The Chinatown in Los Angeles is not nearly as chaotic (nor as Chinese) as the Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco. On a weekday afternoon it’s easy to stroll in and out of stores, taking in their exotic contents. The fish market I come to first has nothing more exotic than Maine lobster and Dungeness crab. I think of asking if they have hidden inventory in back, but I’m afraid that they might sell some sort of illegal catch, like endangered sea urchin or poisonous puffer fish, and I don’t want anything like that. I’m not that crazy.
The second place I try on Broadway is more to my liking. It feels less touristy, more authentically Chinese. I don’t immediately see what I’m looking for laid out on crushed ice, but I have no problem asking the fishmonger. He has a kind and wizened face.
“I’m looking for octopus.”
A kind and wizened face that looks back at me confused. I try to explain so that he doesn’t inadvertently sell me some sort of Chinese goblin, a Mogwai, like in the movie Gremlins—something that will ultimately do more harm than good. But I don’t know the Chinese word for octopus, so I hold up eight fingers, then invert my hands and wiggle them.
“Ahhh. Zhāng yú.”
He walks me to the end of the case and I see them lying motionless on the ice, a half dozen or so. They’re far less menacing when they’re dead.
“Hmmm.” I make a show of studying them as if I’m looking for something very specific. “Do you have anything, I don’t know, bigger?” I hold my hands farther apart for emphasis.
The fishmonger holds up his index finger for me to wait while he disappears into a walk-in cooler. The air-conditioning is working overtime, and the whole place is alive with an electric hum. The windows are yellowed with cellophane, giving everything a doleful pall. A few flies buzz near the doorway, but they steer clear of the fish. I wonder if they don’t like the ice. An elderly Chinese woman looks at oyster sauces. We make eye contact and I offer a smile. She is nonplussed.
The man returns with a larger specimen, one that I think will do nicely. I nod and he smiles and wraps it up in waxy paper. When he hands it to me I say, “There’s one more thing I need.”
The fishmonger looks expectantly at me. I nod to what I see behind him. He gestures at some prawns. I shake my head no.
“That.”
He turns around confused, until he sees what I’m pointing to: I want to buy his cleaver. Now he shakes his head. Not with disgust, but almost. Certainly profound disapproval. This is just like Gremlins. I can hear him say, “You do with Mogwai what your society has done with all of nature’s gifts. You do not understand!” But instead of Mogwai I hear octopus. I doubt the octopus is a gift; if it is, it’s a gift I’m hell-bent on returning.
I point again, insistently, and pull a small wad of twenties from my pocket. He looks at the money. After some hesitation, he pries the cleaver free.
When I return from my errand, Lily is sitting in her bed, awake, staring off in the direction of the stove. She doesn’t hear me, but the octopus does. The paper package under my arm rustles as I enter the kitchen and my keys land on the table with a jingling clang. I place the package on the large cutting board by the sink, then pick up the cutting board and the package together and bring them to the table where the octopus can see. I cast a sideways glance back at Lily to make sure he’s watching.
He is.
I fumble for a moment with the string that ties the package. While I often have difficulty with knots, this fumbling is mostly for dramatic effect, mostly so I can produce my new cleaver and bring it down with a thud on the string at the flatter end of the package. I can feel it sink into the cutting board. While I don’t particularly want to sacrifice my good cutting board, the overall effect is without equal, so I can’t help but not care.
We’re leaving here soon anyway.
“What’s in the package?” It’s the octopus talking. Success. I have piqued his interest.
“Oh, you’ll see.”
I carefully undo the bundle and the paper makes an awful, rumpling sound. The smell hits me before I even have the last of it folded open. It hits Lily only a nanosecond afterward, and she rouses from her trance and her sniffer hits the air and she makes her way over to where I am, stopping only when she bumps into my shins. She plays her part perfectly, a stretch limousine to deliver this party’s guest of honor.
“Seriously,” the octopus says. “What’s in the package?”
