Lily And The Octopus Part 1

Lily and the Octopus.

Steven Rowley.

For Lily.

The Law for the Wolves.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky.

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back.

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

-Rudyard Kipling.

The Octopus.

It's Thursday the first time I see it. I know that it's Thursday because Thursday nights are the nights my dog, Lily, and I set aside to talk about boys we think are cute. She's twelve in actual years, which is eighty-four in dog years. I'm forty-two, which is two hundred and ninety-four in dog years-but like a really young two hundred and ninety-four, because I'm in pretty good shape and a lot of people tell me I could pa.s.s for two hundred and thirty-eight, which is actually thirty-four. I say this about our ages because we're both a little immature and tend to like younger guys. We get into long debates over the Ryans. I'm a Gosling man, whereas she's a Reynolds gal, even though she can't name a single movie of his that she would ever watch twice. (We dropped Phillipe years ago over a disagreement as to how to p.r.o.nounce his name. FILL-a-pea? Fill-AH-pay? Also because he doesn't work that much anymore.) Then there's the Matts and the Toms. We go back and forth between Bomer and Damon and Brady and Hardy depending on what kind of week it has been. And finally the Bradleys, Cooper and Milton, the latter of whom is technically way older and long dead and I'm not sure why my dog keeps bringing him up other than she loves board games, which we usually play on Fridays.

Anyhow, this particular Thursday we are discussing the Chrises: Hemsworth and Evans and Pine. It's when Lily suggests offhandedly we also include Chris Pratt that I notice the octopus. It's not often you see an octopus up close, let alone in your living room, let alone perched on your dog's head like a birthday party hat, so I'm immediately taken aback. I have a good view of it, as Lily and I are sitting on opposite sides of the couch, each with a pillow, me sitting Indian style, her perched more like the MGM lion.

"Lily!"

"We don't have to include Chris Pratt, it was just a suggestion," she says.

"No-what's that on your head?" I ask. Two of the octopus's arms hang down her face like chin straps.

"Where?"

"What do you mean, where? There. Over your temple on the right side."

Lily pauses. She looks at me for a moment, our eyes locked on each other. She breaks my gaze only to glance upward at the octopus. "Oh. That."

"Yes, that."

I immediately lean in and grab her snout, the way I used to when she was a pup and would bark too much, so excited by the very existence of each new thing encountered that she had to sing her enthusiasm with sharp, staccato notes: LOOK! AT! THIS! IT! IS! THE! MOST! AMAZING! THING! I'VE! EVER! SEEN! IT'S! A! GREAT! TIME! TO! BE! ALIVE! Once, when we first lived together, in the time it took me to shower she managed to relocate all of my size-thirteen shoes to the top of the staircase three rooms away. When I asked her why, her reply was pure conviction: THESE! THINGS! YOU! PUT! ON! FEET! SHOULD! BE! CLOSER! TO! THE! STAIRS! So full of ebullience and ideas.

I pull her closer to me and turn her head to the side so I can get a good, long look. She gives me the most side-eye she can muster in annoyance, disgusted with both the molestation and unwanted attention, and my gaucheness as a big, stupid human man.

The octopus has a good grip and clings tightly over her eye. It takes me a minute, but I gather my nerve and poke it. It's harder than I would have imagined. Less like a water balloon, more like . . . bone. It feels subcutaneous, yet there it is, out in the open for all to see. I count its arms, turning Lily's head around to the back, and sure enough, there are eight. The octopus looks angry as much as out of place. Aggressive perhaps is a better word. Like it is announcing itself and would like the room. I'm not going to lie. It's as frightening as it is confounding. I saw a video somewhere, sometime, of an octopus that camouflaged itself so perfectly along the ocean floor that it was completely undetectable until some unfortunate whelk or crab or snail came along and it emerged, striking with deadly precision. I remember going back and watching the video again and again, trying to locate the octopus in hiding. After countless viewings I could acknowledge its presence, sense its energy, its lurking, its intent to pounce, even if I couldn't entirely make it out in form. Once you had seen it, you couldn't really unsee it-even as you remained impressed with its ability to hide so perfectly in plain sight.

This is like that.

Now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it, and the octopus transforms Lily's entire face. A face that has always been so handsome to me, a n.o.ble and cla.s.sic dog profile, betrayed only slightly by a dachshund's ridiculous body. Still, that face! Perfect in its symmetry. When you pulled her ears back it was like a small bowling pin covered in the softest mahogany fur. But now she looks less like a bowling pin in shape and more like a worn-down bowling pin in occupation; her head sports a lump as if it had actually been the number-one pin in a ten-pin formation.

