Dollar Grub: Richmond Hill

Ozone Park–Lefferts Boulevard

A block from the subway, I bump into a young woman selling luscious sliced mango. “Cuanto cuesta?” I ask, employing my finest college Spanish.           

She extends an index and middle finger—two dollars. That simply won’t do.

“Uno,” I say. She looks at me like I asked to father her firstborn. But I stand in front of her, smiling maniacally and unmoving, as she measures out a dollar’s worth of fruit and douses it with salt and hot sauce.