A golden teardrop in the making. The skin stretched pale and translucent, leaving the flesh to its own devices in an increasingly dangerous season. The fruit will not travel far. When it’s picked prematurely off the branch and left to ripe in the dark fridge of the airplane, it will taste the last thing it saw in its transient childhood — the foam net that stopped it from living. When sold at fifty dollars a pound here, it won’t taste the same as when sold at five back home. One thing about fruit is that it has to be experienced generously. Profusely. A paint run for the tongue to gallop in and reemerge delirious, consumed with color. Fingertips smelling of summer, pulp stuck under fingernails, gap-toothed grin. Stinginess ruins appetite. And pipa, the big Tang Dynasty woman, is not for the fainthearted.