seem like a hard nut to crack to me. On the contrary, she seemed split wide open.
“Between you and me,” Cal went on, “Rae called me yesterday and told me she was worried about October. She was the one who suggested I come back. I canceled a bunch of radio promos to get home for a few days, which did not make my label happy. I expected October would be glad to see me, glad I’d made the effort, but when I walked in this morning she seemed more spooked than excited.”
Fucking Rae, I thought. What a yeah-saying, feet-shuffling, raisin-and-almond-eating buttinsky she was.
“Did she say anything else?” I asked nervously. “Rae, I mean.”
Cal shook his head. “October gets like this when she’s overworked. Super-introverted. Doesn’t like to be around people. But I’m usually an exception to that.”
“She has been working like crazy the last couple of weeks.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” he said.
Cal and I went to a local brewpub for burgers and beers. At first we were seated near the window, but Mill Valley is a small town. Cal kept getting tapped on the shoulder by people who knew him and wanted to say hi or knew who he was and wanted to meet him. Especially women. He still clearly commanded—and enjoyed—the attention of women.
I found it amusing and fascinating that so many people recognized my old friend. Of course I was aware of how successful he had become, theoretically anyway, but I’d never considered how that success might play itself out in his daily life. I’d never even imagined Cal in Mill Valley as an adult. I’d always imagined him wandering the streets of New York, cool, carefree, and invulnerable, a force field around him like a rock star superhero.
It was touching for me to see how well he handled the attention. Despite all he’d accomplished, he was the same person I’d known in high school—funny, talkative, focused, and flirty. Success hadn’t seemed to change him in any overt way. If anything, it had loosened him up a bit. He finished his first beer before I finished mine and asked for another round before we ordered our food. The teenage Cal would have stopped at one and lectured me about discipline. The adult Cal was a lot more relaxed.
After a pushy man with a sweater tied around his neck came over and insisted Cal take a photo with his son, Cal chatted up the hostess, who agreed to move us to a reserved table in the back of the restaurant where Cal could sit facing away from the room; we weren’t bothered again.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re really famous.”
He ignored the remark. Then our food came and we both ate like we hadn’t eaten in a week. Minutes passed, and there was quiet between us for the first time all day. But it wasn’t quiet in my head. I was thinking about all the things I had imagined I would say to Cal if I ever saw him again. This was something I’d imagined a thousand times in a thousand different ways. Now here he was, sitting across from me. I had to start somewhere.
“Fuck, Cal. I’m sorry.”
He looked up, burger in hand, mouth full. “Harp, no. It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” I was on beer number three and stirred by liquid courage. “Just hear me out, OK?”
He wiped his hands on his napkin and gave me his full attention.
“Here’s what I want to say. You did it. You did everything you said you were going to do and more. Seriously. Everything. I’m proud of you. And I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry for dropping out of your life. I’m sorry for not being there for you. I’m sorry for so many things.”
He drained his beer and peered at me through a wispy chunk of hair that had fallen across his eye. But he didn’t shake me off or contradict anything I said. He just listened.
“This is hard,” I admitted. A lot of emotions were hitting me at once. I thought of all the years of Cal’s life that I’d missed. I thought of Terry dying, and I thought about the night I’d spent with October. Sitting there with Cal, realizing what I’d done, I swore to myself that nothing else would happen between October and me. I didn’t care what kind of free-love shit they had going on or how I felt about her, I could see right away that he loved her, and I wasn’t going to get