“You want to know?” I gnash my teeth into the most evil grin. “THIS.”
I unfold the final flap of paper and hoist the dead octopus by its head. Juices drip from its flaccid arms onto the floor.
“Whoa,” the octopus exclaims, and uses one of his arms to shield his eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup.”
“That’s barbaric!” The octopus has no sense of irony.
“Yup,” I say again.
“Oh, god, the smell. Who is that, even?”
I don’t know its name; I never thought to ask the fishmonger if it ever had one. I look at the dead octopus, limp and gray. It has only a faded purple hue, like a dying violet. The color is the only thing about it, really, that even suggests there once was life in it.
“Iris,” I answer. I look down at Lily, who is hungrily lapping up octopus drippings from the floor. I always did like naming things after flowers.
“Aw, man. I have an aunt Iris.”
This causes me to cackle wickedly, like one of Shakespeare’s witches. “Probably not anymore!”
When the hurlyburly’s done. When the battle is lost and won.
I push the paper aside and slap the dead octopus down onto the cutting board. It lands with a moist and meaty splat. I pry my cleaver loose and bring it down hard on one of the arms, cutting off a good three inches.
The octopus screams.
Fair is foul and foul is fair: hover through the fog and the filthy air.
I toss the arm piece to Lily and it lands on the floor with a wet slap. Lily finds it almost instantly and gobbles it up with one bite.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Are you crazy?”
I think about my new mantra. “Not crazy enough!” I pry the cleaver free of the cutting board and bring it down again, trimming a few inches off another arm.
“EGAD!” the octopus gargles with horror. I toss more of the dead octopus to Lily, who seems to be enjoying this as much as I am.
“I’m sorry, is this bothering you?” I ask the octopus, faking concern.
“Of course it’s bothering me! Oh, gah! I can actually taste it through her skull.” The octopus is turning green. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
I shrug. “Be glad it’s only your aunt.”
Cleaver. CHOP. Toss a bite to Lily.
“What do you mean?”
I grab the cleaver and crouch low to look the octopus in the eye. Lily continues to cooperate by licking the floor where the octopus bits have landed. With her head bowed, the octopus and I are face-to-face, eye-to-eye. Mano a mano. I hold the cleaver an inch from his face.
“Make no mistake, octopus. You leave tonight. You leave tonight or I will rent a boat and I swear to god, I will trawl the oceans with a fucking net until I catch everyone you love.” The octopus looks up at me like I wouldn’t dare. “And then I will come back here and I will chop them up and I will feed them to my dog and you can taste their stinking flesh.”
To drive my point home, I stand up and firm my grip around the cleaver.
WHOMP!
“Your mother!” I toss a piece of octopus to Lily and she catches it before it hits the ground.
WHOMP!
Another piece. “Your father!” This one hits the floor with a splat and Lily is on it in seconds.
WHOMP!
“Your brother!”
“I don’t have a brother!”
I snarl.
WHOMP!
“Your sister!”
“Stop it!”
“You got a wife? I’ve got all day! How about it
, Lily—do you like this game?”
YES! CHEWY! HAPPINESS! MORE! SALTY! MEAT! FOR! LILY! PLEASE!
“Okay, okay, okay! You’ve made your point.”
“You’ll leave?” I wave the cleaver ominously in front of him.
“You said I have until tonight.” The octopus remains sly to the very end.
Did I say that? I don’t remember what I said. I’ll have to find out if blinding rage—murderous rage—is a natural part of grief. Is it normal for me in this stage to want to make my enemies suffer, or have I gone irreparably too far?
I lock eyes with the octopus and tug at my shirtsleeve.
“What?” he asks.
I roll up the sleeve to slowly reveal my tattoo. Eight octopus arms hang from my bicep, and I can feel the octopus’s eyes growing bigger. I pull up my shirt even farther, revealing Kal’s work from the bottom up in dramatic fashion. Finally my shirtsleeve is up near my shoulder and my entire tattoo is revealed: a dachshund standing triumphantly on the head of an octopus.
