“I don’t think I asked you,” I said with a wink.
“Since when has that stopped me?”
“That’s true.”
“I just mean that your next album shouldn’t be reflexive, you know? Reactive.”
“Well, I don’t think you have to worry about that. I’ve been here a week and I haven’t written a note.”
“I’m serious. It’s OK to stop and take a breath. Don’t just react to the circumstances you currently find yourself in. Stop and think about what you actuallywantto do next.”
As usual, she was right. Ihadbeen thinking of the next record as a “revenge album.” Revenge was pretty damn reactive.
“So what are you doing while you’re not writing?” she asked.
“There’s been a lot of camp counselor–type bullshit this first week, getting the kids set up with their plans for the month.”
“Kids!” she shrieked.
“Yeah, turns out I didn’t read the fine print.”
She snorted. “And are you canoeing and doing camp-y stuff? Oh, are you swimming? Tell me you’re swimming!”
I knew Auden was thinking back to our childhood pool days. Hell, even our adult pool days, as Auden was a regular visitor to the pool at my building. Our shared affection for the water, developed out of necessity as kids, had endured.
Which was why I was disappointed in myself when I had to tell her, “I went once, the first night I got here, but I haven’t been since.”
“What’s the matter with you? I googled that lake you’re on, and it looks like a postcard. That is some prime North Woods shit.”
“I know.”
“Do you know I’ve never swum in a lake? Only pools. Well, I guess I went in the ocean once when I had to go on that company retreat in the Hamptons. But I only went in up to my knees.” She shuddered. “Seaweed, ugh. Why can’t we ever do retreats at the Four Seasons?”
It was wild, sometimes, to think how far we’d both come. That Auden was in a position to casually talk about the Hamptons versus the Four Seasons, and that I had just come off a world tour. Yes, my band had fractured, but still. Auden and I had made it. I didn’t think I’d ever stop marveling at that fact.
“Well,” she said, “you’d better get some swimming in, or else I’ll come there myself and push you in the water.”
“I would love that.” I didn’t know what Marion’s policies on visitors were, but it didn’t matter because Auden’s threat was an empty one. She was a city girl. A New Yorker, more specifically. I could never even get her to come see one of my shows in another city she ought to find suitably large—Chicago, say, or Boston. The idea of her in northern Minnesota was almost laughable. But how great would it be to sit on the glider with her and look out at the lake?
I thought back to my earlier episode of glider sitting, my thigh an inch from Gretchen’s, the electric current between our legs shocking me yet drawing me closer, a dance of proximity and distance, like a binary star system.
“So you’re having a good time?” Auden was leaning toward her phone like she was trying to see through it, straight into my soul. She did that.
“I guess I am.” In my own way.
“Good. I was starting to feel guilty for making you do this.”
“’S’okay. You don’t want me underfoot all summer.”
“Well, actually, I do want you underfoot. I’ve missed you this past year.”
The last tour really had been a grind, even by our standards, and when I thought back to the breaks I’d had that had allowed me to fly back to New York, I realized I’d spent most of them with Karlie. Karlie who I now could barely remember being with.
“I just didn’t think it would be good for you,” Auden said. “You needed to do something this summer besides sleeping in my guest room and moping around.”
“I need to do something bigger.”
“No, I think you need to do something smaller.”
