The phone rang. Rory.
“Am I interrupting the date? I’m probably interrupting the date. But it’s important.”
“You’re not interrupting the date.”
“Aww, really?”
“It was a bust.”
“Well, his loss. Next time will be better.”
I didn’t tell her there wouldn’t be a next time. For some reason, I hadn’t been telling Rory about my dating woes the way I used to. Maybe I was just sick of hearing myself talk.
“You know Imani Tran?” she asked.
“Of course.” Imani Tran was a legend of modern dance. “Doyouknow Imani Tran?”
“Not personally. But I went to ballet school with someone who went on to join her company. Imani was supposed to spend the summer at this camp in northern Minnesota called Wild Arts. She’s pregnant. She isn’t due until December, but apparently the pregnancy has just been deemed high risk and she’s been put on bed rest.”
“That’s terrible.”
“For her, yes. For you, maybe not.”
“Huh?”
“Imani felt bad pulling out so late, so she’s trying to find areplacement. She asked my friend, who can’t do it. My friend, knowing I’m in Minnesota, asked me.”
“And you can’t do it, as you’re about to pop.” Pregnant ladies everywhere. Maybe that was why I’d stopped confiding in Rory. I always used to be the older, wiser one, the one dispensing the advice. But now she was married and pregnant, so that just left me and my midlife crisis.
“Well, not till September twentieth, God willing. But yes, I’m not prepared to spend the summer in the woods. So I suggested you.”
“That’s nice of you, but I can’t leave the studio.” Could I? “And I have way too much going on with the new building.” Didn’t I?
For some reason, the idea of spending the summer in the woods was… appealing? Even though I was not an outdoorsy person. Growing up in a trailer had been, at times, a little too close to camping for adult me to have any interest in sleeping outside on purpose.
“Hear me out,” Rory said. “You always do the two-week closure in the dead of summer. The camp thing is two monthlong sessions. If you did the first session only, you’d really be helping them out. You’d only need someone to cover your classes for two weeks, and that someone is me.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just the teaching, it’s all the admin stuff. The boss stuff.”
Her silence let me know what she thought of that. Rory had been my second-in-command for years, and she ran her own ballet business, too. She was more than capable.
“Fine,” I said, “but what about the new place?”
“You don’t even close on it until your birthday.”
“Yeah, but I’m allowed two visits before that. I was going to take Justin through.” Justin was my contractor.
“So take Justin through now. Then go to camp. Or I’ll take Justin through.” When I didn’t say anything, she kept going. “This is actually perfect timing. You miss two weeks of classes, but you know I can cover those in my sleep. There’s nothing you can really do for the new place at this point. I mean, you don’t even have a name for it yet.”
I laughed. I could feel myself softening.
“I’m not trying to bully you into doing this,” she said, her tone growing serious. “I just… I don’t know, I thought you could use a break. A real break.”
She wasn’t wrong, and it kind of… choked me up to know that she had me so thoroughly figured out.
“The gig is formally called artist in residence,” she said. “It’ll be you, an actor, a writer, and so on. As I understand it, you’re not camp counselors per se, but more like mentors. The idea is that you do the gig, but you also get free time to pursue your own artistic aims.”
“I don’t have any artistic aims. Not beyond the next recital, anyway.” I had entrepreneurial aims. They were taking up all the space available for aims in my brain. I didn’t need to go to the forest to find my artistic soul or any bullshit like that.
