He calls me. It’s three in the afternoon, and he hasn’t had anything to eat. He is staying in a shanty, he says, a tiny wooden shack with gaps where the wind can pass through. He’s stranded at the record label complex, a quasi-hippie commune outside Santa Fe. “I wanted to go into town, to the plaza,” he says, “but they took the van hours ago and haven’t come back.”

I drive seven hours and take a ferry to where they are playing: a tiny restaurant called “the upstage” in a town that is all upstage. They are all wearing hats, and when I arrive, he leans over the railing to kiss me in between songs. The baby, who belongs to the fiddle player and the mandolin player, coos from his grandmother’s lap. I am here because it is a place I can drive to and because they have four days off after this gig. We will stay at the hostel near the bluffs and the ocean and then we’ll drive to Seattle, where we’ll stay in a B and B. Of course, I’ll be paying for it. At the end of the gig, gourmet pizzas arrive – fresh and bubbling. He wolfs his down with a glass of beer. This is normal: dinner at one a.m. Then we are all splitting up because we have a room, and everyone else plans to camp even though it is late fall, the middle of the night, and freezing.

The next morning, we walk to the farmer’s market for coffee and scones. The band was planning on busking, but there is already another band playing reggae. They can’t even play for free right. I eye some handmade gold rings, and the cellist and his girlfriend sit on the grass and eat bread and cheese and drink hot chai. I persuade him to walk to the yarn and candle shop. The owner comments on his beautiful handknitted mittens. I blush a little. We have three days, and I am thrilled because we see each other once a month, and I always miss him. It was my birthday the week before. He buys me some fancy, tasteful lingerie I know he can’t afford.

I call him and he answers. It’s Halloween. They are back in Santa Fe. Between their sets, a couple who met at a show years back has decided to get married. The band is dressed in circus costumes. His costume is a human cannon ball. The fiddle player is the lion tamer; the cellist is the fire-breather; the mandolin player is the bearded transsexual. “I have to go,” he says, “they’re about to start the ceremony.”
There’s always some emergency. “Okay. Call me later,” I say.

I have shooed my students out of class so I can drive to the airport so I can fly to Salt Lake City, where I am now, but I am in the baggage claim area, and nobody is here to pick me up. When I ask the information desk how much a cab will cost to get to the bar where they are playing, they shake their heads and say, “It’s way out there. Fifty dollars? Maybe more.” Then he calls and says I will be waiting a long time if I want to be picked up. He’ll split the cab ride with me. The driver is wearing a lot of cologne. He doesn’t know where the address is, and his English is limited, but he points to a machine on his dashboard and says, “G.P.S.” “Approaching Cottonwood Road,” the G.P.S. machine announces. “Turn right on Cottonwood Road.”

We arrive at the bar, and the bouncer cards me. I have a suitcase. I look much older than the 21 and 22-year-old drunk people coming out of the bar. They are finished playing, and it is Utah, so last call has already happened. He kisses me. “I’m glad you’re here.” “So am I,” I say, and I am, until I have to babysit. For the rest of the trip, I will be the babysitter, because there is no one else. We drive to a Motel 6 and spend the night.

We drive to St. George, Utah, to a coffee shop where they are supposed to play their next show, and the place is empty. I hold the baby in the next room, and it sleeps through the set—a short set they play even though there’s no audience. We spend the night in an office space owned by the owner of the coffee shop. My boyfriend and I sleep in sleeping bags on a pile of foam in a room with no windows. The owner feels bad about the attendance and gives us breakfast though he gave us dinner the night before. I contemplate whether they can actually live on the meager money they’re being paid. My boyfriend and I go on a walk with the mandolin player and fiddler’s dog. It’s warm out, and the palm trees and red earth contrast with the dreary northwest where I’ve come from. I buy a lime slushie at Sonic. I never know when we’ll eat or drink again.

