I threw in a weird key change during the bridge, and Cal practically lost his mind over that, spinning around the room like a whirling dervish, snapping his fingers and howling, “That’s it! That’s it!”
We slogged over the song for a while, experimenting and refining it, but eventually I was too bleary-eyed to keep going. Cal asked me to play it once more so he could record it on his phone and work on the lyrics when he got home, and I did. After that he took a shower, and I took a ten-minute nap on the couch.
The woods next to my cabin were alive at night. As we headed out to the truck, I could hear rustling in the bushes, probably a fox or a coyote, or the family of bandit raccoons that ransacked my garbage on a regular basis. A couple of night birds were singing a duet in one of the trees, and the katydids sounded like they were furiously typing on tiny little insect typewriters all around us.
It wasn’t particularly cold out, but it was chilly inside the truck, and we sat in the cab for a couple of minutes while it warmed up. There, Cal told me he was planning on recording a new album in the spring. He asked me if I would play on it.
“At the very least you have to play on the Portuguese song.”
I told him I would, and it became real as soon as I said it. Almost as if agreeing to play on Cal’s record was a premonition or a vision. Not only could I foresee it coming true, I knew for a fact it was going to happen.
A worn-out silence rested between us on the drive to the airport. Downtown Whitefish was dormant at that hour, but the streetlamps were so bright they gave one the impression of being on a soundstage, on the set of a movie that takes place in a small mountain town. Once we headed south on US 93, however, the giant cabochon sky sparkled with constellations all around us.
Cal rolled down his window, and the crisp air blew his hair back. He stuck his head out and marveled at the stars.
“Big sky country living up to its name,” he said.
Glacier Park International is about thirteen miles southeast of Sid’s property, and despite its overreaching tag, it’s a small municipal airport, the kind of place where you can still roll up to the curb, shut off your engine, and wait without being chased away by security.
I parked behind the only other car at the terminal, a dusty Subaru from which an older couple was pulling blue vinyl suitcases out of the hatchback. The woman was in a bathrobe and slippers, and I surmised she wasn’t the one traveling.
I shut off the engine and turned slightly to face Cal, feeling compelled to say things before he left.
“Listen . . .” I began.
But Cal threw up his hands and said, “Oh, no. Don’t get all sentimental on me now, Harp. I’m fucking knackered.”
I must have looked dejected, because Cal scoffed at me, but it wasa good-humored scoff, as if he found me amusing. “What?” he said. “I punched you, you wrote me a dope-as-fuck song. We’re square.”
I laughed unreasonably hard at that, and my stomach hurt from where Cal had landed the second punch. At the same time, I felt an overwhelming, plaintive rush of gratitude toward him, and to the loyalty he had to our friendship, our brotherhood. “Can I at least thank you for coming? Can I acknowledge that I owe you more than I could ever put into words?”
“Fine, fine. Consider it acknowledged.” He leaned on the dashboard, looked sideways at me. “Now tell me you’re going back, and my work here is done.”
I didn’t respond one way or the other, but right then I knew I would go. And Cal knew it too, because he said, “And then what?”
“One day at a time. Let me get there first.”
He accepted my answer with a single nod, and his mouth fell open like he wanted to say one more thing. Then he shut his mouth. Then he almost spoke again. Finally, he spun his whole torso in my direction, leaned in, seemed to drop his voice an octave and said, “Confession: I left something out earlier. When I was telling you about my conversation with October.”
The air coming in through Cal’s open window didn’t feel especially cold, but I began to shiver.
“I wasn’t going to mention it because I have no idea what it means and I don’t want to get your hopes up, but it strikes me as pertinent at this juncture.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Remember when I told you how I asked her if she thought I should forgive you?”
I nodded and tried to swallow, but my mouth felt like it was coated in breadcrumbs.
“Well, after she got all weird and quiet and said she didn’t want to talk about you, I pressed her on it. I said, ‘You mean to tell me you never think about him?’ and I swear over my life, Harp, this is what she said—and I quote: ‘Chris, I think about him every day. For a long time, he was the first thought I had when I woke up and the last one I had before I closed my eyes, and it almost destroyed me. I poured all of that into my work. I processed it and moved on. I don’t need to talk about it.’”
Cal waited for me to react, but I didn’t know how to interpret October’s words any more than he did, and I sat there in something of an emotional coma, watching the lady in the slippers. She was standing on the curb, holding the top of her robe together with one hand, waving to the man dragging the blue suitcases with the other. She kept
