Chapter 2
Eve and Shannon’s lease runs out at the end of June. Eve is acting supercool and blasé about this. She was raised to believe discussing one’s finances was crass, but here are Eve’s finances:
Danny has been dropping hints for some time that they should move in together.
And it’s true that they are already sleeping in the same bed twenty-eight nights a month, and it’s true that Eve loves being with him, imagines they will probably be together for a long time.
But it’s also true that she is afraid of what it will mean to link herself financially to a man once again.
Would she have stayed with Fletcher for so long if they didn’t co-own Gus the Subaru?
If they didn’t share a couch and a bed and a carbon steel frying pan?
Eve cannot stand to think of Danny becoming someone she loves out of obligation.
So when Danny drops these hints, Eve evades.
She knows she should probably tell him about how she’s feeling, but every time she starts, she worries what it will do to him.
If it will make him more anxious. If it will make him doubt their relationship, and if those doubts will leak into doubts about his work.
Two weeks before the lease expires, Eve still hasn’t given him a firm answer.
She knows she has to, but she doesn’t know what her answer is.
There is no way she and Shannon will stay at the Court—the Court, where there is an ominous scuttling in the walls every few minutes, which they have optimistically nicknamed Nibbles the Mouse—but the question is, do they find a new place together or does Eve move in with Danny?
She considers asking Bug but has a latent fear that Danny and Julian can read her chats.
She’s sitting on the lumpy couch with her guitar. Eve is trying to turn her uncertainty into a viable song when someone buzzes the door. Probably a package, she thinks, because Shannon works from seven in the morning until nine at night and thus has all her worldly needs delivered.
Eve is slow to get up. Her head is stuck in “Evergreen,” as it has been for some months now.
It is both the best and the worst song on the forthcoming Sunbeam, Baby because it’s so close to being great.
The time signature is 6/4, which makes the song feel dreamy and sexy but hard to dance to.
She has double-tracked the vocals, layered on backup vocals, stripped it all back again.
Intimate or epic? More reverb or less? The song should feel like summer—she knows this—but should it feel like waking up at a campsite next to the person you love or like a pool party with all your friends and too much beer?
And then there is the chorus, which goes like: “It’s an evergreen rush with his evergreen touch and my evergreen crush and I want it so much.
” It’s fun to sing! But also sort of painful and cringe in a way that makes her want to die. I mean. Evergreen crush?
Eve comes back to what she always comes back to, which is that she does not feel comfortable writing about happy relationships.
Does the world need to know she wants “it” (sex with Danny) so much?
She has experimented with other choruses that use words like “revisionism” and “asymptote.” Weirdly, none of these choruses were very good.
When she writes a clever song, she doesn’t feel vulnerable.
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s still clever.
But if she sets out to write a fun, easy, breezy song and she fails—if she tries to make something enjoyable that does not end up being enjoyable—then there is no point.
She is afraid, truth be told, to release a poppy, fun song, because she’s not sure anyone will like it.
Also, because she’s afraid that if she strips back the irony and the complexity, everyone will see the truth, which is that all Eve really wants is for people to like her music.
She does not know how she can be a professional musician and still be so worried that people will judge her for taking herself seriously.
Someone buzzes the door again, twice in quick succession. Eve goes to the door, but when she opens it, it’s not a package at all.
It’s her dad.
“Oh,” she says, taking a step back. “Hi.”
Eve and her dad look alike. Always have.
He still has his hair, and it’s thick and blondish brown, an elegant wave coiffed just so.
His eyes, like Eve’s, are set too far apart on his head, which makes him seem prey-like, deerish.
He’s never smoked and rarely drinks and goes to the gym every day from exactly five thirty to exactly six thirty, so in most regards he is aging well—except for in the eyes, where he looks hollow.
“May I come in?”
To Eve’s knowledge, her father has never set foot on the Lower East Side. “Sure. Can I get you tea? Or something?”
“I’m just fine.” He sits on the very edge of the ottoman, and Eve takes her wary place back on the couch, lifting the guitar into her lap. “Were you playing something?”
