Lily and the Octopus Read Online Free PDF

just from his handshake, and we
weren’t meeting in a sufficiently public place, so I said just that and left. Another time, I wish I had said that up front but instead suffered through dim sum while having to answer
questions like, “Do you think you’re the kind of person who could perform an emergency tracheotomy?” (For the record, no, I do not.) But once you’re in the middle of a date,
you’re kind of committed to seeing it through to its natural conclusion. My first date with Jeffrey lasted two days—there was just so much to say! I suppose that sets a very high
bar.
    Lily was asleep when I left, and I felt like one of those new parents who wanted to wake their sleeping baby to see if it was still alive. But while she normally sleeps on her left side, this
afternoon she was on her right, octopus side down. Good. Maybe it will suffocate in her paw-print blanket. Otherwise she was curled up in her usual way, the way that made me call her Bean.
I’m already looking forward to whatever movie she and I may watch together when this interminable date is over. On Saturday nights we watch movies. I hope she’s well rested. Maybe
we’ll order Indian; the place up the street has these chickpeas in a tomato and ginger sauce that are really something. I think again about how to end this ordeal.
Well, since you’re
not really that interesting in person, I think I’ll head out
. If only it were that easy. I should just go ahead and make a third date with the hugging guy. At least I was interested
enough in him to want to know if he was interested in me. Why did I break the hug first?
    “What about kids?” I ask. “Do you want kids?” I like kids well enough—I have a niece that I’m crazy about. But I’m already too old to be a young father,
and I don’t particularly want to be an old father, and I’m single and it’s not something I would do on my own. Nor do I have a particular drive to change my relationship status
just to have kids, despite my being on a dating website. So I don’t really think kids are in the cards.
    “No. Definitely not. I don’t get kids.”
    “Oh, well, there you go. I want to have kids. Need to have kids. Lots and lots of kids. We’ll form a singing group and tour second-tier European cities like Düsseldorf.”
And just like that, there’s my out.
    On the way home, I have a sudden craving for ice cream. I stop at the grocery store and head right to the frozen food aisle and select a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra for me and
an individual cup of vanilla for Lily, because what the hell. One summer when she was young we were driving somewhere together, and I pulled over to the side of a road when I saw an ice-cream place
with one of those walk-up windows. We got out of the car and marched together across the gravel parking lot and I ordered a mint chocolate chip ice-cream cone because the mint chocolate chip ice
cream they had was green and it always tastes better to me when it’s green (even though the dye they use is probably carcinogenic). We sat at a picnic table on some grass and I scooped Lily
up into my lap.
    WHAT! IS! THIS! CLOUD! THAT! YOU’RE! LICKING! I! LOVE! TO! LICK! THINGS! WOULD! I! LIKE! TO! LICK! THAT!
    Even on my best days, I always wished life excited me as much as it excited her. So I lowered the cone to let her have a lick. The response was immediate.
    THIS! IS! AMAZING! WE! MUST! HAVE! THIS! TO! LICK! EVERY! SINGLE! DAY!
    It was impossible, eating the rest of that cone. She stood on my lap and put her front paws on my chest, her tail ticking on its fastest setting. And then the back paws tried climbing, looking
for footholds in my abs, anything to hoist herself closer to her minty prize.
    “Hey, hey, hey!” I objected. “Sit!” She did, steadying the paws on the right side of her body on my left leg and the paws on the left side of her body on my right leg
while trying to maintain a semblance of balance. Her eyes looked up at me