“I mean, why are you up at this hour?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
I grabbed a stool, pulled it up beside the easel, and sat down and watched her paint for a while. Eventually she huffed and said, “Do you mind? I really want to be alone.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I wanted to tell her things, but I didn’t know how. Story of my life, I know. My words were locked somewhere inside of me, and I had long ago lost the key.
Finally I said, “Nothing happened with that girl. I went for a walk and she followed me. I was—I don’t know—I just needed to get some air, and I lost track of time. But I didn’t—”
“Stop!” She slammed her paintbrush down on the stool beside her and the jar of water fell and spilled all over the floor. “Jesus Christ, Joe. Just leave me alone. Please.”
“I’m trying to explain something to you.”
“Well, you don’t have to. It makes no difference to me if you fucked that girl or not.” She put her elbows on her knees, her head fell into her hands, and she said, “What a mess.”
I didn’t know if she meant the spilled water or our lives, but I went to the sink, grabbed a bunch of paper towels, then walked back over and cleaned up the floor. After I threw the paper towels into the trash bin, I sat back down and said, “Can I ask you one thing before I go?”
She didn’t say I could, but she set the paintbrush down and turned toward me. Her eyebrows came alive and she blinked like crazy.
“If it doesn’t matter to you, then why are you so mad at me?”
She reached toward my chest, and I thought she was moving to touch me, to take my hand, to use her gift, but she just brushed dirt off my shirt.
She shook her head and said, “I don’t think you want me to answer that question.”
“Why not?”
“Because every question answered is another can of worms opened, and I’m trying to put the worms back in the can.”
“Please?”
She scratched at a splatter of dried paint on her smock and sighed. “First of all, I’m not mad. It’s just that I watched you walk away from the table tonight, and I knew where you were going, and why, and I wanted to go with you. And that feels like a problem. Here’s something else that feels like a problem: When I’m with you, just sitting here working, or talking, or not working, or not talking, I don’t want to be anywhere else.” She rubbed her eyes and looked up at the skylights, then back at me. “I could see what you were feeling after you played those songs, and all I wanted to do—” She caught herself, shook her head. “Forget it. I can’t say it. It’s not right.”
I was glad she didn’t say whatever she held back, because I had a feeling that if she had it would have haunted me for a long time.
She was spot-on about the worms though.
I looked down at her watercolor palette. The little black circle of paint she’d been diluting to color in some of the dog’s gray fur was wet and tacky, and I pressed my thumb into it. But then I lifted my thumb and it was covered in wet black paint; I didn’t know what to do with that, so I pressed my thumb into my jeans, on my thigh, right above my knee. I held it down for a few seconds so the denim would absorb the water and the pigment, and when I lifted it back up I saw a black thumbprint there.
“Should I quit?” I said, voicing a question I’d been pondering all day. “Do you want me to leave?”
She shook her head. “That would shatter me right now.”
“What if I want to quit?”
“You don’t.”
She was right. I didn’t. “That doesn’t mean I think staying is a good idea. It’s certainly not going to make this any easier.”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t need it to be easy. Besides, we’re adults. Surely we’re capable of boundaries.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. And I had a notion that I would be better at boundaries than she was. Cal might have been a boyfriend to her, but he was a brother to me. Intuition told me brother held more weight than boyfriend.
October looked down at my thumbprint. Then she pressed her thumb into the black paint like I’d done and pressed it onto my jeans, right on top of where I’d put mine, and our prints merged into one.
“Look.” She smiled for the first time since I’d arrived. “We made art.”
I smiled too, but the loneliness and longing I felt for her throbbed and stung like everything else. A moment later October lifted my hand and pressed the tip of her black thumb into the tip of my black thumb and twisted them together, much like Cal and I had done as kids, only we’d used blood instead of paint.
“Friends,” she said.
“Do you really think we can be friends?”
“I think we already are.”
I dropped my head backward and gazed up at the ceiling. The skylights were filthy again. I couldn’t see anything but sticks and dirt and fallen leaves, and that made me sad too. All that dead stuff.
I stood to go, and October said, “Everything will be all right, Joe.”
“How do you define all right?”
“You and I are going to be friends, and you and Chris are going to be friends, and we’re going to work together and make art, and put this thing to bed.” She pointed back and forth between the two of us. “Whatever this is. We’ll get over it. We have to.”
I thought about the song she’d played for me the night we first talked in my apartment. The title of that song, I’d since learned, was “Sorrow,” and I’d listened to it a couple dozen times by then.
I don’t wanna get over you . . .
I went back to my apartment, but I didn’t go to sleep. I watched and waited for October to leave the studio. After she did, I went over to get some varnish and applied three coats of it to the spot on my jeans where we’d left our thumbprints. I’d only ever used that varnish to protect acrylic paint on canvas and wasn’t sure it was going to work on watercolor and denim, but I applied it anyway.
