A Fruit Vendor for 20 Minutes

Dear Diary:

Walking to dinner in Chelsea, I passed a large fruit stand. The owner stopped me: “Could you watch my cart? I really need to go to the bathroom.”

I’d often daydreamed about running a friendly roadside business, like a coffee cart, where I was known to locals, and perfectly positioned to serve as a police informant. “O.K.,” I said. He limped off toward a restaurant.

I now ran a fruit stand. Passers-by viewed me skeptically: in skinny pants, a pink top and once-jazzy yellow trainers, I didn’t quite fit the profile. But suddenly, my first customer: an Irish lady wanting bananas. She noted I had “an accent.” Three for a dollar, but she only wanted one, and I didn’t have change! I explained my circumstances, and she took three.

“What do you do normally?” she asked.

“I work for a think tank.”

Five minutes later, business was booming. I sold bananas, mangoes, oranges, even some decaying bananas, reduced and primed for banana bread. It was exhilarating. But as 15 minutes passed, I began to wonder: am I on “Candid Camera”? Another customer arrived and the thought was shelved.

Twenty minutes passed. Finally, I saw my boss limping back. He’d gone to get pizza. I told him triumphantly about my sales, my showmanship, how I’d shifted the bananas. I counted my takings for him. Nine dollars! He checked to make sure I’d sold the mangoes for the right price.

We shook hands, exchanged names and origins â€" England and Bangladesh â€" and he gave me an apple. I offered to sub for him again if I was ever passing by. “O.K.,” he said. “But business very slow.”

Not for me, buddy. Those elderly bananas sell themselves.

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