“This is goodbye, you sonofabitch.”
I flex, making sure the octopus drinks it in before striking the cleaver down on the cutting board with such force it shatters the board in two.
“I AM THE OCTOPUS NOW!”
The Pelagic Zone
The Law for the Wolves (continued)
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle,
and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken;
it may be fair words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack,
ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel,
and the Pack be diminished by war.
—Rudyard Kipling
Fishful Thinking
I have been preparing and packing for days, meticulously checking off items and tasks on a half dozen carefully constructed lists. Lily is still asleep when I zip the last of our bags closed; they lie stacked in a pile by the bedroom door, dwarfing Lily and maybe even me, waiting to be carried, first to the car and then onto our waiting ship. The supplies are daunting; there’s no telling how long we’ll be gone, how dangerous our voyage will be. Trent (despite his suggestion that I need to stop playing the octopus’s game) has warned me that I am running from an obvious fate, and I understand his concern for us: This is a dangerous undertaking. I, on the other hand, feel like I’m in control for the very first time since this whole ordeal began.
I drink in the sight of my sweet gosling resting peacefully in the feathered nest of our bed’s duvet. It’s almost enough to make me want to crawl back under the covers with her. It has been two days since the octopus left. Without fanfare or goodbyes, he just fled in the night. Disappeared, just as he promised he would when I fed Lily her gruesome meal. Without our unwanted visitor, it feels like we are in the calm eye of a storm. The waters are still and the winds have subsided and there’s great beauty in the fragile peace, despite the promise of the storm soon to rage again.
Asleep like this, whiskered cheeks puffing with each gentle breath, Lily reminds me of her puppy self. The puppy who dreamed of badgers and beaches, of warm laps and wrestling and sunshine and hunting. I don’t know if I’ve scared the octopus into permanent retreat, or where he has even gone. It almost doesn’t matter.
Almost.
Neither Lily nor I can sit idly by hoping he doesn’t return, perhaps this time with reinforcements. There’s only one option that lies ahead for us. I place one hand on Lily’s chest and, startled, she jerks awake. “Shhhhh. Shhhhh. Shhhhh,” I say.
She looks up at me and yawns, her jaw squeaking like a hinge and her legs stretching horizontally for ground that isn’t there. It takes her a moment to notice the stack of weathered oilcloth duffel bags creating a mountainous sculpture in the corner. With the octopus gone, she can once again see.
“What in the world?” Lily asks. I remember again her climbing into my suitcase as a puppy when I would haul it out of the closet to pack for a trip. A pile of bags such as this one must be confusing. Which one should she jump into?
“Those are our supplies.”
“Those are our supplies for what?” She slowly sits upright on the mattress and shakes the sleep out of her head, ears flapping madly like wings.
“For our adventure.” I scratch her on top of her head where the octopus used to sit. My touch is gentle, in case it’s sore. It’s good to feel her soft fur there again. “Remember? I told you. We’re going on an awfully big adventure.”
Lily turns and licks herself in an awkward place before asking, “Yes, but an awfully big adventure where?”
I look her square in the eyes. I want to protect her, at the very least not to startle her. But there’s no benefit in soft-pedaling if she is to be my cocaptain on this voyage. “We’re going on an octopus hunt.”
It’s still dark when Lily drags the last duffel bag down the few steps from the house to the curb with her teeth. I load them carefully into the car. Inside are clothes for me, to protect against the elements (including a cabled sweater I wear during Christmases back east because it makes me look like a fisherman); blankets for Lily, as well as a lifejacket, like Weezie’s, sized just for her; canned goods and kibble; rawhide chews; a few books on sailing and the sea including works by Hemingway, Melville, and several by Patrick O’Brian; fishing nets and a harpoon; a compass; jugs of drinking water; matches; a deck of cards; Lily’s red ball; three bottles of Glenlivet, aged eighteen years; and a harmonica—which I don’t know how to play. The car full, we say goodbye to the house. It’s hard; I didn’t really think about this part in formulating my plan. Neither of us can say with certainty when (or if ) we’ll see our home again.
