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.