The Fruit Seller
Dear Diary:
There was a fruit seller at Broadway and 111th Street who knew me by sight.
We had roots in neighboring countries but we spoke the same language. Feelings of kinship would often overwhelm me when I passed his stand and prompt me to splurge.
One day, I stopped and bought three mangoes, a box of strawberries and eight apples. He gave me two bananas free. That was the bond we shared.
Another customer was appalled to witness such blatant favoritism. She decided to skip the blueberries she was considering and hastily threw the fruit seller a few coins for a bag of oranges.
He shrugged and lit a beedi.
I noticed water splashing out of a weathered bucket that was concealed by a plastic sheet attached to the stand. I bent over and saw a hilsa fish in the bucket struggling to swim.
The hilsa is the king of fish in our part of the world. I stared at the dethroned king, exiled thousands of miles from home and gasping in a rusty pail. I soaked in its whiff.
The fruit seller smoked his beedi and occasionally sang a few lines in a croaky voice. The music wasn’t melodious but it created an atmosphere.
Snow began to fall. The hilsa sank to the bottom of the bucket and lay still.
The fruit seller didn’t talk.
I mourned silently.
— Swaroopa Lahiri
Tall Order
Dear Diary:
An exchange overheard on the Upper West Side:
“I want a dog that doesn’t know it’s cute,” one woman said to another.
— Sara Latta
Steel Drum Sound
Dear Diary:
It happened two days before Christmas about 15 years ago.
I had just been shopping at Bloomingdale’s for a couple of presents that I needed to complete my shopping list.
While I waited for an N train to take me back to the East Village, I heard the sound of a beautiful Caribbean melody being played on steel drums.
Moving toward the music to get a closer look at who was playing, I saw a woman in a fur coat who was carrying several Bloomingdale’s shopping bags walk toward the steel drum player too.
The woman put down her bags and, with a big smile on her face, she started to dance.
She continued dancing for about 30 seconds until a train came into the station. Then she pulled a bill from her purse, dropped it in the musician’s tip box, said thank you, picked up her bags and boarded the train.
The smile was still on her face.
— Fabian Molina
The Last Car
Dear Diary:
As a middle school student in the 1970s, I rode the subway from Borough Hall in Brooklyn to East 86th Street in Manhattan every Saturday for my guitar lesson.
On the way I would read all the ads, and I noticed that Reynolds Wrap had a series of cute ones with cartoons featuring animals.
I wanted one to hang in my room, so on my way home one Saturday I deliberately got on the last car of the train, which often had very few riders.
Sure enough, by the time the train reached Fulton Street, the car was empty. I got up, removed the cardboard poster rolled it up and sat back down.
At the next stop a large teenage boy carrying a big wooden stick got on the car. He sat right next to me and asked me if I knew what time it was.
He then ordered me to give him my watch and any money I had. Regretfully, I did. He also said I had to get off at the next station, which by then, coincidentally, was my stop.
As I walked home shaken, there was one consolation: I still had the poster.
— Robert Mardiney
Dr Pepper
Dear Diary:
I was in Manhattan for the board meeting of a national women’s organization. There were 18 of us from around the country at a long table in one of the city’s finest restaurants, our reservation made months in advance.
I was sitting next to a colleague from Texas who, because she often had trouble finding her favorite soda on the East Coast, always packed a case of Dr Pepper in her carry-on luggage. She was immune to our kidding.
As the tuxedoed server leaned in slightly to take her drink order, she asked for a glass of ice, just ice.
He brought her a heavy crystal glass without comment. She pulled a can of Dr Pepper from her bag, opened it, filled the glass and then left the half-full can on the table.
Much to our chagrin, the server stopped whenever he passed to lift the can and top her glass off with a flourish. When the can was empty, he took it way.
Soon, he returned, carefully placed a new can by her plate, popped the top, filled the glass and set the can atop the starched tablecloth.
“You have Dr Pepper here?” I asked, astonished.
“I ran out to the corner bodega,” he said.
— Beth Shortt
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