Cal nodded, and October said, “You guys are cute. But it’s going to get dark soon.”
“Not that soon,” Cal said. “And it wouldn’t be the first time we hiked in the dark.”
“We were never very good at knowing what time the sun was going to set.”
“Besides,” Cal added, “I could blindfold Harp and he could still get us home from here.” Cal looked at October. “Can we?”
She rolled her eyes and playfully smacked him in the arm. “I’m not your mom. Do whatever you want. Just don’t call me to come and pick you up if you get lost.”
We walked October to the car, and I promised her we would most definitely not get lost.
Cal gave her a long, deep kiss and said, “You’re dope.”
We had to walk down the street a ways to catch the beginning of the trailhead. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet, and that meant we had plenty of decent light left. As long as we kept up a good pace, we’d have a mile or so in the dark, but we’d be on the fire road to October’s house by then and, like Cal said, I could hike that trail in a blindfold and still make it home.
Instead of reminiscing, which is what we’d been doing most of the evening, Cal and I talked about some of the things we had coming up. I was excited about the birdcage and described it to him in great detail. He, in turn, told me how much he was looking forward to his upcoming show at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. It was a couple months away, already sold out, and would be the last performance of the tour.
“I really want you to be there,” he said. “You’ll come, right?”
“Of course,” I assured him. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
By the time we hit the Gravity Car Fire Road, I could tell Cal had something on his mind. He’d gone quiet and his eyes were pointed at the sky. Anytime Cal was feeling contemplative, he stared at the sky.
Further down the trail, he climbed a small embankment and watched the lights of San Francisco twinkling in the distance. A moment later, his eyes glazed out on the view, he said, “Harp, can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure.”
He picked up a long, narrow stick and poked at things in the dirt. “It’s about October.”
My jaw tightened. For a moment I said nothing. Then, “What about her?”
A beep came from Cal’s pocket. He took out his phone, responded quickly to a text, and put it back. Then he skidded down the little rise he’d climbed and resumed the hike. He was looking straight ahead when he said, “Something’s been bothering me all week, and I need to get it off my chest.”
His words and tone gave me pause, and I gulped.
“Something’s not right with her.”
“What do you mean?”
He broke the stick into two pieces and then started to break those pieces into even smaller pieces, tossing the fragmented twigs off the side of the trail as we walked. “I realize it’s not cool for me to put you in this position, being that she’s your boss. And if you and I didn’t have the history we have I wouldn’t even bring it up.”
“It’s OK,” I told him.
He ran his hand through his hair and said, “I think she’s seeing someone.”
My mouth went dry, and I had to swallow too many times to get any words out. “What makes you think that?”
“You can’t tell her we had this conversation.”
I made some gesture to indicate I wouldn’t.
He rolled the last piece of stick back and forth between his fingers and said, “She won’t fuck me.”
This caught me off guard for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I’d assumed they’d been fucking all week while I was alone in my room thinking about all the fucking they were doing.
Cal looked to his left, into the woods, and said, “Not once since I got back. Not even in Big Sur. And if your girlfriend won’t fuck you in Big Sur, you’ve got a problem.” He shook his head. “Every time I try, she makes an excuse. Fine, she jacked me off after I bugged her long enough, but that’s it. And trust me when I say October is a passionate woman. She usually jumps my bones the minute I get home. But for the last week and a half, nothing.”
I felt a rush of panic coming on and picked up the pace to get us home before I started acting guilty. “Have you asked her about this?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I brought it up a few times while we were gone, but she didn’t want to talk about it. Then I pressed her on it again this morning; she told me she’s going through some emotional stuff, and sex is too intense for her when she’s emotionally overwhelmed. She asked me to give her space. I said sure, and then I asked her if she could elaborate on what kind of emotional stuff; she told me that agreeing to give her space means agreeing to stop asking her questions.” Cal shook his head. “The last time I used that line, that I needed space, I’d married a woman I hardly knew and was screwing my ex-girlfriend behind her back.”
Apprehensively, I said, “Have you asked October specifically if there’s someone else?”
“See, this is where it gets complicated. I can’t ask her that. I’m not allowed.”
“I don’t understand.”
It was getting cold out, and I zipped up my jacket. Cal didn’t have a jacket. He dropped the last remaining twig, put his hands deep in his pockets, and hunched up his shoulders.
“We have this arrangement,” he said. “Since we spend so much time apart. We’re supposed to be allowed to see other people, as long as it’s a no-strings-attached sort of thing. You know, casual. Believe it or not, it was her idea. I went along with it because in theory it sounds awesome, right? And because I was in love with her and wanted her to think I was open-minded and all that shit. But I’m not, really. Anyway, not asking each other about our extracurricular activities is one of the rules. It’s the biggest rule. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Our relationship is like the fucking army.”
Thank God for that, I thought.
It was almost fully dark, and Cal said, “You know where we are, yes?”
I could see Beanstalk up ahead and nodded. “Less than a quarter mile from the house.”
