(Was this ever published?)
Lemon by Lawrence Krauser (McSweeney’s Books, 2001)
Wendell writes memorandums for the payroll department of Fuller Communications Company, Inc., Fuller referring to Buckminster Fuller of Dymaxion fame, videos of whose lectures play endlessly in the company’s lobby.
The lemon sits on the floor of the tiny foyer inside the outer door of his building. Wendell “pockets it. Lest the less-nimble injure themselves.” And with that, their whirlwind relationship commences.
“A lemon is a lemon is a lemon,” he tells himself. “It will enhance flavor in a universally prized manner.” And, yet, his lemon is somehow more. “Your pedicel, that uppermost tip of a nipple that springs flowers where you touch the sky, architects have empoemed this in the lantern and cupola of their glorious domes.”
“Eye to eye in the morning sun,” Wendell and lemon “let navels nuzzle,” their coming-together serendipitous. “You understand that heaven and earth came into being for our sakes, by definition: simply because we exist.”
But can a bond between man and fruit, no matter how strongly wrought, survive the disapproval of those who would squeeze its juice for their tea, who would bisect its wedge for the rim of a highball?
And so life becomes complicated. “You crave a languid Thursday afternoon holed up in some turnpike motel with that lemon of yours,” suggests Greg Fuller, Fuller’s president whose name has been misspelled, “Fukker,” in a payroll department memorandum. “You have to think about how the event interfaces with the rest of your existence.”
Nobody understands. The homeless and brain-damaged, society’s cast-offs, assault him on the street. “THIS MAN SLEEPS WITH TOMATOES! THIS STUPID SONOFABITCH FUCKS A TOMATO!!!!”
And so Wendell withdraws. And time passes and waves crest as they frolic in the cold ocean foam.
Lemon is sublime. It falls into place, patterns, and parts effortlessly. The lemon is the sour messenger of sweetness and the sweet bearer of tragedy in a cruel, confused world; it is caution and radiance.
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