I examined the buildings nearby. They were large and made of logs. The one behind Marion sported a sign that read “Office,” and it had some lights on inside. It also had windows that were cranked as wide as it looked like they would go.
All right. Yes, it was hot as hell, but I wasn’t such a diva that I couldn’t survive a summer without air-conditioning. I hadn’t had it my entire childhood. Hell, half the time we hadn’t even had power or running water, depending on what was happening with the rent strikes. I would have to settle for a long, cold shower.
Marion said good night, Danny proclaimed that he was off to visit the kiln—I realized now that what I’d thought was mud on his shirt was clay—and I followed Lena and Sugarplum to a golf cart. “It’s a fifteen-minute walk to your cabins, but with your luggage, we’ll drive. Well, I’ll take you as far as I can, and then you’ll have to hoof it the last bit. The paths between the cabins are muddy since we had some rain this afternoon. You might want to keep that in mind when you walk up for sunrise circle tomorrow.” I followed her gaze to our feet. “You’re fine.” She pointed at the ancient Docs that housed my overheated feet. “But you”—she pointed at Gretchen’s feet—“might want to rethink your footwear choices. Mud aside, there are Lyme-bearing ticks in these woods.” Gretchen was wearing denim shorts and silver, flat, strappy sandals. Her toenails were painted fire-engine red. I experienced a pang of longing as I eyed her perfect cherry toes—but only because I was jealous of how much cooler her feet seemed relative to my sweaty dogs.
“Got it,” Gretchen said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Gretchen sat up front with Lena. From their conversation,I gleaned that Lena was the camp’s longtime caretaker. “Used to be owned by the Girl Scouts,” she said. “Then it was a corporate retreat for a couple years. Then the yoga people.” I gathered from her tone that she hadn’t thought much of “the yoga people.”
“And it’s going OK now as Wild Arts?” Gretchen asked. “This is the third year of Wild Arts, right?”
“Yup, it’s going great. And I gotta say that though I’m not really an art kind of gal—I went to a play once in the Cities when I was young, and I didn’t care for it—it’s good to have Marion here. This place was falling apart when she bought it. I’d been doing the best I could, but as I told the yoga people, you can’t meditate your way to new shingles.”
The last stretch of the drive was through the woods, and we emerged into a clearing that contained a small parking lot. Lena cut the engine and pointed to a dirt path that extended into the trees. “You guys are in cabins five and six. They’re both music cabins, so I’ll let you sort out who gets which.” I was closer to her, so she handed me two keys, each attached to a red-and-white plastic ball.
“Oh, bobber keychains—cute!” Gretchen said.
I had no idea what a bobber was, but I handed Gretchen the key for cabin five, reasoning that if there were six artists in residence, cabin six was likely to be the end of the line and therefore to have a neighbor only on one side. I had been imagining living in Waldenesque solitude, not in a God damn neighborhood.
Waldenesque solitude with air-conditioning, but still.
“You got flashlights?” Lena asked. Dusk had become dark, and it wasdark.
“Nope,” I said.
Gretchen dug around in her giant shoulder bag and produced a flashlight she flipped on and proceeded to blind me with.
I swallowed a curse and shielded my eyes as I slid my phone out of my pocket and turned on the flashlight.
I intended to take off—we both had our keys and our lights—but Gretchen struggled with her suitcase as she tried to keep her tote bag on her shoulder and hold her flashlight aloft at the same time. Sighing, I slung my guitar across my back, grabbed her suitcase and my duffel, and took off. I could afford to be generous because my shower, if not the AC of my dreams, was so close I could practically feel it.
Also because maybe I was a teeny bit sorry I’d been such a dick at the airport. Or, if I was the kind of person who cared what people I didn’t know thought of me, I would have been sorry.
I didn’t know Gretchen, so I didn’t care.
Which probably meant I should stop thinking about it.
I did not respond to Gretchen’s protests that she could carry her own bag, just trudged down the path.
I’d been wrong about cabin placement. Tidy cabins lined both sides of the path, which ran parallel to the shore, the even numbers on the water side and the odds on the forest side. I took in cabins one and three as we approached and extrapolated that Gretchen in five would be “across the street” from me on the beach in six. I would indeed be at the end of the line, though. Three of the cabins we passed were dark, but there were signs of life—a swimsuit draped over a porch railing, windows cranked all the way open. Cabin two had its lights on, and I could see the outline of a person movingaround behind a thin curtain. Yep, this was definitely aMr. Rogers’ Neighborhood–type situation. Fuck me.
As we approached the end of the line, it occurred to me that a gentleman would offer to give Gretchen the cabin with the lake view, but I’d already carried her suitcase, which I deposited with a grunt on the porch of cabin five. It featured a single rocking chair.
Instead of using the steps, Gretchen leaped from the path onto the porch, landing more softly than I’d expected. She was light on her feet. I looked down at said feet, shining my flashlight on them. Her red-lacquered toes were streaked with mud. There was something about the juxtaposition of such perfectly done toes covered in mud that—
“Well,” she said loudly, “good night.”
I blinked, which had the effect of detaching my gaze from her feet. I didn’t return her farewell, just raised my hand in nonverbal acknowledgment and headed across the road.
My cabin faced the lake, so I walked around to find my own porch. It was bigger than Gretchen’s and featured a double glider. I couldn’t see the lake in the dark, but I could hear the lapping of the waves.
I had definitely taken the nicer cabin. I did not feel bad about that.
Not bad enough to do anything about it, anyway.
I let myself in with my bobber key thing and was hit by a wall of stale, humid air. The place had been closed up tight, so after confirming that there was no thermostat or window unit hiding anywhere, I moved around and opened the windows, shedding my clothes as I went. I took in the dark outline of a double bed on one side of what was essentially one big roomand a table and kitchenette on the other. There was a minifridge, a hot plate, a microwave, and a small sink. Through the kitchen was the bathroom, where I found a toilet and a sink and… a toilet and a sink. No shower. No bathtub, no means of washing my sticky, sweaty self.
“Fuck,” I muttered into the hot, still night.