We head to Cedar City, Utah, to another coffee shop. They are friendly and take us to dinner at a New Orleans-themed restaurant before the show. The baby won’t fall asleep. Instead, he cries and cries. For two hours. I begin to regret the favor, but it wasn’t really a favor. It was just that there was no one else to take care of him. He doesn’t drink from bottles, and his crib is next to the downstairs beer-drinking room. Finally, at the beginning of the second set, he cries himself to sleep.

The venue has paid for a hotel room for us, but when we arrive, we are disappointed. It is three in the morning, and it is a room with one king bed. We try to change rooms, but that will cost money that nobody has or wants to spend. Finally, they decide the couple, the baby, and the cellist will sleep on the floor, and we can have the bed. I am beyond caring that this is a group slumber party. I’m trying to not make waves. I could make so many.

We drive to a resort owned by a couple who likes to make videotapes of live concerts, no matter how obscure the band. We soak in the hot springs, eat vegetable soup that tastes like the earth, and then watch the show. I take care of the baby again. It goes to sleep but wakes up every time I try to put it down on a bed. At the end of the show, the mandolin player says he got confused about when their plane was leaving Reno to visit family for Thanksgiving. We will have to drive through the night. I take a sleeping pill so I can stay sane. When we wake up, we are in Nevada, where the band lives. I make my first visit to the band house, where he has been crashing since he joined in August. The house is filthy, and I see the lonely twin mattress against the glass sliding door, where he has been sleeping.

The couple is gone for Thanksgiving, and he is playing a show with the cellist and another fiddle player. We drive to the hotel and unload the gear. I order a glass of cabernet and some of the cheap appetizers. The rest of the people in the lobby are well dressed. Their young children wear fur-trimmed coats and small, expensive boots. One group has just gone ice skating. Another has just returned from Christmas shopping. I finish my glass of wine. The cellist’s girlfriend sits on the floor by the band and eats food from another restaurant. She doesn’t care if anyone sees her. She hates the people in the audience. I drink another glass of wine. I’m starting to hate them too. I order tater tots, a mini roast beef sandwich, and marinated olives. I stay longer than any of the groups. The crowd rotates entirely by the time I move from the small table where I have been sitting to the couch next to the fire. The lobby is empty by the time we start carrying gear out to the car. But he goes back inside. I wait in the car. He needs to get paid.

My plane to Reno is delayed. I’ve driven through a snow storm, passed cars in ditches and cars stopped on the side of the road. I’ve just turned in my grades. I’m a free woman, and all that stands between me and him is an enormous snow storm. I park in a three foot drift and take the shuttle to the terminal, which is packed with anxious travelers.

I wait six hours before boarding the plane. Then, when my arrival time has been pushed back to 7 p.m., he says he can’t come get me. He has to be at the gig at seven. I call my parents’ friends, and they agree to pick me up and let me spend the night at their house.
When he arrives at one the next afternoon, he says he’s had an offer of a gig he can’t refuse. We haven’t seen each other in three weeks, but he drops me off at a coffee shop so he can go to rehearsal with some semi-famous musicians he only kind of knows so that he can learn ten new songs. I spend four hours revising my novel before I put my laptop in the car and go inside. I bring him dinner. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m on the guest list. I can’t help it.

He’s in New York City. He’s staying at the mandolin player’s mom’s house. He has left the annual ski vacation with my family to attend a conference with the band and play in the city. He’s found a four-dollar buffet in Chinatown. Pizza is cheap too, he says.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Looking at Julia Roberts’ apartment. She lives next door.” I think of how it’s their parents, not them, who can afford to live next to a movie star. I think of how far they are from fame.

He calls me. He is near Washington D.C. His grandmother has died, and he needs to find a plane ticket to Dayton, Ohio. He asks me to go on google maps. “Can you find where I am?” he asks.
“Do you know a nearby town?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I’m somewhere on the Chesapeake.”
“I can find a map of the Chesapeake,”I say, “but if you don’t know the closest town, there’s no way I can tell where you are.” I know they bought groceries earlier. “What’s the town where you bought groceries?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says.
I don’t understand how someone can have no clue where he is. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re “on tour.” It warps your brain. I wouldn’t know since I’ve never had a desire to go on tour for more than a few days. The next day, he decides the closest city is Richmond, and he buys a plane ticket.

