Ingrid was so upset that after Bob left for work, she told me to go into my brother’s room and take whatever I wanted before the truck came.
What if Dad gets mad? I wrote in the notebook I’d taken to carrying around.
“Joey, I want you to have something to remember your brother by, and if your father says one word to you about that, you tell him I said he can shove it up his ass.”
I wrote her exact words down just in case the opportunity to show it to Bob ever arose.
Even before I went into Sam’s room, I knew what I wanted: the Martin acoustic dreadnought he’d gotten for his sixteenth birthday. The guitar was brand new, and when Sam was alive he wouldn’t let me touch it because he said my hands were too grimy from petting trees all the time.
The guitar was the only thing I’d ever seen that was as beautiful as the redwoods I worshipped, and I started teaching myself how to play it by studying the Fleetwood Mac songbook Sam bought at a garage sale the same week he got the guitar.
Bob never did get mad about me keeping the guitar, but I figured it was because all I did was sit in my room and play it, and that meant Bob didn’t have to see me or talk to me, or deal with me not talking to him. It was a win-win situation for all.
By the time I met Cal two years later, I knew how to play every song in that book and had moved on to the Eagles Greatest Hits. In fact, the first song Cal and I ever performed together in public, during our sophomore year, was “Take It Easy.” We used the bleachers in the gym as a makeshift stage and played the song during the girls basketball practice because Cal insisted we needed to start getting some live show experience, and because he had a crush on a girl named Nell, who’s family was moving to Frontier, North Dakota, at the end of the summer. Cal had been flirting with Nell for weeks. That day he changed the song’s lyrics from “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,” to “standing on a corner in Frontier, North Dakota,” and before Nell left town she gave Cal his first hand job, more than a year before I would get mine.
The second half of dinner went a lot smoother than the first. Brad/Al continued to bring small plates of food to our table—Kennebec fries, braised short ribs, apple cake for dessert—all the while supplying us with the best red wine I’d had since back in high school, when I used to steal Silver Oak from Bob’s fridge.
October didn’t press or pry any further into my life, and that, along with the abundance of wine, put me at ease. I went on to spend a good portion of the meal giving her in-depth play-by-plays of movies she’d never seen—films that were too violent or disturbing for her, like Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, and a documentary about whales that I’d recently watched. I undertook the narratives with real commitment—“Mr. Brown? That sounds too much like Mr. Shit. How about if I’m Mr. Purple? That sounds good to me. I’ll be Mr. Purple”—and October laughed at my sincere, theatrical portrayals, occasionally interrupting to tell me I was funny or cute, and pretty soon being with her began to feel warm and homey, to such a degree that my heart quailed whenever I wasn’t talking.
The one personal question October did ask me before we left the restaurant was if I had any siblings. My simple, though not altogether accurate, answer was “No.”
When we pulled up in front of October’s house that night, I shut off the truck’s engine but left the radio on low.
We sat in the dark for a while, listening to the quiet music. I didn’t recognize the song that was on, but I imagined the guitarist was playing an old Taylor Milagro. The tone scraped at my insides and reminded me once again that despite the feelings of familiarity I was experiencing, the woman sitting beside me still had no idea who I really was.
Eventually October sighed and said, “I guess I should go.” She paused, then turned toward me. “I had a really nice time tonight, Joe.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
She waited another long moment, the air in the truck suddenly becoming warm and stuffy. I got the sense she was waiting for me to make a move, but I didn’t. Finally she wished me a good night and hopped out.
I watched her walk into her house and shut the door behind her. I watched Diego get up and spin in a circle around her. I watched October scratch the dog’s neck and kiss the top of his head.
I sat there until the lights in the kitchen went off and the ones in the rear of the house went on. Then I went back to my apartment and, without turning on any of my own lights, lay on the bed, closed my eyes, and fell asleep wondering why I was already having the urge to bolt.
NINE.
Cal gave me some sage advice once that I often call to mind whenever I’m attempting to step outside my comfort zone. During our junior year, a girl named Melissa asked him to ask me to ask her to Game Night at our school. Game Night was an event Tam High had once a year in the spring. They would set up tables in the gym and designate each one for a specific game: Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Boggle, stuff like that. They served pizza, there were prizes for winners, and kids took turns making out in the locker rooms.
“Melissa thinks you’re cute,” Cal said. “She wants to be your date. I promised her you’d call.”
I told Cal there was no way I could call Melissa.
“Why not?”
“She’s too pretty. I won’t know what to say.”
“But she’s a sure thing,” Cal argued, aghast at my insecurity. “She asked me to tell you this. She’s not going to say no.”
I told Cal I’d call Melissa if he smoked some pot with me first, and he said, “Fine, fine.” He shook his head. “The things I do for you, Harp.”