Lily snorts at me twice with flared nostrils and I realize I'm still holding her snout. I let go of her, knowing she is seething at the indignity of it all.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says, tucking her head to gnaw at an itch on her stomach.

"Well, I do want to talk about it."

Mostly I want to talk about how it could be possible that I've never seen it before. How I could be responsible for every aspect of her daily life and well-being-food, water, exercise, toys, chews, inside, outside, medication, elimination, entertainment, snuggling, affection, love-and not notice that one side of her head sports an octopus, alarmingly increasing it in size. The octopus is a master of disguise, I remind myself; its intent is to stay hidden. But even as I say this silently in my head I wonder why I'm letting myself so easily off the hook.

"Does it hurt?"

There's a sigh. An exhale. When Lily was younger, in her sleep she would make a similar noise, usually right before her legs would start racing, the preamble to a beautiful dream about chasing squirrels or birds or pounding the warm sand on an endless golden beach. I don't know why, but I think of Ethan Hawke answering the standard questionnaire inspired by Bernard Pivot that ended every episode of Inside the Actors Studio: "What sound or noise do you love?"

Puppies sighing, Ethan had said.

Yes! Such a wonderful juxtaposition, sighing puppies. As if warm, sleeping puppies felt anything lamentable or had weariness or exasperations to sigh over. And yet they sighed all the time! Exhalations of sweet, innocent breath. But this sigh is different. Subtly. To the untrained ear it might not be noticeable, but I know Lily about as well as I think it's possible to know another living thing, so I notice it. There's a heaviness to it. A creakiness. There are cares in her world; there is weight on her shoulders.

I ask her again. "Does it hurt?"

Her answer comes slowly, after great pause and consideration. "Sometimes."

The very best thing about dogs is how they just know when you need them most, and they'll drop everything that they're doing to sit with you awhile. I don't need to press Lily further. I can do what she has done for me countless times, through heartbreak and illness and depression and days of general uneasiness and malaise. I can sit with her quietly, our bodies touching just enough to generate warmth, to share the vibrating energy of all living things, until our breathing slows and falls into the parallel rhythm it always does when we have our quietest sits.

I pinch the skin on the back of her neck as I imagine her mother once did to carry her when she was a pup.

"There's a wind coming," I tell her. Staring down the octopus as much as I dare, I fear there's more truth to that statement than I'd like. Mostly I am setting Lily up to deliver her favorite line from Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Neither of us has actually seen the film, but they played this exchange endlessly in the commercials back when it was in theaters and we both would collapse in fits of laughter at the sound of Cate Blanchett bellowing and carrying on as the Virgin Queen. My dog does the best Cate Blanchett impression.

Lily perks up just a bit and delivers her response on cue: "I, too, can command the wind, sir! I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare if you dare to try me! Let them come with the armies of h.e.l.l; they will not pa.s.s!"

It's a good effort, one she makes for me. But if I'm being honest, it isn't her best. Instinctually she probably already knows what is fast becoming clear to me: she is the whelk; she is the crab; she is the snail.

The octopus is hungry.

And it is going to have her.

Camouflage.

Friday Afternoon.

My therapist's office is painted the color of unsalted b.u.t.ter. Sitting in that office on the couch with the one broken spring that made it just maddeningly shy of comfortable, I have often thought of shoving the whole room into a mixing bowl with brown sugar and flour and vanilla and chocolate chips. I crave cookies when I'm annoyed, when I feel I know better than those around me. Crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies warm from the oven, with the chocolate soft but not melted. I don't know the derivation of this comfort craving, but there's a quote from Cookie Monster that's always inhabited my head: "Today me will live in the moment, unless it's unpleasant, in which case me will eat a cookie." While I don't take all of my mantras from goggle-eyed blue monsters with questionable grammar, this one has taken root. Lately I've been craving cookies a lot.

My therapist's name is Jenny, which is not a name you should accept for a therapist. Ever. A gymnast, perhaps. Forrest Gump's wife, sure. A worker at one of those frozen yogurt places where you pump your own yogurt and all they have to do is weigh it and they still think their job is rough. But not a therapist. I just don't think people take Jennys seriously. Case in point: My name is Edward Flask, but people call me Ted-something I insisted upon after the unfortunate nickname "Special Ed" followed me through grade school because I was so shy. I can see my name scrawled in Jenny's handwriting across the top of a legal pad on her lap, but the T in Ted is bolder-clearly an addition she made after remembering no one calls me Ed. And I've been seeing her for months! Still, Jenny takes my insurance and has an office that is adjacent to my neighborhood (at least by Los Angeles standards). The conclusions she draws are always the wrong ones, but I've gotten good at taking her dimwitted advice and filtering it through the mind of an imaginary and much smarter therapist to get the insight into my life that I need. That by itself sounds dysfunctional, but it happens to work for me.

