She may as well have been meeting the president, as tense as she was on the ride there. We spent a half hour mutually pretending she wanted to talk about anything other than the octopus. Oh, she told me what had been happening at her job, and asked about mine, and she’d seemed genuinely interested in my responses, but there was a current running through her I could feel from the driver’s seat. I almost told her it was all right, she had permission to be excited about meeting her favorite animal.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone who had a favorite animal. Gena had been quite fond of pandas, but not so much so that she would have sought one out, let alone worry about impressing it.
For all I knew, maybe octopods did have very high standards.
The man Burt had put me in touch with, the man whom I’d spoken to on the phone, was Jim Bronner, and he met us at the staff entrance. Jim had a white mustache that reminded me of Scruffy the janitor from Futurama and a blue windbreaker that swished as he extended his hand to me.
“You must be Burt’s friend. And this is your—”
If he said daughter, I would jump headfirst into the shark tank. “Date,” I cut him off. “Penny Parker. Octopod enthusiast.”
Penny practically dove between us with her hand out. She shook Jim’s with both of hers. “Hi! It is an honor to meet you.”
The poor bastard was lucky his arm didn’t fall off at the shoulder, the way she was tugging on it.
“I don’t actually work with the octopus,” he told her, extricating himself from her grip as politely as possible.
“This is Jim Bronner,” I told her. “He works on the money side.”
“Your friend here knows one of our extremely valued donors. Why don’t you guys come on in?”
Jim took us into a rather bland-looking hallway. If someone had told me we were in a jail, I would have believed them.
“He’s not in his exhibit, yet,” Jim told us. “You’ll be able to get up close.”
“Up close?” Penny cast a sideways glance at me. I had never in my life felt more accomplished at pleasing a woman as I did at that moment. And I’d done my fair share of pleasing women. Just usually not with their clothes on.
I gave her a crooked smile and told Jim, “She’s a wee bit nervous.”
He slid an identification badge through a reader on the door. “Why nervous?”
“She’s afraid the octopus is going to be wearing the same outfit, and she’ll have to go change.”
Penny’s loud, shocked laughter gave me the most indescribable high. She was happy, and because of me. I’d taken some interesting drugs during my youthful experimentation days, but nothing had ever made me feel this good.
Well, mushrooms. But I was thinking figuratively.
Jim took us to the “Fish Quarantine”, which sounded like some kind of makeshift field hospital for a coral reef hit by an epidemic. The place was a simple concrete utility room with drains in the floor, industrial sinks, and a very large compressor somewhere, throbbing away inside the walls. They had a long workstation counter, too, and clearly whoever was in charge of keeping it organized was slacking. Probably because they were too busy with the rows of wall-mounted fish tanks, and the larger ones constructed on the floor down the center of the room. At one of tanks against the wall, a dark-skinned woman with gray hair leaned far over, nearly her entire arm submerged in the water.
“Vivian?” Jim practically shouted over the hum of filters.
She jumped and laughed. “I didn’t even hear you come in. The stupid cap fell off my marker and I can’t reach it. And these little jerks are not helping.”
The jerks in question were a pair of yellow fish who seemed to be intent on biting the gloved fingers that had invaded their tiny universe.
“Gimme a hand,” she told Jim. “Or just your arm, that’s all I need.” She pulled off her glove with a rubbery snap and tossed it into a sink. Then, she turned to us, smiling. “You’re here to see the new baby?”
“It’s a baby?” Penny seemed unsure about that prospect, which didn’t jibe with my limited understanding of women and baby animals. Didn’t they usually love that stuff?
It didn’t matter, anyway, as Vivian went on, “No, he’s about four feet long. But we’re as excited over him as a new baby.” She shook our hands with the one that hadn’t been encased in a fish-water dripping rubber glove, and we both shook it in turn. “I’m Vivian Jackson, I’m the director of animal care here at the aquarium.”
“Wow, and you’re the one who’s going to be showing us the octopus?” Penny marveled. “I’m so honored!”
“Well, thank you,” Vivian replied. “When I found out Mr. Baker was sending over some guests, I had to be here to meet you.”
“Thank you so much, Ms. Jackson—” Penny began. You would have thought she was meeting a celebrity, not a veterinarian, from the adulation in her voice.
“Just call me Vivian,” the vet insisted. “I had to come down to give a tortoise an antibiotic, anyway.”
While I tried to figure out if “giving a tortoise an antibiotic” would ever work as a double entendre, Vivian took us to the octopus. Along the way, Penny reached for my hand. Something in my chest ached hard at that casual touch. It seemed like an afterthought, an unconscious action she’d made in a wholly organic way. I was beside her, and therefore, our hands should be linked. I slipped my fingers through hers and squeezed a bit, and bumped her playfully with my elbow.
The tank the octopus resided in looked like an advanced stage of Ninja Warrior. Plastic pipes held up fine mesh netting all around. The top of the box was latched down and weighted. David Blaine had constructed escape tricks that weren’t so complicated.
I touched one of the pipes. “That is a lot of security. Is this the Hannibal Lecter of octopods?”
“They escape like crazy,” Penny answered with a speed that was automatic. Then she apologized to Vivian sheepishly.