Cal was looking at me like he was waiting for me to give him advice, but I was at a loss and ended up asking him a question that was more pertinent to me than to him. “So, you see other women then?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Though I usually feel guilty as fuck when it happens, even though I’m allowed to do it.” He rubbed his hands together to warm them and blew into his palms. “And not that this makes it any better, but it never means anything, you know? I follow the rules. What’s going on with October is different. She doesn’t just connect with random people. She’s not like that. I can count her friends on one hand. She’s pulling away from me, and I’m freaking out. I don’t want to lose her.” He came to a halt in the middle of the trail and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask . . .”
I braced for it. Because I knew that if Cal asked me straight up if something was going on between October and me, I wouldn’t have been able to lie to him.
He said, “Have you seen anyone around? Anyone coming or going that may be worth mentioning? Is she ever gone all night?”
Cal misinterpreted the look on my face and said, “Fine, fine, I know. It’s not fair of me to be asking you this. But the only other person I could ask is Rae, and I have no confidence in her. She’d tell October I was prying.”
“I haven’t seen anybody,” I said.
That wasn’t a lie.
“Thanks, man.” Cal stepped closer and put his arm around my shoulder the way you do when you trust someone. “You’ll keep an eye on things while I’m gone, right? Let me know if that changes?”
I told him I would.
But that wasn’t even the shittiest part. The shittiest part was that when I got back to my apartment, I didn’t sit around thinking about
what Cal was going through. I thought about what it meant that October wouldn’t have sex with him. And while I came up with numerous possible conclusions, the only logical one seemed to be the same one Cal had come to.
She was thinking of somebody else.
FOURTEEN.
Guitars are like people. Each one is an individual. Especially vintage guitars. And almost all of the guitars on Cal’s Wall of Dreams were older than I was.
The morning Cal left to go back on tour, he gave me a key to his studio and told me I was welcome to hang out and play the guitars whenever I wanted. In the days following his departure, I spent virtually all my free time doing just that.
The guitars saved me. Being around October all day was tougher than I thought it was going to be. I felt like I’d spent my life perfecting the art of pretending—pretending to care, pretending not to care, pretending I didn’t feel things, pretending I did—but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to pretend I didn’t want to be with that woman.
I had a little over a week to finish the birdcage, and that kept me busy in my corner of the studio without having to interact with October too much. Plus, Rae was around a lot then. She usually worked out of the house, doing whatever it was she did—taking care of October’s personal business and eating trail mix—but following Cal’s departure, Rae seemed to find myriad reasons to stop by the studio throughout the day. I figured she was there to make sure I was keeping my distance, and I was.
In the meantime, October had begun working on the series of vintage ship paintings that had been lying dormant against the wall since my first day on the job. The series was part of a nautical-themed exhibit she would be debuting at a Thomas Frasier popup gallery in Chicago the following summer. When she wasn’t working on selfies and Ribble scribbles, she focused on those.
But sharing the space with her was hard. Sometimes I would glance up and watch her from across the room, the way she puckered her lips and shifted them to the side when she stepped back to survey a canvas; the way she tilted her head, squinted and bit at her left thumbnail when she was focusing on the details of a piece; the way she had to lift her head up to see when her hair fell across her eye.
She was extra quiet that week. Kept to herself and seemed pretty down. And the minute she left at the end of the day, I felt lonely. If it hadn’t been for Cal’s guitars, I’m not sure what I would have done.
Actually, I do know.
I would have left.
And in hindsight, maybe running off sooner rather than later would have made it easier for all of us. Maybe if I’d left that week, I wouldn’t have ended up working as a guitar instructor in a sleepy mountain town in northwestern Montana, living in Sid’s guest cabin without Wi-Fi, wishing I’d done everything differently.
In any case, I can’t say that playing Cal’s guitars made my loneliness go away. But I could make those guitars feel what I was feeling, and that made me less lonely. I could transfer my longing to whatever instrument was in my hands, and I could turn it into beautiful sounds. It didn’t heal me, but it comforted me, and I needed comfort more than I needed anything. Each guitar was a companion, a friend with whom I could commiserate. I wasn’t alone when I was with those guitars.
There was one instrument I got particularly attached to. Like the mythical Micawber, it was also a Telecaster, but this one was a 1961 Sunburst. In 1961 it was a cheap and unremarkable guitar. Cal bought it in 2014, and by then it was neither of those things. In fact, it had purportedly lived an incredible life as the guitar a couple of Nashville session players had traded around to record with Roy Orbison. Rumor had it that Roy had dubbed the guitar “Sammy” in honor of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. Obviously that name bore a different, but no less powerful, significance to me.
I hold a mystical belief that people leave behind their essence or energy on anything they touch, anything they care for. That’s why vintage guitars are so special. History gives a guitar a character you can feel when you play it. Like a living thing, a guitar has a spirit, and the spirit of the 1961 Fender was deep and kind and, above all, wise. I know it sounds crazy, but this Tele was the wisest guitar I’ve ever played. When I had a question, it had an answer. When I didn’t know what to say, it said it for me. When I wanted to pick up and run, it talked me into staying.
