Cal sat on the chair near the console and I sat on the couch across from him. He was eager to relay the story of how he’d come to acquire this instrument. “There’s a shop I go to on Broome Street in SoHo. They’ve got all these old, incredible guitars. I mean the place is a gold mine. One day about two years ago, I walk in, and that’s the first thing I see. No kidding, I literally begin to shake and sweat at the sight of it. My buddy who owns the place, he hands it to me, and for a while I don’t even play it, I just hold it like you just did, wondering who else had touched it and how it had ended up in my arms. I could tell it had been around the block, you know? I mean look at it. It has a history. A life. A soul. Finally, I plug it in and, well, you’ll see. I dabble in guitar. I’m not a player like you. But when I play Micawber it’s like I’m a fucking prodigy.”

I still couldn’t believe I was holding it. “How much did this cost?”

He chuckled. “Well, that was the thing. I asked my buddy the price as I’m cradling it in my arms, and after he told me I remember thinking, This fucking thing costs more than my mom made in a decade, and I decide right then on principle that I can’t buy it. I just wanted to hold it a little while longer.” Cal leaned in, animated. “October walks in a minute later. She’d been in a clothing store across the street, and she comes over and puts her arm on my back for a while—you know, does her thing—and she says, ‘Wow. I guess you have to buy that guitar.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘I can feel how much it means to you.’ She asked me what was so special about it, and you know what I told her? I swear to God, Harp, I told her it reminded me of you.”

I looked down and focused on the neck of the guitar, trying to keep his words from getting too far down inside me. This is one of my biggest character flaws. I often feel things much deeper than I let on.

“You know what?” Cal said. “October asked me that day, as she and I were leaving the store, why I didn’t look you up. She said I talked about you so much I should just find you and reach out, but I never did. I don’t know why. You’d stopped returning my calls so long ago, I guess I didn’t think you wanted to be found. But she ended up bringing us back together anyhow. Crazy, huh?”

I couldn’t even begin to chronicle the absurdity.

Cal nudged me to play the guitar. He was insistent, like the moment was getting too heavy and we needed to shake it off with some sound.