Into the Woods

5 Reset

5

RESET

Teddy

I didn’t see Gretchen again until after dinner the next day. She hadn’t been in the dining hall for dinner, which was unusual. But then, it was Saturday. Jack had driven to the nearest town for “an injection of life,” which was amusing because he was always talking about how he hated noise and needed silence to write. Maiv hadn’t been at dinner, either, so probably she and Gretchen were off doing something. The two of them seemed to have really hit it off.

I was sitting on my porch enjoying an after-dinner drink when I heard them. You couldn’t not hear them—they were laughing maniacally as they approached in a paddleboat.

“Land ho!” Gretchen called as they aimed for the dock. I wasn’t sure what their problem was, as there were two of them, so the boat wasn’t unbalanced, as it had been last time Gretchen had returned home via nautical means. But they were coming in at a bad angle all the same.

I got up and jogged out to meet them. “Slow down,” I called, which only sent them into further fits of laughter. Eventually I got them to throw me the rope, and I tied up the boat and helped them disembark. I headed back to my porch but kept an eye on them as they lingered on the dock. I wanted to make sure they didn’t fall in the water, as I suspected they’d had quite a bit of fun this evening. They were talking about Little Women . It sounded like Gretchen had gotten Maiv to agree to help with the sets. Damn. The counselors were in charge of the end-of-camp performances, so I hadn’t concerned myself with what the music kids were doing. What could they really do besides play some music, recital style? But it was sounding like we might all be shown up by Little Women , but with dancing.

Not that I cared.

I cared about writing my songs.

Which did not explain why I hadn’t even bothered to bring my guitar out here with me this evening.

Eventually the women hugged and parted ways. Gretchen approached—she had to pass my cabin in order to get to hers. She tripped as she stepped from the sand of the beach to the dirt of the path, and I instinctively stood and moved toward her.

“I’m OK!” she shouted. “I’m OK! I’m OK!”

“Say it like you mean it,” I said.

“Sorry.” She winced. “I’m having some trouble with volume control.” She stage-whispered, “I am a little bit drunk.”

“So I gathered.”

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to my glass.

“Bourbon.”

“Can I have some?”

“Is that a good idea?”

“Meaning what? It’s not seemly for a woman to drink too much? Bourbon’s not a girly drink? It’s acceptable for you to drink but not me? It’s—”

“OK, OK.” I was already on my feet. “Sit. I’ll be right back.”

I came back with her drink and a bag of almonds I’d gotten from the camp store. “You want something to eat?”

“Oh, yes. I surely do.” She took a sip of her drink and promptly started coughing. I refrained from saying anything as I sat. I only had the glider, so I was stuck sitting next to her. She’d sat on her towel, but she didn’t have it wrapped around her, so my denim-clad thigh was an inch from her naked one. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her thigh; you could see the outlines of the muscles beneath the skin.

She blew out a long, theatrical breath, interrupting my thigh-gazing. “What a week. I’m exhausted.”

I could see why. I was tired, and from what I could tell, in addition to her discipline being inherently more physically demanding than mine, Gretchen had spent the week running around being an unpaid camp counselor. I would say she was putting the rest of us to shame, but since I had none, it didn’t bother me.

She did look tired, though. Even in the golden-hour light this place was so good at, she had dark circles under her eyes. “Have you been… dancing a lot this week?”

What a stupid question. Of course she’d been dancing a lot. She was a dancer. I’d been thinking back to her intro speech about how she didn’t have an artistic goal for her time here. I’d found it refreshingly honest. Also, I was dying to know what the “personal goals” she’d referenced were. The “reset” she’d said she needed.

“Not really,” she said. “I haven’t been dancing as much as I would in a normal week of teaching at my studio.”

Hell, I was going to just ask her. She might even tell me, if she was a loose-lipped drunk. “Why so tired, then? Those secret personal goals of yours wearing you out?”

She looked at me for a really long time. So long I was sure she wasn’t going to answer. OK, so not a chatty drunk.

“My personal goals are not really the kind that I have to work on. Just… being here… achieves them.”

Well, damn, color me intrigued. The Sourplum Fairy had put a spell on me. But how could I get her to say more without looking like an idiot?

She took another sip, eyeing me over the rim of her glass. “I might as well just tell you.”

Jackpot.

“It’s not like it’s anything shocking. I just have had a really long, really bad run on dating apps. I keep saying I’m quitting them, deleting them from my phone, but then, I don’t know, hope springs eternal, I guess.” She gave a self-deprecating shake of her head. “But I can’t keep getting my heart broken. I… can’t.”