I still have those jeans.
I’m wearing them right now, as a matter of fact.
The little oval of our thumbprints is still there.
It’s faint, the palest shade of gray now, but it’s still there.
THIRTEEN.
There was a note on top of a stack of papers waiting for me in the studio when I got to work the next morning. I saw my name, written in the same architectural script as the note October had left on my door, and for one reckless instant I both hoped and feared it was going to say Run away with me, or I still can’t stop thinking about you, or I don’t wanna get over you, or something that would erase the boundaries I had sworn to uphold the night before.
In fact, the note contained information and instructions for an upcoming exhibition October had committed to participating in with a handful of other artists. The show would be for charity, held in a few weeks at the Thomas Frasier Gallery in San Francisco. According to the printout, the gallery welcomed painting, sculpture, photography, or installation. The theme was FREEDOM, and all the profits would go to an organization that supported women’s reproductive rights.
October wanted me to build her a birdcage large enough to fit into. She’d drawn a rough sketch of what she was picturing and left me a dozen other images for reference and inspiration. But, she wrote, just suggestions. Be your amazing and creative self. I trust you.
The note ended with her explaining that she was going to work on the next selfie on her own and would send it to me to catalog once she’d finished. Then she wrote:
Chris thought he and I should spend some time together before he goes back on the road. We’ll be away for a few days. Rae will be staying at the house with Diego. Text if you have any questions. Thank you.
Oct.
I sent her a text right away: Got your note. Birdcage will be cool. I would’ve watched Diego.
I was hoping to get a response, to be able to keep a dialogue going with her while she was gone, but all she sent back was the smiley-face-with-heart-eyes emoji, and I didn’t know what to make of that.
I spent all day researching birdcages, trying to design something as visually interesting as what October had drawn, yet functional and easy to build in the limited time I had. I also came up with an idea I thought would elevate the installation to the next level, but I needed to explore its feasibility before I talked to October about it.
I could have done most of my research on my computer at the studio, but to avoid any confrontations with Rae, I went to the Mill Valley Library to work. I was glad to be busy. The idea of October and I being friends sounded hypothetically conceivable, but I realized it was agreed to under the guise of getting to spend my days near her, being productive and creative with her. The work connected us, and in theory that enabled me to accept all the other things we couldn’t do together. But thinking about her and Cal off on a trip, wondering where they were and what they were doing, tangled me up in knots.
After much debate and a call to Shane, an old site supervisor from my Harper & Sons days, I decided to build the cage out of bamboo, first and foremost because it’s a renewable resource, but also because it’s strong, light, and flexible enough to bend without snapping, which would be necessary if I ended up being able to pull off my idea.
Tuesday morning I went to San Rafael to get the materials I needed to build the cage and then went back to the studio to start prepping the wood. I was unloading everything from my truck when Rae left to take Diego for a walk; I was still out there when she returned. She didn’t acknowledge me, and I didn’t acknowledge her, not even when Diego ran over to investigate what I was doing. I assumed this meant Rae and I had a mutual understanding that we would steer clear of each other while October was out of town, and that suited me fine. But later in the afternoon, as I was measuring for the double grid that would be the floor of the cage, Rae came back outside.
She walked to the opposite side of the table and used a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Instead of her usual almonds and raisins, she had a bag of dried apricots, and as she held one between her thumb and index finger, the sun shone through it the way a flashlight illuminates the veins of a hand.
I took my time with the piece of wood I was working on and then put down my pencil and waited for her to say whatever it was she wanted to say. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I wiped my brow.
“I told you everything would go back to normal once Chris got home, yeah?”
I think she was waiting for me to put my hurt feelings on display for her, but she would wait a long time for that. I could feign indifference better than anyone. I gave her nothing.
“They’re in Big Sur, in case you’re wondering.” She ate the apricot she’d been holding. “A little romantic getaway at the Post Ranch Inn.”
I watched foamy saliva collect and pool in the corners of her mouth when she talked and chewed at the same time. And as I stood there listening to her, I wondered if she was deliberately trying to hurt me or simply trying to prove her point.
“I happen to know you’re the one who asked Cal to fly home,” I said. “He told me.”
She looked confused, and I corrected myself. “Chris, I mean.”
“Right. October mentioned you and Chris are what, childhood friends or something? What a coincidence, yeah?”
She was doing it again. Insinuating that I had some ulterior motive to come in and steal October from Cal. She had no clue.
“Some friend you are,” she said.
I hesitated to respond. In my opinion, this was none of Rae’s business. But I didn’t want her meddling any further. More specifically, I didn’t want her telling Cal anything that would hurt him.
