I sat on a torn yellow seat on the train headed for my job in Wichita, Kansas. Next to me, a young woman in a blue gingham dress with a large blue bow in her hair read a pamphlet. She seemed bored with it. But she had nothing else to do. Soon, she dropped it next to me.
     “Good read?” I asked.
     “You tell me.” The young lady then bit into an apple. She scowled: “Oh, this is rotten.”
     I picked up the pamphlet. On the front was a cartoon of a man speaking with a lion and a woman reaching for a handful of apples from a tree laden with endless fruit. This is Paradise, it read. Wouldn’t you like to live here for eternity? Nothing but juicy papayas, talking animals, pure hashish, and rainbow lollipops. Only sunny days, emerald seas, and free Netflix.
     If such a place existed, of course I would love to live there. It certainly would be better than

working 70 hours a week as the damn produce manager at ShopRite. A lot of good my Ph.D. in Peruvian botany did me. Now, I spend my days explaining to perplexed people how to buy ripe avocados.
     I carelessly tossed the brochure back onto the seat, then turned to the girl. “So, where are you headed?”                                             

     “Home,” was all she said, applying rouge to her cheeks.
     “Oh?”
     “Yes.” She stuffed her rouge case into her handbag.

      Finally, the train squeaked up to my stop. “Well, nice meeting you,” I said to the woman.

     “This is where I get off, too,” she answered.
      We both stepped onto the platform. We looked to our right: three young ladies of the Lullaby League balanced on tip-toes.

      We looked to our left: A lion walked up to me on his hind legs. “Come with me,” he said, as he handed me a basket of papayas. “Let me show you where you can score some hashish behind the Applebee’s down the block.”
     The young lady adjusted the bow in her hair, then pointed to the twirling girls of the Lullaby League. “I think I’ll go with them. They look like they’re ready to party.”

Jeff Foster is a Distinguished Lecturer in English at the University of New Haven. His work has appeared in such journals as On the Run, NanoFiction, deComP, Allium: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, and Bending Genres. Among his interests are napping and taking colchicine for his gout.