Wow. I was astonished that she’d spoken so openly. I guess that was the booze talking.

I was also annoyed. I was not the president of the Gretchen Miller fan club, but I was irritated by this alleged parade of heartbreakers.

“Anyway, I made some big life changes before I came here.” She was back to her usual assured tone. “On the professional side of things, I’m expanding my business. And on the personal side, I’ve sworn off men. Deleted the apps—for good this time. That’s the being-here bit.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought a dramatic change of scenery might help.”

“Not to mention the patchy cell service.”

“Exactly.” She sighed and slouched against the back of the rocker, which made me realize that normally her posture was ramrod straight. Must be a dancer thing. “Teddy Knight, what is the secret?”

“The secret to what?”

“The secret to love. Mind you, I’m only asking theoretically, since I’m done trying to chase relationships. But I’m curious. You’re in a long-term relationship, aren’t you?”

I was flattered that she knew that, given it must mean she’d googled me. But of course Google had not reported accurately on my relationship status since Karlie had not informed her followers of our breakup. And since I had no followers—I was not on social media—and also was not the kind of person who had a publicist inform People of changes in my relationship status, news hadn’t gotten out. Maybe I should be that kind of person—maybe that would finally get Karlie out of my damn apartment.

“I was in a long-term relationship,” I said in answer to Gretchen’s question, “but we broke up last Christmas.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling her this when basically no one other than the band and my sister knew, except I guess that Gretchen had shown me her heartbreak and I wanted to respond in kind. Not that I was heartbroken. In fact, I’d barely thought about Karlie since the breakup, which was probably telling. It had only been in the week before coming here, as we’d been bickering over the apartment, that she’d been front of mind. I knew the feeling was mutual. We’d had our time, but that time was over.

“I’m sorry. It must be hard keeping a relationship going when you’re on the road so much.”

“Yes and no. We were on-again, off-again for years, and…” I tried to think how to sum up our relationship and its ultimate demise. “Sometimes our interpretations of when we were on and when we were off did not line up.”

She looked shocked.

Shit. I had to say more, because for some damn reason I didn’t want Sourplum thinking poorly of me. I was afraid she was having visions of me living it up with groupies on the road, when really, what I did on the road was do sound check, play shows, eat, sleep, swim laps, watch TV, and noodle around with Scott on song ideas. I mean, yes, back in the days when things were officially “off again,” I’d had some fun, but I had never lived the stereotypical rock-and-roll lifestyle. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that my childhood of chaos and deprivation had turned me into someone who didn’t want to mess with the status quo—at least when that status quo meant paying the bills by making music. Smashing that TV was the most “rock star” thing I’d ever done—which was probably why I could not stop thinking about it.

“A couple years ago, we decided to get serious, and we moved in together,” I said. “Or maybe I should say I decided to get serious. I flew home before the holidays to surprise her, and let’s just say I was the one surprised—unpleasantly so—by what I walked in on.” In my apartment. In my bed. “That’s what I meant about our interpretations of when we were on and when we were off not always lining up. Call me crazy, but I think living with someone makes you in a permanent state of on.”

“Yikes. You must have been devastated.”

“Not really.” I hadn’t been gutted or heartbroken or any of that. My reaction really had been one of unpleasant surprise. I’d been more upset about the fact that I had to, on principle, throw away my nice sheets.

“Maybe you should have had a don’t-ask-don’t-tell agreement for when you were on the road,” Gretchen said.

I thought that was an odd thing to say, but I also thought it was easier to just agree. “Maybe we should have.”

“Did any of the other band members have arrangements like that with their significant others?”

That also seemed like an odd thing to say—an odd question. “Not that I know of,” I said noncommittally. I’d always been vague when questioned about rumors of Scott’s extracurricular activities. But why now? Scott and I were done. And anyway, he and Cinda had been separated for a year now, speaking of being done with Scott.

But I didn’t want to talk about Scott. I wanted to talk about me. Which was weird, but I went with it. “When I walked in on them, I was more relieved than sad. It felt like it had been over for a long time. Like she was already an ex. A distant one I could think back on fondly. Or maybe not fondly, maybe just neutrally, you know?” Huh. I had never really thought of it that way, much less articulated it to anyone.

“Did you love her? Before, I mean?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. “I thought I did. I said I did.” When prompted, I’d said it back. I tried to think if I’d ever said it first. I came up blank. “But if I really had, wouldn’t I be more upset? Honestly, I’m much more worked up over the apartment than I am the breakup.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s still in the apartment. I don’t have a place to live now that the tour’s over. That’s why I’m here.” Well, that was part of it, but really, I was here for the revenge album that I was apparently incapable of writing.

