Lily and the Octopus (11 page)

“Excuse me, hon.” The large woman who answers the phone is trying to retrieve a few cans of diabetic dog food from the shelf near my feet. I sit up in the chair and swing my legs in
the other direction. She grunts as she bends down to get them.

I put my phone away and turn my attention back to
Dog Fancy
, but I don’t even get into the debate over teeth cleaning before Doogie calls my name.

“Edward?”

When I get back to the examining room, Lily is there on the table waiting for me. She looks pained.

“How did it go?”

“We weren’t able to get a needle as deeply into the octopus as I would have liked.”

“He’s a tough sonofabitch,” I concede.

“We were able to extract a few cells, hopefully enough to tell us if the octopus is malignant. We’ll have to send them out to our lab.”

I show Doogie the picture of Lily in her lei, with the octopus in his infancy. I tell him about the octopus as I know him, about the seizure Lily had last night. He nods and listens and makes a
few notes in his chart. Lily doesn’t add anything, but that’s not unusual. She often clams up at the vet.

“Once we get the report back from the lab we’ll know more. We can try her on certain medications, an antiseizure medication for one, but you know, our best options for dealing with
the . . .”

“Octopus.”
Why is everyone so stupid?

“. . .
octopus
are probably surgical.”

I look away, purposefully. It would help if there were a window to gaze out of; instead, I’m confronted with the dental care poster again. I think of the dog-eared copy of
Dog Fancy
in the waiting room and hope to god someone who works here finds it.

“How old is Lily again?” The vet flips through her chart for the answer.

“Twelve,” I say. “And a half.”

He puts the chart down. “That’s older than optimal for invasive surgery. The anesthesia alone can be a risk for older dogs. But we can discuss our options in more detail
midweek.”

“When you hear back from the lab.” I sound defeated. I feel defeated, especially when I’m asked to pay $285 for the privilege of being told to wait until Wednesday to be given
options that aren’t really options at all.

We get in the car and someone signals their blinker for my parking spot but I emphatically wave them away like they’re after my soul and not just my parking spot and so we sit there for
the twelve minutes until the meter runs out. Lily silently crawls from the passenger seat into my lap and curls up in a little ball. She lets out an enormous sigh.

“You okay, Bean?”

“They put a needle in my head.”

“They put a needle in the octopus.”

Lily looks at me as if they’re one and the same and I wonder if she’s already giving up hope. I feel like I’ve swallowed my own bag of wasabi peas as my throat starts to burn
and then close. I try to focus on something, anything, and I choose the spelling of wasabi and how odd it is that I can’t remember if it ends with an
ie
or just an
i
. I think
it’s just an
i.
Can that be right? Both ways I can see a squiggly red line underneath, like the word processor in my brain is telling me there’s no correct way to spell it. Is
wasabi a proper noun? Should it be capitalized? No, it’s just a plant, isn’t it? I want to run back inside the veterinary office and have them do for me what they did for Lily all those
years ago: give me back my ability to breathe. And maybe confirm the spelling of wasabi. I can’t remember the last time I’ve taken a breath, a long, deep, true breath, the kind they
talk about in Lamaze classes and on yoga DVDs. Hawaii, I guess. Vacation. When I was free of work and deadlines and dating and the need for anything else but to just be. But the last time at home?
Without mai tais easing my circulation? I can’t say.

I feel a sudden need to forget the morning, to turn the day around. To vomit the wasabi peas.

To breathe again.

“You know what we need?” I ask. I don’t even wait for her to guess. Lily perks up; she can tell by the tone of my voice I’m going to say something that she finds
exciting. “Ice cream.”

On the way home, we stop at the corner pet store near our house, the one the Korean family runs, and I select a peanut butter frozen yogurt made especially for dogs. I don’t even wait for
us to get home.

The octopus blinks and asks, “What you got there?” I don’t think I’ll ever get used to hearing him speak.

“Nothing,” is my reply. I hold the Styrofoam dish for Lily right there in the car and she laps at it hungrily until the frozen treat is gone. Even then she licks the empty dish for
another three minutes, her mood brightened.

The octopus eyes me hungrily the whole time, but I don’t let him have any. I hope not to pay dearly for that later.

