But the octopus salad that Sophie had savored during her treasured year studying architecture in Lisbon … that proved to be more problematic. Because while octopuses were not uncommon in that neck of the South Pacific, they were not all that easy to come by, either—at least, not without a snorkel mask and a spear gun, of which Barry had neither. What he did have, however, was a sickening certainty that were he to dive down in the murky shallows of his fishing cove, there would be at least one exceptionally large member of the cephalopod family waiting to greet him.
Balthazar.
The scourge of his island and the thief of his lines. The day had come. It was time for a reckoning.
Barry didn’t have a clear idea of its weight or dimensions, having caught only fleeting glimpses of it during its explosive ascents to pilfer his fish. But he was aware that it was large and creepy, and he was in no way enthusiastic about the idea of diving ten feet underwater, crawling headfirst into its lair, and challenging it to a death match, no matter how hungry they were and desperate for food.
But that was exactly what he intended to do. In dispatching one giant octopus with two fists, he would be killing two birds with one stone: He would be ridding the cove of a true menace and, in doing so, have one hell of a delicious birthday gift to present to Sophie. Just imagine, he thought to himself, the look on her face.…
And so it came to pass that Barry Bleecker, the ex-Manhattanite and former high-yield-bond salesman at Lehman Brothers, stood on the morn of Sophie’s birthday on the rocky ledge above an octopus’s cave. Tanned and sinewy, shaggy and bearded, clad only in a boxer-short loincloth, he bore a far closer resemblance to the Cro-Magnons that had fascinated him in his youth than the paunchy yuppie he had been not so very long before. And indeed, the whole business smacked of the primeval—he did feel something like a Polynesian Beowulf, preparing to rid his village of a many-legged Grendel. With his box-cutter knife in one hand and waterproof flashlight in the other, Barry felt, for the first time in his life, like a man. A terrified man on the verge of wetting his loincloth, but a man nevertheless. And as a man, like it or not, he knew what he had to do—their survival depended on it. He peered down into the pool, took three deep breaths, and dove headfirst into whatever fate had in store.
A flurry of bubbles, a few quick blinks, and—damnit. His contacts both popped out. Barry considered returning to the surface to regroup but realized that the odds of him working up the nerve for a second dive were low indeed. No, it was now or never, contacts or no contacts. In the cool blur of the pool’s blue depths he clicked on the flashlight, directing its beam into the mouth of the cave. He crouched down and ducked his head into it, not sure if what he was seeking was even—
Yep. It was there. Even without his contacts, he could make out its dark shape. Horrifically inert, twin eyes blazing, the octopus was less than an arm’s length away, its mottled skin expertly camouflaged to match its surroundings. But it was there all right. The very monster that had stolen untold fish from his line, robbed him of precious metal hooks, and deprived him and his companion of life-giving protein. The day had finally come; it was Barry or the beast. With exquisite slowness, with the greatest of care, he pulled back his knife hand, preparing his box cutter for its lethal new vocation, readying himself for the imminent violence of the strike.
A strike, as it were, that never came. Not from Barry—the octopus struck first. In a blast of black ink and a nightmare of tentacles it was upon him, knocking him backward into an eight-pronged headlock. His attempt at a scream was as ineffectual as his attack strategy; the thing was wrapped about his body and latched firmly to his face. The pure power of the creature became sickeningly apparent as Barry floundered and gurgled in its hydra grip. Christ, it was strong. Even the varsity wrestling squad at Saint Ignatius had never had arms like this.
Surrender. It was his only option. Short on breath, Barry knelt down to kick up from the bottom, only to discover a most unsettling fact: He was stuck. The octopus that enveloped him was still latched somehow to the rocky coral below. He thrashed and fought against it, to no avail—he was bound to the seafloor by a terrific set of cables. And as if that weren’t enough, something sharp was tearing into his face. The son of a bitch was biting him!
Lungs bursting, blood screaming, Barry fell to his knees and felt frantically for the utility knife, which he had dropped shortly after the initial attack. His first half-dozen pats yielded nothing but sand, until—yes! He had it. With his other hand he searched for the tentacle that still clung to the rock, and when he found it, he lashed at it with everything he had …
Until it snapped. He was suddenly unhinged from the rock and kicking upward, still utterly engulfed in the octopus’s embrace. Then he was back above the surface, clawing its membranous flesh away from his face, sucking back air in honey-sweet gulps—then he was over the rocks and running across sand, screaming for help, a virtually naked man, smeared in blood and ink and blind without his contacts, wearing wrapped about his body an enormous octopus—then Sophie was running toward him, frightened and confused.
“Barry, what is it, what’s—oh, mon dieu!”
And then she screamed.
“Banana-versaire, baby,” Barry managed to mutter, just before collapsing to the sand and fainting like a southern belle. And it was probably for the best that he was unable to see the look on Sophie’s face.
