Leah had long been a martyr to gifts that centered octopuses in some fashion. The same way that anyone who makes the mistake of committing to an animal will receive chicken-or elephant-or dolphin-themed gifts every birthday and Christmas for the rest of their lives, so Leah was constantly writing notes to thank people for octopus jewelry and octopus trinket dishes and cake forks with octopus handles that were semi-impossible to hold. I had, for the most part, made a point of avoiding this trope, except once, on Leah’s thirtieth birthday, when I gave her a sleeve of promotional postcards from the aquarium at which she’d once worked. It was something I’d found quite by chance, on an eBay listing, a book of branded cards, at least fifteen years old, each labeled THE STARS OF OUR SHOW and showing images ranging from the aquarium’s single giant sea turtle to the otter tank and the dolphins and the penguin exhibit. The last card but one showed a tangerine-colored octopus, its left eye swiveled toward the camera, its tentacles thrown up above its head, as though tumbling downward through air, rather than water. The printed label at the bottom left-hand corner of the card read: PAMELA—GIANT PACIFIC OCTOPUS—ESTIMATED AGE BETWEEN 3 AND 4 YEARS OLD. I had given the cards to Leah and she had cried about them and kissed me, and I’m really only telling this story now because it makes me look good, and because Leah always took the postcard of Pamela with her on work trips after that.
When we met, Leah was working in research and conservation for a facility that specialized in the protection of coastal and deep-sea ecosystems. This was before the Centre—long before it even existed, in fact, which often surprises people. I think it has something to do with the name, the Centre for Marine Enquiry, a blandness that implies longevity, a patrician sense of having always been there, of being a long-established institution, which of course it is not. As it was, Leah didn’t move to the Centre until many years after we met, having worked the full span of her twenties for the same small operation. On an early date, she poured olive oil, dipped bread, told me a story about a company she’d once hoped to work for that specialized in applying the physical adaptations of underwater species to industrial innovation. They had engineered a new type of door handle that mimicked the structure of sharkskin and made it more difficult for germs and viruses to attach. Sharkskin is basically made up of millions of tiny teeth, she said, pouring wine, talking with her mouth full. They’re called “dermal denticles,” isn’t that great? Practically speaking, a shark’s skin is almost as likely to do you damage as its mouth is. It didn’t really end up being my area—I’m more straight biology—but I still love the idea of finding a way to harness odd little things like that to do some kind of service. We ate Russian beef stew with dill and talked the way people do on early dates, extravagantly confessional, every statement an attempt at some self-defining truth: I’m the type of person who cries at movies, I’m the type of person who works better alone. After the restaurant, we drank Dark and Stormys at a bar unfamiliar to either of us, talked about favorite meals and favorite places. The night was wet, air close and flannel-damp, reports of ball lightning hitting the power lines some half a mile from my home. I’m a Catholic, I said at one point, so I believe in punishment but not reward. When we kissed—first kiss, wet-palmed, tongues stickled with ginger—I thought about sharkskin and pushed my hand into the space where Leah’s shirt had pulled free from her waistband. The next morning, I woke too early, my bedroom window filled with sharp segments of light.
* * *
I’m not sure what the sound is at first, and then I am sure, and then it is Leah screaming. It is a Wednesday, or possibly a Thursday, and I am not awake except in the parts of me required to jackknife out of bed. The scream seems wrong at first, garbled up into something other. It takes me several moments to recognize this interference as Leah’s sound machine—her screams half-drowned by the swelling, the oozing, the sinking noise, like a mouth forced open and leaking something thick. It’s dark, and I can’t find the light switch, and the noise is louder in the corridor, louder still toward the barrier of Leah’s bedroom door. I reflect, in some faraway part of myself, that every horror movie begins like this: no lights and a voice in the darkness, feet tangled in bedclothes, a knocking hand left aloft as the door swings back. I push the door, take in the room that used to belong to both of us. Leah is there, and the bed is soaking, and it takes me longer than it should, even in darkness, to realize the water is coming from her. As I stand in the doorway, she screams and keeps on screaming, apparently unaware of my presence, and the sound is only interrupted when her body contorts, convulses, and she vomits a shower of water across the bed. I’m not sure what happens after this, only that the screaming proves to have been almost entirely unconscious, as when I shake her awake it stops and she stares at me, mouth swollen with salt, and she doesn’t seem to know me at all.