Page 10 of Again, In Autumn

I wonder what she knows about the first five seconds of the song just played. Does she know what I know? Because I only know the first five seconds.

I don’t listen to folksy, ruggedly handsome singer-songwriters anymore.

Slowly, drama dripping from every word, she gasps, “The. Universe. Has. Spoken.”

Jazz hands.

My stomach clenches painfully. Holding the key in my right hand, I flip my other palm and plant my face in it, leaning into the counter.

“That song is everywhere,” I grumble. “What kind of marketing does he have?!”

She goes on, “We were just talking about him!”

“No!” I snap my head up. “We were not talking about him. No one said his name or mentioned him at all.”

“I did in my brain,” she admits, leaning one on hip, her bangle-laden wrist bending into the other. “I bet you did too. And the universe is listening. It’s a sign, Vienna!”

“Of what?” I throw my hands out to her.

“Of going back to the lake house and confronting your past!” She claps her hands together.

“Ew.” I pretend to gag. “I’ll tell you what it is: it’s a sign that he’s a famous and successful musician now and people can’t stop listening to his music and playing it everywhere. He was the SNL musical guest last month. Did you know that? He makes millions of dollars writing and playing music, and I leave work every day covered in dry erase marker.”

“Vee.” Heddy softens. Her eyes alight with surprise. “What does one have to do with the other?”

“Nothing.” I glance away. “You’re the one who brought him up.”

“You can’t even say his name,” she notices, waving to a customer who just walked out of the door.

I reply, “No, I can’t. Because for years he’s just been him.”

I notice Zander’s head turning, listening.

Heddy waves a hand and steps out from behind the desk. “Come with me, baby, we’ve got a woman’s group coming in tonight, and I need to get the meditation room ready. Keep talking.”

I follow her into the room where she reads Tarot and channels messages for people and holds community moon circles. It’s beige and dimly lit, softly wrapped in hanging white curtains. Flat, round cushions are stacked in a heap.

Heddy picks one up by the handle and brushes it off. “Now you can say his name all you want. Adam Kent,” she sings into the rafters. “Adam Kent!”

“Stop it!” I shush her. “Not here in your magic room, you’re going to summon him.”

She chuckles to herself, dropping the cushion against the wall.

“Please don’t burn that,” I say, glancing at a bowl of bundled sage on a side table. “It’s bad for air quality.”

“You’re changing the subject,” she says, collecting two more cushions.

I pout, staring at my fingernails.

She stops moving, fiddling with the pendant around her neck, and asks, “Is this about Adam Kent or is this about your job? I’m guessing you don’t have dry erase boards at home, unless you’ve made a new decorating choice.”

I lean my back against the wall and exhale. “Both, I think.”

“Tell me.” Heddy looks at the Cartier watch on her arm. “I’ve got to pick up Billy from Jui Jitsu in thirty minutes. I’ve got time.”

I laugh softly, thinking of her 70-year-old boyfriend, a former CEO of a water supply company, in his beginner class with ten-year-olds, waiting on his hippy trippy girlfriend to drive up in a Range Rover.

“Just thinking about being in the lake house again makes me think of Adam,” I admit. I drop to a cushion. My legs shuffle to different positions, trying to get comfortable on this short, fabric-covered stump.

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