It was difficult to stop drinking Cal’s good whiskey and sober up for the drive home. He had no reason to stop, though, and drank into the evening. He seemed to enjoy The Sopranos, chuckling from time to time.
But then, around eight, he capped the whiskey and stood, frowning severely.
“You should go,” he said.
I hustled, jamming my laptop into its case and grabbing my coat. He wouldn’t look at me, though that was no different than usual.
“Are you good to drive?” he asked belatedly.
“Definitely. I had my last drink four episodes ago.”
“Are you sure? I could get you a taxi, call a hotel.” His voice barely betrayed the amount of alcohol I had watched him consume over the last few hours.
A taxi, a hotel ... passing out on his couch was not an option, apparently. Maybe he turned into a wolf at night.
I grinned on my way to the door and he caught me grinning.
“What?” he said.
For someone who barely looked my way, he missed very little.
I answered without hesitation, my expression somber. “I was thinking about how obvious it is that you’re a werewolf.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Is it really that obvious?”
“Blatant, I’m afraid. And yes, I’m sure. No worries.”
“Pull over if you get tired.”
That was easily the most thoughtful thing he had said to me to date and I took a half-second to appreciate it before opening the door. “I will. Feel free to use that HBO account any time, by the way. My password should stay in there.”
I headed out quickly, before things could go south.
I decided I had made the right choice in returning to Red Feather, even though I had been afraid. Anyone in his right mind would have warned me against it, but I didn’t care.
Besides, I could always claim that I had gone back for The New Yorker, for the job, the opportunity. But that wouldn’t make it true. I had gone back for him and it had paid off. We had finally established a twisted sort of association—not quite a friendship, but more than an acquaintance—and I didn’t care that the breakthrough had involved him shoving me into a wall. I really didn’t care.
Tuesday was almost intolerable. I posted a new stream schedule on my social media (extended hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, bonus streams on the weekends) and then I streamed from eight in the morning until six in the evening. It was a grueling marathon. My butt went numb, even in my DXRacer gaming chair, and that’s saying something. I cycled through four games. I was peevish and exhausted by six.
I wondered, more than once, if Cal was watching. He had a right to, in a sense. I was watching his life, looking into his background.
On Wednesday, I made sure to show up at his house after his morning run.
I must have nailed the timing. When I let myself in, he was standing in the kitchen, watching the coffee pot expectantly. His hair was wet, loose. He wore black on black, again, like he lived in a state of mourning.
He didn’t even look my way. The author in his natural habitat. I kept my eyes down and headed to the couch. My lips twitched; I rubbed at them, as if that could satisfy the laughter tickling my throat. Helplessly, I was imagining the scene as something off Animal Planet: Tribal music in the background, Cal staring at the coffee pot, me creeping into the house, some British dude narrating. The journalist keeps his head lowered in a display of submission. The author will only acknowledge the lesser male if—
“What is it now?” he said.
I jumped. “Morning.”
“What’s so funny?”
I thought briefly about trying to articulate the image and then lifted my hands in surrender. “Please, don’t make me explain this one.”
With a dramatic sching, he unsheathed a vegetable knife from the holder. “Don’t make me use this.” His expression was so stoic that it took me a moment to process the joke. Then I laughed irrepressibly, partly at him, partly at my own thoughts, and mostly out of relief. He was in a decent mood.
“Okay, uh, when I came in here just now, I ...” I laughed again, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Cal, these things are funnier in my head.”
“No, they are definitely funnier when you try to explain them.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Okay, in my head, it was like, a nature program. You know, with the jazzy jungle music in the background and some guy narrating?”
He gave me a long, dry stare. “Go on.”
“Cause you were just chilling over there and I was all”—I gestured vaguely, my face warming—“trying to keep a low profile, skulking in.”
He poured himself a cup of coffee and moved to the deck door. I thought he might go out to smoke and leave me alone in my weirdness, but he spoke up after a beat. “If we were both predators, I would have taken you out a long time ago.”
“Exactly.” I grinned. He got it.
“Maybe I wouldn’t even have to,” he continued thoughtfully. “You’d be that lion that just takes himself out. Runs off a cliff by accident.” He was alluding, I assumed, to my fall on his walkway. I shook with laughter.
“Low blow, dude.”
“How is your cut, by the way?”
“To be honest, it wasn’t looking so hot for a while, but—”
He appeared suddenly, striding around the couch. “You said it was fine on Monday. Just a scratch.”
“Well, I didn’t want to worry you, and now it—”
“Do not lie to me,” he snapped. “Let me see it.”
I had a regular bandage over the wound that day and the gash was finally healing. The pink, inflamed skin around it had returned to a normal tone and the crusting and oozing had cleared. Cal loomed like he was about to rip off the bandage himself, though, so I peeled it down gently.
