Lily and the Octopus (23 page)

The other ship is a deep-sea yacht, and by the way it approaches, steadily and with purpose, it seems it still has the use of both its engines. I step out of the deckhouse and wave my arms
furiously, signaling our inability to steer. The yacht approaches slowly, skillfully, eventually pulling up beside us before she cuts her engines.

After a beat, a man appears holding a coil of rope.

“Ahoy!” he yells.

“Ahoy there!” I reply. Water belches between us, wetting me with spray, but I don’t care—I’m just so overwhelmed and relieved that out of nowhere help has
arrived.

The man tosses the rope and it lands with a thud at my feet. I grab the end and pull us together, tying the lariat to a large cleat on the deck with a poor man’s imitation of a
sailor’s knot, keeping us as close to the yacht as the side trawl will allow.

“Some storm.” The man looks drier and more put together than I must, but he is weathered and scraggly, too. He’s bald, with a round head, his skin almost bluish from the cold.
Judging by our distance from shore, he has been at sea awhile.

“She was a rager,” I say. And then, almost as an afterthought, “You think that was the worst of it?” I brace myself for the answer. If it’s not, I don’t know
what will become of us.

The man smiles. A dog’s bark pierces the wind and I look back at Lily, but she shivers in silence. A golden retriever emerges from the yacht’s cabin, tail wagging. “Lost your
engines, eh? Why don’t you come aboard. We’ll have what the whalers used to call a gam.”

I remember gams from reading
Moby-Dick
. When two ships would meet at sea, they would drop anchor and whaleboats would ferry the crews of each to the other ship to exchange gossip and
news. I look toward Lily. She seems unnerved, and I wonder why. It’s not like her to be so still in the presence of another dog.

“Sounds good to me. May I bring my first mate?” I indicate Lily.

“Goldie here insists.” The man pats his dog on the head, and I lift Lily and hold her close so that she feels safe. I grab the last bottle of scotch from the deckhouse, thinking it
rude to come aboard empty-handed. There’s only a swig or two left, but it will more than do.

The seas are instantly calmer aboard the sturdier boat. The yacht is named
Owe Too
, and is newer than
Fishful Thinking
. The cabin is warm and inviting, and while not overwhelmingly
large, it seems absolutely palatial when compared to our deckhouse. The man pulls some towels out of a closet and tosses them to me. I undo Lily from her life preserver and gently rub her dry. She
noses up to Goldie while I dry myself. Goldie sniffs her hindquarters in return and Lily relaxes in the dryness of
Owe Too
’s shelter. The overwhelming relief of seeing another person,
and another dog, brings the feeling of tears to my eyes even though none appear. I’m too dehydrated and too shocked to actually cry.

“Goldie, why don’t you take your friend to your special place in the hull.” The man whistles and snaps and Goldie motions to Lily to follow, and they disappear through a small
door together. “Wasted space under there, so I hollowed it out for Goldie. The enclosed nature gives her a safe place in the vast expanse of sea. I thought us captains could speak while I fix
us something to eat.”

I raise what’s left of the scotch as an offering. The man smiles and pushes two glasses toward me.

He heats a stew for us, and chicken and rice for the dogs. Lily is going to be ecstatic. As he works I tell him our story. I tell him about the octopus’s arrival, the vet’s
diagnosis, and all we’ve been through—the octopus’s sudden disappearance, chartering
Fishful Thinking
, the details of our hunt. He listens intently, interrupting only twice
to ask me to clarify a point. When I finish we are both quiet for a moment.

“Do you think you’ll be able to kill this octopus?”

I answer truthfully. “I think I will enjoy it.”

My response hangs awkwardly in the air.

“You know, yacht derives from the Dutch word
jacht
. Translated literally it means
the hunt
.”

I nod as if this isn’t new information, but it is. Even after three weeks at sea, my knowledge of boating is limited. The man serves us two bowls of hot stew and it is, in this moment, the
best thing I have ever tasted. Salted fish and tomatoes and parsnips and other root vegetables. He puts the chicken and rice in two bowls on the floor and whistles for the dogs, who come
running.

CHICKEN! AND! RICE! LOOK! I! GOT! CHICKEN! AND! RICE!

For Lily, it’s Christmas morning. She is just as excited as I am. Her initial hesitance to come aboard has now fully abated. She wastes no time marveling to Goldie about how chicken and
rice is her favorite, choosing to show her instead by sticking her whole face in the bowl of warm mush.

