“Duly noted.”
She put the chicken, potatoes, and salad in individual glass containers; stacked them in a picnic basket with plates, cloth napkins, and cutlery; and asked me to take it all outside and set it up while she got dressed. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I didn’t know why she had to change, but she said, “This is not proper picnic attire.”
I took the basket to the small patch of lawn in the yard. Then I went and got the camping blanket from my bed and spread it out. I also brought an extra blanket, a pillow, a couple books, and my guitar.
October came out in a floral-patterned sundress, the flowers on it reminding me of the starry mariposa lilies that Bob, Sam, and I used to go looking for on Ring Mountain in Tiburon, the only place in the world where they grow.
She walked over, surveyed my setup, and said, “Nicely done, sir.” Diego came loping out, and she made him lie down on the side of the blanket opposite the food.
We spent the rest of the day there, not doing much of anything. October read to me from Patti Smith’s Just Kids while I lay on my back, petted the dog, and watched clouds rolling by. We talked about our plans for the holidays. I told October I normally spent Christmas in Dallas with Ingrid and her husband, Jim. October said she would be spending Thanksgiving in Rochester with her parents and asked if I would consider coming along. When it started to get dark, she wrapped herself in the extra blanket, and I played Dylan songs until my fingers got too cold to move.
Back inside, we sipped tequila and ate strawberries while October meticulously, flawlessly painted tiny animals on my four biggest toes: a blue bird, a pink rabbit, a black spider, and a red ladybug.
Being the recipient of October’s unremitting focus, and the sensation of the paintbrush on my toes, did indeed turn me on. “So, this is how you seduce men?” I said. “You paint their toenails?”
“Yep,” she laughed. “Works every time.”
Once her work was complete, she moved the paint and brushes aside, rose up onto her knees, gently splayed my legs apart, and kissed me with her eyes open. “Whatever you do,” she whispered, “don’t move your feet until the paint dries.”
She unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them to my calves, making sure to roll them up at the hems so they were out of harm’s way of my toes. Then she went down on me, and almost immediately I started laughing. I don’t even know why. I guess, looking back, I was just so happy. I felt like everything in the universe was miraculously in alignment, and the only way I knew how to acknowledge the full epic-ness of that perfection was to laugh.
October laughed too, like she could feel what I was feeling, and the vibrations coming from her throat added another layer of joy to my joy. When I came, it was like an explosion of that joy surged upward from my cock to my heart.
After she finished, she pulled my jeans back up, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “Told you. Works every time.”
Lightly, she touched all four of my painted toes in the order that she’d painted them and, surmising that they were sufficiently dry, sprayed them with a varnish that smelled like the stain I used to apply to exterior wood when I built houses. It ended up keeping the minuscule masterpieces on for so long, I eventually had to go to a nail salon in Whitefish and have them professionally removed because it became too heartbreaking to keep looking at them.
I was buzzed when I got into October’s bed that night, and I tend to think too much when I’m buzzed. The closet door was open, and from where I lay I could see Cal’s clothes hanging on the left side, his jeans color-coordinated from dark to light, his shirts on matching mahogany hangers, and for the first time all day I felt the weight of fear and guilt like bricks on my chest.
October walked into the closet, slipped out of her dress, and got into bed facing me. To avoid thinking of Cal, I told her about the mariposa lilies in Tiburon, how rare and beautiful they are, and how I thought it would be cool to use them in a selfie when they bloomed in the spring.
And in fact, she ended up doing just that. Months after I left California, she went to Tiburon and filmed a selfie in the little field up on Ring Mountain where the lilies grow. In the clip, she’s wrapped in the camping blanket from my bed, holding an empty bottle of tequila in which she’d inserted a mariposa lily.
The clip ends with her setting the bottle in the dirt, dousing it with lighter fluid, then dropping a match and watching the little flower burn.
We’d only been in bed for a minute or so when October said, “Something’s bothering you.”
The day had been golden, and I didn’t want it to end with a conversation about Cal or my shitty self-doubt. I shook my head and said, “It’s nothing.” Then I repeated what she’d said to me earlier: “We’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”
I remember the exact expression on her face then. An openness so wide and filled with so much faith, it seemed more like blinding recklessness.
The woman believed too much in me.
She believed too much in everything.
TWENTY-ONE.
It rained the day before Cal’s show at the Greek Theater. I remember because October and I were out on the Coastal Trail at Lands End, a park set along the craggy coastline in San Francisco with stunning postcard views of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Golden Gate Bridge to the east.
We were location scouting for a selfie we intended to shoot the following
