Bluefish

The good thing about eating with someone is that, as I’m a fine enough cook, the other person usually leaps up at the end and insists on doing the dishes. The good thing about eating alone is it doesn’t matter if it turns out what I did to the bluefish wasn’t the best idea.

The offerings at the fish markets on the Cape are more than a little overwhelming. Of course one can get such things as ocean scallops and sea bass in the Midwest, but these have traveled on the seafood equivalent of Amtrak by the time they reach my good pan. Here today I asked the girl behind the counter at the fishmonger downtown by the , “What’s really good?” and she said it’s all really good, but the bluefish was just pulled out of the water a couple of hours ago. And so I went with that.

I’m out of the habit of cooking fresh fish. What a joy to have to relearn. Like relearning what to do with green chickpeas. Like having a joint work in a way it hasn’t in a long time.

The crows here shit-talk me as I walk along the forested path to the bay. I imagine their sarcastic cackles refer to the fact that I’m wearing running clothes but not running. But they must know it’s summer hot and humid, and I just got here, the place of hills and afternoon dew.

As I dropped her off at the airport bus, Ellen said you know there are apps for the tides, and I replied that when I hit the water this week is not up to the tides, it’s up to my work schedule. And in any case, there’s always the alternative path of the street to the sandy woods, albeit the crows.

But I paused at the water’s edge this afternoon, where the waves lap up against the wooden bulwark, and watched a couple rowing out to their sailboat, the woman holding tote bags that undoubtedly held some dinner and some wine, the man at the oars.

It took me back to a million years ago when I was a 19-year-old mortgage broker and we’d go out to Stuart’s boat at night to sail in the Long Island Sound with good wine and George Winston. I remembered how Stu was not a bad human, but he was a means to an end, the end being the Sound meeting the night sky, the stars above and the random flashes of light below on the tips of the water kicked up by the boat.

We drank cold Gewurztraminer and ate smoked salmon with capers. He taught me how to cook asparagus. The snippets of memory left me wondering if this woman wanted to be with this man at the oars, or if she (like me back in the day) just wanted that breeze that is like no other, the night air coming off the canvas.

How far away Long Island feels now, though the Cape is its twin. The beach plums here are the same species, as are the scrub pines. (And the ticks. I covered myself in Deep Woods Off before the sojourn.)

All of that is so far gone now, my time on the Island, it feels quite unable to harm. How long that did take. I remembered today the passable champagne I drank somewhere in the Midwest when the seven-year statute of limitation ran out on my time in that corrupt business, doing a refi for a Gambino, writing mortgages knowing people had faked their tax returns.

When I returned, I used the outdoor shower to rinse off the day and the memories. Though I am always wanting a bathtub, this was the standing equivalent – the open air below the deck cooling my feet, the open air above me drying my hair out even as I washed it, the feeling of being as clean as the air. As if the towel was a shame.

Now it is almost dark and someone in a nearby house is picking off a tune on an electric guitar, and I’m thinking about what to do with the leftover fish tomorrow. The lemony-mayo-dill-garlic dressing I made tonight, I think, on a bed of dark greens with sweet tomatoes. With sweet cherries and roasted pecans for dessert. A run in the morning. The crows may yet laugh.