“Why don’t you have a place to live? Were you living with her?”

“No, she was living with me. I mean, we’d lived together for two years—when I wasn’t on tour, anyway—but it was my place to begin with. It’s my name on the lease, and I pay the rent.”

“But she cheated on you!”

“Yeah, I just…”

“She cheated on you six months ago! In your apartment!”

I rolled my eyes at myself. “I know. I know. When we first broke up, I was going to be on the road for months, so I was happy to have her stay for a while. It’s hard to find an apartment in New York, and she has a lot of stuff.” I did hear how that sounded. It was just that Karlie wasn’t going to be able to afford a place that was up to her standards. I didn’t wish her ill, and what use was an empty apartment to me? “Anyway, she was supposed to be out by now, and she’s… not.”

I was coming off as such a doormat. This was not how I wanted Gretchen to see me, though I understood that having a way I did or did not want Gretchen to see me was not a good look. I tried to summarize my last “discussion” with Karlie in a way that would put an end to this topic. “We agreed she’d be out by September,” I said decisively. “So here I am.”

That seemed to satisfy her, at least in the sense that she dropped the subject, but she was staring off into space, and she looked sad.

“A penny for your thoughts,” I said, though I had no idea why. The conversation had come to a close, and she was the one who’d intruded on my solitude to begin with.

“My thoughts are worth way more than a penny,” she said, and based on just her words, you’d have thought she was kidding—it was a jokey thing to say—but she still had that wistful vibe about her, and she was still staring at the darkening sky.

Fuck me if I didn’t respond by reaching into my pocket and pulling out a crumpled ten-dollar bill—I had stopped at the camp store for the bag of almonds Gretchen was eating as we talked, and I still had cash on me. I moved over a bit and set it on the glider between us.

That cracked her melancholy. Her laughter rang out over the lake. “I was thinking about that don’t-ask-don’t-tell thing we talked about earlier. Or on-again, off-again. Maybe that’s actually the way to go. Like, by design. Call it what it is from the outset of a relationship.”

“Nah, I’m just damaged goods. Karlie and I were not a match, not elementally.”

“No, seriously. I’m trying to think how I would react if a Tinder dude outright said he was only interested in getting in my pants.” My eyes zoomed back over to her thigh. Her pantsless thigh. “I’m not sure I’d go for it, but I think I would respect it. I’d certainly respect him more than all the terrible guys I ended up with.”

I cleared my throat. “Aren’t most people on those apps only looking to hook up, though? Isn’t that pretty much the point?” I wasn’t on any apps, but that was the impression I got.

“Maybe for a lot of people, but not for everyone. I have it right in my profile that I’m looking for a long-term relationship.” She glanced sideways at me. “I want love. I know you probably think that’s naive and foolish, but I don’t care.” I tried to object, to tell her I had no opinion on what she did or did not want out of life, but she waved me off and tossed back the rest of her drink. “I should say I did want love. I did have that junk about long-term relationships in my profiles. I’m over it now.” She stood abruptly. “I should go.”

I didn’t want her to leave.

Which was weird as hell, but Drunk Sourplum was pretty good company. “Tell me about these Tinder guys.”

She screwed up her face like what I was asking was the most bizarre thing ever. When I raised my eyebrows, she made a silly face and said, “Well, how much time do you have?” I shrugged. I didn’t have anywhere to be. All I had were some songs that were not going to write themselves and also, apparently, were not going to be written by me.

“OK, but I’m taking this, then.” As she sat back down, she picked up the ten-dollar bill, and I chuckled. But I sobered pretty fucking quickly when she shoved it into her bikini top—like, slid it into her cleavage and then just… out of sight. That was—

Shit. I realized she’d started talking—about the thing I’d told her to talk about—and I’d missed the start.

“… anyway, most of them are your garden-variety bait-and-switch.”

“Meaning?”

“You’d message back and forth a bit and think, We’re on the same page. I mean, they’d read my profile, right?” I wanted to say that maybe they hadn’t read her profile. Maybe they’d seen her pink-and-blond hair and her blue eyes—and her killer thighs if her profile contained any full-body pictures—and swiped without reading a word. But I held my tongue.

