The first recording is someone soliciting donations. Delete.
The second message is clearly a scam. Who would be foolish enough to call back and give a bank account number? Delete.
The third message is an error. Muffled voices, then a click. A butt dial, as Janice Kim refers to them. A hazard of the ridiculous practice of keeping phones in pockets. Delete.
The fourth message begins with a stretch of silence. Tova’s finger is about to punch the delete button when a woman’s voice comes on. “Tova Sullivan?” She clears her throat. “This is Maureen Cochran? From the Charter Village Long-Term Care Center?”
Tova’s water glass clinks as it hits the counter.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news . . .”
With a sharp click, Tova punches the button to hush the machine. She doesn’t need to hear any more. It’s a message she’s been expecting for quite some time.
Her brother, Lars.
Day 1,301 of My Captivity
THIS IS HOW I DO IT.
Near the top of my enclosure, there is a hole in the glass where the pump comes in. There is a gap between the pump housing and the glass, wide enough for me to fit the tip of a tentacle through and unscrew the housing. The pump floats into my tank, exposing a gap. The gap is small. About the width of two or three human fingers.
You will say, But that’s tiny! You’re too big.
This is true, but I have no trouble shaping my body to pass through. That is the easy part.
I slide down the glass into the pump room behind my tank. Now begins the challenge. The clock is ticking, you might say. Once I am out of my tank, I must resubmerge within eighteen minutes or I will experience The Consequences. Eighteen minutes, I can survive out of water. This fact is nowhere to be found on the plaque by my tank, of course. I have determined this myself.
On the cold concrete floor, I must choose whether to remain in the pump room or breach the door. Each choice has its merits and costs.
If I choose to stay in the pump room, I have easy access to the tanks nearest mine. Unfortunately, these tanks hold limited appeal. The wolf eels are simply not an option, for what should be obvious reasons. Those teeth! The Pacific sea nettle are too spicy; the yellow-bellied ribbon worms are rubbery. The bay-blue mussels are rather uninspired, flavor-wise, and while the sea cucumbers are delicious, I must use willpower. If I take more than a few, I risk calling Terry’s attention to my activities.
Alternately, if I choose to breach the door, I have reign of the hallway and the main tank. A more robust menu. But it comes at a price: First, I must invest several minutes on the process of opening the door on the way out. Then, because the door is heavy and will not remain ajar on its own, I must spend several minutes reopening it on my return.
Why don’t you prop the door?
Well, obviously.
I did prop the door, once. With the stool below my tank. With those extra minutes of freedom, I pillaged a bucket of fresh halibut chunks left by Terry under the hatch of the main tank. （Presumably, the halibut chunks were meant to be breakfast for the sharks the following morning. But the dim-witted sharks hardly know day from night. No regrets there.）
Under this illusion of leisure, it was almost a pleasant evening. Perhaps the most enjoyable time I’ve had since I was taken captive. But upon return, I discovered something that, to this day, I cannot comprehend: by some sleight, the stool had failed to hold the door.
Lesson: I cannot trust a propped door.
By the time I worked it open, I was failing. The Consequences were in full effect.
My limbs moved slowly, and my vision blurred. My mantle became heavy and lolled toward the floor. Through the haze I could see my flesh had paled to a flat shade of brownish gray.
As I crawled across the pump room, the floor no longer felt cold. No surface registered any temperature. Somehow, my clumsy suckers fumbled me up the glass.
I worked my tentacles and mantle through the gap. Partway through, I paused, hovering over the surface. My tentacles were completely numb, devoid of any sensation.
For a moment, I considered this option. Nothing was something. What might lie on the other side of life?
As the water took me in, I returned. My sight sharpened to the familiar trappings of my tank. I coiled a tentacle around the pump and replaced it, closing the gap. Color crept back into my flesh as I poked an arm through the crack to screw the housing into place. My mantle trailed through the cold water as I swam, strong and swift, to my den behind the rock. My gut, crammed full of halibut, ached pleasantly.
Afterward, as I rested in my den, my three hearts throbbed. The dull pulse of dumb relief. A base instinct triggered by a surprise victory over death. I suppose it might be how a cockle feels having buried itself in the sand under the snap of my beak. Beating the odds, as you humans might say.