I took a deep breath, tried to center myself and said, “Listen, this job is important to me, and I’m not here to mess up anyone’s life. What happened between me and October was a mistake. I get it. She gets it. It’s over.”
“Very happy to hear that,” Rae said.
She made like she was going to walk away, but then she stopped, looked at me, and when she spoke again it was as if she’d taken off a mask.
“You know, I went to art school for a while,” she told me. “I thought I wanted to be an artist, but I quickly realized that I didn’t like making art as much as I liked being around it. I dropped out. After that I couldn’t get a job in the art world to save my life. When I met October, I was working as a receptionist at a company that makes pasta sauce. I thought her work was special. I told her that if she ever had a place for me, to call. About a year later, she did.” Rae paused, seemed to waffle a little, as if perhaps she was revealing too much. “I appreciated that. I owe her a lot. All I’m doing here is looking out for her.”
“Maybe you underestimate her. Maybe she can look out for herself.”
“Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think you do, yeah? Maybe I’ve seen her get hurt. And maybe I know that when she gets hurt, she doesn’t get over it for a long time. Chris has his issues, I know. But he can’t hurt her. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded.
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
I nodded again, and she went shuffling back into the house.
The following night, October sent me a file to catalog for the 365 Selfies site. The subject line of the e-mail read: “Reverse Suicide Selfie.” It was a video of her walking out of the ocean, and it began with a shot of the waves. October was completely submerged under the water, so much so that I didn’t expect to see her. A second later she was there, heading toward the camera. I’m not even sure how she managed it, because she was wearing a long dress, similar in shape to the one she’d had on the night of the dinner party, but the one in the video was belted, and the belt had big leather pockets with fringe hanging down on each side.
The pockets were filled with rocks, and as October emerged from the water, she lifted the rocks from her pockets. One at a time she dropped the rocks into the sea and then, once she reached the beach, onto the sand.
The water in Big Sur is frigid, even in summer. October was trembling, and her skin was translucent. And it wasn’t just her skin. Her dress was light, gauzy, drenched, and it became diaphanous as it clung to her body. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and I could see her nipples, the outline of her waist, the curve of her hips, everything. The night we’d slept together, I’d only gotten glimpses of her body. She’d been either lying down, on top of me, or under the sheets, and it was fairly dark once I’d turned off the lights.
I didn’t know if she meant for the clip to be so erotic, but it was impossible for me to see it any other way.
After I uploaded and cataloged the video, I tried to read a book on edible plants of Marin County, but every time I got to the end of a page, I realized I hadn’t absorbed a word; I put the book down. I kept thinking about the night October and I had spent together, remembering how soft she was; the way she whispered into my ear, telling me what she was going to do and how she was going to do it; and how she tasted like tangerines and mint and fit so perfectly in my arms.
I went back to my computer, watched the video again, and wondered if Cal had been manning the camera. Then I started to imagine what might have happened after he turned it off. No way he didn’t have the same reaction I had to seeing October like that. No way he hadn’t wanted her.
I tried to stop thinking about it, but that backfired, and things took a darker turn. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was Cal fucking October on the beach in that dress. In my fantasy, Cal was rough and violent, ripping the dress apart, forcing himself on her as she screamed and fought.
October once told me that no one should be ashamed of their fantasies, but jacking off thinking about my best friend hate-fucking the woman I was pretty sure I was in love with
did not make me feel like I was dealing with the situation in a healthy or constructive way.
October and Cal didn’t come home until Thursday night. I was standing in my kitchen eating takeout from Sol Food when I saw her SUV pull up the driveway. Rae came outside with Diego, and the dog went crazy when he saw October, running and bouncing around in big, clumsy circles, almost knocking her over.
I stood in the window and tried to will either October or Cal to look in my direction, to wave and invite me down, but neither did.
October, Rae, and Cal stood in the front yard talking for a few minutes. After Rae got in her car and drove away, Cal put his arm around October; they walked into the house with Diego loafing behind.
I went to the studio early the next morning to do more work on the birdcage before October saw it. She came in around nine o’clock carrying two cappuccinos.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” She handed me one of the mugs. “Disclaimer. I don’t make them as well as you do.”
I tried to assess her reaction to being back, tried to measure how things were between us, but I didn’t have her gift, and from my point of view she seemed unfazed and unattached, not all torn up inside like I was. Reluctantly, I asked how her trip to Big Sur had been. Her answer was ambiguous and deflective.
“Fine,” she said. “Tell me about your week.”
“How about I show you?” I was nervous, desperate for her to like the cage, and I walked her to the back of the studio so she could see the progress I’d made.
Before she was even close enough to see any of the particular details, she stopped in her tracks and said, “Woah . . .” As she continued to approach, she looked at me, then at the cage, then back at me. She walked all the way around it, ran her hand up and down the small section of bars I’d already installed, and then took a few steps back to take it all in.
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