Perfection...

fiction

If you pulled up images of strawberries on the internet this would be the gold standard. The most strawberry of strawberries to have ever strawberried.

The shape was perfection. That full rounded pyramid. The size was impressive. It was two inches tall with a full solid base. It was the deepest, most even, strawberry red she had ever seen. Already a few women at the table were talking about how they'd love to have a lipstick that color.

It was sitting point side up across a smear of hand whipped cream and a hint of a whisper of chocolate. Their host had said she had thought about a drizzle of balsamic vinegar but thought that would detract from the pure beauty of the berry.

Which was bullshit. She didn't put this plate together. There was a chef hiding out in their wine cellar who had created their entire lunch, including this beautiful plate.

"They come 6 to a package. Nestled in holding cups to ensure they stay so perfect looking. We thought about buying more but I thought in this case savoring a single berry would be better. Less is more afterall."

Also bullshit. She knew how much a package of 6 berries cost, everyone at this table knew how much they cost or their hostess would not be serving them, the expense was part of the show. But she also knew that they could not have afforded anymore than one package. And even one package was probably all the extravagance they would be enjoying for a long long time.

Everyone sat with their perfect berry in front of them. Just looking at it. They say you eat with your eyes first, if that was true everyone at that table had gorged themselves on strawberries.

"Go ahead, dig in." Their hostess picked up her dessert fork and the very delicate knife next to it and sliced a small amount off the berry. Everyone followed suit.

It was like slicing through wood pulp. The inside of the berry was almost white. And it was thick. She swore she could hear the crunching when her friends bit into the flesh of the berry.

"Do you remember what strawberries used to be like?" Her hostess started again. And oh yes, she did. "So small and misshapen." Well that wasn't what she was thinking at all.

"I can remember my grandparents had actual strawberry plants." The elderly woman across the table from her said. "I can remember going out to pick berries and finding one that looked like this one." She caught the eye of her hostess and corrected herself, "Well not exactly like this one, it was much smaller, but it was red and beautiful and I picked it up and a worm had already gotten to it. Only one side was perfect. The other had a giant hole."

Everyone made murmurs of agreement. How terrible. How awful it was when things like worms could eat your food. Or birds. Or sometimes the berries weren't red all over. They would have a little patch of white. Or maybe the tip was still a little green. The seeds on the outside were almost random in their placement sometimes a thick cluster in one space, where clearly the berry hadn't grown as lush. Weren't they so lucky now to have such perfection. And remember how the ones they bought at the farm stands would seem to rot on the way home because they were so delicate? You had to eat them all within hours of buying them or they would mold. What a waste of resources. They were so lucky now that everything was shelf stable for months and months.

She sliced her berry and put the crunchy, woody, flavorless slice in her mouth and thought about the small delicate berries of her youth. The ones that seemed to dissolve on your tongue as you ate them. Her mother called them little sugar bombs. It had been so long she sometimes thought she had made them up. That they had never existed at all. That all of her life fruit had been what was created by the massive 3D printers at the food co-ops. Injected with vitamins and nutrients so they were perfectly healthy food substances. Molded and modeled after real fruit. The kind that could not grow anymore. Not with the soil contamination.

Her children would never know what a real strawberry tasted like.

She pushed her plate away.

"You haven't finished."

"I couldn't possibly. You were so generous with the entire meal that I am stuffed. I couldn't eat another bite."

"Oh, I understand. Not everyone is used to having as much as we do."

She smiled at her hostess. Condescending bitch.

"But what did you think of the berry?"

"It was perfect." And she thought to herself, what a shame.