He had never, of his own volition, stood so close to me. He seized my jaw and tilted my face to get a better look. I held perfectly still, my eyes round. It wasn’t like the shove—this gesture came from a place of concern—but it still startled me.
He glared at the wound while I thanked my stars that I hadn’t lied and that it was, in fact, better. At last, he made a quiet, dismissive sound and released me.
“Don’t lie to me again,” he said.
Then he left, storming out to the deck, while I wondered if I had ruined his mood.
I hadn’t, it seemed. He returned from smoking and began talking at me and pacing around the kitchen. “I got out these albums for you. They’re family photos and things. Come look at them.”
I brought my laptop to the kitchen table, where he had piled four large photo albums. “Oh, wow.” This was about as surprising as the face-grab. Given our first two meetings, I had thought I would need to pry every piece of information out of his mouth. “This is great.” I opened the first album.
“Everything is labeled. It’s mostly my parents, my sister and I, some cousins and aunts and uncles. Grandparents, too. The grandparents have all passed away.”
He lectured me on his upbringing in Massachusetts, which he claimed had been happy and ordinary, and his family’s history. His grandparents, staunch evangelical Christians, had left England and New Zealand as missionaries to Brazil. They had planted churches and raised their families there, and one of his uncles still continued the work.
“He runs a large Bible conference every year. It’s in the jungle, the interior. One phone booth, no Internet. Thousands of people go to hear the speakers. It’s amazing.”
“You’ve been?” I typed frantically, taking notes as fast as I could.
“Oh, yes. Several times. The messages are in Portuguese, but I understand enough to get by. What I really love is the place. The heat, the rain, the trees. There are wild macaws, coral snakes, monkeys. It’s like something out of a movie.”
“You like ... nature,” I observed carefully. “Remote areas.”
He stopped pacing and glowered at me. “Please, rise above the Caleb Bright is a Salinger-esque recluse thing.”
I laughed. “I wasn’t going to go there, don’t worry.”
“Good. I’m not a writer anymore. I’m not publishing. I’m just a man with a house in the mountains, like anyone else living out here. The reclusive writer thing is played out and it’s silly.” He resumed pacing, describing how his parents had moved to America, his birthplace and his sister’s, his father’s work (surgery) and his mother’s (homemaking). It was all almost uncomfortably traditional. They had been a churchgoing family for generations and still were. Even the surly man before me, who smoked and drank and occasionally swore, apparently went to church each Sunday.
That, I had to see.
His parents lived in Cambridge and Martha’s Vineyard. His sister was married and had two small boys. She visited him often and he saw his parents each summer. “My family is everything to me,” he said. “My family and my faith.” I didn’t doubt him, though the lines sounded curiously rehearsed.
Growing up, he had attended and eventually volunteered at a Christian camp in Pennsylvania. He had excelled in school—no surprise there—and attended Harvard.
My eyes glazed over a little as I listened. I was picturing it: The clean living, the privilege, the charitable work, and summers at the beach.
“I was a lifeguard for a while,” he said, “at the camp and a pool near home.”
“Of course you were.” The words slipped out from my interior monologue. He halted again and frowned at me.
“What do you mean, of course I was?”
I had meant, in my private thoughts, that he struck me as the type of guy who was never not fit. He had probably started working out in high school and continued to this very day. His teeth were electrically white and surgically straight. He cut an imposing figure. He spoke a second language. He had an Ivy League education under his belt and the luxury of doing nothing with it, just having it there, an expensive accessory.
He was everything my girlfriend wanted me to be and then some. The real deal. The actual dream. I cleared my throat and gazed at one of the albums. The glossy stills of his family and friends confirmed everything he had said.
“I forget,” I mumbled lamely.
“Tell me.”
“Could I not?” I flipped a page. His sister had his tall, willowy figure, glossy black hair, and attractive face. She could have been a model. I turned the page again so as not to be caught staring at his sister in a bathing suit.
“Please,” he said more gently. “I won’t get upset. I’m curious.”
“Ah, the lifeguarding just”—I pretended to be typing notes into my Word document (I typed: wkw 3jkh3bkb rjthle)—“seems, I mean I can imagine ...”
I glanced at him. One of his dark eyebrows was arched in almost comical anticipation of my next words. He was a good listener, I realized at once—a disconcertingly good listener. In fact, I couldn’t bring to mind a single other person who stopped and stared at me the way he did when he asked me questions.
“Go on,” he said.
“It’s just that I can picture you lifeguarding, causing women everywhere to pretend to drown.” I laughed.
“Ah.” He nodded. He did not find that funny. His eyes narrowed. “At any rate, you look at those. I’ll make some kind of lunch.”