He is in another part of Virginia, in one of the four houses that the mandolin player’s parents own. This one is called “the farmhouse.” At this one, he can’t get cell reception and has to run to the top of a nearby hill to call me. Also, the water is turned off, and they have to poop in the woods, another reason to go to the top of the hill.

He is still in Virginia, at another one of the four houses. “All the houses here are like 200 years old,” he says. “I went into the general store, and there was a woman making yarn on a spinning wheel. I thought of you.” Later, he’ll bring me yarn the old woman spun.

He calls me on a walk. The wind is so loud that I can barely hear him. He’s in the graveyard. A tree has fallen down. The dates on the tombstones are from the 1700s and 1800s. He says he sees a tombstone with John Brown’s name on it. “I wonder if it’s the John Brown. It could be. That would be cool.”

They are back at the farmhouse. There’s a problem. The cello player has announced he’s getting married. The cello player was supposed to drive him back to Nevada. Now he’s not going to Nevada. He’s going to Michigan to start planning the festivities. The rest of the band is going to Santa Fe to the record label complex. My boyfriend’s ticket is from Nevada, and he has 48 hours to get there from the last gig in Memphis.

I don’t know what I will do if he doesn’t make it here when he said he would, at the end of the month. It’s been six weeks since I’ve seen him, and I feel like I’m going crazy with missing him, with loneliness, with desperation. “Maybe you can take the bus,” I say, frantically checking schedules and fares.

“I’ll figure something out,” he says, sounding confident, but I don’t feel confident. I don’t want to leave it to chance. He has to get here. He has to arrive. There must be a new plan.

They drive to Ashville, North Carolina. They have Japanese dinner with his cousin.

They drive to Nashville, Tennessee. He calls me from a bar where he’s watching The Three Amigos.

They drive to Memphis, where the band is playing as part of the folk alliance conference.

The cello player agrees to drive him as far as St. Louis. “Then I’ll take the bus,” he says. “It’s twenty five hours and around a hundred bucks.”
“Will you make it in time?” I ask, anxious.
“I think so,” he says, but I am not convinced. I ha

ve cleared my week for when he will be here. I have grading and social events stacked up on either side, but that week, I have nothing, nothing but him. He has to make it.

Finally, he calls and says he has a ride. Another Nevada band has room in their van if he can drive a leg of the trip.

Two nights later, he lets himself in as I’m sleeping upstairs. For a moment, I’m in shock to hear his voice so close, and not through the telephone. He climbs into bed with me, and I pretend this is how it will always be.

He’s working at a jazz festival during the week he’s here. At one of the concerts, we go backstage. His music friends are there; some of them are having their pictures taken. We sit at tables covered with white tablecloths and watch the stage on a huge screen. I look up, and Gretchen what’s her name is singing. He’s talking to his music friends, but this was supposed to be our date. I want him all to myself. I look back at the screen. I want to say I need to leave, but I can’t. Instead, a knot gathers at the back of my throat, and I know tears are on their way.

I get up like I am leaving, but then the singing is over. He is still socializing, making plans for when he’ll see his music friends again. Tears stream down my face, and I try to get away, not show them how sticky and snotty I am, how much I hate it when he talks to them. Then he is coming up behind me, his arm around me, but I am on a mission to the door. I am crammed into the hallway with every high schooler in the Pacific Northwest, moving in a slow mass out to the parking lot. They are laughing and joking, probably up past curfew. It must be midnight. He’s right next to me, his arm warm on my shoulder. He was only being social. We pass the bus drivers waiting in their buses. We find the car. I am sobbing. I can’t say anything. He’s finally here, and I can’t even look at him.