Lily And The Octopus Part 2

"What do you do?"

"I'm a flight attendant, but I'm quitting that to become a professional dog walker."

f.u.c.king L.A. Professional dog walker. Is that a thing? Are most dog walkers maintaining their amateur status to compete in the Dog Walking Olympics? I guess that's what I am. An amateur dog walker. It's where I should be now. Enjoying a walk with Lily in the early evening. The gloom has parted just enough by five o'clock that there's some soft light streaming through that would make a walk with her seem nice. It could be the only sunlight we see for days. Suddenly I want to be here even less.

"That sounds like a . . ."-how do I phrase this politely?-"lateral move."

"It's kind of a step up, actually."

"That makes me feel bad for flight attendants." I cringe, imagining him handing me a ginger ale with his sweaty mitts.

"Well, here it's a step up. In L.A., people will pay anything for their dogs. Do you have any pets?"

"No." I try to remember my dating profile (how much is on there about Lily?) and weigh the chances that he actually read my profile and would remember it well enough to know that I'm lying, or if he just flipped through my photos to find the one s.h.i.+rtless one. I shouldn't have written that thing a bottle deep in one of New Zealand's finer white wines and I certainly shouldn't have posted a s.h.i.+rtless photo. That was the wine's fault.

"Me, neither. I want to, though. Have a pet."

This (aside from the maybe s.e.x joke) is the most interesting thing about him. I don't even know what he means by a pet-dog, cat, reptile, bird, one of those chirping key chains that j.a.panese children used to carry, hamster, fish, rock-but he wants one.

I try to think of how to tactfully cut this short. If it's not going anywhere (there's so little connection here there's not even interest in s.e.x), there should be a socially acceptable way to just get up and walk out. I mean, if there's nothing obviously wrong with the other person-they are "as advertised," but you're just not, for whatever reason, feeling it-there should be a way to get up and leave. If there is something obviously wrong with them, you can say so right up front. Maybe not in those exact words, but you can say something like, "I'm sorry, I don't think this is going to be a match." Once I got a particularly creepy vibe from a guy just from his handshake, and we weren't meeting in a sufficiently public place, so I said just that and left. Another time, I wish I had said that up front but instead suffered through dim sum while having to answer questions like, "Do you think you're the kind of person who could perform an emergency tracheotomy?" (For the record, no, I do not.) But once you're in the middle of a date, you're kind of committed to seeing it through to its natural conclusion. My first date with Jeffrey lasted two days-there was just so much to say! I suppose that sets a very high bar.

Lily was asleep when I left, and I felt like one of those new parents who wanted to wake their sleeping baby to see if it was still alive. But while she normally sleeps on her left side, this afternoon she was on her right, octopus side down. Good. Maybe it will suffocate in her paw-print blanket. Otherwise she was curled up in her usual way, the way that made me call her Bean. I'm already looking forward to whatever movie she and I may watch together when this interminable date is over. On Sat.u.r.day nights we watch movies. I hope she's well rested. Maybe we'll order Indian; the place up the street has these chickpeas in a tomato and ginger sauce that are really something. I think again about how to end this ordeal. Well, since you're not really that interesting in person, I think I'll head out. If only it were that easy. I should just go ahead and make a third date with the hugging guy. At least I was interested enough in him to want to know if he was interested in me. Why did I break the hug first?

"What about kids?" I ask. "Do you want kids?" I like kids well enough-I have a niece that I'm crazy about. But I'm already too old to be a young father, and I don't particularly want to be an old father, and I'm single and it's not something I would do on my own. Nor do I have a particular drive to change my relations.h.i.+p status just to have kids, despite my being on a dating website. So I don't really think kids are in the cards.

"No. Definitely not. I don't get kids."

"Oh, well, there you go. I want to have kids. Need to have kids. Lots and lots of kids. We'll form a singing group and tour second-tier European cities like Dsseldorf." And just like that, there's my out.

On the way home, I have a sudden craving for ice cream. I stop at the grocery store and head right to the frozen food aisle and select a pint of Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra for me and an individual cup of vanilla for Lily, because what the h.e.l.l. One summer when she was young we were driving somewhere together, and I pulled over to the side of a road when I saw an ice-cream place with one of those walk-up windows. We got out of the car and marched together across the gravel parking lot and I ordered a mint chocolate chip ice-cream cone because the mint chocolate chip ice cream they had was green and it always tastes better to me when it's green (even though the dye they use is probably carcinogenic). We sat at a picnic table on some gra.s.s and I scooped Lily up into my lap.

