Lily is asleep when I get home, so I decide to inflate the sharks in the backyard. Blowing them up takes some effort in the heat, and after inflating one, and half of another, I feel light-headed and unsure of my plan and need to sit down. I look at the sharks, one at full attention, the other slumped at half-mast, as if it were suffering from some sort of palsy, and it occurs to me that Lily would have enjoyed these in her youth. Enjoyed destroying them, as she destroyed all of her toys except red ball. When she was a puppy, my dad’s wife had given her a stuffed monkey toy with these oversized orange arms. One day I noticed one of those arms was missing. I searched the house high and low, but it was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t until the next day while walking her with a friend that the arm made a dramatic return.
“Oh my god, what’s wrong with your dog?”
I turned to find Lily crouched as she does, an orange monkey hand, then arm, making its way out of her like some sort of hernia exam in reverse.
“Oh. That happens,” I said, lying, crouching with a plastic bag to pull the rest of it out of her, a magician doing the most disgusting magic handkerchief trick.
In the little storage space under the house I find an old bicycle pump that belongs to my landlord, and after a few false starts I use that to inflate the remaining sharks. Finished, I sit in a semicircle with my new menacing friends like we’re at the oddest tea party this side of Wonderland. “No room! No room!” cries one of the sharks, playing both the Hatter and the March Hare. Of course, he’s wrong. There’s plenty of room, as we’re sitting in the empty yard.
“We’re a team, you and I,” I tell the sharks. “Normally we have only each other as enemies, but today we are hunting octopus. Together.”
“Octopus?” another of the sharks exclaims, before they all start talking over one another, making it difficult to hear.
“Guys, guys, guys! Only one of you talk.” I look around the circle to see who they will elect to speak. It’s the one sitting next to me on my right.
“Sure. We could eat some octopus.”
“Here’s the thing. Now, this is important, so listen up.” I look around the circle to see if any of the sharks have ears, which they don’t, at least not that I can see. “Do you guys have ears?”
“We have endolymphatic pores.” It’s the shark across from me now. “They are like ears.”
“Where?”
The sharks kind of bow down. “Here,” one says. “On top of our heads.” It makes me feel powerful to have all these sharks bowing in front of me. I can just make out these so-called pores near where the plastic handles are attached.
“Good. Now, listen up. The octopus is stuck to a small dog.”
“Dog?” they exclaim, and start talking over each other again. “Canine.” “Mongrel?” “Pooch!”
“Guys!”
The shark next to me remembers his role as elected speaker. “Sure, we could eat some pooch.” Murmurs of agreement and consensus.
“Do not eat the pooch!” I clap my hands together loudly and repeatedly to grab their attention. One of them covers his hearing pores, or whatever, with his fins. I wait until I have their attention again. “Do not eat the dog. That is what I’m saying. You may eat the octopus. But I am trusting you to not eat the dog. Does everyone understand?”
I survey the circle and the sharks nod their agreement.
I repeat. “Does everyone understand?”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
“Sure!”
“Yeah!”
“Octopus!”
“Dog.”
“No dog!”
“No dog.”
“Good!”
I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.
I tiptoe inside, carrying the sharks two at a time, and I place them around Lily’s bed so they’ll be the first thing the octopus sees when he wakes up. It’s a horrific sight. Imagine waking up to a shiver of red-lipped sharks grinning from ear to . . . well, not ear. Endolymph . . . whatever . . . pores. Never mind, that’s a bad example, but you get the picture. I hope it literally scares the octopus to death.
When everything is set up, I call for Lily with a quick whistle. She lifts her head and shakes her ears and when she stops she stares through the sharks, unfazed. She can’t see them. The octopus, however, screams.
“Aaaaauuuuugggghhhhh!”
He covers his eyes with two of his arms.
I bite my lip with anticipation. Will he have a heart attack? Will he just die of shock? Will his eyes turn to Xs like in a cartoon while his mouth goes slack?
“Just kidding, governor,” the octopus says, dropping his arms back down to their resting place on Lily’s head. “Nice pool toys.”
“Those aren’t pool toys, they’re sharks. Real sharks! Right, guys?”
Instead of murmuring their agreement, this time they all lie silent. In fact, one tips over on its side. Not very menacing. The jig, sadly, is up. “How did you know?”
The octopus shakes his head. He can’t believe how pathetic I am. “They smell like condoms.”
“How do you know what condoms smell like?”
“Oh. Lily and I got in your goodie drawer. I tried a few on.” I look down at Lily, wondering how she could be such an unwitting accomplice. How she could possibly ever team up with this monster. But she’s blind and trusting and sweet, and he may be steering her in ways beyond her control. As if to underscore this new reality, Lily stares blankly into the void. “By the way, there were only nine left in the box and I used eight, so . . .”
“And you smelled them?” I’m incredulous.
“Our smell sensors are at the ends of our arms. Kind of hard not to.”
I look down at