I entered therapy after I ended my last relationship eighteen months ago, six years in and maybe two years after I should have. It started out strong. We met at the New Beverly Cinema after a screening of Billy Wilder's The Apartment and we argued about its merits. Jeffrey was smart-scary smart-and pa.s.sionate. When I blanched at The Apartment's themes of infidelity and adultery, Jeffrey pressed me on my professed love for another of Wilder's films, The Seven Year Itch.

At first, his charisma made it addictive to be around him. But over time, I recognized it was also a facade; there was a wounded boy inside of him. He had grown up without a dad, so it made sense to me that he sought constant validation. I found it endearing. Humanizing. Until he started to indulge that little boy. There were tantrums. There was acting out. There was his need to control things that he had no business controlling. But he was still that boy, and I loved him, so I stayed, thinking it would get better. And then one morning I woke up to one of life's clarion calls: I deserved better than this. That night I said I was leaving.

After more than a year off from dating, I'm finally putting myself out there again. Dipping my toes in old waters from which I thought I had long since sailed downstream. Jenny asks me about this.

"How is that going?"

"That?"

"Yes."

"Dating?"

"Uh-huh."

It's the last thing I want to talk about. The octopus has almost as tight a grip on my head as it does on Lily's. And yet I can't bring myself to tell Jenny about our unwanted visitor. At least not yet. I can't show my hand, expose the fear that the octopus brings and have her say all the wrong things, as she's all but guaranteed to do. Jenny. I can't do her work for her-not on this. I would rather do her work without her, which means, for now, holding this one close to my chest.

I shouldn't even have come, shouldn't have left Lily alone with the octopus, but the sunlight was streaming through the kitchen windows in the exact way that she likes, and the long beams of late afternoon would provide her ample warmth for a long nap. I couldn't get an appointment with the veterinarian until Monday, and something in me thinks the sun could be healing. That it might irradiate our visitor, desiccate our fish out of water.

"Are octopuses fish?" I ask it out loud without meaning to.

"Are octopuses what?"

"Fish. Are they considered fish."

"No. I think they're cephalopods."

Figures Jenny would know that. She was probably one of those girls who wanted to grow up to be a marine biologist before she went off to college and fell for a psych major with big, masculine hands and a name like Chad. I wish I was curled up on the floor in the sun beside Lily. I wish I could lay my hand on her like I did when she was a pup, to let her know that all that worried her would be okay so long as I was there. It's where I belong instead of here.

"What about dating, though?" Jenny snaps me back to attention.

"Dating. I don't know. It's fine. Uneventful. Soporific."

"Juvenile?" she asks.

"Not soph.o.m.oric." G.o.d, I want cookies. "Soporific. You know, tedious. Tiresome."

"Why is it tiresome?"

"Because it is." Cookies.

"It's always interesting to meet new people, isn't it? Couldn't you look at it that way?"

"I could." I say it in a stubborn way to make it clear that I don't and I won't. I don't know if it's me-maybe I'm not ready to date. I don't know if it's them-maybe the good ones are already taken. I don't know if it's my age. Los Angeles is a Neverland of Lost Boys who preen and crow far too often and demonstrate substance far too seldom. I started dating with enthusiasm and put my best foot forward in the task. But soon I found myself on a string of first dates where I couldn't remember if the story I was telling was one I had already told, or if it was a story I had told a previous date a night or two earlier. In an effort not to be boring, I had concocted a string of my best anecdotes, a highlight reel of witticisms, and in employing them over and over again, I ended up boring myself.

All of this I should be saying out loud, if only because my insurance company is paying for this time and I am paying for my insurance (as a freelance writer it's no small expense), but instead I offer an anemic "I just . . . I don't know."

"Tell me," Jenny implores.

"No."

"Come on. Tumor me."

The octopus swooshes its powerful arms in front of me, and in a chaotic flash exposes its hungry beak as it leaps for my face.

I flinch, swatting my hands in front of my nose. "What did you just say?" It comes across as accusatory.

Jenny looks at me, concerned. She has to see the sweat forming just along my brow line. I look frantically around the room for the octopus, but as quickly as it appeared, it is gone.

"I said, 'Humor me.' " Her concern melts into a smile.

Did she?.

My b.u.t.ter prison is closing in; the walls seem closer than they did five minutes ago. This is usually a sign of an oncoming panic attack. They used to be rare, but lately I've had several. The best way to stave off a full-blown meltdown is to do the one thing I don't want to do-talk about dating. To remember life continuing. To not give in to that which causes the panic. So I relent. "There's this one guy. Handsome. Smart. Funny. Handsome. I said that twice, didn't I? Well, his looks merit it. I just can't tell if he's that interested."