“No, you’re right,” Vivian told her. “His eventual enclosure will be far more secure, but for right now, we have to prevent prison breaks.” She unclipped some carabineers that held the netting in place, then popped the tank latches and pulled the lid open. “Let’s see if we can get him back here.”
There wasn’t much in the tank. It looked quite depressing. But then, all the tanks did; they were like holding cells for aquatic animals awaiting arraignment over the weekend. The octopus at least had some scant seaweed and a large configuration of rocks.
Vivian told us the animal was four feet long. Which had seemed fine at the time. Perhaps I hadn’t adequately conceptualized what four feet of octopus would look like. If I’d been paying attention, I would have perhaps spotted it sooner. It was nearly the same color as the rusty blue-red of the rock it had been clinging to. As it emerged, it seemed endless. More and more of the thing kept unfurling, a mass of formless goo I could barely make sense of until something resembling a bulbous head bobbed up.
“Here comes Monty,” Vivian cooed.
Still clutching my hand, Penny used her other to grab my arm. I don’t think she realized how tightly she was holding on, but I could have used her as a tourniquet in case of amputation.
Like some miniature Cthulhu rising from his dead-dreaming slumber, “Monty” hurled himself at the glass and heaved himself upward with two horrific tentacles. I’d had no idea they could move so fast. Or that they had a desire to escape the water. I jumped back. “Jesus Christ!”
Penny looked at me with such horror, anyone standing by would have thought I’d just vomited on the Queen. “Ian, you’re scaring him!”
I was scaring him?
Penny abandoned me to get closer to the tank, leaning down to say, “I am so sorry, sir.”
I was playing second fiddle to a guy who had eight arms, which I suppose, from a fiddling perspective, was a given. But it was worth it just to watch Penny’s reactions to coming face to face with the horrifying monster she, for some reason, loved.
I suppressed an all-out laugh. �
�I don’t think you have to call him sir.”
“Look at him,” she said reverently. Her hand stretched out, longing.
Vivian smiled. “You can touch him. It’s all right.”
Penny leaned over, her hair swinging down to obscure her face as she viewed the creature through the glass. There was a sputtering, burbling noise from within the tank. A tentacle reached out. As I watched, wary, the thing actually touched her. I wasn’t sure if I should rush in and rescue her, but the instinct was very persistent. Since Vivian didn’t spring to her feet and start attacking the creature with specialized octopus defense gear, I assumed I could relax.
Penny straightened, and the tentacle still clung to her. “Wow! They really are strong.”
“He’s not going to pull her in there, is he?” I had to know. I didn’t have a lot of fighting experience, but I would punch an octopus if I had to, to save a life. If I could get the nerve to touch it, that is. He looked fairly disgusting, so Penny could be doomed.
She talked to the thing like it was a newborn baby, or a very cute dog. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
Vivian shook her head in response. “He’d just tire himself out. But…” She reached over to adjust Monty’s hold on Penny, as a tentacle had wrapped around her wrist. “We don’t want him to get a real good grip on you, either, or he’ll use you as leverage to escape.” Vivian looked to me. “You want to touch him?”
I held up my hands defensively and took a step or two back. Logically, I knew Vivian wouldn’t throw an octopus at me. But the thing was a nightmare, and I wasn’t taking any chances. “No, I’m fine over here.”
Penny picked up on my abject terror and excused it with a simple, “This isn’t really his thing.”
Anyone else would have mocked me for being afraid of a creature that couldn’t pursue me on land—I would have, too—but Penny… She was pure kindness. Well, except when it came to yoga moms in Central Park, but I could forgive that.
“And he brought you here, anyway?” Vivian sounded as though she approved of me. “That’s devotion. You’ve got yourself a keeper.”
Instead of rushing to correct Vivian with regards to the newness of our relationship, Penny looked at me and smiled. I smiled back, because there was no other facial expression that felt half as good when I was with her. Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked sharply away.
“Are you all right?” I asked, trying to laugh.
She wiped her eyes with the hand that wasn’t currently covered in suckers, and said, “I’m just…a lot happier than I’ve been in a really long time.”
God, I hope it was because of me and not just Monty. I’d lost women to some pretty disheartening romantic rivals before, but at least they’d all been humans.
I didn’t keep track of the time while Penny bonded, both figuratively and literally, with Monty. The animal’s suckers left dark magenta circles on her arms, which delighted her. When he lost interest in Penny or, at least, became more interested in escape than feeling her up—Monty had very poor taste, in my estimation—Vivian offered him some disgusting fish pieces, and he swept majestically away to eat them in privacy.
“You’re going to make her wash her hands, right?” I asked Vivian as Penny shook water off her arm. “She isn’t going to get a sucker infestation?”
After Penny washed off, once to be practical, a second time for my own mollification, Vivian took us to the door.
“This is one of the top five moments in my life,” Penny gushed to her.
“Well, I’m glad I could be a part of it.” Vivian paused. “You know, we take volunteers here. You could be a tour guide.”
Penny said, “Yeah. Maybe some day.” There was a wistful sadness behind the answer, one I could easily recognize as the ghost of a past ambition. Perhaps working at a magazine hadn’t been Penny’s first choice of career.