“Eventually the messaging is promising enough that you go on a date. Then, I don’t know, either you sleep with them and they ghost you, or you don’t sleep with them and they ghost you. Or God forbid you decide it’s not a match and deign to say so in the politest possible terms, intending to save everyone time, and they send you a tsunami of harassment, usually involving an itemized list of everything that’s wrong with you and/or an essay riddled with grammatical errors about how they didn’t want you anyway.”

“Really? Jesus.”

“Yeah. I think the problem with dating apps is everyone is paralyzed by choice. Like, why settle for me when there are so many other people out there? Or in there.” She leaned over and pointed at my phone, resting on the armrest of the glider on my side. Her breast brushed against my arm, but she didn’t notice.

I thought about the ten-dollar bill.

“It’s been years since I’ve had a real relationship.” She threw a handful of almonds in her mouth, then appeared to have a memory that amused her, because she started laughing—then coughing and spraying out fragments.

I sat up, alarmed—did I remember any of that CPR?—but she waved me off. “I was remembering this one guy. Talon.”

“His name was Talon ?”

“You should talk, Tennyson .”

Yeah, yeah. I rolled my eyes.

“Anyway, Talon was a bank teller, but I only found that out later, because he said he worked ‘in finance.’ Now, I have exactly zero problem dating a bank teller. I do, however, have a problem dating liars. But anyway, when this came out, I somehow talked myself into giving him another chance. So we’re on date number three. And, incidentally, we’re at a sushi restaurant, which I always avoid because I have a shellfish allergy, and even if you don’t order anything with shellfish, I find there’s often cross contamination. Anyway, having had enough bad reactions, I steer clear of the sushi category entirely—alas. He knew all this. But he really wanted to try this new place, and he gave me the puppy-dog eyes, so I agreed. No, actually, I faked enthusiasm.” She did the nose scrunch, but this time it looked like she’d smelled something bad. “I faked enthusiasm over miso soup and seaweed salad, which was all I felt I could safely have. Why did I do that?”

I had no idea. “You don’t seem like the kind of person who fakes anything.”

“Right?” She seemed cheered by my assessment. “I’m not. Or at least I didn’t used to be. Which is exactly why I’m here. Having the reset. Anyway, after dinner Talon ‘invites me back to his place.’” She paused and gave me an exaggerated wink. “Do you know what that means?”

I chuckled. “I know what that means.” Drunk Sourplum was cute.

“Well, for all I know, famous people have a different code.”

“If they do, they haven’t told me about it.”

“I wasn’t really feeling it, but at some point you have to fish or cut bait or you lose them. So we’re at his place, and things got…” She rotated her wrist in a way I took to indicate that things got heated between them. “Do you know what that means?” She rotated again.

“I know what that means.”

“So fine, we’re kissing. But then he starts pushing my head into his lap.”

“Wait. What?”

“Yeah, not that unusual.” She was on a roll with her story now, and I had to make a concerted effort to keep up, to not remain mentally snagged on the idea of a dude named Talon pushing Gretchen’s head into his lap. “And honestly, usually you’re going to get there eventually. Unless you want to give up on the prospect. Which is what I generally told myself, anyway. I’m a pragmatist.”

Well, shit. “That’s just—”

She cut me off. “But this guy.” She snorted. “He said, ‘Polish my talon, babe.’” She burst out laughing. I chuckled along with her, but inside I was unsettled.

“So I had to call it. Couldn’t do it. I got up, wished him well, and left. I could hardly keep a straight face, and that was my mistake. When I got home, I had seventeen text messages telling me I was a frigid bitch, a talentless whore who deserved to be—”

“I get it.” I couldn’t hear any more.

“I wanted to be like, Which is it? Am I frigid or a whore? I think you have to pick a lane there, dude. But you have to give Talon credit for his vocabulary skills. Most of them are…” She trailed off, and she was back to looking at me strangely.

“Most of them are what?” I prompted.

“Most of them are more succinct. They might just call you a bitch, for example, without the adjectives. There’s something about all this Andrew Tate ‘men’s rights’ bullshit that I honestly think is poisoning an entire generation of men. Though to be fair, some of the Andrew Tate crew aren’t throwing the word bitch around necessarily, but they’re looking for a ‘high-value female.’ Apparently that isn’t me. I also had one guy tell me I wasn’t ‘obedient.’”

What. The actual. Fuck. I was dumbfounded.

She was silent a long time, and just as I was coming around to the idea that I had to let the evening wind down, she said, “So then what happened is my best friend fell in love. Like, real, cinematic, happily-ever-after shit.”

“That must be hard for you.”

