Catch of the Day

The day started out like any other. Dooley Trundy sat in the car, smoking a Marlboro Red, and watching his brother talk to their father’s gravestone. It was his third to last smoke, so he made a mental note to stop by the gas station before the docks. Penny was visibly singing now, though he couldn’t hear it from the car. Dooley honked, and Penny jolted. He chuckled to himself as Penny rushed back.

At the gas station he bought a couple packs of cigarettes and a scratch off. He’d never won anything in his life, and his run of bad luck wasn’t up just yet. He peeled the plastic off the new pack and tossed it in the trash with his ticket. The man in line behind him paid for a Sprite and “the same ticket as that guy.” The fucker won twenty-grand and ran out of the store yelling about the Bahamas. Dooley lit a cigarette and walked back to the car. Penny was listening to show tunes on the radio.

“What was that all about?” Dooley rolled down his window and sighed. “Nothing.” Penny nodded. “I’m thinking of trying out for a local rendition of Wicked.”

At the docks they slid into their Grundens. Penny always looked awkward ambling onto the skiff. Along with their last names, career, and the little shack they called home, the skiff completed the list of things they’d inherited from their father. Despite this, neither of them had taken much of a liking to lobstering. Penny had wanted to be on Broadway since being cast as Peter Pan in a school play. Dooley loved Tarantino films and Johnny Cash songs, and dreamed of heading west. Hand pulling traps in the dead of Maine winter was a far cry from either of their fantasies.

They used a set of red buoys with two yellow stripes to mark their pots. It used to be green and pink when they went out with their dad, but it took Penny a while to get the hang of tying knots. Sometimes they’d still find the old ones floating in coves around the bay. They picked these ones up second-hand from a yard sale.

“There’s one over there.”

Dooley eased the boat around a bank. Penny scooped up the line and began to pull.

“Feels heavy Dool.”

It had been a light day, so this was welcome news. The trap breached the surface and the brothers reached down to heave it aboard. Cautiously, Dooley unlatched the trap and pulled out a vacuum-sealed white brick. More lay below it. Penny’s eyes widened and he stated the obvious. “Dooley, I don’t think this is our trap.”

Frasier Dufresne awoke early that afternoon to the sound of a text from his old friend Dooley Trundy. They hadn’t seen each other in years, but had been thick as thieves in high school. Recently on an acid trip, Frasier had found himself wandering through a graveyard when he came across a headstone reading Ernest Trundy, Beloved Father. Since that moment he knew their paths would cross again before long. He read the text and smiled broadly.

“Hey man if you’re still plying the same trade I think I’ve got a proposition for you…” Frasier replied with an address and an invitation to stop by that day.

Dooley wasn’t surprised his brother felt so strongly. Penny had been the one to find their dad, and after that he got scared of the world. His brother was traumatized, so be it, but you can’t be a coward if you want to get ahead. So when they approached the police station on the way home from the docks, Dooley kept driving. He told Penny they needed to take some time to think things through.

Dooley was done thinking though. He had already texted Frasier, and now he was just waiting for a chance to slip away. Back at home he told Penny not to worry, he’d get rid of everything that afternoon. Penny was relieved and went to take a shower. From there it should have been simple. If only he hadn’t left his damn phone behind.

When Penny got out of the shower Dooley was gone. To Penny this meant the end of the ordeal, or so he thought. Then he heard his brother’s phone ring. The caller ID read Fraz. He decided to pick up.

“Hello?”

“Hey man, when you come by do you think you could bring some blueberries?”

“What… I mean who is this?”

“Is that Penny? My God, how long has it been?”

“Frasier?”

“Ya dude. Are you coming by with your brother?”

“Dooley is coming by?”

“Ya, he reached out this morning. You’re more than welcome to join. I live in Blue Hill at 14 Old Steamboat road now. Just bring some blueberries. I wanna bake this blueberry buckle I found a recipe for.”

At this same moment a private plane touched down at the Mount Desert Island airfield carrying Cheryl Del Cavone and her wife Samantha Hecht. Despite plans to spend the winter down in Florida, a death in the family had called them back north rather suddenly. They would arrive at their cottage in Blue Hill an hour and a half later.

It didn’t take long for Penny to piece together what was taking place. Sure, Frasier was an old friend, but he was also notably a drug dealer. His brother reaching out on the day they pulled fifteen odd pounds of white powder from the sea was no coincidence. Dooley had taken the car, so Penny rode his bike.

