“I’ve been here 26 years,” a crab catcher tells the woman in the bulky navy coat. She’d been sitting in her car, watching the crabbing, perhaps waiting on one of the yellow-rain-coated men on the dock. A minute ago she exited to have a cigarette and take in the fresh air. This man advanced upon her like the flapping seagulls when the crab traps were raised. “I like those spots over there, I think it’s deeper on that side of the dock.” He wears his wallet on a chain, paint and seawater dapple his grey sweatshirt. He wears his brown hair long, coiling rather neatly from under his blue baseball cap. He approached the woman on her right, so she saw his left profile in her periphery when they stared over the water. From that angle, she couldn’t see the giant neck tattoo on his right side.

He smokes and…