Chapter 4
Eve spends most of the day of her album launch pacing alone in the apartment she shares with Shannon—the one they moved into together just a few months prior but is already proving more characterful than anticipated.
The apartment, Eve and Shannon call the Court because it’s on Attorney Street, an alley of mechanics and dog trainers and funky dive bars whose college-age crowds tumble along the sidewalk late into the night and early into the morning.
The Court is on the fifth floor of a series of narrow apartments above a tiny tarot shop: PSYCHIC ADVICE BY DEBBIE, the window says, and beneath, a painting of a golden hand crosshatched by crimson lines.
The Court is a fickle space, possibly haunted, where the water is sometimes forty degrees and sometimes two hundred, but never in between.
There is a clanging radiator in Eve’s bedroom (nicknamed Bang Clang) and a huge metal pipe in the bathroom (nicknamed Hot Pipe).
Both Bang Clang and Hot Pipe should be off for the summer, but every few days, they spontaneously turn on and begin blasting heat into the apartment.
Their super believes this is on account of some sort of supernatural activity; he blames Psychic Debbie.
Because the apartment is so mercurial, Eve and Shannon discuss it as a living thing in need of coaxing and regular sacrifice: “Will my hair dryer work today, if it pleases the Court?” “Can the bathroom door close today, if it pleases the Court?”
The windows face a brick wall with a small ledge where three pigeons make their home.
Every morning, around sunrise, the pigeons begin to coo.
Early on, Eve decided that she could be annoyed at the pigeons or delighted by them, so she ascribed them a storyline: Their names are Matilda, Esme, and Thad, and they are in something of a tumultuous throuple.
Inside the Court, it’s an eclectic hodgepodge of secondhand furniture and decor.
Some days, Eve thinks it looks chic and intentional—the heaped velvet pillows and the weird little art deco chandelier and the inexplicably red kitchen cabinets.
Other times, she thinks it looks like it belongs to two people who have not yet acquired the money or taste to live somewhere better.
Eve thought it would be nice to spend a “chill” day at the Court so she could “unwind” before the album launch, but by the time it gets dark and she’s ready to go, she has never been more fully wound. Bang Clang has been bang-clanging her last nerve.
She walks into the Williamsburg bar when it’s still mostly empty.
Shannon is there already, talking behind the counter with the manager, a thirtysomething woman Shannon briefly dated but saw no future with because the woman’s ten-year plan involved moving to a commune upstate.
Shannon has nothing against communes; she’s just kind of been there and done that.
The manager greets Eve and says, “Hey, big fan.” This is unlikely—Eve doesn’t have the kind of streaming numbers that produce a lot of big fans.
Shannon has already put up giant posters of the album cover.
On it, Eve sits on the golden wood floor of a ’70s-style living room with her legs stretched in front of her.
She’s wearing a retro ski suit bell-bottoms, chevrons, a huge belt—and an expression that says Please get me the fuck out of here.
This photo was taken after two hours of making other expressions and was entirely genuine.
The theme of the evening, in honor of the album art, is “ ’70s après-ski but it’s summer in New York.
” Eve is wearing thin red ski bibs and a black bra.
She had originally planned to include a tank top for some portion of the night but then her parents remembered they were going out of town this weekend.
Eve wonders when you become famous enough that you’re willing to wear lingerie at events where your parents will see you.
“Hot,” Shannon says, gesturing to Eve. “Excellent.”
“Nauseated,” Eve says, gesturing to herself. “Excited?”
“You’re gonna do so good.”
Eve put very clear instructions on the invitation:
7:00: This is when the party technically starts. Show up now if you want to hang out with me while I’m nervous and it’s weirdly light out.
8:00: This is when you should show up if you want to get the good snacks.
9:00: This would be an ideal time for you to show up to vibe to some music.
10:00: This is a slightly late time to arrive but I support you.
11:00: This is very late and I await your most colorful excuses.
12:00: This is when I will be going home.
Danny shows up at 7:06 looking flustered.
“Hi,” he says, kissing her forehead. “My flight got delayed. I came straight from the airport. This is amazing, you’re amazing, how can I help?”
Julian and Gigi arrive at 7:28 in matching color-block windbreakers.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” Julian asks.
“They had a thing with the Colemans.”
“That’s so typical! I’m sorry. Fucking hell, man.”
Eve pats Julian’s shoulder. They look at each other with pity.
Eve thinks of her parents as caricatures—memes of self-involved sixtysomethings who refuse to be impressed by their children.
Julian thinks of them in a more human aspect.
Eve feels Julian’s way is probably kinder, but at least she’s never disappointed.
“Breathe, my guy,” Gigi tells him. “Eve, come here. Julian, photo.” She grabs Shannon from somewhere and spends ten seconds posing everyone, tilting them into the best light and rearranging Eve’s hair. “Okay. Look indolent.”
