Let’s use the other stool, shall we?”
Cameron watches skeptically as Tova drags the old, broken step stool out of the way and replaces it with the new one. Someone should deal with that busted old thing. Maybe he’ll haul it out to the dumpster on his way out tonight.
“Last time he hid,” Cameron points out. “What makes you think tonight’s any different?”
“He’s in a better mood tonight.”
“Oh, come on. A better mood?” Even the Octopus Whisperer herself can’t discern an invertebrate’s moods. Can she? Cameron peers into the tank. Marcellus looks how he always looks, floating around like some weird alien, his unnerving eye moving like it’s got a mind of its own. It wouldn’t shock him if someone cut Marcellus open and found his insides full of wires and circuits. A spying sea robot, dispatched from a distant galaxy. Isn’t there a movie with that plot? If not, there should be. Maybe he could write the screenplay.
He hesitates before the stool, glancing at the tank next door. Wolf eels. Seriously, the ugliest fish Cameron has ever seen. Two of them are out now, parked next to a rock, their terrifying teeth jutting up from twin underbites. “How about we play with them instead? They look about as friendly.”
Ignoring his sarcastic comment, Tova climbs up on the stool and dips her hand into the tank. Cameron watches as Marcellus winds his arm around her wrist. Tova touches the top of his mantle, and the creature seems to lean into her hand, in a way that reminds him of how Katie’s ridiculous little dog used to demand her attention when it sat on her lap.
“You’re going to say hello to my friend Cameron now, and this time, you’re going to be friendly,” Tova tells the octopus. She motions Cameron to replace her on the stool. He rolls his eyes. But the octopus seems to listen and releases his grip on her arm before turning his inscrutable eye on Cameron, hovering expectantly in his cold blue tank.
“Okay,” he mutters, shrugging off his favorite hoodie and tossing it on the counter before climbing up. He dips his hand in. The water is bracing. Worse than Puget Sound itself, the coldness of which Cameron now considers himself an expert on, after his outing with Avery.
The creature trails an arm upward, brushing his hand.
“Ack!” Instinctively, he yanks his hand from the water, which draws a gentle chuckle from Tova, who watches from below.
“It’s quite all right to be a bit alarmed,” she says.
“I’m not,” Cameron grunts. “It’s just really cold.”
“Try again,” she encourages.
When he does, he forces himself to keep his hand in the water this time, allowing Marcellus to prod at the veins on the back of his hand, to explore the tops of his knuckles. Then, in an instant, the octopus wraps the end of its arm around his wrist. Each individual sucker feels like its own tiny creature, and before Cameron knows it, it feels like there are hundreds of them crawling up his arm.
To his surprise, he laughs.
Tova laughs, too. “It feels funny, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He looks down into the water. Marcellus’s eye is gleaming, somehow, like he’s laughing along with them. The creature’s muscular tentacle wraps tighter, up to his elbow now. How strong is this thing, anyway?
Cameron is so preoccupied with the circulation in his arm that he doesn’t notice the creature’s other appendage winding around behind him until Marcellus taps him on the opposite shoulder. He whirls around, turning the wrong way, of course. Had the octopus intended that? Like a joke?
“Ah, he got you!” Tova’s eyes sparkle. “My brother used to fool his nephew, my son, with that one. Oldest trick in the book.”
The octopus unwinds. As Cameron steps down from the stool, he examines the sucker marks along the underside of his arm.
“They’ll fade quickly,” Tova assures him.
“Yours didn’t,” Cameron points out.
“My skin is seventy years old, dear. Yours will mend more quickly.”
What does it matter? The marks look kind of cool, like a tattoo. Maybe Avery will be impressed. He grabs a roll of paper towels from the shelf and dries off his arm. He’s about to turn and shoot it, free-throw-style, at the trash can in the corner of the tiny pump room, when something in the octopus’s tank catches his eye. Something shiny, barely peeking through the sand near the big rock behind which the creature disappeared a minute ago.