26
Barry awoke half an hour later to a throbbing pain in his left cheek, an incessant whacking, and the sound, if he was not mistaken, of singing. A few tentative pokes revealed that his face was thoroughly bandaged, stirring a few hazy recollections of Sophie tending to his wounds and helping him put in a fresh pair of contacts. A dizzying emergence from the shelter showed that the source of the whacking was Sophie beating severed tentacles against the nearby rocks, a trick for tenderizing octopus that she had learned from Corsican fishermen during a high school trip to the island. And as for the singing, she was belting out the tune to “Alouette” as she worked, but with slightly altered lyrics—she had changed the refrain to “Pieuvrette, gentille pieuvrette,” and the familiar “je te plumerai la tête” to “je t’enleverai les bras.” Of course, Barry didn’t pick up on the clever alteration, but he smiled wincingly at the girlish sweetness of her song.
“You have the voice of a meadowlark, Sophie. You should join the Vienna Boys Choir.”
“For that, I think I would need a pair of testicles.”
“Well, you have plenty of tentacles at your disposal.” Barry prodded one of the severed, sucker-covered limbs before sitting down beside her. “How’s the octopus coming?”
“Almost ready to be cooked.” Sophie pushed the hair from her face with the back of her tentacle-smeared hand. “And you’re crazy, by the way. You could have been killed.”
“Well, we might have died of starvation if I hadn’t. This should last us for at least a week. And besides”—he cleared his throat and poked her playfully—“Portuguese octopus salad isn’t exactly easy to come by around here.”
“It’s going to be grilled Polynesian octopus salad, but still, thank you.”
“Well, there’s more. That’s not your only present.”
“It isn’t?”
“Nope.”
Barry finally revealed the hand he had been conveniently hiding behind his back, presenting to Sophie the clamshell earrings and cake of pure white soap.
“Wait, is that—”
And then Sophie screamed, perhaps even louder than she had when he was being attacked by the octopus, but with joyful disbelief rather than fear. “C’est du savon? C’est vraiment du savon?”
“Oui, oui, it’s soap. I made it out of coconut oil and ash lye. And if you want, you can use the other rainwater pool for a bath. I think one drinking pool is enough.”
Octopus slime and all, Sophie threw her arms around Barry and laid a smarting kiss on his bandaged cheek.
“Ouch, be careful!”
“Sorry.” She
grinned with contrition. “How does it feel?”
“It hurts pretty bad. How did it look?”
“Pfff. The octopus took a big chunk out of your cheek. The wound isn’t very long, but it’s deep. And you’re very lucky, he just missed your eye.”
“Well, shoot. To think I could have had an eye patch.”
“I think the scar will give you character enough.”
“God knows I need it.” And he winked at her, although with the bandage covering most of his right eye, Sophie didn’t notice.
“What you really need are stitches. I cleaned the cut with the alcohol wipes and antibiotic cream from the first-aid kit, but you should keep the bandage on until it closes up.”
“I will. And you should go try out that soap and get ready. I think I can handle Balthazar from here.”
“D’accord. Merci, Barry. Pour tout.”
“De nada.”
Sophie giggled again. “That’s Spanish.”
“Crap. I thought it was Portuguese.”
“It’s the same in Portuguese.”
“See?” he replied, teasing, “Maybe us Americanos aren’t as dumb as you think.”
Sophie set down the octopus tentacles, wiped off her hands with a strip of wool rag from what once had been a pair of Brooks Brothers slacks, took the earrings and the cake of coconut soap, set off toward the rainwater pool to take her first real bath in over a year, and couldn’t help thinking that maybe there was some truth to that, and perhaps more to that particular American than she could have ever imagined. Well, either way, the presents were a very nice thought.
As for the bath, it was, in Sophie’s own words, vraiment extraordinaire. She soaked her body for a good half hour in the smaller of the two collection pools, to loosen a long year’s worth of salty grime. Then she worked up a lather, thick as the foam on a cappuccino, and proceeded to scrub every inch of her body with it. And it was just as marvelous as she expected, the sensation of all that filth sloughing off from her skin, to be replaced by an otherworldly sort of cleanliness. She completely submerged herself on several occasions, holding her breath as long as she could in that baptismal warmth, feeling the volcanic rock press roughly against her bare bottom, and letting a fluttering stream of bubbles escape gradually from her lips. When at last she climbed out, she felt pruny as a newborn and just as pure. She welsh-combed the tangles out of her damp hair and braided it up into a sleek French twist. She slipped her new clamshell earrings into her lobes and refastened her loincloth with a jaunty knot. She felt slightly more exposed than usual without her hair hanging down over her breasts as it generally did, but, well, merde—Barry had probably earned an unobstructed view of her nichons after all he had done. She let what lingered of the evening’s trade winds dry off her body and allowed her lips to part into an alluring smile—in the absence of her preferred Yves Saint Laurent #13 lipstick, she would have to wear it instead. As for the wedding ring that still hung about her neck on a translucent string of filament line, she debated for a moment if she should wear it or not but decided in the end to keep it. She wasn’t ready to part with it yet.
