Remarkably Bright Creatures(92)

But his mind has other ideas. And it will not shut up about them. From somewhere deep in his brain, a voice needles him. None of this was ever real, it nags. Too good to be true. This isn’t your life. This is not your home. He wasn’t your father. She’s not your girlfriend.

At least he has a job he doesn’t hate. How many times has Tova assured him that Terry is definitely planning to offer him the permanent position? And that it’s well-deserved? Even Cameron must admit that his glass polishing has come a long way. He makes that shit sparkle. And he can do the entire loop with the mop, including all the random nooks and crannies, in under an hour now.

But then, the needling voice cuts in, why didn’t he offer the job? Especially when Cameron asked about it this afternoon?

You’re not as good as you think you are, the voice sneers. Not even qualified to run a small-town supermarket.

“Shut up,” Cameron mutters to himself, swinging into the left-most lane and stepping on the gas.

Eventually, traffic thins out, and at some point, the fuel light comes on. Cameron blinks at it. He’s only twenty-something miles from Sowell Bay. He could probably make it. Live on the edge. But he pulls off at the next exit and finds a gas station.

The convenience store cashier gives him a pleasant smile as she rings up his bag of chips and a bottle of soda. Dinner. Cameron doesn’t smile back. It’s like he doesn’t remember how. His face is frozen in neutral as the clerk asks him how he’s doing tonight in a making-conversation sort of way.

He ignores the question and instead tells her add on a pack of smokes.

While gasoline glugs from the pump nozzle into the camper, he scrolls his phone, but it’s purely reflexive, like his eyes are registering that words and photos are rolling by but his brain isn’t downloading any of it. Until a picture catches his attention.

Katie.

Did she unblock him? He taps her name, and sure enough, her profile loads. There she is, with her haughty smile. Like she invented the world, and he’s just lucky enough to live in it.

She’s posted a million new pictures this summer. Cameron whizzes through her feed. In half of the photos, some asshat has his arm slung around her, always wearing some idiotic wraparound sunglasses so that Cameron can’t even see the guy’s stupid face.

Has he moved into her apartment yet? He probably remembered to put his name on the lease. Works in some boring office. Drives a brand-new SUV and has never once needed the four-wheel drive. Uses an electric toothbrush. They probably get together with his parents for dinner on the weekends.

Screw every last one of these people with their normal, happy lives. Cameron will never get there, no matter how hard he tries. Not even here in Washington.

He opens his map app. Types in a new route. Sowell Bay to Modesto.

Fifteen hours.





An Early Arrival


The doors are propped open when Tova arrives on Wednesday evening. It’s a bit earlier than usual, but Terry had sounded so wound up when he called. She’d left her supper plate unwashed and poured a hasty bowl of kibble for Cat before hurrying down to the aquarium.

Is this about the open door? Her stomach lurches, remembering what happened when Cameron left the back door open and Marcellus tried to escape. But a moment later, Terry comes sauntering out with a broad smile and a wave.

“What’s happening here?” she asks, approaching.

“Big night. And I don’t mean only because it’s your second-to-last day.”

Tova tilts her head.

“We’re getting a delivery,” Terry continues. He’s downright giddy. “Never thought it would happen before you left. And I called you because I thought you’d want to be here to meet it.” He laughs. “It. Listen to me! Her. I thought you’d want to meet her.”

Who on earth is “her”?

Before Tova can ask, a truck rumbles into the parking lot. With a series of loud beeps, it backs up toward the doors. A gruff-looking man loads a wooden crate from a refrigerated enclosure onto a forklift. At first, the delivery person seems keen to deposit the large box right there, but Terry talks him into helping him transport it inside. Clutching her pocketbook, Tova follows the two men as they guide the huge crate through the open doors and around the curved hallway, which seems to be quite a project.

She trails them into the pump room, where they deposit the crate. It sloshes audibly as they edge it onto the floor. In a flash, the delivery driver has vanished with the forklift.

“Keep an eye on that for a minute, will you, Tova?” Terry says. “I need to go sign the paperwork.” He trots away after the deliveryman.

Tova takes a closer look at the crate. On one side, in big, red, stenciled letters, it reads: THIS SIDE UP. On the other it says: LIVE OCTOPUS.

“Keep an eye on it. What’s that supposed to mean?” Tova asks Marcellus as she peers through the narrow glass panel on the back of his tank. The LIVE OCTOPUS crate sits silent in the center of the room, so still that Tova wonders whether there’s anything alive inside at all. What is she meant to be keeping an eye on?

Marcellus waves an arm, a noncommittal gesture. He doesn’t know, either.

“I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?” Tova muses. “In any event, it looks like you’re about to have a new neighbor.”

A couple tanks down from Marcellus, there’s one that’s been emptied. Pacific nettle sea stars were there before. Where have they gone? The empty tank looks too clean, its water too clear. Tova pokes her head out of the pump room; Terry’s nowhere in sight. Quickly, she drags out the step stool and lifts the octopus tank’s lid. Marcellus pokes the tip of an arm through the surface of the water, and Tova lowers her hand. He curls his arm around her wrist in a gesture that’s well beyond familiar now, and there’s something almost instinctive about it, like the way a newborn baby will clutch at its mother’s finger.