“I know you’re not going to like what I’m about to say,” I mumbled. “But waiting until he gets home also gives you time to change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” October said.

“Yeah, well, it’s possible you might. And in this scenario, no harm, no foul if you do.”

I was too tired to mull it any longer. I stretched out on the couch, pulled October down beside me, and for a while we were lost in our own thoughts. I ran my finger up and down her arm in a figure-eight pattern around the bandage that was still there, and she was quiet, but I could feel her ribcage moving in and out with her breath.

After a few minutes she said, “OK.”

“OK?”

“We can wait until he gets home. But you need to give me your word, Joe. You need to promise me that immediately after the show, we’ll sit him down and tell him. I’m going to trust you on this.”

Like I said, I had absolutely no intention of bailing on her.

I lifted her hand, kissed her palm, and said, “I promise.”

We fell asleep there. And hours later, as daylight was just starting to outline the trees and the sky to the east looked like it had been tie-dyed, a deep tangerine fading to apricot, I awoke in a fog and imagined a scenario in which Cal was in the house, looming over us on the couch. Only, in my imagination he was a giant, as tall as a redwood, his body stretched so that it appeared to narrow as it rose up three hundred feet high.

From above, Cal surveyed us, livid and bereft. And I tried to experience his reaction to finding his girlfriend in my arms, pictured him pulling me to the floor, beating me to a pulp, and telling me what a shit I was.

Then I thought, no. That’s not what he would do at all. And I imagined him glaring at me with pity, laughing. Crazy madman laughter like a mental patient as he knelt down beside October and tapped her on the shoulder until she opened her eyes. Once she did, he leaned in toward her face and said, “Just so you know, Harp doesn’t keep his promises.”

TWENTY.

“Aristotle’s notion of happiness,” Sid said. “Go.”

We were sitting at the little round table in his office, on the second floor of Moses Hall, near the Campanile on the Berkeley campus, a pot of Folgers on a trivet between us, discussing my thesis.

“Well, first of all,” I said, “Aristotle’s notion of happiness isn’t what most people think of when they ponder what it means to be happy. Most people confuse happiness with pleasure, but for Aristotle, happiness was the supreme value and goal of one’s life and couldn’t be divorced from whether or not one had reached his or her full human potential.”

“Meaning?”

“Given those parameters, it’s impossible to assess if one has lived a happy life until one’s life is over.”