Remarkably Bright Creatures(51)

“Well, no, not here. The tea here is shit, to be honest. But it could be here, if you’d like. I hadn’t actually worked that part out yet.” Ethan bites his lower lip and drums his meaty fingers on the register. “Somewhere else, then? Or not at all, perhaps. Never mind. Rubbish idea.”

“It wasn’t a rubbish idea.” Tova is astonished to hear the colloquialism come out of her mouth. Is this how Janice picks up her sitcom talk? Before she can stop herself, she finds herself replying, “Certainly, we can have tea sometime. Or coffee, perhaps.”

Ethan shakes his head. “You Swedes and your coffee.”

Tova feels herself flush, wondering if she ought to make a joke about him being a Scot, but before she can come up with one, he hands her a scrap of paper, the same one that he scribbled on. In blue ink on the back, he’s written his telephone number.

“Give me a ring, love. We’ll set something up. Before you . . . go.”

Tova nods, then ducks out of the Shop-Way, astounded at how difficult it’s suddenly become to breathe normally.

IT’S PAST TEN now, and daylight has finally drained from the sky. On her way home, Tova makes an unplanned turn.

One more errand today.

The aquarium’s parking lot is empty, except for a dilapidated camper, the same one that was parked in front of Jessica Snell’s office earlier. Perhaps the owner is a fisherman. She scans the pier, looking for a figure with a pole, but it’s empty.

Hobbling up to the front door, she pauses. Terry had forbidden her from coming to clean, naturally, but he hadn’t expressly instructed her not to use her key for a social call. In fact, when she’d tried to give the key back, he’d insisted she hang on to it, which she’d taken not only as an affirmation of her trustworthiness but also as a vow of confidence in her resilience. You’ll be back before you know it, Terry had said.

The same force that drew her to Will’s headstone earlier today has led her here. To . . . communicate. To notify the octopus of her plan to move to Charter Village. Although neither Will nor Marcellus the Octopus can understand her, both deserve to know. And, less urgently, he might lead her to a solution for this mess she’s gotten herself into with Ethan Mack and his tea. Unless she ought to keep that to herself; perhaps if she pretends it never happened, the invitation will simply vanish? She can practically see how Marcellus’s shrewd, knowing eye will glare, how his sucker-lined arm will waggle, scolding. Tova clicks her tongue at her own behavior. Pretending to speak with the insentient. She’s ten times worse than Mary Ann Minetti and old Mrs. Kretch put together.

The door clinks open. Everything else aside, she must admit she’s curious about how the place has fared, hygienically speaking, in her absence.

She holds her breath, ready for sloppy tile and smudged glass, but to her shock, things look decent. This fellow Terry brought on to fill in is managing well. This begets a small corollary disappointment, the dull realization that she is not indispensable. But overall, this is a good development. More than once, the thought of the aquarium being cleaned in a subpar manner has given her pause about her plans to leave. Perhaps this new fellow can stay on after Tova’s departure.

Heading around the hallway toward the octopus’s tank, she moves as discreetly as she can with this wretched boot. Which is unnecessary, because she’s the only human here. Whispered greetings to her old friends, the Japanese crabs, the wolf eels, the jellies, and the sea cucumbers, linger for a moment in the dark corridor then vanish into the bluish-green air like wisps of smoke. Even if they could, these creatures would never tell anyone she was here. It’ll be their secret.

She passes the sea lion statue and, as always, pauses to stroke its head, reveling in the fleeting illusion of her son flickering within her when she touches something he so adored.

Approaching the entrance to the back of the octopus enclosure, Tova frowns. A fluorescent glow seeps from under the door. Someone has left the light on.

Then a terrible clatter erupts inside.





Conscience Does Make Cowards of Us All


Cameron blinks. Wincing, he rubs his temple, which is throbbing where it must’ve smacked into the table as he fell. He wipes the smear of blood on his shirt and gives the busted stepladder a vengeful kick. If he wanted to, he could probably sue the balls off of this place. Poorly maintained equipment. A workplace injury. But what if someone asks him to explain what he was doing back here in the first place?

“You,” he says, glaring at the creature as he stands. The thing hasn’t moved. It’s hunkered like some overgrown tarantula, having burrowed in the clutter of tubes and jars and pump parts in the deepest corner of the shelf above the tanks. It scrambled up there, somehow, as Cameron tried to corral it with a broom handle, which he now jabs toward the creature again. “What’s your problem, bro? I’m trying to help you.”

Its massive body heaves, like a sigh. At least it’s still alive, but probably not for much longer. An octopus can survive briefly out of water (there was a documentary once, on some nature channel), but this one has been on shore leave for almost twenty minutes, and that’s just counting from the time Cameron discovered it trying to slip out the back door he’d left propped open.

Someone could’ve warned him the exhibits might escape. Like, how is this even a possibility? Secure tanks should be a reasonable expectation in a tourist aquarium. Honestly, the situation is making him uneasy about those sharks circling the big tank in the middle, especially now that his head is bleeding. Can sharks smell through glass?