Having just failed to purchase a pair of shoes, I was walking to the bus when I happened upon a homeless chap sitting on a busy corner.

He had a sweet collection of bags, some cardboard bedding, some sort of receptacle for change (why do they all keep their spare change out where people can take it? It just doesn’t make sense.)  What set this particular homeless man apart though was his coffee table. A god damn coffee table. He must be the envy of all the other homeless people (do they have envy? I don’t know). I stood an stared. It wasn’t an Ikea jobby either. Beech, if I had to guess (although I would resent being forced to guess). Simple but elegant rail-and-post construction, turned legs, a light sheen, nothing ostentatious. The traffic light at which I was standing went Bip bip bip bip bip bip (and so on). It was time to go; I turned for one last glimpse of the coffee table and … what? Could it be? On the corner of the coffee table, previously obscured: an apple.

A granny fucking smith apple.

So many questions. Why granny smith? Why not a red delicious or a pink lady? Actually, the gala has always struck me the Homeless Man’s Apple. And why has he not eaten it yet? Isn’t he hungry, is that, like, a thing? Maybe he’s waiting for more apples and he’s going to make a pie. He’ll need a fruit bowl so they don’t all roll away. That would suck. And flour too. Actually he’s going to need quite a lot of pie-making paraphernalia. Wow, you never really think about how much equipment goes into a single pie. I guess that’s why you don’t see many homeless people making pies.

I walked over to his table and took a bite of the apple. Take that, jerk.