“Are you joining us?”
“Me?” He looks over his shoulder, as if there might be another “sir” behind him. Then he shrugs. “Sure, why not?” Something to pass the time, anyway.
“This way, then.” With a polite smile, she motions him toward the group.
ETHAN MUST ADMIT: the residents do seem happy. Maybe that ridiculous slogan isn’t off base.
There’s a billiard room, a cafeteria with a mile-long buffet, even a pool and Jacuzzi. Residents can get room service, and the beds are made up daily with six-hundred-thread-count sheets. By the time the tour starts to wrap up, Ethan finds himself half-convinced to move in. As if he could afford it. His union pension wouldn’t go far in a place like this.
WHEN TOVA SURFACES an hour later clutching a box, Ethan springs from the plush reception leather chair.
“All right, then, love?”
“Certainly.” Tova looks so little in her purple cardigan, and the box makes her frame seem even more slight.
This time, he beats her to the car door. Chivalrously, he opens it and steps aside for her to enter, for which she thanks him politely. Then he takes the box and finds a space for it behind the passenger seat. But there’s something else, too. A glossy page with an image of the community center and tennis courts. Some bloke with a full head of silver hair and white shorts swinging a racket.
As Tova is fiddling with her seat belt, he steals a longer peek.
It’s not just a slick brochure. It’s a whole packet. A sleek Charter Village folder with that terrible motto: “We Specialize in Happy Endings!”
There’s one page not neatly aligned in the folder.
An application.
Day 1,309 of My Captivity
YOU HUMANS LOVE COOKIES. I ASSUME YOU KNOW WHICH food I mean?
Circular, about the size of a common clamshell. Some are flecked with dark bits, others are painted or dusted with powder. Cookies can be soft and quiet, moving soundlessly on their journey through human jaws. Cookies can be loud and messy, bits breaking off at the bite, crumbs tumbling down a chin, adding to the flotsam on the floor that the elderly female called Tova must sweep. I have observed many cookies during my captivity here. They are sold in the packaged food machine near the front entrance.
Imagine my confusion, then, at the remark made by Dr. Santiago earlier this evening.
“What can I say, Terry?” Dr. Santiago raised her shoulders and held her hands up. “I’ve seen a lot of octopuses, but you’ve got a smart cookie here.”
They were discussing the so-called puzzle: hinged box made of clear plastic with a latch on the lid. There was a crab inside. Terry lowered it into my tank. He and Dr. Santiago leaned down to peer through the glass. Without delay, I seized the box, opened the latch, lifted the lid, and ate the crab.
It was a red rock crab, one that was molting. Soft and juicy. I consumed it in a single bite.
This did not please Terry and Dr. Santiago. They frowned and they argued. I gathered they anticipated my dismantling of the box to take longer.
I am a smart cookie. Well, of course I am intelligent. All octopuses are. I remember each and every human face that pauses to gaze at my tank. Patterns come readily to me. I know how the sunrise will play on the upper wall at dawn, shifting each day as the season progresses.
When I choose to hear, I hear everything. I can tell when the tide is turning to ebb, outside the prison walls, based on the tone of the water crashing against the rocks. When I choose to see, my vision is precise. I can tell which particular human has touched the glass of my tank by the fingerprints left behind. Learning to read their letters and words was easy.
I can use tools. I can solve puzzles.
None of the other prisoners have such skills.
My neurons number half a billion, and they are distributed among my eight arms. On occasion, I have wondered whether I might have more intelligence in a single tentacle than a human does in its entire skull.
Smart cookie.
I am smart, but I am not a snack object dispensed from a packaged food machine.
What a preposterous thing to say.
Maybe Not Marrakesh
McMansionville is too quiet. No footsteps thumping on the ceiling from the upstairs apartment. Cameron’s phone battery blinks red, nearly drained. He digs in the bottom of his duffel for his charging cord, but it’s sitting on Katie’s nightstand. He can practically see it there. Left behind, leaving him literally powerless.
Maybe Brad or Elizabeth has a spare. He creeps into their kitchen, opening drawers as quietly as he can. Silverware in neat rows, an entire pull-out devoted to oven mitts. Who needs that many oven mitts? Are they cooking for an infantry unit? Most are monogramed. Elizabeth and Bradley Burnett: EBB. Like an ebb tide. As if the two of them are headed right on out to sea, waving to him as he’s left alone on the shore.