I started shivering, and seconds later I saw goose bumps all over October’s arms.
“I know that in the grand scheme of things, we spent so little time together, this might not mean anything to you anymore, but it means a lot to me. It always has. Even when I didn’t know how to say it. The way you used to look at me. The way you saw me for exactly who I was but never asked me to be anyone else. You believed in me. You changed me. You inspired me. And if I died tomorrow, I’d want you to know that.”
I figured my time was almost up, and I said, “Listen, I can’t not do things anymore. I can’t not try. So I’m going to ask you something I have no right to ask, but when this is all over, when you get home, do you think I could call you? I’m back in Mill Valley for good, and I’d really like to call you. Just to talk. Could we do that? Could we have coffee or go for a hike or something?”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
“How about this,” I suggested. “Blink once for Yes and twice for No. Yes, I can call you; No, you want me to leave you alone.”
She held her eyes open and didn’t flinch. And then the chime went off.
“OK. I get it.” I nodded. “I understand.”
The security guard looked at me from the doorway.
October let go before I did.
She hadn’t blinked.
I went back the next day. Actually, what happened was I couldn’t sleep, and I drove to the museum at 3:00 a.m., this time with a backpack carrying two breakfast sandwiches from an all-night diner on Lombard, a thermos full of coffee, and drawings of the art project I’d been working on for the past month, the one that came to me in a vision after I dropped Cal off at the airport.
My original concept had been a sculptural, working hourglass filled with as much sand as it would take to flow continuously from the top bulb into the bottom until my life was over. I estimated forty years’ worth of material as a safe bet, the thought being that every day I’d literally be able to see my time running out, and that would be a quotidian impetus for me to stop wasting it.
I ran the idea by an architect I used to work with at Harper & Sons, and while he agreed it would be possible to build such an edifice, he concluded that the amount of sand needed, and the structural engineering it would take to hold the weight of that sand, would necessitate a sculpture the size of a small building. But I wanted something I could look at on my wall or, at the very least, in my backyard.
After further consideration, I reimagined the sculpture as a light installation made up of 14,600 tiny lights—the estimated amount of days I had left. The lights would spell the words “The Clock Is Ticking,” and every day one light would go out until all 14,600 lights had gone out and, most likely, so had I. Hopefully with fewer regrets.
I’d consulted my old buddy Len, electrician extraordinaire, on the optimal way to ensure the sculpture would last for forty years, and he suggested I make the tiny lights out of hollow, colored glass, not filament. Sort of like an elaborate Lite-Brite, with a back panel that uses two separate light sources, one active and one as backup. When the active one burns out, the backup will kick in while the other is being replaced, and so on and so forth, enabling continuous illumination for the duration of my life.
For over an hour that morning, Eli and I were the only two people in line, and we passed the time talking about a trip he’d taken to Sweden over the summer. He’d been on assignment in Fulufjället National Park and stopped to see a Norway spruce known as Old Tjikko, a tree that’s allegedly been growing since the Neolithic period.
Eli showed me photos of the tree with the kind of dorky zeal I assume I exhibit when I’m talking about redwoods and guitars.
“This guy was born around the time humans