“This far out at sea. No one else around. Would it be correct to say, then, that you are on a hunt of your own?” I ask.

The man hesitates before saying, “Perhaps.”

“And what are you hunting, if you don’t mind me asking?” The man looks at me as if perhaps I’ve overstepped my bounds, and I look back at him without blinking. The
silence becomes too much. “If we’re just talking. Captain to captain.”

“We’re just talking,” he confirms, before answering. “What is anyone hunting for? Peace. Solace. Meaning.” Then, after a pause, “Spoils.”

“Spoils?” The word strikes me as odd. Like the spoils of war?

The man shrugs.

We eat our stew and the
Owe Too
rises and falls over a big wave and we both brace ourselves against the table, afraid that the squall has turned back in our direction. After a moment of
relative stillness, it seems the wave was an aberration.

“You know, I may have seen your octopus,” the man says.

I drop my fork and the tines strike my bowl with a clang. “You have?”

“Not three days ago. Goldie and I were enjoying the sunset when off the starboard side there was a slick reflection that sparkled differently off the water than the last of the sun. I
looked more closely and I swear I could see an eye watching us. The eye blinked once before Goldie caught a whiff of him and started barking. The thing swam closer, eyeing Goldie, and I grabbed her
collar and held her close. The whole experience was over in a matter of seconds, but it was unnerving. As it approached our ship it sank beneath the surface and I never saw it come up
again.”

The hairs stand up on the back of my neck and we both reach for our tipple. My gut was correct.

We are close.

I notice the man has a Magic 8 Ball on the shelf beside the table. The kind I had as a kid. I reach for it.

“Do you mind?”

The man nods his permission. I cup the black ball with two hands and ask my question aloud. “Will I ever catch up with the octopus?” I give the ball a good shake before turning it
over.

Signs point to yes.

“There you have it,” the man says as he smiles a crooked smile. “The 8 Ball never lies.” He clears his dish and reaches for mine. “More?”

Before I can say yes, Lily starts to growl. I look up, afraid that her love of chicken and rice has emboldened Lily to challenge Goldie for the bigger dog’s share. But their dishes are
empty, and Goldie is nowhere to be seen.

Lily is growling at the man.

“Lily! That’s not nice. He made you chicken and rice! Where’s Goldie? Say thank you to our hosts.”

GOLDIE! IS! A! FISH!

“What? What are you talking about? Goldie is a dog, like you.”

Her growling continues, low and guttural. It’s a noise I’ve only heard her make once before, when we were on a walk back home in Los Angeles one night and a coyote ambled across our
path.

I’m becoming increasingly alarmed.

“Don’t worry,” the man says. “The storm has her on high alert. That’s a good dog you have there.” He sets the dishes near the sink. “Would be a shame if
anything happened to her.”

His every word exacerbates the situation, and things escalate quickly. Lily is gnashing what teeth she has left in her old age, and she crouches low, ready to attack.

“Lily?” This time I don’t scold. This time I know better. This time I trust my dog.

I turn to the man. “How did you come to name the
Owe Too
?”

He answers without hesitation. “I owe too much on the title.”

Owe Too.

Lily’s barking is now out of control. Goldie is a fish? I look around for the retriever, but there is no sign of her. I can barely gather my thoughts over the racket, but I force myself to
think fast.

Owe Too.

What do you see, Lily, that I do not?

Owe too.

Oh, to . . .
Oh to what?

Oh two. It doesn’t mean anything!

O2?

Oxygen
.

I can barely breathe and my heart beats fast. Think, goddammit. I can hardly hear my own thoughts over the yelp of Lily’s barking. I look down at my feet for bearings. Oxygen. Breath.
Life.

And then it hits.

The atomic number of oxygen is eight. Oxygen is the eighth element on the periodic table of elements.

Eight.

The Magic 8 Ball.

I lift my head slowly and look up at our rescuer with growing scorn. His eyes are fixed on Lily.

“She has a hurricane inside of her.” The man winks at me slowly, deliberately. “Doesn’t she.”

Bile rises in my throat. Only three people know about the hurricane.

Myself.

Lily.

And the octopus.

