asleep.” She bit her lip and chuckled. “To be fair, I was jetlagged. I’d flown in from an exhibit in London that morning. But the worst part of this story is that Bruce actually saw me sleeping, and in between songs he looked down at Chris and said, ‘Am I boring your date?’ to which Chris said, “Sorry, Boss. That appears to be the case.”
“That’s pretty funny,” I said, though the ease with which she spoke to me about Chris made me uncomfortable.
“Mortifying is more like it.” She shook her head as if clearing it of unnecessary debris. “OK. Less talking, more sleeping. Let’s do this.”
I checked the levels on the camera, gave her a thumbs-up, and pushed “Record.”
She slid down into the bed, turned onto her side, and closed her eyes.
Less than a minute later she flipped onto her back, lay there for another few minutes, and sighed. “Remember when I said I could sleep anywhere? That only works if I’m actually tired.”
As a joke I said, “Here, maybe this will help,” and I played “Dancing in the Dark” on my phone. That cracked her up, which, in turn, cracked me up. After that we tried to right ourselves back into work mode, but we couldn’t. October would settle back down, and I would stifle a laugh; then I would settle, and she would laugh. Finally she threw a pillow at me and said, “You’re ruining this selfie!” But she wasn’t mad, she was being playful. And right then I had a sense I was going to remember the night in some meaningful way for a long time.
I handed her back the pillow and she said, “What time is it?”
I looked at the clock above her head—it was one of those big digital ones you’d imagine a fancy advertising agency or the NYSE might’ve had on the wall in the 1980s. I’d found it in a consignment shop in San Anselmo.
“11:09.”
She sat up against the headboard again and said, “Tell me when it’s 11:11 so I can make a wish.”
I waited until it was 11:11 and said, “It’s 11:11.”
She closed her eyes, presumably made a wish, then opened them and looked at me in a way that tugged at my body.
I imagined Cal’s voice in my head: More or less, Harp?
I asked her what she’d wished for and she said, “If I tell you it won’t come true.”
We looked at each other some more.
“Now what?” I said.
“Well, since you derailed the work, it’s your responsibility to come up with something that makes up for it. This night can’t be a total bust.”
More or less, Harp?
I shut off the camera and the lights. The only illumination in the room was the soft glimmer coming from a floor lamp near the front of the studio and the weird red glow of the large digital clock above our heads.
I walked toward the bed, watching October’s face for signs I was making the wrong move. I saw none. I felt daring. And since I didn’t normally do daring things, the rush filled me with an audacity so foreign to my body it was as though I were watching a movie with Joe Harper as the star—only the Joe Harper in the movie was a hero.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, hands shaky, throat dry, wishing I had a shot of tequila. But I met October’s gaze and held it.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said softly.
“I was just thinking about my best friend from high school.”
Her brow furrowed. “A male friend?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I was thinking about some advice he gave me once when I wanted to ask out a girl but was being shy and stupid.”
“What was his advice?”
“He always told me to go for it.”
“Sounds like good advice to me.”
She stopped blinking, her gaze still locked on mine, little pilot lights burning in her redwood-colored eyes. She lifted my hand, pressed the tips of her fingers against mine and her palm into my palm, trying to figure out what I was feeling. And I tried to send her a message, tried to tell her through my skin what I couldn’t say with words.
I’m pretty sure she heard me loud and clear, because a moment later she dropped my hand and took off the hospital gown. It tied in the back, but she didn’t bother to untie it. She just lifted the whole thing over her head and tossed it onto the floor.
“Your turn,” she said.
I took off