Chapter 3
Shannon comes to Eve’s San Francisco show and stands in the VIP section with her parents.
“Your parents came!” Clay says when he sees them waving.
“Those are my friend Shannon’s parents,” Eve says.
“Another classic whiff for Clay,” Eliza says. “Put it in the book.”
Eve almost plays one of her half-baked new songs but chickens out at the last minute. Stella’s performance is, as always, flawless. At least one newspaper has called the show robotic, which Eve thinks is unfair. Stella can’t win.
After, Shannon and her parents wait to drive Eve home.
“You didn’t have to wait,” Eve says.
“Honey!” Shannon’s mom says. “Get to wait.”
Eve feels her stomach turn in on itself when Shannon’s mom presses the key fob and the lights of the Subaru flick to life. She smells burning rubber.
“I’m happy to drive,” Eve says brightly. “I’m superawake. All these shows.”
Shannon and her parents all look at each other. “Okay,” Shannon’s mom says after a second. “Sure thing.” She hands Eve the keys.
The whole drive south, Shannon’s parents ask earnest questions from the back seat.
“What’s the best part of being on tour?” “How has your creative practice changed between your first album and now?” “What do you hope people take away from your music?” And then, when Eve answers, they nod and go, “Yes, wow, that’s such a good way of putting it.
” Eve follows Shannon’s directions down the highway, down the peninsula, into the Santa Cruz mountains.
When Shannon’s parents talk about her, it’s with such vivid pride.
“That’s our girl, bringing transparency to tech, casting a light into the darkness.
” Shannon laughs and waves them away when they try to pat her face.
Eve watches it all in glances in the rearview mirror and pretends not to.
It’s two when they finally reach the intentional living community, called Treehouse, and Shannon’s parents go to their cabin and Shannon and Eve to a guest cabin.
Eve has three days before she has to be in LA for the next show, and there is nowhere she sleeps better than Treehouse.
She wants to take a picture of it for Danny—of the indigo basin of stars, the sky-hungry redwoods, and the coils of fog—but it’s too dark.
In the morning, Eve wakes because Shannon throws a pillow at her face.
“Ow,” Eve says.
“Ow? That’s organic bamboo.”
“My poor, delicate face.”
“Okay, but,” Shannon says, “if you don’t get up, there won’t be any coffee left, and then you’ll be like, ‘What kind of monster would bring me to a place with no coffee?’ and then you’ll wish I’d thrown more organic bamboo pillows at your face, poor and delicate though it may be.”
This is a compelling argument.
Eve follows Shannon into the misty morning.
Treehouse gives summer camp, and Shannon gives camp counselor in her bandanna and long flannel.
Eve, who never went to summer camp, is in a Mets hat and Lululemon leggings.
She loves the forest but feels like an impostor when in nature, like the trees might smell her fear.
Colorado never loved her back. To grow up in the woods—like Shannon, like Danny—is strange and admirable.
It seems like the sort of place where families really know each other.
Sometimes, when in the edges of her mind, Eve will catch herself thinking she also grew up in the woods, went to camp, made friendship bracelets and s’mores.
Eve has a phantom limb nostalgia toward this imagined life; she thinks it probably comes from watching The Parent Trap.
They get their coffee from the mess hall and drink it in Adirondack chairs on the back porch.
“Do you ever think about moving back here?”
“No way, dude,” Shannon says.
“Why not?”
“I like New York. I like New Yorkers. I like that you have to order your bagel in five seconds if you don’t want to get yelled at. I like that everyone tries so hard. I like that people in New York are all in a hurry to do something great.”
“Maybe,” Eve says. “Not as many trees, though.”
Eve shares her insight about The Parent Trap, and Shannon says, “See, but that was me with Gossip Girl. I wanted to go to galas at 30 Rock, not drink Bud Lights with Mickey Weaver at a beach bonfire.”
“Mickey Weaver?” Eve asks. “I don’t think I’ve heard about Mickey Weaver.”
“Really? We snuck off to make out in what I later learned was a patch of poison oak.”
“Oh! This is Incriminating Rash Guy?”
“Exactly,” Shannon says. “Meanwhile, you were eating yogurt on the steps of the Met.”
“Hey,” Eve says. “First of all, I was really more of a Clif Bar girl, and second, it was the Natural History Museum.”
“A thousand pardons.”
“Forgiven.”
“Still would’ve traded you for Mickey Weaver.”
“We all want what we can’t have?” Eve asks.
“I don’t know,” Shannon says. “I think it’s normal to be curious about other people’s lives. Good, even.” Shannon swipes Eve’s Mets hat off her head, and Eve grabs for it, but Shannon holds it on her curls.
