(14) Elizabeth Weissberg: Seven Limes
The entire pie is balanced in the crook of my right arm. I’m using my left hand and some Hail-Mary muscle tension in my legs to keep climbing up my high-rise’s fire escape. Even ground-level, I always believe a pie in-transit will fall and splatter before I eat it.
Kara is behind me. She made the pie and is shouting up to me how the recipe is simple — condensed milk and the juice from seven limes, mostly. I don’t know whether Kara is a good cook. We’ve known each other maybe a week.
That’s probably why she’s slung a bag over her shoulder with silverware and two ceramic plates, instead of us just eating slices off paper towels while standing in my kitchen. With a new person, it’s so easy to do a little bit of work.
After I watch Kara put both feet on the roof and we’re sitting comfortably away from the edge, she cuts a piece for me. She lifts it from the tin and the wedge remains perfectly straight-edged, something I haven’t known was possible with a first slice.
My fork hovers towards the pie before I notice and drop my arm. She’s noticed too, and she laughs.
After I cut a piece for her, I wait to take a bite until she does, because I want us to have the same taste in our mouths at the same time. When I do, the flavor is the way merengue diner-pie looks, before you bite into it and the ornamental topping tastes like an industrial refrigerator and stale air.
The sky is blue. Kara’s hair is backlit and the frizz is silver in the sun. I do not know what will become of us, but at this moment, there’s nothing more I could ask for.
Elizabeth Weissberg is a student in NYU's Literary Reportage MFA program. She writes fiction and narrative non-fiction. Currently, she is working on a memoir about travel and grief.