“Don’t they have a bassist too?”
“They do, I think they’re on leave. So they asked me to fill in.”
She nods.
"And your band? The Belladonnas?"
"You know who I am?"
"I saw you on stage right after you ruined my...never mind.” She shrugged. “You're not low-profile, you know."
"Oh,” I feel my face warm. “Yeah. That's also why I wear the mask."
"What’s that like? Being famous?"
"I’m not famous. But we're recognizable enough that people look twice in airports and I'd rather they didn't." I shrug. "I just want to be left alone sometimes."
“So what’s it actually like,” she says, folding onto the floor by the couch with her own mug, “running a band?”
“I don’t run it. I hold it.” The distinction matters and I don’t know why I’m handing it to a stranger. “Jo writes, Jo fronts, Jo decides. I book the studios, field the label, make sure everyone’s where they’re supposed to be. Three months ago Jo would’ve stayed till midnight arguing about a bridge. Now she leaves at nine to go home to her girlfriend, and the rest of it lands on me.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is. But I’m good at it. I like handling things.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t lonely.”
I don’t have an answer for that, so I drink my tea.
She has work in the morning—she’s an accountant, it turns out, at a firm she describes with the enthusiasm of a woman reading a hostage statement—so she leaves me the couch, the remote, and a pot of soup with instructions. I sleep most of the day. When she comes home at four, work clothes rumpled and hair falling out of its clip, she drops her bag by the door and says, “Okay. I need to hear the rest of it. The band. All of it,” like she’s been thinking about me between spreadsheets.
So I tell her the rest, and she tells me about her day, and somewhere in there the afternoon goes soft and easy in a way my afternoons never are.
"It is. But it's also—I'm good at it. I like handling things."
"That doesn't mean it's not lonely."
She checks my temperature with the back of her hand against my forehead. Her fingers are cool and certain. When she passes me a mug of tea, her thumb overlaps mine for a half-second that she doesn’t withdraw.
I don't either.
Her name is Lena. She's an accountant. She hates her job and loves her friends and has a fan account for the Sirens' drummer that she's embarrassed about. She eats dinner at seven thirty every night. She has a blanket on her couch that smells nice, worn soft at the edges.
She tells me about the fan account. How she started it as a joke. A single post about Riley Puth's hi-hat technique written at two in the morning after a show. How it became the coolest thing in her life. How it went viral over night and now she has over fourteen thousand followers.
"I’m really impressed. I remember it took us a while to get to fourteen thousand on the Belladonna’s account"
"Really? I feel like a creepy stalker."
"Not at all. You're in love with her ability to play her instrument. That's pure."
She smiles and shrugs.
———————
I pack my bag. I call the studio to push my arrival by a day, and they don't argue. She walks me to the door.
"Thank you," I say, and I mean it in a way that surprises me. "For the couch, the soup. And not letting me die in an airport."
