Chapter 3
“This is big stuff,” Eve’s manager says. “A great opportunity!”
The opportunity in question: a live-streamed performance from Penn Station.
“What?” Eve says. “No. That sounds terrible. You want me to perform underground? Among the angry commuters? By an Insomnia Cookies?”
“Miss Too Good for Cookies!” her manager says.
“I don’t want to perform in Penn Station,” Eve says. “I don’t particularly want to perform in the Hudson Yards Bus Terminal or the Times Square Margaritaville, either.”
“This is why people think you’re a snob! But think of the new light it would cast if everyone saw you by the Amtrak. A woman of the people. Definitely not dead!”
“And Penn Station is on board with this?” Eve asks.
“More or less. I know a guy.”
Which is how Eve ends up in Penn Station longing for the Times Square Margaritaville.
She goes with Gigi, her manager, and a security guard named Junior.
Eve thought Gigi was a good idea because she’s good with a phone camera and doesn’t suffer fools.
The label thought Junior was a good idea on account of the death threats, which is not exactly what you want to be told before descending into a crowded underground hellscape.
“This feels like a pretty bad idea,” Gigi says. “If anyone wants my feedback.”
They set up on a corner of white tile under sterile fluorescent lights. There is nowhere to stand in Penn Station where you aren’t completely in the way. This is, Eve thinks, the anti–Prospect Park.
“Look like you want to be here,” Eve’s manager says as Eve sets up her guitar.
“Or don’t,” Gigi says. “Look like you think this is really stupid.”
“It is really stupid,” Eve says.
“Yeah,” Gigi says. “People love that exasperated thing.”
Eve starts out with “Dreamweather on Tenth,” which is a track no one really knows off Sunbeam, Baby but is easy to play and doesn’t test Eve’s vocal range.
People mostly walk past without looking at her.
Two teenage girls inspect Eve, whispering at each other, and one of them takes a video on her phone before they hurry off. So maybe that’s good! Or bad.
After the song ends, Gigi says, “How was that for you?”
“If everyone could please stop saying I’m dead,” Eve says to the camera, “I would just love to stop doing this.”
She plays “ski rat,” and she’s just launching into “Evergreen” when the teenage girls reappear. One of them is now holding a plastic Starbucks cup, tall and full of ice water. Here to listen, Eve thinks!
And then the girl with the cup flicks her wrist, and the water is flying, and there is water in Eve’s hair and on her guitar and in her guitar, and the girls are now running away with Junior running after them, and Gigi has recorded all of it for posterity.
Eve lowers her guitar. Now people are looking. They’re still not stopping—don’t be silly—but they are glancing over at the situation with eyebrows raised like, Well, how unfortunate for that person.
“Okay,” Eve says. The water is beginning to soak through her shirt and cling to her skin. “Okay, I think I’m done here.”
Eve wipes the water from the guitar with her sleeve as best as she can and puts it back in its case.
“It’s just water!” her manager says. “Don’t let them win!”
“Actually,” Eve says, “I think it’s okay if they win.”
Gigi lowers her phone. Eve wants to laugh at how stupid this all is, how stupid it has been, and how stupid she feels for having tried so hard to fight it.
Her manager says some other things, and Eve responds politely and calmly because this is still who she is, incapable of not saying “Thanks for this opportunity.”
Eve leaves her manager there in the puddle and makes her way to the downtown ACE so she can get to the L so she can go home and find something else to do with her life. She doesn’t realize Gigi has followed her until she is stepping onto the subway car.
“Ugh,” Gigi says, “you walk so fast.”
Eve sits on the blue plastic bench and pulls her Mets hat lower. Everyone has become a potential ice water assailant. Gigi drops into the seat next to her.
“So what’s next?” Gigi says. “Playing in the Hudson? A brief concert in the sewage treatment plant?”
Eve laughs and drops her face into her hands. “I don’t know. I never wanted my job to be social media, anyway. I just don’t know if this is worth it.”
“Probably not.”
“But your job is social media.”
“Eve,” Gigi says, “I am so fucking tired of looking at my face.”
“It’s a great face.”
Gigi is quiet from 23rd to 14th. Eve thinks maybe she’s not going to say anything else until: “Do you think the app is ruining your relationship?”
“Pattern?”
“No, DoorDash. Yes, Pattern. Come on, Eve.”
Eve snorts. “No. Maybe a little. I wouldn’t say ruining, but I don’t think it helps us. I think Danny and I both have this instinct to double-check our behavior with Bug before we talk to each other now. Why? This feels pointed.”
“Before this app,” Gigi says, “I genuinely thought Julian and I were perfect. Like, it wasn’t even a question. And then once we were a hundred, the hundred was something we could lose. And then we did. Start to lose it.”
“What are you now?”
“Eighty-eight.”
“Oof,” Eve says. “For the record, you’re still a hundred to me.”
“I just want to go live in a mossy knoll,” Gigi says. “And raise bees.”
“I recently floated the idea of moving to the woods with a family of possums.”
“A little gnome village down deep in the mines.”
“I just think if I could be a hedgehog under a mushroom,” Eve says, “then I would truly know peace.”
Gigi leans against Eve’s shoulder. Eve is startled but doesn’t move. As far as Eve remembers, Gigi has only ever touched her by way of a hug as a hello or goodbye. They’ve never just casually leaned on each other, like friends would.
“Julian and I are working on some things,” Gigi says. “They might make you and Danny angry.”
Eve puts her arm around Gigi’s narrow shoulders. She says, “I think we’ll be okay.”