“Oh,” Eve says, “yeah.” She hesitates. “Did you, you know, want to hear it?” She feels like a frat boy at a house party. Anyway. Here’s “Wonderwall.”
“Oh, no, that’s all right,” he says. “So. This is where you live.”
“Yeah. Me and Shannon.”
“The reporter.”
“Yeah, she’s a tech journalist.”
“She’s saying good things about Julian?”
“I mean, I think that would be an ethics violation, but sure.”
“He’s doing well these days.”
“Yeah. I’m so happy for him.”
“It was good of him to include Danny.”
“In the company? In the company that Danny cofounded?”
“Everything I say, you hear the worst possible version of it.”
Eve does not respond to this. She sets her guitar next to her on the couch and folds her hands in her lap. Is everyone like this with their parents? Like they’re trying to break a record for how quickly the conversation can go bad?
“I’m not here about Danny,” her dad says. “I’m here about you.”
Eve sits back into the couch. At this moment, the ominous scuttling of Nibbles the Mouse comes scratching through the walls.
“Eve,” he says. He gazes around the apartment.
At the big New Yorker posters (Shannon) and the framed vintage ski resort map (Eve, courtesy of Stella Seaport); at the umbrellas leaned up against walls; at the running shoes, knee-high boots, white sneakers, strappy heels strewed under every couch and chair.
Eve lifts her chin and waits for him to look back at her.
Again, he says, “Eve. What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I always saw myself in you, you know that? You have drive. But my god. Why are you using all that drive for this?”
Eve pauses. “By ‘this,’ ” she says, “you mean music?”
“Music. This apartment. Danny. All of it.”
“Whoa,” Eve says. “What does Danny have to do with anything?”
“Princess,” he says. “I’m just worried, is all. You know, I knew this woman who gave up a great career, a whole life, just because she wanted to paint mugs.”
“Maybe they were great mugs. Maybe painting mugs made her happy.”
“Your life can’t be all one thing. You’ve got to leave doors open for yourself.”
“Dad, I love music. I’m making money with music. Can you just please trust me?”
“You think you’re making money,” he says. “But you’re not making ‘send your kids to college’ money. You’re not making ‘pay your mortgage’ money. What’s your plan here? Marry Danny and hope his app keeps you in the black?”
Eve feels like she’s been slapped. “Excuse me?”
“You know how many miserable wives we know who can’t leave their marriages because they can’t afford to?”
“What,” Eve says, “like Mom?”
Phillip claps his hands twice against his knees. “You’re not using the degree I paid for. I think it might be best if you paid it back.”
Eve stares at him.
He stands.
“Wait,” she says. “Wait, is this a joke?”
“You’re wasting your potential,” he says. “I can’t watch it, and I want no part in it.”
“I don’t have four years of college tuition money to pay you.”
“Then get a different job. You get a different job, a real job, one where I know you can take care of yourself, and you don’t have to pay me a dime.”
“This is insane.”
“You need to know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“But I didn’t study music. That was our deal. I did what you wanted.”
“None of this—” he looks at the apartment, which does not have in-unit laundry or an elevator or a doorman or air-conditioning or closets or windows that open all the way but is nonetheless Eve’s home, Eve’s life “—is what I wanted.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because, princess—we love you.”
He leaves. Eve watches him shut the door calmly behind him. She calls her mom, who lets it ring and ring. Finally, Eve texts her.
Eve: did you know dad was going to do this?
Mom: I don’t want to get in the middle of it.
Eve: in the middle of . . . him asking me for hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Eve: i’m not convinced he has legal recourse for this, actually
Eve: is he just being a dick?
Mom: Please don’t make this difficult.
Eve: is this just a pride thing? he just wants to embarrass me?
Mom: Turn autocorrect back on, honey. It’s exhausting.
Eve sets her phone on the coffee table and rubs her fists against her eyes until she sees white stars.
Nibbles the Mouse runs up and down inside the walls.
Well, she thinks. Well. That was good. Actually.
It was good that it happened, because now Eve can stop trying to impress her parents.
For real this time. It’s freeing. This is exactly what she wanted from the start.