After we ate, the waitress offered us another round of Guinness, but Cal shook his head and asked for the check, which he paid right away. When I tried to leave the tip, he said, “Fuck off, you bloody cunt.” This was something we’d heard Noel and Liam say, and it made us laugh every time.
A second later, Cal got October’s attention and went back to talking like himself. “Baby,” he said, “would you be bummed if you had to drive home without us?”
She started fishing through her purse for the car keys and didn’t immediately respond.
Cal looked at me and said, “I was thinking . . .” And before he said it I finished his sentence with: “. . . that we’d hike back.”
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