WHAT! IS! THIS! CLOUD! THAT! YOU'RE! LICKING! I! LOVE! TO! LICK! THINGS! WOULD! I! LIKE! TO! LICK! THAT!

Even on my best days, I always wished life excited me as much as it excited her. So I lowered the cone to let her have a lick. The response was immediate.

THIS! IS! AMAZING! WE! MUST! HAVE! THIS! TO! LICK! EVERY! SINGLE! DAY!.

It was impossible, eating the rest of that cone. She stood on my lap and put her front paws on my chest, her tail ticking on its fastest setting. And then the back paws tried climbing, looking for footholds in my abs, anything to hoist herself closer to her minty prize.

"Hey, hey, hey!" I objected. "Sit!" She did, steadying the paws on the right side of her body on my left leg and the paws on the left side of her body on my right leg while trying to maintain a semblance of balance. Her eyes looked up at me lovingly and with great antic.i.p.ation.

Someone once said give a dog food and shelter and treats and they think you are a G.o.d, but give a cat the same and they think they are the G.o.d.

We shared the rest of that ice-cream cone, for I am a G.o.d.

Sunday, 4:37 A.M.

My legs jerk in that way that they do when I'm half-asleep and dream that I'm falling and about to hit the ground. I wake up in a cold sweat, prop myself up, throw the covers back, and reach for Lily all in one fluid motion.

The octopus is rattling the bed. Its limbs have come alive, all eight, and they swarm around Lily, gently but with purpose, and I just know that its dormancy is ending.

I put my hand on Lily's chest. Nothing. I press down harder while my own heart stops. And then it comes, the familiar rise and fall of her muscled torso. She's still here. She's okay. The octopus's arms slow and then stop and the terror becomes less immediate and things go back to more or less the way they have been since I first noticed the octopus on Thursday.

I try to remember if I was dreaming just now, just before I awoke. Something about standing on a boat, and maybe Lily was there. Or maybe she was both there and not there, in the way that in dreams things can happen on several different planes. I think I was chasing something. Not chasing, hunting. I can't even be certain there was a boat or a dream at all. It all feels less like a dream and more like a memory, albeit a memory just out of reach.

Lily's chest rises and falls again. Her breathing is deep, sonorous.

For the first three months that she was mine, she did not occupy my bed. She slept in a crate beside me. It started out across the room, but the first several nights she whimpered and whined, unable to sleep away from the warmth of her littermates. Each night, my judgment increasingly affected by my own inability to sleep, I moved the crate a little closer to me, until I could lie with my finger between the bars of the swinging door. We slept like that-side by side, me in a bed, her in a crate, sometimes my finger and her paw touching-until it was time to spay her. After the surgery to remove her uterus she refused to wear the cone that would keep her from picking at her st.i.tches. THIS! IS! THE! DUMBEST! THING! I'VE! EVER! SEEN! AND! I! WILL! TAKE! NO! PART! IN! WEARING! IT!

Without the cone, she helped herself to licking at her wound whenever I was not there to stop her. So during the day I took her everywhere with me, and at night I brought her into my bed and slept with one arm stretched across her. I don't know that I physically prevented her from pulling at her st.i.tches, but it was an emotional comfort. Enough at least that it allowed her to sleep through the night, undistracted by the discomfort of her incision.

She never again slept out of my bed unless we were apart.

When her st.i.tches were removed and her wound had healed, I no longer slept with my arm across her. Free to roam the mattress, she immediately burrowed beneath the covers to the very foot of the bed to sleep alongside my feet. Two nights I battled her, convinced of her imminent suffocation if she insisted on sleeping so burrowed. She would tunnel down to the bottom of the bed and I would drag her back up for air. Then she would tunnel back down to the bottom of the bed and I would drag her back up for air. We did this for hours ad nauseam, and late in the second night I hit my breaking point.

"Fine. You want to sleep down there? Then you will suffocate. You will cease being able to breathe. And the last thought you will have in this life is that I was right and you were wrong and you will go to your grave regretting having a brain the size of a walnut."

