My anxiety morphed into alarm. “You spoke to her about me?”
“I’m going to be straight with you. She wasn’t too thrilled about that. As soon as I mentioned you, she clammed up and stared at her crème brûlée. So, I said, ‘You don’t think I should forgive him?’ and she said, ‘Chris, I know how much he means to you, and I think you should do whatever feels right. I just don’t want to talk about him.’”
Cal’s words sunk into my chest like a pickax. “She hates me. Why wouldn’t she? I hate me too.” I picked up my mug and tossed back what was left of the tequila while Cal watched. Just as he was about to speak, I put my hand up and said, “Don’t bother telling me how much I deserve her hate; I know.”
Cal shook his head. “Don’t underestimate her. October’s above hate. She feels things hard and then channels those feelings into her fucking art. Even after you left, when I hated you, you know what she told me? She told me the most important thing to do when your heart’s been broken is to keep it open.” Cal rolled his eyes. “‘Nurture the tenderness, Chris. Hold on to the love. Turn it into something beautiful.’ Those were her exact words. And when I asked her why she wasn’t furious with you, she said, ‘I understand Joe too well to be angry with him. I’m just sad.’”
That crushed me. I’d take anger over sadness any day. Moreover, it’s always been hard for me to accept the idea that someone could love me. But for someone to understand me and still love me? Well, that took a level of character and compassion I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Cal was still shaking his head. “No, she didn’t hate you, Harp. She was just super fucking bummed. You broke her heart. And you left her without an assistant.”
I rubbed my eyes again. The pain was deeper and duller now. “How is she? Honestly. Is she happy?”
“I think so. She’s mad excited about this MoMA thing.”
Against my better judgment, I said, “Is she seeing anybody?”
Cal shrugged. “Some twenty-four-year-old muralist from L.A. He wears ironic sweaters and makes craft beer in his spare time. It’s nothing. Casual summer fling was the phrase she used.”
He nodded toward the guitars in the corner, and in what I took to be a deliberate, subject-changing non sequitur, he said, “Remember that time we had the concert in Old Mill Park? Charged a buck for admission and played Who songs until the cops shut us down. And you smashed my Silvertone at the end of the show.”
I chuckled. “I was very in the moment that day. Didn’t think that move through.”
“Stalled the electric side of the band for a bit, as I recall.” Cal snapped his finger. “But Bob came through for us that time! He got us a new one, remember?”
“Wrong.” I shook my head. “You told him the guitar had been stolen.”
Cal laughed hard at the memory. “Right! Someone broke into his car at the dock, and I lied and told him the guitar had been in the back seat.”
“He didn’t get us a new one. His insurance did.”
We both laughed, but then Cal stopped, remembered. “Shit, Harp. I’m sorry about Bob. I thought about calling you after I got your text. I wanted to. I wasn’t ready.”
“I hadn’t spoken to him in years. Missed his service too. You think I’m a bad friend? I’m an even worse son.”
Cal shook his head. “Part of that onus was on him.” He exhaled wistfully. “Weird to think we’ll never see that fucker again, huh?”
He looked up and stared at the ceiling for a while, the way he does when he’s contemplating. Then he said, “Tell me something: If you’d known Bob was going to die, would you have reached out to him?”
I’d considered that question more than once since Bob’s death. “Yeah,” I said sadly. “I can’t tell you how many letters I wrote to him over the years. I just never sent any of them.”
“What if it was me?” Cal asked.
I rolled my eyes.
“I mean it. What if you’d found out yesterday that I had a month to live, what would you have done?”
“I assure you I would have called. I would have come to see you. Begged for your forgiveness. Sat with you while you took your dying breath. I don’t know. Something.”
Cal dipped his chin down, and it made the corners of his eyes look sharp and pointy, like little arrows going in opposite directions. “What if I said I came here today to tell you October was dying?” He must have seen the alarm on my face, because he put his hands up and said, “Calm down. She’s fine. But what if she wasn’t? What if you found out she only had a month to live? What would you do?”
The question stifled me. “I don’t know.”
There was a hard edge to Cal’s voice when he said, “You don’t know?”
I huffed. “I would obviously want to see her. I would want to talk to her. And yes, I would be drowning in regrets. That’s what you’re getting at, right? That’s what you want me to say? It’s not that simple.”
“But it really fucking is,” he said, all riled up. “You make it complicated. You’ve always made everything more complicated than it actually is. Let me spell this out for you: She is dying. I’m dying. You’re dying. We’re all dying. Every single day, each one of us is one step closer to no longer existing. Think about that. Think about how you really want to be spending your days. And with whom.”
I thought of Santiago and the note he’d written at the end of my assignment. Go back, you spineless motherfucker. The clock is ticking.
“There are no more chances once someone’s gone,” Cal said.