“Yes and no. I’m over the moon for her. She’s expecting a baby. She’s younger than I am, and I used to give her dating advice. She used to have this crappy boyfriend, before Prince Charming—who’s a retired NHL player, by the way—and I was always on her case about settling and all that. But really, what was I doing but exactly the same thing? It maybe looked different because I was always on to the next guy. So it seemed like I was picky, or had high standards, or whatever. But really, I was making myself small to please men, same as she was. Only I couldn’t even hold on to one for more than a couple weeks at a time, even with all that shrinking.”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” I said softly. But I did admire the fearless way she confronted her perceived shortcomings.

“I’m not, though,” she insisted. “I’m being good to myself. By making myself face the truth. I don’t want half relationships. I don’t want to sleep with people who don’t care about me as a person. I’m tired of twisting myself into something I’m not to please other people—to please men .” Her voice had risen, and she seemed to realize it. “So I’m not going to do that anymore,” she finished quietly. Almost primly. “I know you think that’s dumb, but I don’t care.”

“I don’t think it’s dumb.” I didn’t like the way she kept prefacing what she was saying with declarations about how she knew I was going to think it was dumb, or pathetic, or naive—what did it say about me that those were the vibes I was giving off? Her little speech had been oddly moving, actually. Gretchen and I were different sorts of people, and we’d gotten off on the wrong foot, but authenticity was something I dug. And Sourplum, she was very much herself.

And her thing about coming to the woods for a reset—it was a nice idea. It was basically what I was trying to do, too, though I hadn’t given it a name.

“It sounds like you know literature,” I said, thinking about how she’d known that stupid “Better to have loved…” line came from Tennyson. “You know Thoreau? Walden ?”

“Never read it, but yeah, I’m familiar.”

“‘I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately,’” I quoted.

She pointed at me. “Exactly, Teddy Knight, exactly.”

“You want another drink?”

I was disappointed when she said no. “I’ve already had too much.” She heaved herself to her feet. “You know I only told you all this because I’m drunk, right?”

“Right.”

“Which means you can’t hold it against me tomorrow.”

“I won’t.”

She shook her head and sounded genuinely dismayed when she said, “I can’t believe I told all my pathetic shit to the local rock-and-roll asshole.”

“I promise your pathetic shit is safe with me.” I made an X over my heart.

She looked momentarily confused, then seemed to give up on whatever thought was dogging her, shrugged, and executed one of her signature leaps off the porch.

I was glad the leap was back.

I was jolted awake in the middle of the night by my phone.

It was a FaceTime from my sister, and I fumbled to answer.

“Oh my God, you were asleep ?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, checking the time. Eleven twenty.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Auden said.

“No, no, it’s OK.” Calls from Auden were the one thing in my life that were a constant, and I wanted to talk to her more than I wanted to sleep. I reached for the bedside lamp, and when my fingers found the switch, I was confronted with the sight of myself blinking and befuddled. I’d been having a dream. Something about Scott. We’d been at his parents’ apartment, but as adults, not as teens. We’d been… doing something with a marching band? The more I tried to send my mind back to it, the more the fantastical tendrils loosened their hold on me.

“Look at you! Dead asleep, and it’s barely past midnight!”

My sister and I were night owls. It was normal for one of us to call the other in the wee hours—after my shows, after her late-night bursts of work.

“It’s not even midnight here,” I said. “Minnesota’s on central time.”

The exaggerated funny-shocked face she made turned my yawn-in-progress into a grin. Like me, Auden had “made it.” She’d transcended our tumultuous childhood and made a life for herself. She was an actuary. I sometimes thought she’d chosen that line of work because it was lucrative and stable—the opposite of our scrabbling, chaotic childhoods—but she seemed to really like it. She was a kick-ass musician, but she had also always been freakishly good at math. But even though she’d changed pretty much everything about her circumstances—job, borough, personal style, you name it—that face she was making was the same. It was her all-purpose Teddy face, and I loved it. Depending on the circumstance, it could express shock, outrage, amusement. It was the same one she’d made when Mom had decided to demolish an interior wall once in the middle of the night. But also the one she made when Scott and I first got signed. The key, with this face, was that whatever else it was doing, it was always expressing solidarity. Auden and I, we were siblings, yes, but we were more than that. We were fellow soldiers.

She exaggerated “the face” and said, “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

It was actually a good question, but she was joking, so I answered in kind. “I dunno. I guess the deep dark North Woods has a lulling effect?”

“Or, call me crazy, you’re completely exhausted by the implosion of your career?”