I lifted the covers and stared down at her and I could just make her out staring at me. By then I had all but given up trying to outstubborn a dachshund, an exercise in futility if there ever was one. All I knew was that I was tired and I needed sleep. I would dig her corpse out of the bed in the morning.

Of course when morning came she was fine. She trotted up to the covers' edge to greet the daylight, stretching her front legs in some complex yoga pose and yawning the sleep away.

Tonight it is me who wants to burrow to the foot of the bed, to find the safest spot under the covers, where I can feel small and protected and warm. A spot away from the nightmare of the octopus, away from the reach of his quivering arms, away from what I know is coming next.

Sunday Night.

On Sundays we eat pizza, the one ritual Lily and I have that stems directly from my childhood. When I was a kid, Sunday night was always pizza night. My sister, Meredith, and I would take turns making pizzas with my dad and it was the one night we were allowed to drink soda. It was something we looked forward to even though the weekend was drawing to a close. My mother enjoyed it because it was the one break she got from overseeing our endless feedings, something we never fully appreciated. (It was not in her nature to put her feet up, however, and she spent the time doing other thankless tasks like ironing our bed sheets or using the odder vacuum attachments to clean under the fridge.) My sister and I enjoyed it as something we could do with our dad. Making the pizzas was half the delight, and we had to claim Sundays on the calendar in the kitchen to stake out whose turn it was to help a.s.semble the pies. The event was scored by the game-ending plays of football or the familiar ticking that starts 60 Minutes. (I'm Mike Wallace. I'm Morley Safer. I'm Harry Reasoner. And I'm Ed Bradley. Those stories, plus Andy Rooney . . .) Lily and I continue the tradition, although we usually order pizza to be delivered so Lily can bark at the deliveryman like a crazed townsperson accusing Goody Proctor of being a witch. I think she looks forward to it, too, even though it's the end of the weekend, the end of the concentrated time we spend together before the craziness of a new week begins.

I'm asking Lily if that's what she wants to do, order pizza, when the octopus tightens its foul grip and the first seizure begins. I can tell something is wrong almost immediately, as Lily gets a confused look on her face and starts to back away. And then without further warning she stumbles and falls on her side, just tips over, unable to catch herself, and her legs go rigid and she seems to stop breathing.

"Lily!"

Her legs jerk and her body shakes and she stares somewhere far off in the distance and I drop the pizza menu and run to her side.

"Lily!" I shout again; if she hears me, she can't respond. I kneel and stroke her neck and try to support her head so that it doesn't slam against the linoleum. After a few beats of this, her legs start to run, stiffly, without bending, and she foams a bit at the mouth. The whole thing only lasts about thirty or forty seconds, but it feels like an eternity, and when it subsides I am hot with sweat.

"Shh, shh, shh," I manage, worried that she will try to come out of it too quickly. I pet her gently, in the way I do when she's restless at night and I want to lull her to sleep. Eventually she is able to focus on me, and I do my best to smile so that she won't be overly alarmed, but I oversell it, looking more than a little bit creepy.

"You look weird," she says.

I help her to her feet, but I don't let go in case she falls again. She tries to take a few steps and I feel like an anxious father teaching his child to ride a bicycle without training wheels, holding on to the seat as they wobble awkwardly into balance. Lily takes three steps into a wall and falls into a seated crouch.

"Take it easy, will you?"

She shakes her head and her ears flop. "That was . . . different."

"Yeah. It was." Don't do it again, I want to add, but I know she's not the one who did it.

It was the octopus.

It's a toss-up to say who's more shaken by the whole experience, her or me. I fluff the paw-print blanket that lines her bed, get her settled, scratch her neck the way that she likes it scratched, and beg her to try to sleep.

"What about pizza?" She seems exhausted, like a boxer who just went twelve rounds instead of getting knocked out in the first.

"You take a nap and I'll order the pizza and when you wake up you'll smell it and it will be here."

She yawns and her jaw squeaks like a rusty hinge and the only protest she makes is to remind me that she likes sausage. As if I could ever forget.

"I know. You're a sausage dog."

She falls asleep quickly and soundly. Her chest and soft belly rise and fall with each subdued breath. I sit next to her on the floor, my legs tucked close and my arms wrapped around them, and I make some of the eye rain she likes, but not too much. I don't know where the rage first takes root-my heart, my gut, my brain, my soul-but it has been metastasizing over the four days since the octopus first came calling. I look it directly in the eye.