“Everyone’s going to see how greasy my hair is,” Eve says. “They’re all going to say, ‘Ha ha, look at how greasy her hair is.’ ”
“Too bad. I’m a real New Yorker now. I’m walking a mile in your hat.”
“But you already have your cute bandanna. That’s two headwear. Now I have no headwear.”
“Let’s go Mets, baby.”
Eve feels a tug in her stomach like oh, and she senses that it’s inspiration she doesn’t want to scare away by calling it inspiration. The sun is just breaking through the fog in fine, luminous beams. It’s just there—an inkling.
Shannon goes to a coffee shop in town to work—she’s researching an article on crypto—so Eve sits on her bunk in the cabin and strums her guitar. The curtains are pulled back and in comes the light. That’s what Eve wants—the sound of light through a window.
When Danny calls, Eve leans her guitar against the bed.
Danny is so good about calling. Eve is forever losing track of time, but then there is Danny—steady Danny, who never forgets anything and who is never impatient when Eve does.
Earlier on the tour, he suggested they talk three, rather than two, times a week—like he knew she was feeling a little lonely and a little lost, like he knew she needed him to make her feel tethered but that she would not think to ask because she would never have expected him to be so willing to give more of himself than he already did.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey. Where are you now?”
“California. Shannon’s commune.”
“I thought it was an intentional living community.”
“My sweet Danny.”
“Is it culty? Do they wear matching outfits and sing culty songs?”
“I hope so. I think I could make a splash in the culty song space.”
“Goes without saying.”
“Unfortunately, Shannon’s parents and co are mostly former tech people who just really love kombucha. They all have three to five college degrees. I don’t think I could sway them with a rousing chant.”
“Maybe this is why Shannon is so intimidating,” Danny says. “I bet she can sense that I would totally be swayed by a rousing chant.”
She totally can. Eve loves her for it—her measured skepticism—as she loves Danny for saying so—his complete sincerity. It’s funny to Eve that Danny jokes about being intimidated—that he seems to believe he is intimidated by anyone—because he’s not, really.
On a break in the tour, when Eve was back home and Danny was over, their dinner was interrupted by a call from one of his investors, who began to shout so loudly that Eve assumed Danny’s phone was on speaker.
Danny held the phone calmly away from his face, kissed Eve’s temple, and mouthed, “One second.” He went into Eve’s bedroom and shut the door.
She could still hear the investor from the table.
“Not what we agreed on, not a blank check, are you men or are you children?” Danny’s voice, when it came, was smooth and calm.
Eve had not realized that she expected Danny to shout back.
That was what men did when threatened, yes?
Phillip was easily provoked; Fletcher tailgated cars that cut him off in traffic; Julian, much as Eve loved him, would not have held his temper on the other end of this call.
But Danny just spoke in that measured way, paused to listen, spoke again firmly and softly.
Functionally, Danny was not intimidated by anyone.
He did not change his course when someone wanted to make him feel small.
When Danny came back a few minutes later, he apologized and poured Eve another glass of wine.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m fine. He just needed to feel included. Hey, how long do you think the line is for Van Leeuwen right now?”
That might’ve been the moment Eve really knew.
“I’ve been thinking of new songs as trees,” she says now, leaning back in the bunk bed. “Like, with layers of bark. I don’t know if this metaphor holds water or if I’m just really surrounded by trees right now.”
“No, I get that,” Danny says from her phone. “I think about that when I’m coding. You’re not just moving forward but moving out. Increasing complexity.”
“Giving it texture,” Eve says. “Right.”
“How are the new songs?”
“I have this idea for something, but it keeps having too few layers. It’s just not interesting enough.
I guess I’m worried that if I spell out my meaning too literally, it’s good on the first listen, but then there’s nothing to go back to.
Like, would you rather write a song that makes great background music for a mall?
Or a song that’s a little weird but makes you think? ”
“That’s kind of like coding, too. Do you make something users will find familiar, or do you risk asking them to adopt something that might be better?”
In moments like these, Eve wonders how she ever could have dated Fletcher, who had no creative practice.
She never would have said creation was a prerequisite for her relationships, but now that she’s had it, she could never settle for less.
It’s incredible what a kind and interested person can do for your standards.
“How’s the app going?” Eve asks.
“It’s okay. Some days, I’m like, ‘This is a terrible idea and we’re wasting our time.’ And other days, I’m like, ‘Wow, if my parents had this twenty years ago, maybe they could’ve figured their shit out.’ ”
When Shannon gets back, Eve mentions this.
“That’s funny,” Shannon says. “Maybe we all take the career path we think could’ve fixed our parents.”