Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley Page B

unsulfured kind that doesn’t give me headaches. I write for a spell.
It’s only the evening activities with Lily, game nights and movie nights and pizza, that provide a small respite from the monotony. At night I put my laptop back on my desk, and my phone back
on its charger. Lily and I go out one last time. I never set an alarm before bed. I don’t have to: my insides are as tuned in to the sameness as my everything else.
    Someone has taken a seat on the barstool next to Trent and the two of them are talking. Trent gestures back at me. The guy leans in to see past Trent, looks at me, then holds his hand up as if
to say “not interested.” Trent turns back to me and shrugs.
    “Who did you hook up with?” It’s an obvious attempt to keep the conversation on my successes.
    “Massage guy. The one who came to my house.”
    “Theodore,” Trent says disapprovingly. He calls me Theodore instead of Edward when he wants to full-name me, because he knows it gets under my skin.
    “Not my name.”
    “Isn’t that like paying for it?”
    “No,” I say with four or five o’s, partly in defense of my reputation and partly in defense of massage guy’s. “I paid for a massage. Then we got to talking, I
offered him a drink, we each had a few while we continued our conversation, he’s a writer, too, a librettist . . .”
    “Libidinous?”
    “No. Well, that, too. A
librettist
, he writes the words for . . . The point is, we had a surprising amount in common, so we talked for a while—and
then
. . .” I
let the sentence finish itself. “It was like a date. Except, you know, I was wearing a towel.”
    Trent laughs. “I should have seen that one coming.”
    “It took me by surprise.” But maybe I should have seen it coming, too. At least an indication it might happen.
    An omen.
    My eyes are too often closed to these things. Should I have seen it coming? Should I have seen the octopus coming? An omen for that? Octo. Latin for eight. But who did I know who was Latin? Any
number of people. This is Los Angeles, after all. Maybe the Latin origin is the wrong thing to focus on, maybe it’s the eight itself. The bartender pours a beer. There are eight pints in a
gallon. Eight crayons in a box of Crayolas. Eight nights of Hanukkah. Eight atoms of something in octane. Carbon? Compounds of carbon form the basis of all life, could that be it? A stop sign has
eight sides; is the octopus a sign for me to stop? And if so, stop what?
    But can’t omens be good as well as bad? If there was an omen of the octopus coming and I missed it, shouldn’t I be looking for an omen of recovery, an omen of the octopus leaving?
Omen is also Latin. Back to that again.
    My brain hurts.
    “What time is it?” I ask.
    Trent checks his phone. “Eleven fifteen.”
    As if on cue, the door opens and a few people enter, laughing. They’re all wearing black pants and white shirts. I elbow Trent who just mouths “Weird,” studies the late
arrivals, and lands on one guy with a pen stuck behind his ear.
    “What about that one?” He’s still focused on my getting some uncommitted lip.
    I flag down the bartender. “Another round?” he asks.
    “Can I ask you a really stupid question?”
    “Shoot,” he says.
    “Isn’t this a gay bar?”
    The bartender laughs. “Used to be. The owners sold it. Now it’s mostly a hangout for local restaurant servers when their shifts end. That’s why it picks up late.”
    I look at Trent, who just shrugs.
    My head hits the bar and I speak into the crook of my arm. “We’re really bad at this,” I say. “I blame you. You’ve been happy too long.”
    “I blame you. You’ve been
unhappy
too long.” Trent fixes his gaze on the blank space above me.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Looking for the black cloud over your head.” He punches me playfully. I punch him back, a little less playfully.
    “One more round,” Trent says to the bartender, who places two fresh cocktail napkins on the bar before