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.
