“More like Daniel,” Berron scoffed.
“Williams-Sonoma? Is she really into kitchenware?”
“Whole Foods,” he said. “It smells kind of like home.”
We took the down escalator at a jog, dodging around stationary riders to descend below street level.
The polished concrete floors shone under the carefully aimed spotlights. Everything, from the flower stand to the immense piles of produce, looked artfully placed and perfect. Almosttooperfect. I liked food, and I liked quality, but something about Whole Foods made me want to topple a display just to mess it up a bit. I preferred the Union Square Greenmarket with its jazzy chaos.
We started at the produce section. It’s not like the Princess of Arrows could have been hiding there—the displays were low enough to reveal anyone but a small child—but when you look for something, you have to stop and really pay attention.
The nearby flower stand almost overwhelmed the scent of fruits and vegetables, but not quite. The crisp, sweet smell of apples was in the air. Traces of dirt on the humble Russet potatoes and their fancier multi-colored cousins. The green of cut cucumbers in boxed salads. Oranges and lemons in piles.
And yet… there was something else. Something green but not fleshy; not cucumbers, not cut bell peppers for fajitas, not torn lettuce slowly wilting in a salad bag. A growing green. A living green. Awildgreen. Where had I smelled that before?
Something, in this place of perfect order, was out of place.
The produce lay before me like one of those cartoon pictures in the newspaper:spot the difference.
I stalked the aisles. Celery, green beans, cut herbs. Kiwi, onions, bananas. What was I missing? And why did it seem so familiar?
I completed the circuit and came back to the apple ziggurats.
And then I saw it—
A bite mark.
I hurried forward and scooped up the bitten apple. A delicate bite, taken out of the reddest and best part.
And not only that, but the apple itself had sprouted leaves! Tiny, emerald leaves blooming freshly on a stem no longer stiff. Every apple surrounding the bitten one had sprouted them too. The familiar smell? Riverside Park, with its wild apple trees. Not just the fruit, but the leaves.
“Berron!” I called, hurrying to the next apple bin and finding another bitten apple surrounded by a halo of more apples with green leaves. Almost every variety had been sampled: Cosmic Crisp, Sugar Bee, Autumn Glory.
Almost. She’d skipped Red Delicious, and who could blame her?
I gathered the bitten apples into my arms until they threatened to spill onto the floor, at which point I had to use my shirt as a makeshift basket.
Berron walked up. “What are you doing? This is no time to be shopping.”
I fumbled an apple out of my collection and shoved it in his face. “Look. Your sister was here.”
He peered at the apple. He took it out of my hand and brushed his thumb over the new green leaves.
He was holding his other hand, the one not holding an apple, behind his back.
I looked over his shoulder. “You were getting acoffee? I thought you said this was no time to be shopping.”
“I think better with caffeine.”
“Give me that.” I took it out of his hand and downed a scalding sip, then handed it back. “There. Now we’re both thinking better.” I dumped the apples out of my shirt onto the nearest pile. “How many checkouts are open?”
“Just one. It’s not busy.”
I grabbed one of the apples. “Let’s buy it and see if there are any leaves in the cash drawer.”
We headed for the checkout.
When the cashier rang up the apple—now looking the worse for wear, having been picked up, bitten, put down, sprouted, and picked up again—the drawer sprang open to accept my money and revealed a couple of leaves stacked on top of the one-dollar bills. “Bingo,” I said.