"In you."

"In the art of puppeteering." I cross my arms protectively. "Of course in me. We went out a second time. And it was good." This is stupid. I should be talking about the octopus, but I can't think about the octopus. I can't feed the panic. "But still, I didn't know. If he was interested. In me. So, I thought when we say good night the second time, if he tries to kiss me, that'll be some indication. And if he tries to hug me, I won't break the hug first." Pleased with that plan, I point to my head-like it's more than just a hat rack. Then I realize perhaps the octopus is hiding on my head, heads being a place he seems to be fond of, and I give myself a top-to-bottom pat down. Jenny looks at me like I'm experiencing some sort of debilitating seizure, but forges ahead.

"Smart. Then you could see if the hug was a friendly hug or a romantic hug. So, what happened?"

"I broke the hug first."

Jenny looks at me, disappointed.

Defensively: "Well, he didn't break the hug, either, so we were just standing there like two stroke victims propping each other up!" The walls are now so dangerously close that I wonder if they will crush me or if I will be pressed into their b.u.t.tery softness, creating a perfect mold of my form after I suffocate in clotted cream.

"That in itself should have told you something." Jenny makes a doodle on her notepad, darkening the ed in my name to match the bolded T. She's being paid to listen to me, and even she finds me boring. But it's not her fault. Less than twenty-four hours since the arrival of our . . . cephalopod houseguest, I already recognize a trait we share: I, too, am hiding in plain sight. I am walking through life invisible, skulking like a failure, hoping few people notice me. I've been doing that since things went south with Jeffrey.

"I think you need to allow for the fact that some people have difficulty expressing themselves," Jenny muses.

Jenny always employs the phrase some people when she's talking about me. But once again, this is the wrong conclusion. This guy did not have problems expressing himself. I do not have problems expressing myself. This guy just didn't know if he liked me, and that made me anxious. Even if it was my fault he didn't know. Even if I was not letting myself be seen.

C is for cookie, that's good enough for meeee. Cookie cookie cookie starts with C.

I filter her a.n.a.lysis through the voice of my preferred, imaginary therapist and he comes up with sharper advice: It has only been two dates. Why do I need to know how this guy feels about me? Why does everything have to be settled? Do I even know if I like him? I mean, beyond his looks? I have to be better about living in the not knowing.

And suddenly it's not about dating, it's about the octopus. I have to be better about living in the not knowing.

Friday Evening.

June in Los Angeles is the opposite of June everywhere else. Here, it means only one thing: gloom. The sun disappears behind clouds and fog and smog and haze and doesn't reappear for weeks. Normally, I like it. Normally, I'm fine with it being the price we pay to have sunshine the rest of the year. But tonight there's no sunset, and it bothers me.

Trent calls and proposes dinner and I say no, but Trent doesn't take no for an answer, so I say yes to save us from going twelve rounds. I feel bad about leaving Lily for even another hour, but I also know I need to talk to someone, and if it's not going to be Jenny it might as well be Trent. He knows how to get through to me and always has, ever since we met on our first day of college in Boston. He was a loud Texan and I was a quiet Mainer and I was immediately captivated by his southern charm, much as he was fascinated with my northern chill. It was a friendship that worked from the moment he knocked on the door of my dorm room and asked if I wanted to walk to 7-Eleven for cigarettes; he was the Ferris Bueller to my Cameron Frye.

From the time we were twenty-two, Trent would tell me not to worry. He said it was all going to happen for us when we were twenty-nine. Bad breakup? Who cares. Dead-end job? It wasn't a waste of time. Any other stress? Why waste even a moment caring-it was all going to happen when we were twenty-nine. I questioned him at first. Why twenty-nine? Why not twenty-eight? And then I started to panic. What if it didn't happen for me until I was thirty-one? I didn't know how to use swear words correctly until the seventh grade, or what the Internet was until 1995. I worried about falling behind. Still, the bravado of the statement, and the confidence with which he delivered it, eventually made me a believer. I never bothered to ask what "it" was-the it that was going to happen for us. I'm not confident he entirely knew.

And then, in the very waning hours of my twenty-ninth year, I found Lily. The day before my thirtieth birthday.

Trent is already inside the restaurant when I get there. It's our usual place. We like it because when you order a martini it comes in a chilled martini gla.s.s, and then, when you're halfway through the drink, they bring you a fresh chilled martini gla.s.s for the rest of it. They even transfer the drink for you and bring you fresh olives. Astonishing, right? Service.