Lily and the Octopus(51)

“Your coat is mahogany,” Lily told me. “Like mine.” We both now have gray hairs under our chins.

On day fifteen I swallowed my fear and jumped off the bow and into the ocean. The water was shocking, then invigorating. I thought of the monsters below, of the octopus attaching itself to my leg and pulling me down to great depths, of my head exploding from the density of water, of drowning. But only for the briefest of moments. I felt too alive to die. It took a great deal of encouraging, but at sunset I talked Lily into a swim. I held her tight with two hands and close to my body, using my legs to kick and keep us afloat, and she paddled with her paws but mostly out of panic.

“I’ve got you, Monkey. And I’m never letting go.”

Together we drifted, looking at the orange sky, clouds tinged with lava from an unseen volcano. I put my head back in the water, submerging my ears, and for the first time in days everything fell quiet. I kept one eye on Fishful Thinking so we wouldn’t drift too far, but I let all of our other cares wash away. It felt like a baptism of sorts. Once we had been submerged in the ocean, we were protected by it. We were now pure.

It’s now day seventeen. We’ve stopped putting tuna fish on bread or a plate and just eat it out of the can. It’s easier that way, and there’s less to clean up. I glance at Lily, who finishes her can first. She gazes stoically ahead. The light accentuates the gray on her neck and around her whiskers, and the little bit between her eyes. She is no longer young; she is no longer my girl.

“I think it’s funny you packed canned tuna for an adventure at sea,” she says, with only a modicum of judgment.

I look around at the nets and the trawlers and all the gear that decorates Fishful Thinking. “Funny ha-ha? Or funny strange?”

She doesn’t answer. I finish my meal and I gather the empty tins. We’ll run out of canned tuna eventually and have to fish for our meals from the sea. But I don’t tell her this. There’s no need to play on her fears.

“How will we know when we find the octopus?” she asks again, studying the ever-changing ripples surrounding the hull.

I have only the answer I have given her each time she has asked this question before. I scratch her under the chin and the tags on her collar shake. “We’ll know.”

For the past two and a half weeks, despite the boredom, despite the monotony, I have thought of little else but the octopus. He will not allow us this deep into his waters and resist the urge to announce himself. He’ll take our presence in his home as a personal affront, much the way I resented his presence in ours.

At night, when I have trouble sleeping, I steel myself for a great battle at sea. I picture this monster wrapping his muscular arms around our vessel, trying to pierce the hull with his beak while Lily and I try desperately to outmaneuver, fight back, and harpoon. It’s nothing I haven’t dreamed of doing to him in other ways. With surgery and radiation and pills. It’s two to one, this fight, but I’m still not sure we’re evenly matched. He has the advantage of the sea.

“And why are we hunting him again?” Lily asks.

I check the ship’s compass and correct our course five degrees southwest. “It’s the best chance we have of staying together.”

Lily stands, turns around three times, then sits again. She does this when she’s bored.

“Do you want to sing a song?” I ask.

“Not really,” she replies.

“I could try my hand at the harmonica again.”

Lily cringes, but remains polite. “No, thank you.”

“We’ll find him,” I assure her. “It’s just that the ocean is so vast.”

“So is Los Angeles.” To a dachshund, that probably seems equivalent.

“Not this vast.”

I study our charts. If I’m reading them correctly, we’re over a particularly deep trench. Something in me tells me the octopus is near.

Lily looks over the side of the boat and says, “It’s a wonder he ever left all this to come and live with us.”

I’d never given much thought to the octopus’s motivations; the why of it all seemed irrelevant. But Lily’s right. It is a wonder. “I hope the octopus has the same thought about us, right before we harpoon him through his fleshy head.”

Lily blanches in a way that makes me question for the first time whether she’s come to feel some sympathy for that parasite. Stockholm syndrome. Capture bonding. Whatever they call it. I hope she doesn’t. I don’t want that to be true. I don’t want her to hesitate when it comes time for the kill.

The sun fades. We’ve made a habit of watching it sink below the horizon, and tonight is no different. We sit out on Fishful Thinking’s bow, me Indian style and her perched in the gap in my legs, and as the sun dips out of sight I say, “Going, going, going . . . gone.” And then usually we make some kind of wish. It’s my favorite moment of the day.

“What’s the first thing you want to do when we get back home?”

Lily considers this. “I’m not sure I’ve thought about it.”

Does she know something I don’t? Or is this just part of her canine ability to live entirely in the present? Part of me doesn’t want to know. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I want to take a hot shower and sleep a good long sleep in our own bed. And have a slice of Village Pizzeria pizza with roasted red peppers and black olives and a cold Sam Adams beer.”