"You." I surprise myself with how guttural it sounds.

There is no reply.

"YOU!" This time I intentionally snarl.

The octopus stirs. Its arms swoosh around Lily's sleeping head like they did late last night and sluggishly it opens an eye. Horrified, I feel myself digging into the linoleum so as not to retreat. Holy f.u.c.k. What is this thing? It blinks at me drowsily as I advance, slowly, as close as I dare, neither of us making any sudden moves.

It speaks. "If you're talking to her, she's asleep."

I jump back. Did I expect an answer? I don't know. I'm alarmed and disconcerted and yet not at all surprised that he can articulate. He? He is a he, I think, with that voice. I think I knew this was coming. That one chapter was ending with another about to begin, that a foe this formidable would make himself heard.

"I'm talking to you." Since this is the first time I'm openly addressing the octopus, I should have given more thought to what I want to say. But this is all gut, all emotion; whatever is going to come out is going to come.

"What can I do for you?" His tone is bored, verging on annoyed.

"f.u.c.k you, that's what you can do." I stare at him to wait for a reaction.

The octopus feigns offense. "There's no need to be vulgar."

I stare the octopus down. "Leave."

The octopus looks for a moment like he's considering my directive. His gaze swoops up to the ceiling, hangs there for a beat, then falls back down to me. "No."

I stand, drawing myself up to my full height of six feet two inches, and outstretch my arms, making myself as large and as intimidating as possible. You're supposed to do this with bears, I think, and other frightening things. As a final sign of my physical dominance, I puff out my chest. "Leave. Go. Now."

"I'm sorry, I can't."

"However you came, leave." There is an icy coldness to the exchange that chills the room ten degrees.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," he says. I hate his smug posturing. I'm sorry. I'm afraid. As if he wants to leave but can't, and the reason he can't is beyond his control.

"I won't let you win."

"Win what, exactly?"

"You shall not pa.s.s!" If I could strangle him, if I could get my arms around his eight and wrench him from her skull, I would. I would eviscerate him and tear his flesh, rip his pieces into tinier pieces and lay his guts bare. But I don't dare, not knowing how he's attached.

"Are we playing a game?" I hate that I'm not getting a rise out of him. His placid tone is making me more irate.

"What do you want from me?" I yell.

"Nothing."

I turn and I punch the cabinet where I keep the baking pans. Inside they rattle and clang. "What do you want from her?"

Pause. "I'm not sure I've decided."

"I will do everything in my power to stop you."

"It would disappoint me if you did anything less."

The only words I have left are Cate Blanchett's, and I say them with all the gusto of Elizabeth the First standing tall in the face of the advancing Spanish armada. "I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare if you dare try me!"

The octopus lethargically blinks again.

"Do you hear me, octopus?" I gnash and growl and spit. My face is hot and my fists are clenched. "I have a hurricane in me!"

"Do you?" The octopus is unconvinced, enraging me to full boil.

"I'm serious, you p.r.i.c.k. We're going to the vet in the morning and I will do whatever it takes to stop you. I will max out every credit card at my disposal. I will beg, borrow, and steal. I will order every test, every pill, every measure, every treatment."

The octopus blinks, but doesn't retreat. Skeptically: "Will you?"

I would pull the walls of this house down on top of him if he weren't attached to the fragile skull of my deepest love. In my whole life I've never been more angry.

Mostly because he is right.

The Invertebrate Five Years Earlier Stuck Come to San Francisco." It's my sister, Meredith.

"When?" I ask.

"Day after tomorrow."

I look across the chaotic airport terminal at Jeffrey, who is trying to trade our two tickets for seats on an earlier flight out of JFK. I'm sitting thirty yards away on the grimy airport floor, our phones plugged into the only available charging station. We have been on the East Coast for eight days; Christmas with his family, and then several days in the city, just the two of us, to wander and explore and eat. But now the snow that was so beautiful just days ago is falling harder and harder and people are trying to rebook their flights to get out ahead of the advancing storm. "I don't know. We might be stuck."

"Then get unstuck!" Meredith is uncharacteristically emphatic.

"What are you doing in San Francisco?" An announcement blares over the airport speakers, but I can't make sense of it.

"Where are you? I can barely hear you," Meredith says.

"New York. Trying to get a flight home. Why San Francisco?"

Silence at the other end of the line.

"Meredith?"