Sammy also had the best neck of any instrument I’d ever held. Before holding that guitar, the best neck I’d ever touched was on a 1952 Les Paul that belonged to Elvis Costello. Right before our senior year, Cal and I had summer jobs at The Sweetwater, a small music venue in Mill Valley where Elvis would occasionally show up to play. We happened to be working one of those nights, and Cal being Cal, he sauntered up to Elvis’s guitar tech and told him I was the best guitar player under thirty in the whole Bay Area. The tech took one look at me and laughed, but he let me tune some of the guitars, including Elvis’s ’61 Tele and his ’63 Jazzmaster. Once I’d sufficiently impressed him, he handed me the Les Paul. It was a hard, feisty guitar. It fought me, taunted me, made me work for the magic. The damn G string wouldn’t stay in tune, so I was on edge the whole time it was in my hands, but on edge in a way that made me feel alive.
When I held Sammy, the neck felt as if it had been broken in by my hands. And I wasn’t alone in my feelings for that guitar. When Cal texted me on Wednesday to see how things were back home, I told him I’d fallen in love with Sammy, and he wrote: “I’ve yet to have someone play that guitar who isn’t in love with it. No kidding. I bought it from my buddy Don, and he still calls me every couple months to ask me how it’s doing.”
The funny thing is the 1961 Tele isn’t even a rare guitar. They’re expensive as hell, but easy to find. Hell, Cal has another one in custom black on his wall. But I played the black one too, and it didn’t deliver like Sammy delivered.
On Thursday night I decided I needed a break from Casa Diez. I went over to Berkeley for the first time since I’d moved back to Mill Valley and met up with one of my old coworkers for a drink—and to get October her mushrooms, which I hadn’t forgotten about.
My buddy, Len—the shroom purveyor, and hands-down the best electrician I’d ever worked with—wanted to hear about my new job. At first I was reticent with my answers, conscious of October’s privacy, and careful not to give too much away. But after a beer and a shot of tequila, I guess I dropped my guard a bit, because when Len pressed me on what October was like, I stumbled over my words, and Len’s face cracked.
“You’re sleeping with her!” he said, loud enough for half the bar to hear.
“What? No.” I tried to sound sincere. “Definitely not.”
“Ah. Then you want to sleep with her?”
I shook my head. My face felt hot. “It’s not like that.”
Part of me wanted to confess to Len, get it off my chest. But the truth of the matter seemed impossible to convey. So I changed the subject to another uncomfortable topic. “Have you heard from Bob lately?”
Len had spent seven years under Bob’s tutelage, and they’d gotten on well.
“Nah,” Len said. “Not since he left. How’s he doing?”
“Dunno.” I shrugged. “I haven’t heard from him either.”
When I got back to my place, there was a Mason jar filled with cookies in front of my door, with a note on it that said:
Homemade Oreos.
(No hydrogenated oil!)
October wasn’t kidding. The cookies looked just like Oreos, only they were twice the size of the store-bought kind. I took them to the kitchen and ate one the same way I used to eat real Oreos when I was a kid—by twisting off the top, eating that first, and then eating the bottom half like an open-faced sandwich. The cookies tasted like real Oreos too, if real Oreos could ever be soft and fresh. I ate a second one and thought about how October told me she baked when she was anxious; I wondered what was on her mind.
After much internal debate, I sent h
er a text that said: Thanks for the cookies. She sent me back a smiley face. I hated when she responded with emojis because I didn’t know how to interpret them. In a moment of weakness, I typed Feel like hanging out? But I knew that was a bad idea and deleted it before I pressed “Send.”
There seemed to be a gaping hole in the night, down which I was in danger of falling. And here’s how absurd I got: I tried to send October a message telepathically. Much like my psychic relationship with Sam, I didn’t necessarily believe October could receive my communiqué, but I felt powerless in life almost all of the time, and attempting extrasensory contact was my way of pretending I was capable of controlling my destiny.
The bottom line was: I wanted to see her. So I closed my eyes and imagined that she was sitting on her couch and that my spirit was beside her, whispering in her ear, telling her that she wanted to see me.
I felt stupid after that. And because I didn’t want to be tempted to communicate with her like a normal person, I left my phone in the kitchen, took off my shoes and socks, and went downstairs to play.
I was in the mood for an acoustic and selected Cal’s Gibson SJ-200E, the guitar he’d used the night we played together at the dinner party. The Gibson had volume knobs and a pickup like an electric, so it was really more like an acoustic on steroids. According to Cal, the knobs and pickup were put there by the original owner, and Cal was told upon purchase that only two people ever did that to their acoustic guitars back when these knobs and pickups would have been installed: John Lennon and Elvis Presley.
“It’s probably a bullshit story,” Cal said, “but I choose to believe one of them owned this guitar.”
My choice was more specific. I chose to believe it had belonged to John Lennon, and I played “Across the Universe” in his honor as my warm-up.
And then something extraordinary happened. I’d barely played the last note of that song when I heard a quiet tap on the door; a second later, October walked in with Diego at her side. She had two beer bottles in her hand and a woolly lavender blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
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