red of the melon’s interior. I smiled broadly, goofing around, laughing at the sight of myself. A thought entered my head and I went to the kitchen where the melon skin was still sitting on the sideboard. I grabbed it and returned to the bathroom, holding it up against my lips, creating the illusion of a huge, clownish grin. The combination of alcohol, the boredom of being alone on a Friday night, and the frustration of another bad week at work seemed to combine to draw out a strange, reckless creativity in me.
I laughed at the sight of myself and enjoyed the stupidity of it all. I went back to the kitchen and placed the melon on the sideboard, next to the bottle opener. It was then that the second idea hit me. With the bottle opener positioned below the melon skin, with its “arms” in the upright position from when I had opened the wine, there was distinct resemblance to a parachutist, with the melon as the parachute. It wasn’t hard to imagine the ropes connecting it all together and then, in my strange state, I decided I would go further than just imagining it and actually make it; perhaps Sarah would have thought it cute, quirky, charming. I don’t know. I pierced a hole at either end of the melon with a skewer and threaded a small piece of string through at either end before tying it around the bottle-opener. It took no more than two minutes, but all the time I was seized by a manic desire to complete the task. Once done I held the tips of the melon, letting the bottle opener fall down and its weight tighten the strings, and admired the likeness I had created. I remember thinking ‘I bet no one in the history of New York has ever done this before’.
As soon as this thought had filtered through my slightly drunk mind I suddenly felt very conscious of the oddness of what I was doing. A 27-year-old man making contraptions from food and utensils while Sarah was off trying to save a man's life. I placed the melon and the parachutist down on the side board and looked at my watch. By now it was getting on for 10 and I remembered the highlights of the game would be on now so went to the living room and forgot about the melon. Not long after settling down on the sofa I started drifting in and out of sleep and so, before it was too late, I hauled myself to bed. Lying in the darkness, waiting for sleep to overtake me, a text from Sarah came through saying she’d be back in the morning, about 7.30, and was staying at the hospital overnight. At the end she just put, “I lost him”.
The next morning, with a cold, clear light pouring in through the windows, I woke up at 7.04. I lay in bed for a few minutes, listening to the city’s gentle hum below before I was roused from my drowsy state by the shrill tone of my phone ringing. I looked at the screen and saw it was a call from my brother, Nathan. He spoke quickly, Can you look after Dylan for the morning? I have to go back to work for an hour or so. I sighed, exasperated. What else could I say? Of course he can stay, when will he be over? Well, he said sheepishly, I'm outside now in the car. I gave a wry grin and told him I’d buzz him in. I put on my dressing gown and went to the lobby, watching the elevator climb until it reached the 23rd floor and out stepped my nephew, his blonde hair full of curls, his backpack slung haphazardly across one shoulder. Nathan was nowhere to be seen. Typical.
How are you Dylan? I asked, through sleep and a minor hangover. Good thanks Uncle Dan he responded. We went through the door to the apartment and, as we headed towards the kitchen, the phone rang again. I told Dylan to go and get himself a drink and a biscuit and headed to the phone, vibrating its way across the bedside table. Hi Sarah. Hi Dan. How are you? Not good, was a tough one last night, really bad accident. I'm sorry to hear that, I replied. She spoke again: Look I’m just around the corner, do we need anything, milk, coffee, tea? I thought about telling her to get something for Dylan, a magazine, or some juice, but she’d only have got annoyed and why do that to her over the phone after the night she’d had? I told her no, we didn't need anything. She said she’d be there in two minutes and I hung up. I stood there, inert, staring at nothing, as if I was trying to recall something that had to be done, or something I had forgotten. I heard Dylan laughing, which brought me around to the world again, and then I heard a short, sharp scraping noise. I stood there for five seconds more – suddenly highly conscious of being alive – and felt the tingle of a cold, autumnal air rushing around my legs. I put the thoughts together and realised what was happening. I ran, but was too late.
I skidded into the kitchen just in time to see Dylan completing a strong, confident throwing action that sent the parachute-bottle opener sailing into the air, clear of the balcony’s edge and into the empty sky. I scrambled to the edge and peered down. Dylan didn’t even come to look but wandered off, bouncing in to one of the walls as he went. I watched the object fall, hurtling to its terminal velocity. Across my mind flashed something I had heard about penny's dropped from the Eiffel Tower having the force to kill someone. I felt sick. I lost sight of the melon's green canopy against the colours of the street and then there was silence, punctuated by the light eddy swirling around the balcony. I stood and listened. For two minutes nothing happened. Perhaps it had just hit the pavement. Perhaps it was okay. Then the sirens started. Drawing louder towards the street below, until there they were, directly beneath, parked up on the pavement, a crowd clearly visible.
Dylan was in the living room watching cartoons. I went to the bathroom and threw water over my face, trying to calm down Then I went to the bedroom and picked up my phone and called Sarah to tell her what had happened, to ask if she perhaps could tell me what was happening down there. It rang through and went to her voicemail. I felt so sick. I phoned again. Nothing. I could feel the bile rising in my throat. I rang again, and this time a man answered. Hello? I said, Is Sarah there? The man replied. Can I ask who you are sir? I’m Sarah's fiancee. Somehow I knew what he was going to say next, it was the way he had used the word sir. He spoke: Sir, this is Officer Brown of the NYPD, I’ve got some bad news.
I threw up all over the bed
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It turned out the tip of the corkscrew had pierced directly through her skull. Four people needed therapy after what they witnessed. And that’s what happened. Each stupid, individual action exactly as it occurred: each pointless when considered on its own but, when placed in the sequence I have just relayed to you, crucial to the outcome of the story
‘Mr Smith, thank you. No further questions your honour.'
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