The Chinatown in Los Angeles is not nearly as chaotic (nor as Chinese) as the Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco. On a weekday afternoon it’s easy to stroll in and out of stores, taking in their exotic contents. The fish market I come to first has nothing more exotic than Maine lobster and Dungeness crab. I think of asking if they have hidden inventory in back, but I’m afraid that they might sell some sort of illegal catch, like endangered sea urchin or poisonous puffer fish, and I don’t want anything like that. I’m not that crazy.
The second place I try on Broadway is more to my liking. It feels less touristy, more authentically Chinese. I don’t immediately see what I’m looking for laid out on crushed ice, but I have no problem asking the fishmonger. He has a kind and wizened face.
“I’m looking for octopus.”
A kind and wizened face that looks back at me confused. I try to explain so that he doesn’t inadvertently sell me some sort of Chinese goblin, a Mogwai, like in the movie Gremlins—something that will ultimately do more harm than good. But I don’t know the Chinese word for octopus, so I hold up eight fingers, then invert my hands and wiggle them.
“Ahhh. Zhāng yú.”
He walks me to the end of the case and I see them lying motionless on the ice, a half dozen or so. They’re far less menacing when they’re dead.
“Hmmm.” I make a show of studying them as if I’m looking for something very specific. “Do you have anything, I don’t know, bigger?” I hold my hands farther apart for emphasis.
The fishmonger holds up his index finger for me to wait while he disappears into a walk-in cooler. The air-conditioning is working overtime, and the whole place is alive with an electric hum. The windows are yellowed with cellophane, giving everything a doleful pall. A few flies buzz near the doorway, but they steer clear of the fish. I wonder if they don’t like the ice. An elderly Chinese woman looks at oyster sauces. We make eye contact and I offer a smile. She is nonplussed.
The man returns with a larger specimen, one that I think will do nicely. I nod and he smiles and wraps it up in waxy paper. When he hands it to me I say, “There’s one more thing I need.”
The fishmonger looks expectantly at me. I nod to what I see behind him. He gestures at some prawns. I shake my head no.
“That.”
He turns around confused, until he sees what I’m pointing to: I want to buy his cleaver. Now he shakes his head. Not with disgust, but almost. Certainly profound disapproval. This is just like Gremlins. I can hear him say, “You do with Mogwai what your society has done with all of nature’s gifts. You do not understand!” But instead of Mogwai I hear octopus. I doubt the octopus is a gift; if it is, it’s a gift I’m hell-bent on returning.
I point again, insistently, and pull a small wad of twenties from my pocket. He looks at the money. After some hesitation, he pries the cleaver free.
When I return from my errand, Lily is sitting in her bed, awake, staring off in the direction of the stove. She doesn’t hear me, but the octopus does. The paper package under my arm rustles as I enter the kitchen and my keys land on the table with a jingling clang. I place the package on the large cutting board by the sink, then pick up the cutting board and the package together and bring them to the table where the octopus can see. I cast a sideways glance back at Lily to make sure he’s watching.
He is.
I fumble for a moment with the string that ties the package. While I often have difficulty with knots, this fumbling is mostly for dramatic effect, mostly so I can produce my new cleaver and bring it down with a thud on the string at the flatter end of the package. I can feel it sink into the cutting board. While I don’t particularly want to sacrifice my good cutting board, the overall effect is without equal, so I can’t help but not care.
We’re leaving here soon anyway.
“What’s in the package?” It’s the octopus talking. Success. I have piqued his interest.
“Oh, you’ll see.”
I carefully undo the bundle and the paper makes an awful, rumpling sound. The smell hits me before I even have the last of it folded open. It hits Lily only a nanosecond afterward, and she rouses from her trance and her sniffer hits the air and she makes her way over to where I am, stopping only when she bumps into my shins. She plays her part perfectly, a stretch limousine to deliver this party’s guest of honor.
“Seriously,” the octopus says. “What’s in the package?”
“You want to know?” I gnash my teeth into the most evil grin. “THIS.”
I unfold the final flap of paper and hoist the dead octopus by its head. Juices drip from its flaccid arms onto the floor.
“Whoa,” the octopus exclaims, and uses one of his arms to shield his eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup.”
“That’s barbaric!” The octopus has no sense of irony.
“Yup,” I say again.
“Oh, god, the smell. Who is that, even?”
I don’t know its name; I never thought to ask the fishmonger if it ever had one. I look at the dead octopus, limp and gray. It has only a faded purple hue, like a dying violet. The color is the only thing about it, really, that even suggests there once was life in it.
“Iris,” I answer. I
