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We head to our respective washing machines. I’m both thrilled and nervous to find myself next to Lyndsey. She shoves her laundry into the massive metal drum and sprinkles some chalky laundry soap into the dispenser.
“I think tour laundry is worse than regular laundry,” she comments.
“Agreed,” I add, pressing the start button on my machine.
“You know I didn’t start doing laundry on tour until I was thirty.”
“What did you do until then?” Lyndsey asks, wrinkling her brow as we watch our clothes transform into a soapy kaleidoscope.
“I just bought new ones. Who needs laundry when you have money?”
Lyndsey elbows me, and I try not to hold my breath as her elbow connects with my rib cage.
“Vince! That’s so wasteful! Did you know that millions of pounds of clothes end up in landfills every year?!” she lectures.
I love watching her get indignant like this. Her eyebrows wrinkle, and the tip of her nose gets red like a cartoon. It’s cute. She shoves her glasses up further along the bridge of her nose, a telltale sign of her irritation.
“I wasn’t thinking about the environment when I was stranded in Germany, and I needed new underwear, y’know?” I joke.
She makes a decisive humph noise. “Well, maybe you should have been!”
We settle onto two sage green chairs near the washing machines. Lyndsey checks her watch and grumbles as she tries to get her phone to connect with the shoddy Wi-Fi.
“So, have you ever been to Myrtle Beach?” I ask, trying to make conversation.
I’ve developed a game out of prying every personal detail I can get out of Lyndsey. She’s guarded. Every time she tells me about something she and Allison did when they were kids or any other tours she’s worked, I feel lucky. I get the sense that she doesn’t let many people into her world.
Lyndsey sighs and shoves her phone back into the pocket of her shorts, “Once before, with Oli June. We played at a tiny festival outside of Charleston. It was a good show, but it was hot as balls. I’m talking about the sort of day where you resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to feel sweaty and gross all day. But I’m worried about this.”
She shows me the weather radar on her phone. We’re heading into a deep purple spot, the color of an eggplant, denoting a massive thunderstorm.
“Shit, when is that supposed to start?” I ask. We’re playing at an outdoor amphitheater with millions of dollars’ worth of gear and equipment that cannot get wet, not to mention the thousands of fans who have traveled to see us.
“At four, and they said it’ll maybe last an hour?”
“So, if we were supposed to go on at eight and we push it back an hour,” I start.
“You can go on at nine, but that’s if there’s no lightning.”
“Fuck!” I hiss.
Lyndsey nods. “I know. But I’ll figure it out; that’s my job.”
“Lyndsey, no amount of spreadsheets can grant you the power to control the weather.”
“And here I thought you believed in me,” Lyndsey jokes. The washing machine dings, and Lyndsey gets up, transferring her sopping wet clothes into the dryer.
“Neither of you needs to separate your laundry into colors and darks, do you? It’s your little goth corner!” Priya exclaims.
Lyndsey blushes. “Listen, I know what looks good on me.”
“And I’m allergic to color,” I add.
“Not true, you wore red yesterday!” Lyndsey replies.
“That was a fluke,” I mumble.
We load our mountains of clean laundry onto the bus and settle back into our seats. We’re not stopping until we get to Myrtle Beach. Lyndsey’s glued to her phone, her eyebrows scrunching as she jams her index finger onto the screen repeatedly.
