Chapter 7
Danny leaves for the office before Eve wakes. When she opens her eyes, she stretches across the cool sheets looking for his warmth and finds nothing.
In the kitchen, he has left her favorite mug, washed, next to the espresso machine, and drawn a smiley face on their fridge whiteboard.
She opens a drawer at random and shuts it again.
She wants to text him to ask why he had to leave so early, but she wants to be the kind of cool girlfriend who doesn’t get annoyed by things like that.
She angrily draws a smiley face next to his and angrily reaffixes the magnetic pen to the fridge.
Today, she is meant to be creating a spon con video for Summer Camp, and another one for a mascara company she accidentally cornered into sponsoring her after she gave an interview saying that once, she got attacked by a cougar and hit by a truck in the same day, but her mascara did not budge.
She’s also meant to be meeting Clay in the afternoon to work on writing the next album.
Then, in the evening, she’s supposed to meet her manager for dinner to discuss the spring’s live show dates.
Though she toured in the fall, everyone agreed it was kind of compressed and did not successfully capitalize on the popularity of “Evergreen.” Part of the problem was, none of the “Evergreen” fans wanted to hear Eve’s older music, and none of Eve’s longtime fans wanted to hear anything off Sunbeam, Baby.
And now, Eve is alone in her apartment drifting progressively farther from her sunbeam, baby, with absolutely no interest in recording a video of herself saying how much she loves Summer Camp beer just to post it on Instagram, where a thousand people will tell her to kill herself and also lose some weight.
When she finally opens her phone, she finds there is a stream of comments on her latest Instagram Reel saying things like, I hope ur butler strangles u biatch and i may not be rich but at least my boobs are not completely different sizes.
Eve lies on the floor of the kitchen and contemplates having a mental breakdown. Ultimately, she decides she could not bear the cleanup.
There is a part of Eve that wonders if there is something disconcertingly inhuman about Sunbeam, Baby that listeners can hear if they pay close attention. Something tellingly AI. And if there is, is it a fact of AI forever or just for right now, while the technology is still young.
In Paradise Lost, there’s a part where the angel Raphael tries to explain angel sex to Adam.
It’s superweird. What Milton is trying to do is show that sex need not be an act of sin and passion.
But then Adam and Eve eat the fruit and lose their innocence, and then they are both lustful and self-conscious when they have sex.
But in her reading, Eve found something lovely about this—the lust, the awareness, the fragility of it all.
For the first time, Adam and Eve become familiar—become human.
And so now Eve wonders if technology is like an angel—more than human in knowledge and predictability, but never truly able to understand the particular sensory experience of personhood.
And she finds that this is what she hopes for.
She wants to believe that she contains mysteries that cannot be algorithmically known.
Eve, still on the floor, calls Clay.
“Hey, babe,” he says. “We still on for today?”
“I want to record ‘Settle Down.’ ”
“The song from Stella’s tour? I thought you decided it didn’t work.”
“I figured out how to make it work.”
“Listening.”
“It’s too acoustic. It’s a sad-girl song with a sad-girl sound.”
“And you want to make it angry?”
“I want to make it baroque. Brass, strings, too much reverb. Think James Bond. Or, like—femme fatale. Noir.”
“Okay. Really? Okay. This might work. I have to think about it.”
“And the lyrics are too straightforward. It’s not enough of a story. It needs more verses.”
“It’s already, what, four minutes long?”
“I’m thinking it’s going to be nine.”
“Okay,” Clay says. “Okay. So, I really don’t want to quash your full artistic expression here.
But you’ve just reached a big new world of fans who love what you’ve done in the upbeat pop space.
And I can’t help but wonder if a nine-minute-long chamber pop song might feel, to some of these listeners, like a teensy bit of a fuck you. ”
“I do hear you,” Eve says. “But also, I kind of feel like I’m in something of a spiral and music is the only thing I can control?”
“Well, babe,” Clay says. “I’m not going to say no to that.”