L
ily and I have no standing plans on Tuesday nights, so when Trent calls and says we should go grab a drink by the beach, I agree. It’s
night, and I immediately have second thoughts—it feels like a hassle to go all the way to the beach this late when you can’t even see the beach—but Trent is already down there for
a business dinner that’s just ending, and the beach always seems like a getaway, a respite, a destination. Even in darkness you can smell the saltwater, hear the crashing waves, feel the cool
ocean breeze. These used to be of comfort; now, the ocean is mostly the swamp the octopus crawled out of. Trent wants to know what the vet said about Lily’s prognosis, and since I don’t
have Jenny until Friday, it’s probably a good idea for me to talk.

Trent is feeling nostalgic and suggests this gay bar we went to in the nineties that’s right across the Pacific Coast Highway from Will Rogers Beach, specifically the gay section of Will
Rogers Beach known affectionately as Ginger Rogers. Parking is usually a nightmare, but I luck out and find the perfect spot under a broken streetlamp, hidden from drivers in a pool of gloom.
It’s maddeningly too small, and after five minutes of trying to fit in the damn thing I have to concede defeat and move on to the next spot I find a good quarter mile away.

On my hike back to the bar I step in a puddle. It hasn’t rained in weeks, so that’s of some concern. I try to text Trent but my phone is frozen and I have to give it a hard reboot.
When I finally make it to the bar, the exterior looks different. It has a nautical theme like I remember, but something is amiss. I guess the bar could look at my haggard face and say the same
about me.

The place is dimly lit, but it’s easy to spot Trent sitting at the bar; he’s one of the few people here. I pull back the stool next to him, wave for the bartender, and take a
seat.

“What made you think of this place?” I ask.

“Client dinner. The fog of work. Remembering simpler times.”

The bartender comes over and he’s good looking, but not the threatening kind of good looking that’s usually a job requirement for bartenders in gay bars. I ask Trent what he’s
drinking and he says vodka tonic so I order the same.

“What did the vet say?” Trent asks. “What are the options?”

The bartender pushes the drink in my direction, at the last second adding a lime. I reach for my wallet before Trent stops me. “I opened a tab.”

I take a sip of the drink and it’s strong, which I like. “They can either make her comfortable with medications to stop any pain and seizures, or they can put her under, take a
bigger sample of the octopus, and devise a more aggressive treatment plan.”

“What are you going to choose?”

I shrug and take another sip of my drink. “I dunno. I have to talk it over with Lily.”

“It’s your decision, though.”

“Is it?” I look around the deserted bar. “Where is everyone?”

Trent turns around and flinches, like it’s the first time he’s noticing the emptiness. “Don’t know. I guess it’s a later crowd.”

The bartender must be eavesdropping because he chimes in. “It picks up after eleven.”

I take out my phone to check the time, but it’s not rebooting and I plunk it down on the bar. “Great. Fucking Tuesdays.”

“What’s wrong with Tuesdays?” Trent asks.

“Everything. Monday’s always Monday, but at least it’s the start of something new. Wednesday is hump day, Thursday’s almost Friday, and Friday brings the weekend. But
Tuesday? Nada.”

Trent looks at me and shakes his head. “What difference does it make? You work at home.”

“I work
from
home,” I say, but I don’t know why it makes a difference to me. “My phone is fried, my parking spot was too small, I stepped in”—I look
down at my shoe—“urine. I don’t know what to do about Lily. Should I go on?”

Trent puts his hand on my shoulder. “We need to get you laid.” He surveys the room again, but the prospects are dim.

“Oh, I got laid.”

“When?”

I reach for my phone to check today’s date before remembering it’s dead. “I don’t remember. Recently.” I guess there’s life in me still.

“Recently?” He sounds skeptical.

“Yes. Recently.” And then I’m forced to concede, “I think it was recently.” Time runs together.

“Well, we need to get you laid again. At least some uncommitted lip.” That’s what he calls casual kissing.

“Maybe after eleven.”

