First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (15 page)

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?”