I didn’t bring it up, not while she was radiating pure joy. As we walked to the car, she took my hand, then stepped in front of me. “This was the sweetest thing any guy has ever done for me. I don’t know what I did to deserve it—”
“You’re you. And you gave me a chance,” I blurted, before I could stop the words coming out. How else could I have answered her? The reason I’d begged Burt for his help in setting up this date was specifically to make her as happy as being with her made me. Granted, I would have to grow four more limbs to be on the same level as Monty, but if she was willing to settle for a human, I wanted to be that human.
She rose on her toes, her beautiful lips parted in anticipation, and I couldn’t resist. The moment our mouths met, I had to have her in my arms. They felt empty without her in them. I pulled her in, reminding myself not to squeeze her too hard. Only Monty could get away with that.
Through dinner, all Penny could talk about was the octopus. Oh, she tried to come up with other topics, but the conversation always wandered back to Monty, and I did nothing to stop it. I didn’t think I would ever tire of her excitement, and knowing I’d done something that had so thoroughly pleased her.
She was still going, even in the car. “They’re really devoted mothers. A female giant Pacific octopus will make a den in a nook or a hole, somewhere she can protect, and lay like ten thousand eggs. And she hangs them up on the walls and spends six months just sitting there, cleaning the eggs, moving them around; she doesn’t even feed herself. She doesn’t sleep. If she’s not dead by the time the babies hatch, she’s not alive for long.”
We stopped at a light, and the car next to us kept creeping toward the line. I hated that, and I wanted to be certain that I pulled through first, just to rankle the other driver, so I answered absentmindedly, “Why? Do they eat her?”
I might as well have asked Penny her weight difference between now and high school. “No! How dare you!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was an offensive question.” I laughed at the absurdity of her reaction.
“No, they don’t eat her. You should YouTube octopods, sometime. They’re fascinating.” She leaned back and sighed happily.
I had never met a woman as strange, as funny, or as kind as Penny. I had no idea what she was doing, going out with me. I probably should have counseled her against it. But I was falling for her, and I would be reaching terminal velocity soon.
“Well, I find you fascinating, Penny Parker,” I said, and I winked at her. Because if I tried to say anything else, she would know I was already in love with her.
Chapter Nine
Stunned by my personal epiphany regarding my feelings for Penny, I drove back to my apartment on autopilot. I hadn’t intended to, and we’d never discussed exactly where it was we were going when we’d left the restaurant, but it still felt like a sleazy, oh-no-we’ve-run-out-of-gas move.
“Well, isn’t this presumptuous?” Her slow, sexy smile assuaged some of my mortification.
Since she wasn’t offended, I thought I might as well run with it. I tried for cool, one hand on the top of the steering wheel as I shrugged. “It’s Saturday night. There must be something good on television, right?”
Her knowing smile never faded. “I don’t think we’re going to watch TV up there.”
Christ Almighty. I knew she wasn’t promising sex, but my cock didn’t know that.
“You caught me.” I pointed to her arm, where Monty’s sucker marks were still visible, though fading. “I was hoping I’d get to put some hickeys on you, as well, since you’re being so generous about it tonight.”
“Shut up and let’s get inside.” She laughed.
God but I wanted to.
Upstairs, I offered to open some wine, and Penny accepted, though in hindsight, I worried she might think I was trying to get her drunk. She wandered off to the bathroom, and I panicked. Romance wasn’t exactly my forte, and I didn’t know what a woman Penny’s age would expect from me. Was wine overkill? Did it seem too cliché or desperate? Or was it not enough? Would she feel like I didn’t value her if I didn’t make an effort?
I picked a playlist of slow, romantic songs I’d put together in a rather maudlin post-divorce moment. Most of them were from the eighties, but depending on Penny’s musical tastes and knowledge, it was possible I could get away with pretending they were just so obscure and hip she’d never heard of them.
Calm down, the last reasonable part of my brain, the part that didn’t wish me ill, commanded. She likes you. She came up here, didn’t she? She’s in the bathroom, now, probably checking her makeup and worrying about impressing you the way you’re worrying about impressing her.
I wished that part of my brain were a little bigger and a bit more vocal in times of need, because it really did give good advice.
Penny returned just as I brought the wine to the living room. I placed the bottle on the coffee table, handed her a glass and said, “I hope you like Chardonnay, because it was all I had.”
“It’s better than a glass of peanut butter.” She took a cautious sip. The last time she’d been here, she’d gulped down a beer without hesitation. I made a mental note to offer her that, next time.
For now, I just sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside me. “Best living room view in all of New York?”
She joined me, nestling at my side as though she’d always belonged there. I put my arm around her, and she fit so well maybe I did believe in destiny as much as she did.
She laid her head on my shoulder. “Best seat in all of New York. Best date.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” was all I could manage to say. Any breath I had to speak with lodged in my chest. It escaped as a sigh. “Of course, now I’ll never top it.”
“You’ve set a really high bar for me,” she mock-complained. “How am I supposed to compete with you providing the culmination of my lifelong dream?”
First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) Page 11