Why did I have such a distaste for Tuesdays, now that I freelance from home? Trent has a point. If I hated Tuesdays for their sameness when I was part of the world, a member of a more
traditional workforce—their lack of anything to help them stand apart—wouldn’t it make sense that I hate everything now? Every morning I rise at eight. It takes a little effort to
wake Lily, but not much. I throw on some clothes, usually something that I can wear to the gym as a motivator to go. We head outside for the first of the day’s walks. The morning sun feels
just right, not too hot or oppressive. I know this in part because Lily only starts to pant when we round the corner in front of our house, and the panting goes away after she has just a few sips
of water. I give Lily her breakfast and I have one (always one) cup of coffee sweetened with Stevia. I bring my laptop from my desk where it has charged overnight and sit in the kitchen in the spot
where the glare from the window misses the screen. I write for an hour or maybe two and then have a bowl of Kashi covered with half of a sliced banana (the other half goes in the fridge). Then I
allow myself the day’s procrastination: I read the news, I argue with dumb people on websites, I stalk random crushes online. Sometimes I actually make it to the gym; lately not as often. In
the afternoons I try to get out of the house, but even then the errands and the distractions have a sameness to them. Groceries for the night’s meal, coffee on Larchmont, a movie at the
Arclight I don’t particularly want to see. I get in the car, I park the car, I get out of the car. The driving, the destination, I don’t always remember. Lily and I take a second walk,
an evening walk, where we enjoy the soft haze in the sky except at the height of summer when it is still quite bright, or the turn of the winter solstice when it is already dark. Lily gets dinner
and a rawhide chew. I have a glass of wine and something to chew on myself, usually dried mango or apricot, but the unsulfured kind that doesn’t give me headaches. I write for a spell.
It’s only the evening activities with Lily, game nights and movie nights and pizza, that provide a small respite from the monotony. At night I put my laptop back on my desk, and my phone back
on its charger. Lily and I go out one last time. I never set an alarm before bed. I don’t have to: my insides are as tuned in to the sameness as my everything else.

Someone has taken a seat on the barstool next to Trent and the two of them are talking. Trent gestures back at me. The guy leans in to see past Trent, looks at me, then holds his hand up as if
to say “not interested.” Trent turns back to me and shrugs.

“Who did you hook up with?” It’s an obvious attempt to keep the conversation on my successes.

“Massage guy. The one who came to my house.”

“Theodore,” Trent says disapprovingly. He calls me Theodore instead of Edward when he wants to full-name me, because he knows it gets under my skin.

“Not my name.”

“Isn’t that like paying for it?”

“No,” I say with four or five o’s, partly in defense of my reputation and partly in defense of massage guy’s. “I paid for a massage. Then we got to talking, I
offered him a drink, we each had a few while we continued our conversation, he’s a writer, too, a librettist . . .”

“Libidinous?”

“No. Well, that, too. A
librettist
, he writes the words for . . . The point is, we had a surprising amount in common, so we talked for a while—and
then
. . .” I
let the sentence finish itself. “It was like a date. Except, you know, I was wearing a towel.”

Trent laughs. “I should have seen that one coming.”

“It took me by surprise.” But maybe I should have seen it coming, too. At least an indication it might happen.

An omen.

My eyes are too often closed to these things. Should I have seen it coming? Should I have seen the octopus coming? An omen for that? Octo. Latin for eight. But who did I know who was Latin? Any
number of people. This is Los Angeles, after all. Maybe the Latin origin is the wrong thing to focus on, maybe it’s the eight itself. The bartender pours a beer. There are eight pints in a
gallon. Eight crayons in a box of Crayolas. Eight nights of Hanukkah. Eight atoms of something in octane. Carbon? Compounds of carbon form the basis of all life, could that be it? A stop sign has
eight sides; is the octopus a sign for me to stop? And if so, stop what?

But can’t omens be good as well as bad? If there was an omen of the octopus coming and I missed it, shouldn’t I be looking for an omen of recovery, an omen of the octopus leaving?
Omen is also Latin. Back to that again.

My brain hurts.

“What time is it?” I ask.

Trent checks his phone. “Eleven fifteen.”

As if on cue, the door opens and a few people enter, laughing. They’re all wearing black pants and white shirts. I elbow Trent who just mouths “Weird,” studies the late
arrivals, and lands on one guy with a pen stuck behind his ear.