He put on a Tool album, which did not help my anxiety, and I lit the joint I’d found in Chuck’s coat pocket. This was one of the few times Cal had agreed to get high with me, and despite all of his antidrug protests, he seemed to get a kick out of it. On the other hand, I felt more on edge with each inhale. Cal had to dial Melissa’s number for me and then ask Melissa’s mom if Melissa could come to the phone.
“I’m calling on behalf of Joseph Harper,” he said formally.
I thought maybe Cal was going to do all the talking, but once Melissa got on the line, he tossed the phone at my chest. I don’t know what the expression on my face was like, but he took one look at it and fell on the floor, pointing at me and laughing.
I put my hand over the receiver and asked Cal to turn the music down, but he was still on the ground, now playing air drums, and didn’t hear me. I cupped my hand over my ear to block out the noise as best I could and managed to ask Melissa to go to Game Night with me, but after I hung up I knew it was going to be impossible for me to think about anything else until the date was over.
“See? That wasn’t so hard.” Instead of it mellowing him out, the pot made Cal extra verbose and too easily amused. “You know what I tell myself, Harp, whenever I get nervous about doing something?”
“You never get nervous about doing anything.”
“But I do!” His eyes were glassy, and he was wobbly on his feet as he hopped onto my bed and began lip-syncing to the song.
“Cal, be serious for a sec.” I was suddenly fascinated with the idea that Cal could feel insecure. “What do you get nervous about?”
“Ack.” He rubbed his face with his palm like he was trying to rub off the high.
“Cal,” I huffed, turning off the stereo with an irritated thud.
“Bro. Chill.” He sat down and looked at me. “I’ll tell you, even with this dumb Game Night, I worry that I’ll sound stupid or lose every round to the biggest douchebags in our class.”
“Really?” I said. “You really think like that?”
“Sometimes. Yeah.” He laughed like a stoner. “But you know what I tell myself when I do?”
“What?”
“I tell myself that everybody thinks like that. And you know what else? Deep down, nobody gives a rat’s ass what other people are doing, th
ey’re too concerned with themselves. You can’t let that kind of shit stop you from doing your own shit. This is supposed to be fun. Games are fun. And everything in life is like that. Not all fun and games; I mean shit is important, obviously. Doing shit is important. Dreams are important.”
“Cal.”
“My point is—” He pointed his finger so close to my nose it made my eyes cross. “It’s impossible to become less of yourself by doing something you really wanna do. You can only become less by not doing it. And becoming less means you shrivel up and die inside. That’s why you have to do shit. Especially shit that scares the crap out of you. You know what I mean? You can only become more from that. More smart, more strong, more brave, more whatever. Even if you fail. That’s the goal. To be more.”
It was impressive how articulate he could be even when he was stoned out of his mind.
“More or less?” he asked in a prog metal voice.
I laughed. “You’re so washed, dude.”
“More or less, Harp?”
“More,” I said. “For sure. More.”
“Way more.”
“Way.”
That’s what I was thinking about when I finally got up the nerve to kiss October. Cal and his concept of more.
It happened at work, at the beginning of what was supposed to be a long night shoot.
October and I had gone on one more dinner date that week, though it was to Super Duper for burgers and shakes, which we got to go and ate on the swings in Old Mill Park because October was in one of her moods where she didn’t feel like being around people. We’d fallen into the habit of sending flirty texts back and forth before bed, but I hadn’t touched her yet. I wanted to. And I could feel a tacit, palpable desire buzzing between us like a delay pedal on an endless feedback loop whenever I got within a two-foot radius of her. But she’d put the ball in my court, and that meant she had to wait for me to get my head out of my ass.
On Wednesday, October announced that Thursday’s selfie would consist of me filming her entire night’s sleep. She planned on condensing that into a four-minute video, on top of which she would overlay carefully selected words and phrases about time and death.
“And could you make the set look like a hospital room?”
She wanted it simple: just a bed, some medical equipment on the side, which I rented, and a working clock on the wall. “The biggest clock you can find so the numbers are visible above the bed.”
She gave me the next day off to rest so that I wasn’t too tired to man the camera for six hours that night, and she filmed and uploaded a selfie on her own that afternoon.
We reconvened late Thursday evening. October showed up in a hospital gown with a pair of white silk pajama pants underneath. Her hair was wet from a shower.
“Are you really going to be able to fall asleep with a camera running and a strange man staring at you?”
“I can fall asleep any place and under any circumstance.” She sat up against the headboard and pulled the covers up to her chest like she was cold. “Last year, Chris and I took my parents to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden. We had seats in the first row, and about two hours in I fell asleep.” She bit her lip and chuckled. “To be fair, I was jetlagged. I’d flown in from an exhibit in London that morning. But the worst part of this story is that Bruce actually saw me sleeping, and in between songs he looked down at Chris and said, ‘Am I boring your date?’ to which Chris said, “Sorry, Boss. That appears to be the case.”
“That’s pretty funny,” I said, though the ease with which she spoke to me about Chris made me uncomfortable.
