The Tropical Market was the only storefront on a street of windowless warehouses, like a pineapple wedged into a brick wall. For sun-starved New Englanders, wandering around its colorful aisles in winter provided a brief equatorial respite from snow and ice outside. By mid January the owners could have charged admission merely to cross their creaky wooden floorboards, as just walking through the door felt like entering C. S. Lewis' wardrobe, except with a lush paradise on the other side rather than frozen, windswept Narnia.
Customers came from far and wide to buy pillow-cases of rice and beans by the bucketful, assuming they could fight their way through the enchanted cilantro rainforest growing from the ceiling. I would go there searching for plantains, but they were usually sold out so I'd leave with a consolation mangosteen, which would slowly rot in my fruit bowl because I didn't know what to do with the weird looking thing. Should have played it safe and bought a stupid papaya instead. At least I knew how to eat one of those.
There was a sensuous yet motherly woman behind the counter, who might have been a Caribbean Queen in another life; or perhaps a voodoo priestess, watching me shuffle like a zombie from empty plantain crate to overflowing box of mangosteens. 'And what are you planning to do with that?' she would ask, narrowing her eyes, when I approached with my mangosteen. 'It's not ripe, you know.' I was, as she suspected, completely clueless on both counts but rang up my purchase anyway. We had an understanding, after all: I was supporting local business and she indulged my West Indian island fantasy. It was a win-win.
But the Tropical Market is gone now, of course, along with everything else useful and unique around here. The trade winds have ceased to blow and the tallyman has left the building. I guess being my mangosteen supplier did not pay the rent. It's been replaced amid the windowless warehouses by an unpopular pizza joint, like an oil slick seeping across a brick wall. But I've seen the Caribbean Queen again since then. She was selling steaming plates of homemade mofongo at a neighborhood street carnival, a soft golden glow on the hard grey pavement. So that's where all those plantains went, I thought, adding my name to the mailing list for her meal subscription service, which has kept me sitting comfortably beneath an imaginary palm tree whatever the weather.
Comments