I
pivot quickly, positioning myself between Lily and the octopus. Reflexively, I grab the empty scotch bottle and whack it against the table. It doesn’t break.
I whack it again—nothing. Why is it so easy to make a jagged weapon in movies and I can’t get this scotch bottle to so much as crack? The octopus stands between us and the exit and
Goldie is still nowhere to be seen.

“It’s you, isn’t it.”

“Who?”

“The one we hunt.” There’s another bottle, a second bottle, on the counter. I grab this one instead and bring it down on the table with all my might and this bottle breaks and
out comes my scribbled warning:
I KNOW YOU
’
RE OUT THERE
. He found the bottle. My bottle.

The octopus wipes a string of drool from his human mouth. “I wondered when you would recognize me.”

“Your ugly, fleshy head should have been a dead giveaway.” I’m mad at myself for being so easily seduced by the idea of companionship and food. I should have known. He
wasn’t blue from the cold, he was purple from being a cephalopod. Twenty-four days at sea have weakened me, and I have failed at protecting Lily.

I lunge at the octopus with the jagged scotch bottle, but he grabs a single-flue harpoon that’s leaning in the corner. We’re both armed, him with a longer reach and with seven more
limbs to take up arms should he decide to take octopus form again.

I grab a kerosene lantern hanging off the wall. “I swear I will burn this boat to the ground.”

“To the ocean,” he corrects. “Do it. Of the three of us, who is the strongest swimmer?” I’m keenly aware of Lily’s life jacket crumpled uselessly in the
corner. He’s right, of course, as always. It’s the most maddening thing about him.

“Monkey,” I say calmly to Lily without breaking eye contact with the octopus. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her ears perk up.
“Run!”

Lily bolts through his legs as he brings down the spear. I cringe, but my baby is fast and clears the sharp tip with hundredths of a second to spare. The harpoon buries itself in the cabin
floor, and as he lunges to free it, I strike. I sink the toothy bottle in his shoulder with every one of my two hundred pounds. Immediately there is blood and I twist the bottle to extract even
more.

“Go ahead and take my arm. I’ve got seven more.”

Yes, but where?
I don’t understand how he looks like a man. I don’t understand the depths of his dishonesty. He punches me in the nose, and as I fly backward he rips the
bottle from his flesh and smashes it into pieces on the ground.

I stumble, but I don’t fall. I can feel blood spill from my nose and the pain in my face is indescribable. I lower my center of gravity and go for the tackle. I’ve never been in a
fight. Not like this. Not with a single-minded determination to cause catastrophic harm. To end life. To kill. Before I even know it’s happening, I’m charging at him with maximum
speed.

We crash into a wall of shelving and both slump to the ground. One of the upright beams cracks, sending books and dust and nautical maps raining down upon us. I get in one good punch and I poke
at his eyes with my thumbs, hoping to crush them. To blind him like he blinded Lily. Suddenly, I notice the whoosh of flames behind me. The lantern! I dropped it when I careened backward, and now
the curtains are on fire. A small fishbowl falls from the shelf and lands on the octopus’s arm, spilling water and a single goldfish onto the floorboards. I look at the fish flopping
helplessly, gasping. It immediately flops toward the safe space in the bow.

A flash of recognition. Lily warned me.
Goldie is a fish.

“Goldie?” The golden retriever was a lure, a trick. One of the octopus’s fish companions taking dog form to lull Lily and me into a false sense of security. Everyone trusts a
man with a dog. The octopus stomps his boot down on the goldfish, smearing its guts on the floor. I grimace. His first kill tonight.

Hopefully his last.

The octopus’s good arm, the one in the puddle of fishbowl water, starts to twitch and twinge and transform. Before I can even get off him, it’s the arm of an octopus, slimy and
purple and long. It curls around me like a python, choking me, its suction cups sticking to my skin. Part man, part octopus, he squeezes so tightly it’s unbearable, and the cabin begins to
darken. I claw and thrash at the sludgy, toadlike arm, but I can’t loosen his powerful grip, and as my vision starts to narrow and fade all I can think of is failure.

Lily appears through the smoke, charging forth with a rope in her mouth. At the end of it is tied a noose. Whether she has tied it, or it was waiting to hang us, I do not know. She shoves the
rope in my hand, and as the octopus-man lifts his head, I reach behind me and slip it around his neck. Lily grabs the rope and pulls. She’s low to the ground, her back haunches raised
slightly, her teeth exposed. I’ve seen her in this pose dozens of times as we’ve played with her rope chew. I know how strong she can be.