The Afternoon of the Missing Flounder
How do we know what we know?
The first thing Lorraine Carston heard that morning was the scourge of her existence, the six-forty-five alarm plus the first notification of the day: dinner with the Harrisons. It was Poppy Harrison’s birthday, and they had offered her and her husband a home-cooked dinner. The Harrisons were successful people who traveled for business too much, and whose fridge never contained more than half a container of two percent skim and the sad packets of soy sauce from a long ago Chinese takeout meal.
The idea enchanted them.
Ron was already in the shower. It was his pleasure to make coffee in the monster appliance they had just bought, which did everything but fix your life’s biggest regrets. That meant she had five more minutes to stretch and plan the day.
“OH, HELL! LOR—RAINE!” Ron’s voice boomed from downstairs.
She bolted out of bed and threw on her robe. When she entered the kitchen, what she saw needed no forensic specialist’s interpretation; it had been a two-animal job. The cat with her superb athletic abilities and night vision, had jumped up on top of the fridge, and using her paw like a hockey stick, had knocked everything to the floor. The dog had ripped open the packaging and devoured most of the potato chips, butter cookies, and coffee cake.
“Shit! You know, in some parallel universe, we went with the fish tank,” she said.
"Yeah, God-like control."The phone rang. It was the supermarket delivery service asking for verification on Lorraine’s order. She took down the list pinned to the cork board and went through everything with the operator, while Rob prioritized making the coffee.
“...Yes, that’s it, but I just want one more item not on the original list, please. Could you add a pound and a half of fresh flounder?...Yes…around twenty minutes? …Okay…Thank you.”
Lorraine hung up and turned around. With a loud crunch, she put her foot into the downed box of butter cookies.
“Arg! Is this an omen or something? I want tonight to go off without a hitch,” she said as she picked up a pretzel-shaped cookie. Ron handed her a cup of coffee and went for the broom.
“Smashing butter cookies is a punishable offense, you know!”
“A misdemeanor. The real felons are our thieving pets. Where are they, by the way?”
“I don’t know. Shake the kibble bag.”
By the time the doorbell rang, they’d managed to have breakfast and turn the disaster area back into a kitchen. Lorraine got up and went to the door.
“The groceries are here. Do me a favor. While I start the food prep, you do the living room.”
She lugged the plastic crate onto the kitchen counter to the sound of Metallica and the vacuum cleaner, unpacked everything, putting the perishables in the fridge.
“OH HELL, RON!”
The vacuum switched off, and Ron came into the kitchen.
“They forgot the flounder!”
“So? There’s steak in the freezer.”
“NO! I want to make that recipe we had in France. I have all the other ingredients. Stuffed flounder with pomme de terre doh-fanWAZZ!”
“Baby, they’d be happy with your peanut butter and bacon sandwiches.”
Lorraine swatted him.
“You don’t understand! Poppy is my oldest and dearest, but these people are in a different SUCCESS category than us! They’re accustomed to THE BEST!”
“Okay, okay, you do your thing. I’m going to, you know, dust the porcelain. And shall I polish the silverware, madame? Pull out the soup tureen?”
“Keep talking, Ron.”
He took another slurp of coffee. His face fell like a bad soufflé.
“I think you’re getting a little manic about all this.”
Lorraine wasn’t listening. She was moving into cyclone mode. She’d gone up, gotten dressed and come down again, purse slung over her shoulder as she tied back her hair. The front door slammed, and in a flash, the car out in the driveway was gone.
The dog entered tentatively, clicking across the kitchen tile with the classic I-know-I-done-wrong expression in its eyes. Ron stroked his soft brown head.
“You and me both, buddy. Where’s the leash, Max?”
The dog went wild.
*
The fish man—regrettably, we don’t call them mongers anymore—shook his head.
“Look, I’m sorry, but the flounder sold out about an hour ago.”
This or some variation repeated from one store to the next all across town. Lorraine was beside herself. There wasn’t even any frozen flounder left, although she would never have stooped that low as to serve her guests frozen flounder. It was like some kind of cosmic conspiracy.
“Can you just look again in your walk-in? Maybe some flounder got mixed in with the cod or something?”
Yet another fish man felt justified in ignoring her as he let the cleaver come down with a resounding thwack on a salmon head. Then he looked up.
“Why don’t you take some of this? Flounder is bullshit.”
Salmon reminded Lorraine of hotel conventions and cruises.
“No thanks. It’s that or nothing.”
The fish man’s mouth turned downwards in weary disapproval.
She left the sixth fish shop in despair and asked herself for the first time why she was being so stubborn. Her watch said twelve-ten. Two hours of driving around and nothing. Lorraine walked back the two blocks to where she had parked. Then something strange happened.
“Hey lady, psst, hey.”
A small bald man in a coat that was big for him and gleaming white tennis shoes sidled up to her.
“You need a little flounder?”
Lorraine eyed him suspiciously. He had the grubby looked of an old-time longshoreman.
“Have you been following me?”
“Since the fish store, not gonna lie. How much do you need?”
“Pound and a half, to be exact. Why, you got any?”
“Yeah, I got. I’ll give you a good price. And other things I got, too–lobster, shrimp, all good. All fresh.”
He said this in strange, breathy voice and motioned to her with his head to follow him.
Lorraine, dear, what are you doing? She said to herself. The man lead her to a cute vintage truck with a fresh coat of paint in a creamy shade of yellow, which she asked him about. He told her it was a 1957 Divco delivery truck. Across the sides, it said ‘Fish Market A. La Forgia’ and an address she didn’t recognize.
“Are you A. Forgia?”
“Yes, ma’am. Antonio Forgia, that’s me.”
The itinerant fish man opened the double doors on the back of the truck and stepped inside. Lorraine peered in and saw two neat rows of wooden fish stalls heaped with ice. It was clean, and there was no fishy smell. She saw clams, mussels, lobster and many other kinds of fish.
It was frankly amazing, not to mention timely.
“Well, I’ll take two pounds,” she said on a hunch, brushing off her initial skepticism.
The man smiled broadly and held out his hand. She shook it.
“Thank you, ma’am. Why don’t you take some sample oysters. On the house. These pair beautifully with Spanish Albariño.”
Lorraine felt that she had fallen into a dream.
“Winkin’, blinkin’, drinkin’, and thinkin’”, she blurted out and was immediately mortified. She didn’t know what she was saying or what had come over her.
“Oh, indeed,” said Antonio Forgia. “You have hit the nail on the head, Missus. Life is all we have; we must cherish it.”He seemed to understand exactly what she was, and now she could see it clearly, too. She was sad and happy and proud of herself. Nothing had ever been good enough, and now, in a terrible thunderclap of wisdom, she saw that it was all good, and always had been.
Lorraine paid for the flounder and accepted the oysters with genuine thanks. Then she said goodbye and walked to her car feeling elated. Not only would everything go as planned, but her life would never be the same. Something in her had changed forever, although she could not say what exactly.
***
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