A man...
no no, wait, that's too cliché… they'd be expecting it.
Uhhh... it's about a
woman. She's carrying a bag of oranges...
no, make that a single orange... we're supposedly trying to eradicate plastic bag usage here.
Anyway, the orange sores silently from her delicate fingers and traces the edge of the building above. She watches on, open palm ready to catch the orange as gravity takes force.
The orange lands with a graceful thud and she casually rolls it towards her fingers. As she rocks the wrinkled surface across her palm, she glances at a sea of people before her. Their faces are stern and seemingly riddled with purpose, yet she cannot help but think that they have no goal or purpose within the busy mall. The orange rolls dangerously close to the edge of an index finger.
She grabs at it in mid-plummet. A hand reaches for her heart, willing for the shock to pass. It thumps wholeheartedly in reply. She reclines on the bench and checks her watch again. Five forty-five in the afternoon and another orange is yet to grace the mall with its presence.
Hours pass as her thumb penetrates the orange's surface. A small gasp escapes her lips in surprise and mock horror. Behind her, a wave of happy chatter mixes with the crash of
Jay Jay’s closing door. The mall becomes diluted as darkness slowly deters prospective shoppers.
She begins to ponder her life, existence and whether or not she forgot to turn the iron off before she left. A sarcastic crease to the corner of her mouth dismisses such inanities as she remembers an early morning SMS message:
Happy birthday to you!! :) Hope the office treated you accordingly :) Meet up after work? We've got to talk. Remember to bring an orange... I’ll bring one too. ;)
She got the joke... a nice reference to their introduction outside the
Juice Station. He spilt orange juice on her new work shirt...
The bastard didn’t even foot the bill for the drycleaner she reflects petulantly.
She rises and storms down the mall trying to focus on the love. Yet, public displays of affection spawn from teenage couples only digs at her hurt. She sets her sights on an alluring garbage bin.
The bin swallows the orange peels that fall from her juice-stained fingers. Like so many bad memories, the pulp clings between her nails in irritation. Orange flesh follows the peelings into the bin with a conclusive thud. Apathetic, she continues towards Adelaide St, her eyes devoid of purpose.
A man dressed in a new white work shirt naively waits outside a deserted
Juice Station, only metres away from the woman’s deserted bench. He edgily rolls an orange velvet ring box in his palm as he checks his watch again. Darkness swallows the city skyline and the man wonders if his girlfriend received the second part of his morning SMS:
Meet outside the Juice Station… have *important* question to ask you :)