We drive the thirty or so miles to Long Beach. Despite the early hour the route is surprisingly populated with cars, but not enough to cause a delay. The drive is mostly silent, except for quiet wet sounds as Lily continues to lick herself. I wonder if in the course of this whole ordeal I’ve forgotten to give her her flea medicine. Nothing I can do about it now. On the plus side, there probably aren’t many fleas at sea. The sun is just cracking the skyline when we reach the marina and I pull into the only available spot and stop the car. It sits underneath a sign that says No Overnight Parking and I can only imagine the stack of tickets that will greet us if we ever return.
Through some tough negotiating via telephone over the past two days, I’ve secured us the use of a trawler named Fishful Thinking. She presents herself at the end of the docks just as the morning fog is lifting, and I get my first real glimpse of her. The boat is not fancy and needs a fresh coat of paint, but she’s sturdy, romantic even in her slight weariness, and she has logged time at sea. Fishful Thinking has a forward deckhouse, two masts—main and secondary—an aft working deck, and outriggers on either side that extend beyond the gunwales. Our lease is open-ended.
“Are you Ted?” The man who owns her is salty and gray; he wears a sweater like the one I’ve packed, but his is full of holes. Instead of a pipe, he smokes (or vapes, I guess) an e-cigarette, which surprises me, and I find the whole thing distasteful and inauthentic. I don’t know why his poor lung health would be essential for a successful launch, but somehow in my head it is.
“I am. And this is she?” I ask, tapping my hand on the roof of the deckhouse.
“This be her.” He helps me load our supplies belowdecks as Lily mostly sits back on the wharf and watches. She shifts her feet when the dock rocks underfoot as we carry the heavy bags. I let her sit and enjoy a quiet moment getting used to her surroundings. She will need to gain four sea legs, while I will only need two.
“Sure aren’t packing light,” the man says, his voice full of gravel and booze.
“No, sir. We aim to be prepared.”
“What are you preparing for?”
I think about this. I’ve never been on an octopus hunt before, and since it’s impossible to foresee all the potential dangers ahead, I choose m
y reply carefully. “For anything.”
“There’s only one of you, and the little one can’t require much.” He nods at Lily.
“We may be gone some time.” The truth.
“Where you headed? Can I get that much out of you?”
I throw down a heavy duffel and it kicks up dust and we both cough. The man inhales deeply on his cigarette and his vapor cloud mixes with the dust before the air settles and I answer, “Out where the octopuses live.”
The man looks startled and nearly drops the bag he’s carrying, but he catches it at the last second and sets it down. I can hear the clink of glass bottles; it must be the bag with the scotch. His face takes on an apprehensive expression and he stands and twists, cracking the bones in his spine, his old sweater hanging loose and tattered off his frame. “The waters neither close to the bottom, nor near to the top, nor within reach of any shore.”
“The pelagic zone.” I’ve done my reading. “That’s where our destiny lies.”
The man nods. “What the Greeks would call the open sea.”
I don’t give a damn about the Greeks, but I smile anyway. I only care about one thing. “Will Fishful Thinking make it?”
The man takes another drag on his blue-tipped cigarette and sizes me up and down. He blows vapor into our tight quarters, our shared breathing space. “It’s not the boat I’m worried about.”
I look past the man just in time to see Lily appear on the steps that lead below the deck to where we are. She sits quietly and listens. I wonder if she overheard his concern.
“You don’t need to worry about us,” I say. “We’re adventurers, she and I. This is nothing new. We may not look like much, but we are stout of heart. And we have a mission. The open seas don’t frighten us.” At least not as much as doing nothing, sitting home and waiting for the octopus, or worse, to return. I suppose we had a deal, a truce of sorts, but I’m confident he won’t keep his end of the bargain, so why should I keep mine?
Lily and the Octopus Page 15