Julian takes the picture. When he shows them the screen, Gigi says, “Yes.”
“Holy shit,” Shannon says. “This is the best photo anyone’s ever taken of me.”
“We look like a spy trio,” Eve says.
“All in the lighting,” Gigi says. Eve thinks it’s more all in the Gigi.
There’s no way for a launch not to be anticlimactic. The music is new for everyone else, but Eve is already tired of hearing these songs seven thousand times. She keeps noticing phrases that seem so boring—are they cliché, or has she just gotten used to them?
They play the album all the way through twice on the speakers. Eve nurses a beer and says,“Hi, hi, oh my gosh, thanks for coming, hi.” The bar is humid, and all the voices blur together in a low hum.
“I’m running out of things to say to people,” Eve tells Danny at one point.
“You got it,” he says. From then on, whenever anyone approaches, Danny talks incessantly. “What’s that you’re drinking? No way! Is that your favorite? Tell me about it!”
Eve is pretty sure her cousin Janine will forevermore believe Danny is just that passionate about IPAs. He holds her hand, and she leans against his shoulder.
She ends up standing on a low table singing “ski rat” and “retrocognition” and then “HONEY LOCUST,” a song off her first album, and when she looks into the dark depths of the bar, she sees Danny gazing back at her with a beer pressed to his chest, and though there are no spotlights, she thinks for a minute there are because he is the only thing she sees: like a sunbeam.
When they are back in his bed two hours later, they face each other across the pillows.
His skin, in the lamplight, is gold. His eyelashes are honey.
One of his hands is tucked under his cheek, and his wrist still has a green paper band from the bar.
Sometimes, when Eve looks at him, she is baffled by the thought that thousands of people have met Danny, and only a fraction have fallen in love with him.
“Oh my god,” Eve says. “I never even asked how your trip went.”
“You were somewhat busy.”
“Forgive me.”
Danny kisses her palm and looks up at her. “I’m just happy to be here.”
She lifts his chin. Their foreheads touch and she kisses him gently, just for a moment. “But really. Tell me about the trip.”
“But we were kissing.”
“We can do that after,” Eve says.
“Foiled again,” Danny says. He tucks her hair behind her ear. “It was good. San Francisco is weird. I didn’t expect it to be so corporate.”
“Gigi said you were meeting investors?”
“We have a new pitch for the app. I’ve been wanting to get your take on it, actually.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, we’ll still match people. But then we’ll also be a support system as the relationship goes on.”
“Support system how?”
“It’ll give you personalized advice—how to handle conflict, get out of a rut, whether you should break up. That sort of thing.”
“How are you going to tell people if they should break up?”
“We’ll give them a relationship score.”
“Like, ‘two stars, would not recommend to a friend’?”
“You sound skeptical,” Danny says.
She pauses. “I don’t want this to come out the wrong way. But do you really think something like this will help people feel more secure? What if you find out your partner loves you less than you love them?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to know?”
“That’s very Miltonic of you.”
“I have bad news,” Danny says, “because I’ve listened to your first album many times, but I have never made it past the third page of Paradise Lost. I hope you can still find it in your heart to love me.” A pause. “I mean love in the colloquial sense. Platonically. As bros do.”
“Danny,” Eve says.
“I really didn’t mean that in, like, a declarative sense—”
“Technically, you were declaring on my behalf. You declared nothing of yourself.”
“I did declare I’m not the sort of suave sophisticate who has read Paradise Lost.”
“Are you worried?” Eve says. “About how I feel? Because I was wondering, with the app, if this is because you feel like I’ve been too much or not enough or like we’re not on the same page. But I can just tell you. If you want to talk about it.”
“Okay,” he says.
“I’ve never had anything like this before.”
“Like what?”
“It’s all just so easy. You make me laugh, and you’re kind, and I’m incredibly attracted to you. I like who I am with you. I care so much about this going right. It just feels like it always is. Right.” When he doesn’t immediately respond, she asks: “Is that how you feel?”
And then he smiles. It takes a second to get from his mouth to his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “Exactly.”
“Hey, Danny?”
“Hey, Eve.”
“Can I tell you something slightly deranged?” she asks.
“That would make me so happy.”
“You know how I got attacked by a mountain lion. And then got in a car crash.”
“This is why I’m giving you Bubble Wrap for your birthday.”
“There’s a superstitious part of me that feels like the universe stepped in with drastic measures because it got tired of waiting for me to come find you. So that’s how I feel. About you. If that clarifies anything.”
He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his chest. Kisses her hair and the nape of her neck. “Actually,” he says, “that clarifies a lot.”
Eve doesn’t say she loves him even though she does. Why not?
Because she read a magazine at age twelve that said men need a chase and this worked its way into her brain on an inexorable level.
Because she suspects this is the last time she will say it for the first time.
Because she is afraid he will not say it back.