2. The Plane #2
"It's not an insult. You look really sick."
"I'm fine. Just need sleep."
But when we land, I'm not fine. My legs don't believe in standing. The terminal is too bright. I sit down at the gate because the alternative is continuing to walk, and I'm not confident my knees will support me.
I close my eyes. The seat is hard. I think about the studio, the drive, the B&B, the recording session that starts in six hours. Then I’m not thinking because I’m dozing off.
"Hey." Her voice is close. "You okay?"
I open my eyes. She's crouched in front of me with a water bottle.
"I'm alright. Just need to sleep it off."
“I don’t think you can sleep here."
“I’ll be okay, I’ll just take a nap and go to the studio.”
"Where's that?"
I pull up the address on my phone and show her. Two hours north. A beautiful facility in the middle of nowhere with a farmhouse B&B nearby.
"Oh no, that’s ages away. My apartment is twenty minutes from here," she says. "Maybe come sleep it off on my couch and go to the studio when you can stand."
"I can stand up."
I hear her scoff. "Do it then."
"In a bit."
"You're running a fever. I can feel it from here."
She reaches out and presses her palm against my forehead. Her hand is cool and I lean towards it.
"That's a fever," she says. "Come on."
I should say no. But my legs aren't cooperating, and the studio is two hours away.
“I haven’t agreed to this,” I state, but she’s already pulling up a taxi app on her phone.
"You're agreeing now," she says, tapping through screens.
"I'm really not. I'm saying words and you're ignoring them."
"Alright, do you want to go to a hospital instead?" I shake my head. She types something into her phone. "There. I've booked the ride. We're leaving in four minutes."
"You can't just do that."
"I just did. And you’re going to get in that car because the alternative is you spending the night in a hospital.”
The ride shows up outside security. She stands and waits for me to stand. I manage it, somehow.
Her apartment is small and warm. She installs me on the couch. Gives me a blanket, pillow, painkillers and a glass of water on the side table.
I keep my mask on to avoid getting her sick.
"You don't have to—" I start.
"Please take the ibuprofen. Sleep. I'll be at the kitchen table if you need anything."
She pauses. "Is there someone I should call? A bandmate, or—"
"No." I soften it. "I'll text them in the morning."
Jo and Rebecca were on an earlier flight, Ana, and Jeremy already gone too, Sandy on whatever flight Sandy ends up on. I stayed back to finish the mixes, which is how I’m the one who got caught alone in a blizzard.
"What's your name?" I ask. "I should know that if I'm sleeping on your couch."
"I'm Lena."
"Rhonda," I say. "Thanks for not letting me die in an airport."
She smiles. "You’re welcome. Take the ibuprofen."
I take ibuprofen. I lie down. The sofa is too short—my feet hang off the end—but the blanket is clean and the pillow is the exact firmness I’d choose. The sound of her typing at the kitchen table is rhythmic enough to pull me under.
I sleep for six hours. When I wake up, the fever's come down. There’s a bowl of soup on the side table with a spoon and a napkin folded into a triangle. The note says "Please eat this. There’s more in the pressure cooker."
The chicken noodle soup soothed my throat, and was comforting.
Over the next day, as the worst of it passes, we talk.
"So you're filling in for another band?" she asks from the kitchen table, her laptop open, a spreadsheet on the screen that she keeps glancing at with irritation.
“Yeah, in the industry many musicians play around in different bands. Freelance where you can.”
“Don’t they have a bassist too?”
“They do, I think they’re on leave. So they asked me to fill in.”
She nods.
"And your band? The Belladonnas?"
"You know who I am?"
"I saw you on stage right after you ruined my...never mind.” She shrugged. “You're not low-profile, you know."
"Oh,” I feel my face warm. “Yeah. That's also why I wear the mask."
"What’s that like? Being famous?"
"I’m not famous. But we're recognizable enough that people look twice in airports and I'd rather they didn't." I shrug. "I just want to be left alone sometimes."
“So what’s it actually like,” she says, folding onto the floor by the couch with her own mug, “running a band?”
“I don’t run it. I hold it.” The distinction matters and I don’t know why I’m handing it to a stranger.
“Jo writes, Jo fronts, Jo decides. I book the studios, field the label, make sure everyone’s where they’re supposed to be.
Three months ago Jo would’ve stayed till midnight arguing about a bridge.
Now she leaves at nine to go home to her girlfriend, and the rest of it lands on me. ”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is. But I’m good at it. I like handling things.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t lonely.”
I don’t have an answer for that, so I drink my tea.
She has work in the morning—she’s an accountant, it turns out, at a firm she describes with the enthusiasm of a woman reading a hostage statement—so she leaves me the couch, the remote, and a pot of soup with instructions.
I sleep most of the day. When she comes home at four, work clothes rumpled and hair falling out of its clip, she drops her bag by the door and says, “Okay. I need to hear the rest of it. The band. All of it,” like she’s been thinking about me between spreadsheets.
So I tell her the rest, and she tells me about her day, and somewhere in there the afternoon goes soft and easy in a way my afternoons never are.
"It is. But it's also—I'm good at it. I like handling things."
"That doesn't mean it's not lonely."
She checks my temperature with the back of her hand against my forehead. Her fingers are cool and certain. When she passes me a mug of tea, her thumb overlaps mine for a half-second that she doesn’t withdraw.
I don't either.
Her name is Lena. She's an accountant. She hates her job and loves her friends and has a fan account for the Sirens' drummer that she's embarrassed about. She eats dinner at seven thirty every night. She has a blanket on her couch that smells nice, worn soft at the edges.
She tells me about the fan account. How she started it as a joke. A single post about Riley Puth's hi-hat technique written at two in the morning after a show. How it became the coolest thing in her life. How it went viral over night and now she has over fourteen thousand followers.
"I’m really impressed. I remember it took us a while to get to fourteen thousand on the Belladonna’s account"
"Really? I feel like a creepy stalker."
"Not at all. You're in love with her ability to play her instrument. That's pure."
She smiles and shrugs.
———————
I pack my bag. I call the studio to push my arrival by a day, and they don't argue. She walks me to the door.
"Thank you," I say, and I mean it in a way that surprises me. "For the couch, the soup. And not letting me die in an airport."
"You weren't dying." She laughs.
"I was close."
"You had a cold."
"It was a bad one."
She grins. "Feel better, Rhonda.”
It's the first time she's used my name. I grin.
"Thanks, Lena."
I entered my contact details into her phone before I leave. She puts hers in mine. I walk toward the Uber with my bag on my shoulder and my bass case in my hand, and her number in my pocket. The afternoon is cool and grey.
On the drive north, I text her: I’ve made it to the studio.
She replies before I've finished reading the first text: Good. Don't infect them all.
I'll try not to.
The couch was okay, right?
It felt so cozy, thank you.
Glad I could help.