“Mortifying is more like it.” She shook her head as if clearing it of unnecessary debris. “OK. Less talking, more sleeping. Let’s do this.”
I checked the levels on the camera, gave her a thumbs-up, and pushed “Record.”
She slid down into the bed, turned onto her side, and closed her eyes.
Less than a minute later she flipped onto her back, lay there for another few minutes, and sighed. “Remember when I said I could sleep anywhere? That only works if I’m actually tired.”
As a joke I said, “Here, maybe this will help,” and I played “Dancing in the Dark” on my phone. That cracked her up, which, in turn, cracked me up. After that we tried to right ourselves back into work mode, but we couldn’t. October would settle back down, and I would stifle a laugh; then I would settle, and she would laugh. Finally she threw a pillow at me and said, “You’re ruining this selfie!” But she wasn’t mad, she was being playful. And right then I had a sense I was going to remember the night in some meaningful way for a long time.
I handed her back the pillow and she said, “What time is it?”
I looked at the clock above her head—it was one of those big digital ones you’d imagine a fancy advertising agency or the NYSE might’ve had on the wall in the 1980s. I’d found it in a consignment shop in San Anselmo.
“11:09.”
She sat up against the headboard again and said, “Tell me when it’s 11:11 so I can make a wish.”
I waited until it was 11:11 and said, “It’s 11:11.”
She closed her eyes, presumably made a wish, then opened them and looked at me in a way that tugged at my body.
I imagined Cal’s voice in my head: More or less, Harp?
I asked her what she’d wished for and she said, “If I tell you it won’t come true.”
We looked at each other some more.
“Now what?” I said.
“Well, since you derailed the work, it’s your responsibility to come up with something that makes up for it. This night can’t be a total bust.”
More or less, Harp?
I shut off the camera and the lights. The only illumination in the room was the soft glimmer coming from a floor lamp near the front of the studio and the weird red glow of the large digital clock above our heads.
I walked toward the bed, watching October’s face for signs I was making the wrong move. I saw none. I felt daring. And since I didn’t normally do daring things, the rush filled me with an audacity so foreign to my body it was as though I were watching a movie with Joe Harper as the star—only the Joe Harper in the movie was a hero.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, hands shaky, throat dry, wishing I had a shot of tequila. But I met October’s gaze and held it.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said softly.
“I was just thinking about my best friend from high school.”
Her brow furrowed. “A male friend?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I was thinking about some advice he gave me once when I wanted to ask out a girl but was being shy and stupid.”
“What was his advice?”
“He always told me to go for it.”
“Sounds like good advice to me.”
She stopped blinking, her gaze still locked on mine, little pilot lights burning in her redwood-colored eyes. She lifted my hand, pressed the tips of her fingers against mine and her palm into my palm, trying to figure out what I was feeling. And I tried to send her a message, tried to tell her through my skin what I couldn’t say with words.
I’m pretty sure she heard me loud and clear, because a moment later she dropped my hand and took off the hospital gown. It tied in the back, but she didn’t bother to untie it. She just lifted the whole thing over her head and tossed it onto the floor.
“Your turn,” she said.
I took off my T-shirt, dropped it to the floor on top of her hospital gown, and got in bed.
We scooted down under the covers, facing each other on our sides, and she moved in close. Her breasts were warm against my chest, her palm cool on my back. She ran her thumb across my bottom lip, maneuvered her lower body so that my thigh was firmly between her legs.
“Remember, nothing has to happen if you don’t want it
to,” she said.
“What if I want it to?”
I don’t know who went first, but one of us—probably October—leaned in, and we kissed. It was clumsy at the start. My teeth banged into hers and my head was going in the wrong direction. She giggled at that; I righted myself, and then it was good and soft and warm. Her mouth tasted like tangerines and mint and her neck smelled like the jasmine that grew outside the house, and I didn’t stop kissing her for a long time, so long that after a while it got to be too much—physically painful, I mean—and I knew I was going to have to either get the hell away from her or go all the way.
“The ball is in your court tonight,” I said.
It wasn’t just that I was scared. It was that she was my boss, and that meant she had to decide how far to take it. At least that was my assessment and my excuse.
She rolled over, climbed on top of me and began unbuttoning my jeans.
“Are you sure?” she said. “Because I can be kind of naughty when I’m in charge.”
October did all the work that night, and afterward we were quiet; I held her close, our limbs entangled so that I didn’t know where my body ended and hers began. And I remember thinking that holding her felt so much more right than my last girlfriend. Meadow was tall and strong, and holding her had been like trying to hold a mare. October was a fawn in my arms.
I was a moment from dozing off when October whispered, “You know what I like about you?”
I couldn’t have answered that question if my life depended on it. “My dynamic, outgoing personality?”
She laughed and then said, “You understand how to exist inside silence. Most people don’t know how to do that.”
“I like silence.”
“I like silence too.”
Another long, quiet moment passed between us.
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