He walked me to the couch and I sat down, dizzy and nauseous.
“Fuck,” I said again, coughing.
“I mean it. I don’t know what came over me.” He rubbed his knuckles, shook out his hand. “I’ve never punched anyone before. It hurts.”
Blood dripped down my face, and I wiped it off with the bottom of my T-shirt. It was warm and sticky. “I’ve never been punched before. That hurts too.”
Cal walked to my kitchen, wrapped a bunch of ice in a dishtowel, and handed it to me. He told me to press it to my cheek and I did. The right side of my face throbbed, and I felt like I was going to throw up.
Cal sat in the armchair diagonal from me, glowering in my direction with his head tilted back and to the side, arms crossed over his chest like a hip-hop star in repose.
I was still struggling to get a full breath, and the pain in my face made my eyes water. Blood continued to drip down my throat, and it tasted like I was sucking on a guitar string. I leaned my head against the couch to stop the room from spinning, and when I sat back up, Cal’s beady eyes were trained hard on me.
We looked at each other for a long time without saying anything.
The right side of my face was burning cold, and I took the ice away. I fingered my nose and Cal said, “Is it broken?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Your eye is pretty swollen. Gonna have a nice shiner there.”
My cheek started to ache again, and I put the ice back.
Cal was sitting on the edge of the chair now, legs spread, left elbow on left knee, chin in his palm. It could have been an album cover: Callahan Goes Country.
“That first punch was for fucking my girlfriend,” he said. “The second one was for generally being the biggest pussy I’ve ever met.”
I couldn’t argue with him on either count, and I didn’t.
I moved my jaw back and forth and heard more Tic-Tac noises.
“You have nothing to say to that?” Cal asked abrasively.
I sighed. “How did you find me?”
He threw his head back and laughed with disdain. “Seriously? Why are you such an asshat? Have you ever heard of the internet? Anyone can find anyone. We both know you’re here.” My face must have betrayed something when he said we, because he rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, Harp. October knows where you are. People on Yelp have reviewed your guitar lessons. It’s not rocket science.”
Part of me wished Cal would hit me again, knock me unconscious.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said. “Did you expect her to come knocking on your door? You’re the last person she wants to see. And she’s the last person you deserve.”
Again, I couldn’t argue with him.
“Cal, why are you here?”
He stood up and strode around the room like he was looking for something. His eyes paused on the corner where I kept my Martin, and the old Silvertone I’d recently acquired from a pawnshop in Columbia Falls. It came in a case that was also an amp, and Cal looked at it mawkishly, probably because he’d had an almost identical one when we were kids.
“Got anything stronger than water in this place?”
I nodded toward the kitchen. “Cabinet to the left of the sink.”
Cal walked into the kitchen, grabbed the tequila from the shelf, opened a few more cabinets, and came back with the bottle and two mugs that said “Cowgirl Coffee” on them. He poured generous shots.
I took the ice away from my face again, pulled two cubes from the dishtowel, and dropped them into my drink.
“Why am I here?” Cal repeated. “I was asking myself that same question on the cab ride over from the airport.” He downed his drink in one swallow and made a face. Paper-belly, I thought, and my heart ached.
I downed my drink too, and it was soothing at first, but once it settled into my gut, I swore it magnified the pain in my face.
As Cal refilled our mugs, declarations of contrition spun around my head, but I thought it best to let Cal do the talking. He was squinting up at the ceiling light, and I wondered if he noticed it was the same fake-bronze, flush-mounted fixture I’d had in my room as a kid, a frosted semicircle with a little knob in the center that looked like a nipple. Cal and I used to call it the boob light.
“I’m here because I’m a fucking sap, that’s why.” He stared down into his drink, ran his thumb around the rim of the mug, and I could tell by the way he was stretching his mouth from side to side that he was getting emotional. “I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “And I want you to think about this. Even during all those years that we’d lost touch, whenever I imagined myself old and gray, retired to some big old house, maybe over on Muir Beach or up in Bolinas, I always imagined you there, the two of us still playing the Tam High setlist, still talking about, I don’t know, guitars and girls, I guess.” He chuckled a little. “And that time I beat the crap out of you in Montana.”
I chuckled too, but tears filled my eyes.
“You’re my family, you fuckhead. Literally the only family member I have. And what you did—” He shook his head. “I confided in you. I trusted you. And the whole time you were—” He stopped, covered his mouth with his palm, rubbed his chin. “I shouldn’t have found out like that.” He met my eyes fiercely, and I stayed with him. “You should have told me, Harp. At the very least, you should have fucking told me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I set my mug on the table without finishing my drink. “I also know the word ‘sorry’ is meaningless. It doesn’t sum
