Three skins already lay splayed on the floor. There had been a flash of guilt after the first, but as Peter meticulously peeled the fourth banana, taking care to tear along the lines, that feeling had become foreign. Unzipped, he mashed the sweet flesh into his mouth and dropped the peel to the mottled grey linoleum tiles. Of course he knew that eating the bananas was not a good idea. He knew it would piss her off. Hell, he was counting on it. If he could’ve, he would’ve rammed the tapered tip of the fruit right through her heart as he screamed, “How does it feel, huh?” Needless to say, he was not in a good place.
He had been sitting in the kitchen at the green melamine table, staring at his phone for 2 hours and still nothing. Not a peep. Just the low hum of the rusty refrigerator. At some point, darkness had slithered into the room and it now watched his mindless mastication. In the void, vague shapes of cabinets and fittings fought for scraps of blue light being emitted by the microwave’s digital clock. It flicked to form 20:13. He didn’t notice. His mind wasn’t there; it was with her. In the 2 hours he had been sitting there, she had died a hundred deaths, screwed a thousand men and told a million lies. The arguments he had played out in his head as a result of her indiscretions all terminated in an out-loud, “Fuck you!” that echoed down the empty passage, past the lounge and died in the bedroom of the small apartment. He played with the thought that this was the true cause of Tourette Syndrome: a mental river of made-up arguments that gushes into an enraged ocean of expletives. The thought made him chuckle briefly before he considered that it could very well be true. Then he just got paranoid. Is that why she hadn’t called? Because he’s got Tourette’s? Is that why she was busy fucking her boss and her personal trainer and the parking attendant and the guy that smiled at her at the coffee shop and the homeless guy outside her apartment and the doorman and her gay neighbour and her step-brother and the pizza delivery boy and the lead singer of that band she likes and the drummer and the guy who she’s ‘just friends’ with and the fucking Dalai Lama…slut, bitch, how could you, I love you and I’ve got Tourettes - ”Fuck you!”
His chewing had slowed with her whoring until he just stared at the phone, mouth agape and jammed full with pulverized cock-fruit. Still nothing. The chewing resumed and he eventually swallowed.
He awoke at 3.16 the following morning. He was curled up on the kitchen floor, ensconced in a half-foot layer of bruised banana peels. They covered every inch of the linoleum surface. He lifted his head and squinted around the room, confused - but also rather impressed - by the sheer volume. How had it reached this point? Where had all these bananas come from? Why do chimps in captivity throw pooh? These and two other inconsequential thoughts ran arm-in-arm through his mind, like the Von Trapps singing Edelweiss. Unsticking himself and climbing from the yellow mould, he was taken by the accuracy of the fetal impression left behind in the pulp. The image unlocked a fleeting fantasy of an avant-garde exhibition in an upmarket New York gallery, opening to fawning critical acclaim, followed by inevitable sex with skeletal models. Unfortunately, the piercing of his sci-fi ringtone vapourised the vision and beamed him back to reality. It was coming from somewhere beneath him, trapped within the strata of decaying fruit skins. Maybe it was her. He began a frantic subcutaneous search for the phone, spading up handfuls of banana muck and tossing them over his shoulder. It must be her. He had to find the blasted Nokia. He scooped up a good mash of mush and as he flung it, the laser tone whizzed past his ear. In a panicked spin he crawled through the mess, snatched up the phone and pushed green.
“Hello!”
“Mr Bunton?”
“Yes?”
“Peter Bunton?”
“Yes!”
“Peter Bunton of 6a, Cromwell Court, 3rd Ave ?”
“Yes! Who is this? Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Maggie Fredericks – from the bank?” she asked.
“What bank?”
“Your bank. People’s Federal?” she asked again.
Why was this woman asking so many questions? Was she unsure of who she was and for whom she worked? Peter decided to help her.
“Yes. You are Maggie Fredericks from People’s Federal,” he said, carefully enunciating each word.
“Mother’s maiden name?”
“Huh?”
“Your mother’s maiden name, Mr Bunton. For security?”
“Oh right…um…Dermot. What - ”
“Thank you. Are you aware that your credit card has been used 13 times this evening? The first purchase for 48.95 at 8.54 p.m. and the last, 20 minutes ago at 3.04 a.m. for an amount of R2316 and 43 cents?”
Peter turned towards the kitchen counter hopefully. His wallet lay there, staring at him with saucer eyes. He went cold. And took a hard swallow.
“Yes,” he said with a measure of uncertainty, the true meaning of the wallet’s presence slowly dawning on him. “I am. Thank you.”
“Have a good day.” She hung up, before he could reply.
Peter was left listening to the dead tone. It seemed to echo in the silence and his eyes drifted around the room in a slow-motion search for clues or triggers or better yet, actual answers. Apart from the mattress-thick layer of compacted peels that covered the floor from counter to counter and wall to wall, nothing appeared out of the ordinary in the kitchen. The scanning of the scene however, was superfluous and he knew it. Even if there had been a 107cm flatscreen above the oven, playing back time-lapse footage of the events from his POV, it would merely have been dressing up the answer in that evening’s attire. The fact is; he was intimately familiar with the bare truth; a naked and deranged ape with a bent for the sweet fruit.
He sat there for a while, confronting this towering truth. It heaved breath in and out of its lungs and so did he, like old foes that find each other in a cave after a lifetime of hiding and hunting and hoping. It’s a moment he’d imagined many times.
As dawn seeped into the room through the dusty panes above the sink, it drained what little denial had managed to pool in the pockets of darkness and exposed the pathos of his predicament. The phone began to ring again. Still clutching the Nokia in his hand, he looked down at it. It was her. He watched it flash three times before placing it carefully next to him on the slimy surface of spoiled skins. Then, he crawled over to the deep fetal impression he had awoken in and slid back into the warm hole. As he lay curled up in the decaying crater, the phone continued to call out to him. He clamped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, as tight as they would go. “There is nothing you can do for me now, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Nothing.”