The address Frasier had given Dooley was nothing like what he expected. As his car climbed to the top of Blue Hill he pulled up to a large cottage, surrounded by wood and straddling a cliff. Either Frasier’s business was booming, or something was off. Maybe both. He parked in front and grabbed the duffle bag containing the drugs. Frasier greeted him at the door wearing an apron and whisking some batter. “Dooley brother, let me grab you a beer.” They walked inside and the scene started to make more sense. The place smelled of weed and sandalwood incense as Townes Van Zandt crooned the tale of Pancho and Lefty from a bluetooth speaker. A book of Alan Ginsburg’s poems sat next to a half eaten curry chicken salad sandwich, and a strange show about John Lurie ice fishing with Willem Defoe was playing on the television. This was more like the Frasier he remembered.

Despite his friend clearly being at home in this space, certain details remained confusing. For example, above the fireplace was a set of photographs containing the same two women posed with various celebrities: Megan Rapinoe at the World Cup Parade; Kate McKinnon backstage at SNL; Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi at their wedding; and oddly enough George W. Bush at his second inauguration. A picture of those same two women was screen printed onto the apron Frasier was wearing.

“Who’s that? Your aunts?”

Frasier looked down at his chest confused. “Oh, honestly I’m not totally sure.”

“There’s a lot of pictures of them in here. Is this an airbnb or like a rental...?”

“Wrong again. But astute nonetheless. I’m actually squatting here.”

“What?”

“Ya, you see a few years ago I was camping out in the woods of this palatial estate near Acadia. You know the type of place. And basically it was the coldest night of my life. I had all the gear, but even still I thought I was gonna end up like Jack at the end of The Shining. And, so in this state of frozen stupor I wander over to this mansion and knock on the door. No answer. Lights hadn’t been on in days. And lo and behold the door was unlocked. I was only planning to stay the night, but as I got a fire going, a thought occurred to me. How many places just like this are there around the Penobscot Bay? Homes that only get used one or two months a year?” Frasier paused and motioned at the room around them. “Tada.”

“And what if they come home?”

Frasier grinned, excited to espouse the virtues of his unusual lifestyle. “I do my homework.” He grabbed a little black book off the table and began to flip through it. Tedious notes covered the pages. “I’m always scouting. Keeping track of comings and goings. You’d be amazed how fixed people are in their routines. They’re all birds of paradise in search of that endless summer.” He stared off into the distance admiring his insight and ingenuity. Dooley cleared his throat. “Well, should we get down to business.”

Penny watched through a window as Dooley and Frasier sat down at a large wooden table. His brother began to remove the drugs from a duffel bag. Penny had just arrived at the house on his bike and his heart was pounding. Unsure of how to proceed he decided to sneak around back and bide his time. Maybe if they got distracted he could take the drugs before they even realized he was there. He’d get rid of them, that was the only thing he knew for certain.

Now inside, he could hear them brokering a deal. Frasier was explaining that it would take time, but for this amount of product, they were looking at over a quarter-million dollars.

“I want to be done with it today. How much can you offer me right now?”

“I’ve got twenty thousand on hand.”

“Ok. fine.”

“Deal. Wait right here I’ll go grab it.”

As Penny listened to the sound of Frasier’s footsteps carry into another room, he decided the time to act was now. He stepped through the door frame and glared at his brother.

“How could you do this Dooley?”

“Penny? What are you doing here?”

“Are you trying to get us killed?”

Dooley found this side of Penny exhausting. He rubbed his brow and took a breath. “I’m trying to save us Pen. We won the lottery this morning and you’re telling me you don’t wanna cash in the ticket?”

Frasier came back around the corner with Dooley’s duffel, now filled with twenty thousand dollars in loose bills. “Penny, my man. Glad you made it. You bring those blueberries?”

From the moment they heard Cheryl Del Cavone’s car crunch down the gravel driveway, everything became a blur. A jumbled explanation was given to Penny. Frasier started muttering about birds of paradise. Dooley cursed himself for thinking that luck would smile on him that easily. As the couple approached the front door, the boys ran out the back. Penny had managed to scoop up all the drugs and was making a beeline through the woods. Frasier followed close behind, toting the money and his little black book, apron flapping in the wind.

“Penny! Take the money, give me the drugs, and let’s split up!”

Penny just kept running. By the time he saw the cliff coming it was too late. He tried to stop, but the ground was slick with snow. Frasier didn’t see it at all. As Penny’s momentum slowed Frasier barreled into him clumsily. Dooley lagged behind with a turned ankle. One moment they were there and the next they disappeared.

Dooley dropped to his knees as he looked down the sheer face of the god-for-saken cliff. Below him, splayed on jagged rocks, were the bodies of Penny and Frasier. Around them, dotting the scene, were airtight bundles of white powder and a duffle bag, filled with the promise of a different life. The tide seemed to be inching closer with every crashing wave. He now realized there was a siren emanating from the woods behind him. A man shouted to put his hands above his head. Another wave came crashing down, taking some of the packages with it-- returning to the ocean as mysteriously as they’d been found.