What’s in Store? - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 190

Vieques isn't exactly a shopper's paradise.
A thorough inspection of all the gift shops in Isabel takes less than an hour.
You might manage to kill forty-five minutes strolling through the emporia of Esperanza,
but only if you dawdle with intent.
And yet the island's stores are intriguing in their own way.
Take the hardware stores. When you buy a house on a tropical island, have it gutted and
start over from scratch, you inevitably spend a lot of time wandering up and down the aisles
of the local hardware stores, searching desperately for things they almost certainly don't
have.
During our first couple of years on the island, there were days when we spent more time
in the hardware store than we did at the beach. As much as I enjoy home projects, this equa-
tion seems to violate several basic laws of nature.
There are three main hardware outlets on the island (and several smaller ones), all locally
owned. Nales , the largest of these, would be considered a modest mom-and-pop store in an
urban setting, but in Vieques it's the place to see and be seen for the home improvement set.
Situated behind a chain link fence, near the intersection of Routes 200 and 201, Nales is
spacious by local standards. It has a large courtyard and an open-front shed to the south of
the main building for bulk purchases of stone, plywood, and gravel.
Inside there's a decent, though hardly outstanding, selection of garden supplies, hard-
ware, and household goods.
There's even a paint shop in the rear. This is where we had so meticulously registered
our color choice the year before only to have it equally meticulously ignored by Daniel when
it came time to paint the interior of our house.
Nales is an acquired taste. The staff could be a little more friendly or helpful and the
item you're looking for is almost certain to be out of stock. And yet we like the place.
Maybe it's because we're always a little bit happier on Vieques than anywhere else,
whatever we happen to be doing at any given time. Maybe it's because we love our house
and—despite the fact that we may occasionally grumble about the effort required to keep it
in perfect order—we honestly enjoy every last chore.
Or maybe it's the intangible things about the place, like the Siamese cat who seems to
inhabit every corner of the store, fixing patrons with her defiant crystal blue stare before
curling briefly but affectionately around their legs.
Or possibly it's even O-Lan, the young woman who runs the paint corner with cool effi-
ciency but who blushes charmingly when you ask about her unlikely name (her mother was
a Pearl Buck fan).
If Nales doesn't ring your bell there's always the hardware store in Floridá, which
couldn't be more different.
Here the pace is slow and friendly. The staff members go out of their way to be helpful.
Considering the store's small size, its stock is plentiful if unpredictable. It was here that we