What makes up Cal’s mind isn’t the fact that quitting now would earn him an ineradicable reputation as a pussy and a tourist, or at least not primarily. What does it is the effortless rhythms of the talk snapping back and forth across the table. Cal has been missing the company of men he’s known a long time. His four best buddies were among the reasons he left Chicago; the depth and detail with which they knew him had come to feel unsafe, something to be kept at as much distance as possible. By that point he couldn’t be sure what there might be, inside him, that they would spot before he did.
