“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.”