I made my own face at her, deciding to stay on the joking train, but she wasn’t wrong. Concrete Temple had been a touring band. Yes, we’d made records, good ones, but our success and longevity had been largely down to the fact that we’d spent most of the year, every year, on the road. We had a die-hard fan club, and people would come to see us year after year, some of them road-tripping to hit more than one city. It had been awesome, but it had also been exhausting.

It was possible that I was only now realizing how much.

“Well, either way,” Auden said, “I like this for you. Rest. Real rest. Are you writing?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

“How do you do that through a phone screen?” I loved it, though. This was what I meant about Auden. No one else was ever going to get me like she did, because no one else had lived our life. I’d thought Scott got me, because even though he came from a wealthy Upper East Side family, he’d been around since we were teenagers. But I guess that wasn’t long enough. I guess you had to go further back for someone to really get you.

“I wouldn’t beat yourself up about not writing,” Auden said. “Honestly, I don’t think you should rush whatever’s going to come next.”

“I don’t think I asked you,” I said with a wink.

“Since when has that stopped me?”

“That’s true.”

“I just mean that your next album shouldn’t be reflexive, you know? Reactive.”

“Well, I don’t think you have to worry about that. I’ve been here a week and I haven’t written a note.”

“I’m serious. It’s OK to stop and take a breath. Don’t just react to the circumstances you currently find yourself in. Stop and think about what you actually want to do next.”

As usual, she was right. I had been thinking of the next record as a “revenge album.” Revenge was pretty damn reactive.

“So what are you doing while you’re not writing?” she asked.

“There’s been a lot of camp counselor–type bullshit this first week, getting the kids set up with their plans for the month.”

“Kids!” she shrieked.

“Yeah, turns out I didn’t read the fine print.”

She snorted. “And are you canoeing and doing camp-y stuff? Oh, are you swimming? Tell me you’re swimming!”

I knew Auden was thinking back to our childhood pool days. Hell, even our adult pool days, as Auden was a regular visitor to the pool at my building. Our shared affection for the water, developed out of necessity as kids, had endured.

Which was why I was disappointed in myself when I had to tell her, “I went once, the first night I got here, but I haven’t been since.”

“What’s the matter with you? I googled that lake you’re on, and it looks like a postcard. That is some prime North Woods shit.”

“I know.”

“Do you know I’ve never swum in a lake? Only pools. Well, I guess I went in the ocean once when I had to go on that company retreat in the Hamptons. But I only went in up to my knees.” She shuddered. “Seaweed, ugh. Why can’t we ever do retreats at the Four Seasons?”

It was wild, sometimes, to think how far we’d both come. That Auden was in a position to casually talk about the Hamptons versus the Four Seasons, and that I had just come off a world tour. Yes, my band had fractured, but still. Auden and I had made it. I didn’t think I’d ever stop marveling at that fact.

“Well,” she said, “you’d better get some swimming in, or else I’ll come there myself and push you in the water.”

“I would love that.” I didn’t know what Marion’s policies on visitors were, but it didn’t matter because Auden’s threat was an empty one. She was a city girl. A New Yorker, more specifically. I could never even get her to come see one of my shows in another city she ought to find suitably large—Chicago, say, or Boston. The idea of her in northern Minnesota was almost laughable. But how great would it be to sit on the glider with her and look out at the lake?

I thought back to my earlier episode of glider sitting, my thigh an inch from Gretchen’s, the electric current between our legs shocking me yet drawing me closer, a dance of proximity and distance, like a binary star system.

“So you’re having a good time?” Auden was leaning toward her phone like she was trying to see through it, straight into my soul. She did that.

“I guess I am.” In my own way.

“Good. I was starting to feel guilty for making you do this.”

“’S’okay. You don’t want me underfoot all summer.”

“Well, actually, I do want you underfoot. I’ve missed you this past year.”

The last tour really had been a grind, even by our standards, and when I thought back to the breaks I’d had that had allowed me to fly back to New York, I realized I’d spent most of them with Karlie. Karlie who I now could barely remember being with.

“I just didn’t think it would be good for you,” Auden said. “You needed to do something this summer besides sleeping in my guest room and moping around.”

“I need to do something bigger.”

“No, I think you need to do something smaller.”

I thought of how big the sky was here. How tall the trees were. How dark it was. But then I thought of that single G note I’d played when I first turned on the keyboard in my cabin. The first note of “Lemon Tree,” and how it had reverberated through my chest. “Or maybe both at once.”

“Maybe.”

“You sure I can’t lure you out here for a visit?”

“You cannot.”