The plan as October had explained it was for me to film her as she walked naked through the labyrinth out on Eagle’s Point. She was going to have sharp maces hanging from ropes tied around each of her wrists like macabre, medieval bracelets, dangling and slicing up her legs as she moved.
I hated the idea and tried to talk her out of it. When that didn’t work, I asked her what the motivation was.
“I’m about to hurt someone very badly,” she said. “I want to hurt too.”
We figured we would get one take before someone called the cops to report a naked, bloody woman in the labyrinth, so we needed to plan the shot carefully. I was mapping out the camera’s path when my phone rang.
I pulled it from my pocket and raindrops misted the screen as if from a spray bottle, blurring Cal’s name.
I told October I’d be back and stepped off the trail to take the call.
“Yo,” Cal said.
“Hey.”
He was calling to say he would be landing at Oakland Airport the following morning and wanted to know if I would pick him up and take him to the venue.
“This way we can hang out all day,” he reasoned.
I paused, guarded, unsure of how to respond, and Cal said, “Harp, you still there?” as if maybe the phone had cut out.
I turned around and watched October picking things up in the center of the labyrinth—talismans, rocks, crystals, notes people had left there. She was looking at me, holding up a folded piece of paper, pointing to it, but I was too far away to see what it was.
“Harp?” Cal repeated.
“Sorry, yeah. We’re over at Eagle’s Point. I can barely hear you.”
I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to act normal around Cal, and I knew it was a betrayal on top of an already inexcusable betrayal to agree to spend the day with him, given that I’d been having an affair with his girlfriend for the last month. But here’s the rub: I wanted to spend the day with him. I wanted to pretend, for twenty-four more hours, that he and I were still best friends and brothers. I wanted to see what his life was like on tour. And more than anything, I wanted to watch him perform in front of eighty-five hundred people.
“Text me your flight info,” I said.
Before we hung up, I asked Cal if he expected me to bring October. He sighed and said, “Nah, bro. I need to talk through some stuff before I see her. I need to pick your brain. She’s going to come over later with Rae.”
Earlier that year a strong winter storm had toppled half a dozen redwoods in Muir Woods, and a group of rangers had set up audio recording equipment in and around the park to capture the sounds. Imagine a distinct, cacophonous creaking, like a giant door to the sky with a squeaky hinge, and then a loud, sweeping crash, the final thud actually a symphony of thudding, because a skyscraper tree doesn’t fall in isolation. It catches other branches and trees, often dragging down whatever its weight can raze.
That’s the soundtrack I heard in my head throughout my last day in California. I was a rotten redwood, weak enough for the wind to knock me over. But instead of falling by myself, I was going to take my friends—the ones whose roots were helping to keep me stable—down too.
The night before the show I slept in my apartment. It was the first time I’d stayed there in weeks, but I had an asinine notion that if I didn’t, Cal would be able to smell the bed, his pillow, his girlfriend on me, and I wanted to delay the inevitable for as long as I could.
Before I left that morning, I stopped by the house to see October. I made cappuccinos, and we drank them in heavy silence. I couldn’t look at her, and she wouldn’t stop looking at me. She didn’t think it was a good idea for me to pick up Cal, but I told her it was important to me, and she let it go.
I was rinsing out my mug when she said, “I forgot to show you something yesterday.” She handed me her phone, open to a photo album. “It didn’t seem right to take it from the dirt, but I snapped a few shots.”
The pictures were of the folded piece of paper she’d found in the middle of the labyrinth, the one she’d been pointing out to me. On the front, someone had written: READ THIS. The note inside said: I miss you more than you know, my brother. But every day I feel your energy and hope you feel mine. I love you and do my best to help. One day you’ll find the strength to make right all that you’ve wronged. One day you’ll understand.
“What the fuck,” I mumbled, shaken.
“Maybe it’s a sign.”
Of course it was a sign. But if I’ve learned anything from Sam, it’s that signs are only helpful if you have the guts to follow them.
October tried to put her arms around me, but I stepped away and said, “I have to go.”
As I turned to leave, she said, “Joe, everything’s going to be all right.”
I nodded, but by then I was already starting to doubt it.
I got to the airport absurdly early and had to wait in the cell phone lot for more than thirty minutes before Cal texted to say he was walking off the plane. Much like the day before, the weather was cool, damp, and gray, and as I pulled up to the curb I had to turn on my wipers