* * *
The moon had risen by the time Sophie emerged fresh from the palms, stepping gracefully from between the shivering fronds into the gleam of its sterling light. Barry, crouched over the fire, watched her approach with an elegance that bordered on the spectral. When she entered the bouncing glow of the cooking fire, he received his first real glimpse, fleeting as it was, of what their first meeting may have been like under different circumstances—a blind date at a restaurant in the East Village or a chance encounter at a little café on the Canal Saint-Martin. Gone was the irritated girl he had seen for the very first time at the Tahitian airstrip; nowhere to be found was the heartbroken woman he had shared that Alcatraz of an island with for more than a year. Instead, he saw Sophie Ducel, the brilliant architect, great beauty, and longtime resident of the tenth arrondissement, walk into the firelight and say a confident bonsoir as a long-lost smile spread charmingly across her face. Granted, such an encounter in an international capital would likely not have involved so much bare nipple, but Barry was hardly one to complain. Partial nudity aside, they could have been meeting for an allongé at Aux Deux Amis or after-work cocktails at Tavern on the Green. It all felt that natural.
“You look…” And his voice trailed off in buoyant wonder.
“Oui?”
He was going to say something trite like “incredible” but instead stated what was to him the obvious, and even more complimentary. “Like a Gauguin painting.”
“Which one?”
“Like a cross between Vairumati and Two Tahitian Women.”
“Well, there’s just one of me.”
“Thank the Lord for that. I don’t think I could handle two of you.”
“Imbécile,” she shot back, although for once she meant it endearingly.
“So should we eat?”
“Pfff. We’re in the middle of a banana famine, and you need to ask?”
“Then bon appétit.”
Barry laid two skewers of roasted octopus sections across their stone table, and for a solid ten minutes neither of them spoke, occupied as they were with stuffing their faces full of the tender grilled meat. The fact that said meat had belonged to their archnemesis Balthazar only made the feast that much sweeter.
“Better than Lisbon?” Barry finally asked, cheeks bulging with roasted octopus.
“Better than anything,” Sophie replied through a mouth just as full. “I can’t stop eating. Je suis trop gourmande.”
They gorged until their bellies distended, washed everything down with two tall, stainless-steel cups of coconut water, and crumpled in tandem onto the sand, lying side by side beneath a mother lode of stars. The hearth had long since burned itself out, and the only light came courtesy of their distant fire.
“Want to know one thing about it here that makes me sad?”
Sophie turned her head toward Barry, whose eyes were battened to the heavens above.
“What’s that?” She had come close to answering with, Just one thing? but the lingering swoon of the dinner had robbed her of all snark.
“The constellations. I learned all the northern ones in Boy Scout camp when I was a kid, but in the Southern Hemisphere, I don’t know a single one. It would be nice to look up and see something familiar. You know, just one thing that hadn’t changed.”
“You can always make new ones. You don’t have to depend on the old.”
“The Medium Dipper?”
“No, totally new ones. You just have to find them.”
“Any jump out at you?”
Sophie’s eyes danced across the great wash of stars. “That one, there.” She jabbed at the sky with her finger. “It looks like une grosse bite avec deux couilles tombantes.”
“Like what?”
“A big dick with two droopy balls. Capricock.”
Barry erupted with laughter, hard enough to trigger a coughing fit. It had been so long since he’d had a good laugh, he’d forgotten what it felt like—he even peed a little in his pants, or loincloth, as it were.
Sophie laughed alongside him, taking no small pleasure in the mirth she had caused. “See, maybe us French are funnier than you think.”
“I never said you weren’t funny.”
“But you probably thought it.”
“Well, if being stuck on a desert island doesn’t give you a sense of humor about things, I suppose nothing will.”
“Stuck on a desert island—it’s like that game. Did you play it in America?”
“Which one?”
“You know, if you were stuck on a desert island, what one thing would you bring. Some people say a pocketknife, or a record player, or some beautiful supermodel. Whatever matters most.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“So?”
“You mean what would I bring with me?”
“Oui.”
“Not including a French architect wi
th a strange sense of humor and a lifetime supply of little green bananas?”
“Oui. Not including that.”
“Hmmm.” Barry mulled it over. The irony of playing the game while actually on a desert island was rich indeed and, frankly, rather mind-boggling. But it didn’t take long to find his answer. “My paints. I miss painting.”
“That’s the only thing? Quel artiste.”
“Well, fried chicken and a cold beer would be nice, too, but I can live without those. Painting, on the other hand … that’s something else. That’s part of why I hated my old job so much. I had hardly any time to paint. And then when I did have time, my—” And Barry caught himself. “Ex-girlfriend hated it.”
“Why?”
“She said she didn’t like the smell of the turpentine I used to clean my brushes.”
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