“What’s that thing?” he asks Tova.
She looks up at him, confused.
“That shiny thing.” He ducks down and peers through the glass, and Tova does the same, adjusting her glasses.
“Good heavens.” Tova frowns. “I don’t know.”
As if on cue, one of the octopus’s arms snakes out from the rocky den and prods the sand with its tip, reminding Cameron of Aunt Jeanne when she falls asleep on the sofa and loses her glasses and has to feel around, half-blind, in the cushions.
“I think he’s looking for it,” Cameron says, not quite believing the words coming out of his mouth. Was the creature actually listening to them?
Before Tova can reply, the octopus finally lands on the mystery object, and the sand is swept away. Cameron squints through the glass. It’s a teardrop-shaped silver thing, an inch wide, maybe. A fishing lure? No, an earring. A woman’s earring.
With a whoosh, the octopus sweeps the earring into the den.
For some reason, Tova throws back her head and laughs.
“What’s so funny?”
She clasps a hand to her chest. “I should say, I do believe our Marcellus is something of a treasure hunter.”
“A treasure hunter?”
As Cameron follows Tova out of the pump room, she tells him some story about her lost house key that the octopus apparently dug up from his tank and returned to her one night. Cameron nods along, but he’s not sure he’s buying it. Tova’s a nice lady, but in spite of what he’s seen tonight, some of this octopus shit just seems crazy. Eventually, they resume their work in comfortable silence. Cameron lets his mind wander again, replaying his night with Avery, the way her hair smelled like some fruity shampoo on his pillow. He won’t check his phone again, seeing if she’s messaged him back. Nope. And he won’t go by the paddle shop on his way home tonight, even though he knows it’ll be closed. Definitely not. These are the promises he’s making to himself as he absently collects the trash and goes to replace the can liner.
“Don’t forget to hook it all the way around,” Tova calls from across the hallway.
How had she even seen him? Does she have eyes on the back of her head? Maybe she’s a robot spy from a distant galaxy. That would make a great twist in his screenplay.
He points to the rim of the trash can. “It’s all the way around. Look.”
“Pull it down farther. It’ll only take an extra moment.”
“It’s good enough!”
“It’ll start to slip down when it gets full.”
“Well, when that happens, someone can fix it.”
Tova turns to him, arms folded. “Didn’t you mother teach you to do things right the first time?”
Cameron stares at her. “I never had a mother.”
Tova’s color drains.
“She was . . . I mean, she struggled. With addiction. I haven’t seen her since I was nine.”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry, Cameron.”
“It’s okay,” he grumbles while yanking the liner all the way on, hating the fact that it did only take an extra moment. When he looks up, Tova is wiping fervently at some nonexistent spot on the glass, refusing to meet his eye.
“Really, it’s okay,” Cameron insists. “How would you have known?”
“It is certainly not okay. I ought to be more careful with my words.”
“No, I shouldn’t have chomped your head off about it. I’m just tired.” Cameron lets out a puffy breath. “Terry asked for extra cod for the sharks today, and Mackenzie was out, sick, so I covered the desk between loads, and the phone kept ringing, and . . . it’s just been a long day.”
“You’re working very hard here.”
“I guess I am.” The words seep through him, slow and warm like hot chicken broth on a cold day. It might be the nicest compliment anyone has ever given him.
“Indeed.” Tova smiles at him, gives a tiny approving nod before resuming her wiping down of the glass tank.
“The truth is, I didn’t have a mom, but I had an aunt Jeanne,” he says tentatively. He picks up the mop and starts to run it along the baseboard. “She’s the one who raised me after my mom took off.”
Tova looks up. “I’d love to hear about her.”
“She’s one of the most amazing people on the planet, but you might not like her.”
“Why on earth wouldn’t I like her?”
A conspiratorial grin spreads across Cameron’s face. “Pretty sure she’s never had a clue about the proper way to put in trash can liners.”
Tova’s laugh echoes down the empty hallway.