Lily and the Octopus(53)

Lily makes a sour face. “Why did he do that?”

“Their valves had collapsed and they had no way to return blood to my heart. The doctor yanked them out like a bird pulling worms from the ground.”

Lily blinks and lowers her head. “What about this mark over my eye?”

I grab her snout and lower her head even more. “That? That’s nothing. A pleasure scar. You were chasing your red ball so diligently you ran headfirst into the stove.”

Lily laughs as if even she thinks that’s a dumb thing for her to have done. And then, as if by instinct, she scurries across the room and finds her red ball under the little table where we sometimes eat when we tire of looking at the sea. She hops up onto our bunk and drops the ball safely at her feet.

I hold out the index finger on my left hand as scotch laps against the sides of my glass like the ocean against our hull. There’s a mark just above the knuckle that joins the finger to the hand. “This here I got battling you.”

“Battling me?”

“That’s right. I was putting groceries away and you snatched a chorizo sausage right out of my hands, chomping down on my finger in the process.”

“I did?”

“You wanted that sausage so badly you wouldn’t let up on my finger.”

“What did you do?”

“I punched you in the snot locker and laid you among the bok choy. Just so I could have my finger back.”

Lily shrugs. “I’m a sausage dog.”

“I know you are.”

Lily twists again. “What about this thing poking out the side of me here?”

I press on the side of her abdomen and feel her floating rib. “Oh, that. When you were a puppy you fell down a flight of stairs. The doctor thinks you broke a rib. I didn’t know it at the time, but it must have healed funny. You scared me a lot when you were a puppy.” I raise my glass and toast. “I’ll drink to your floating rib.”

Lily hops off the bed and over to her water dish on the floor. “And I’ll drink to yours.” She laps thirstily at the water. I don’t bother explaining that I don’t have a floating rib. I get where she’s coming from.

Lily jumps back onto the bunk and asks, “Do you have any more scars?”

“Just on my heart. But only the figurative kind.”

Lily looks like she’s trying to figure that one out. Over the years, I’ve tried to explain about Jeffrey—about how he was there for six years and then suddenly he was not. How the yelling and the sadness and the quiet and the deceit were not how love was supposed to be. Even now, I’m not sure she entirely understands.

I sit down next to her on the bed and scratch behind her ears.

“Did the octopus come to me because of karma?” she asks.

I’m taken aback by the question, and when I finally understand what she is asking, the whole thing is like a meaty punch to the gut. “No. No, of course not.”

“But you said a person’s actions in the present—”

I cut her off. “That’s just it. A person’s. Dogs, on the other hand . . . dogs have pure souls. Look at me.” I grab her chin and look straight into her eyes. “Dogs are always good and full of selfless love. They are undiluted vessels of joy who never, ever deserve anything bad that happens to them. Especially you. Since the day I met you, you have done nothing but make my life better in every possible way. Do you understand?” Lily nods. “So, no. The octopus did not find you because of karma.”

She nods again and I let go of her chin. I throw back the last of the scotch and set the empty glass down on the floor with a clunk.

“Shall we?” I climb into the bunk with her. Something is catching me not right under my back and I reach under the blanket and produce red ball. I set it on the floor next to the empty glass. I tap on the Witchie-Poo charm for luck and I blow out the candle in our lantern. Lily gives me a gentle kiss on my nose and I kiss her back in the groove between her eyes.

I don’t tell her what I’ve wondered myself in the darker moments since our ordeal began: if the octopus, in fact, did come to her because of karma.

But not karma for her actions.

Karma, perhaps, for mine.





Midnight


I’m straddling Lily, punching her repeatedly in the snout and yelling, “Die! Die! Die!” Tears are falling from my face and my knuckles are searing with pain and the air is fire and my lungs and my heart and my everything burns. I don’t remember anything but betrayal. The sharp realization that Lily is the octopus. That she has been deceiving me all along. I no longer know anything. I don’t know where the boat ends or the water begins, where the water ends or where the sky begins, where the sky ends or near space begins, where near space ends or where the darkness begins.

Or where the darkness ends.

I don’t know if the boat has capsized. I don’t know if the bed has crashed to the ceiling, if the windows will burst and water will rush in, if we will drown. I don’t know if the whole world is upside down, or just mine. I don’t know anything except the pain of betrayal as I pummel my sweet dog in the face.

And that’s when I wake up gasping for air.

I turn immediately to Lily, who is sound asleep. Her face is perfect, unmolested by violence. She is not the octopus. She could never betray me. It’s not possible, it’s not in her to do so. And yet the dream was so real, as if it were foreshadowing gloom. She looks so beautiful, so calm. I force myself to shake the feeling, but not before whispering, “Please don’t ever die.”