“Paint teeth on them.”
“It’s not just the teeth, it’s the blowholes.”
“What do you need them for?”
“For the octopus.”
Trent props himself up on his elbows, fishes for his sunglasses, and puts them back on his face. He looks at me. “You’re buying that thing presents now?”
“Not presents. Impediments. Octopuses are afraid of sharks.”
“Are they.” Trent shakes his head and swats his arms wildly at nothing in the air. He’s fearful of bees and swats at the air a lot, even when I don’t see any bees.
“Never mind. I’ll go make us more drinks.”
I grab his glass and mine and head for the kitchen. The pool deck is hot and I have to move quickly to avoid burning my feet. Before stepping inside, I catch my reflection in the sliding glass door and it stops me cold. I can feel the concrete burning my soles and I don’t care. My vision, compromised from the sun and the afternoon drinking, registers a reflection that is foggy and hazed. Despite the soft image of my mirrored self, I make out a clear harshness to my face, a disheveled quality to my appearance. I squint and take a step back. There’s almost a double reflection now. Instead of two arms and two legs I have four arms and four legs. Eight.
I am becoming someone I don’t recognize.
I am becoming harder, meaner, wilder.
I am becoming the octopus.
3.
I reach into the paper bag containing six cookies and three napkins, pull out an M&M cookie, and take a bite. It’s warm from the bakery’s oven, or from sitting on my dashboard on the car ride over here, or who really cares. All I know is if I have to spend another Friday afternoon in this soft, buttery hell, I am going to eat cookies, and lots of them.
I do not offer one to Jenny.
“What are those?” I eyeball the stack of oversized cards in Jenny’s hands skeptically.
“I thought we’d try something different today.”
“I don’t like different.” Not right now—certainly not with Jenny.
Jenny nods, but plows forward anyway. The size and shape of the cards reminds me of the sewing cards I used to do with Meredith when we were kids. I liked a lot of Meredith’s toys more than my own, especially her stuffed animals and anything to do with crafting. One Christmas she received a kit to make animal finger puppets and she just handed it over to me. I wish I had one of those finger puppets now, as I have a particular finger in mind for Jenny.
“Are you familiar with the Rorschach test?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Is that a yes?”
Dammit, Jenny. I take another bite of cookie and speak with my mouth full. “Inkblots.”
“Have you ever taken this test?”
“No. And I don’t know why I’m about to now.”
“It can help me learn about your emotional functioning, thinking processes, internal conflicts, if you’re experiencing any kind of underlying thought disorder . . .”
“Like thinking there’s an octopus on my dog’s head? That kind of thought disorder?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what you meant.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Because I showed you a picture!”
Jenny leans forward in her chair and attempts to sweep aside my concern with an innocent gesture, but she loses her balance and does something that comes close to genuflection. “I thought it would be fun.”
I fully realize I’m saying this as someone with his own form of Enclosed World Syndrome, and I realize I’m saying it to someone who knows this, but I can’t stop myself from saying it anyway. “You really should get out more.”
Jenny smiles and bangs the cards on the table with a certain flair, the way a croupier in a James Bond movie might before cutting the deck. But Jenny doesn’t cut the deck, she just hands me the one on top. “Why don’t we just get started?”
I hold the last of the cookie between my teeth, shake the crumbs off my hands, and take the card, turning it first left, then right. I haven’t quite figured out if I’m dealing with Old Jenny or New Jenny today, so I decide to just go along. I can practically see my imaginary better therapist encouraging me to participate.
What do you have to lose? he says.
What do I have to gain? I ask in return.
I study the card. Mostly it looks like an inkblot, but when I turn the card upside down I finally see it. “It’s the octopus,” I say with cookie still between my teeth, crumbs falling down my front. I’m reminded of something a friend who works at the White House once told me about the journalist Candy Crowley always having crumbs on her bosom from eating. I don’t know why I think of this other than that I feel like a reporter under rapid fire, doing my best to report what I see.
Jenny turns the card back around so that she can see it, too. “Most people say bat, or butterfly.”
I take the cookie out of my mouth. “Most people would be wrong, then. That’s the octopus. I mean, it’s sort of a view from above. What he looks like when you’re looking down on him, which is what I’m doing most of the time, because he’s on top of a dachshund, and dachshunds have short legs.”
Jenny looks at me skeptically to see if I’m putting her on. I can see that she wants to ask if I’m taking this exercise seriously. I think I need to put us both at ease.
“Did you know that Hermann Rorschach was hot?”
“Excuse me?” she asks.
“The inventor of this test.” My intent is to catch her off guard. Maybe turn the tables a bit.
Jenny sets the first card down on the table between us and sinks back into her chair. “No, I know who Hermann Rorschach is.”
“Oh. Well, he was hot. Like crazy next-level Brad Pitt kind of hot. I had to research him
