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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Finland, a country of vowels and gold-and-turquoise-capped buildings. Remy had expected far more snow on the ground and was almost disappointed to see just a scattering of the stuff across the streets. The lingering Floridian in him longed to see big mounds of snow, kids making snowmen, reindeer nosing through holly bushes, polar bears, and ice-skating.
“Have you been here before?” he asked Vivi, looking out her hotel window. They were mending their argument slowly, carefully, each word a stitch pulling tight between them. Working on “Maybe It’s Me” was doubly helpful—like working on that song shored up the foundation songwriting had laid for them back on the bus out of Portland.
“A few times,” Vivi said, lifting her guitar, warm compared to the cool Finland skyline, off her lap. She walked up beside him, arms folded, then tilted her head to lay it against his shoulder, sighing gently when he reached for one of her hands and wound his fingers with hers. “So I was thinking that maybe we could go to one of the saunas tonight? After the show?” she said.
Remy turned, almost causing her to fall off-balance. “A sauna?”
“It’s like their thing, here. The press isn’t bad at all, and it’s a super private sauna. Is that okay?” Vivi asked, looking apologetic, like she was nervous. “We can just go for a walk if you’d rather, but it’ll be cold—”
“Of course that’s okay,” Remy said. “That’s fantastic. I mean, I have no idea what one does in a super private sauna, but still.”
“I think you more or less sweat and pretend to be Scandinavian,” Vivi said, smiling and taking his other hand in hers. “But I’ve heard it’s fun, and I’ve never gone to one before. I’ve never had anyone to go with before. I’m excited.”
“I am too,” Remy said, and smiled at her, then leaned in to kiss between her eyes gently. She turned and went back to the guitar, strumming through the first chords of a song Remy didn’t know.
“Is that something new?” he asked.
“Just something I’m playing around with,” she said with a shrug before opening her notebook and making a few lines with her pencil. “Nothing serious.”
“You’re just trying to keep me from asking to hear it,” Remy said in half play.
Vivi smiled at him. “Maybe it’s about you.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of,” Remy said, and this time, despite the smile on his face, he wasn’t playing at all.
The Helsinki show was tiny, compared to the rest of the tour—a twelve-thousand-person arena, when they’d been playing ones four or five times that big. Vivi did the show as big and powerfully and confidently as she ever had; the band, jittery from cup after cup of Finnish coffee, played along to a recorded version of the second guitar parts that Parish used to play. Remy didn’t realize how accustomed he’d become to looking at Parish during certain points in the show. Despite the fact Vivi had set him up nicely as penance, Remy still found he missed the guy, bro-factor and all. Parish’s firing meant the rest of Bus Three was on high alert, eager to prove they were doing everything right, that nothing was wrong, that they were models of the Vivi Swan Morality Clause. It made it easier—much easier—for Remy to slip away after the show for his and Vivi’s sauna date, because everyone more or less went straight to bed, hoping to get eight hours before the flight to Asia the following afternoon.
He knocked on Vivi’s hotel room door; when she didn’t answer, he knocked louder then louder still, until he finally lifted his phone to send her a curious text.
Remy Young: Are you in your room
Vivi Swan: already in the sauna. Come on. You’re slow. Leave your phone.
Remy frowned, dropped his phone in his room, then went down to the lobby. He made his way through a series of doors, struggled to explain himself to a series of Finnish people with rocky English, and finally found himself at an enormous sapphire-blue door guarded by a small woman with ice-blond hair.
“Hi, I’m meeting a friend,” he said.
“Miss Swan? Are you Mr. Young?” she asked. He nodded. “Excellent. She requested no additional services, but please let us know if you would be interested in seeing our menu.”
Remy had no idea what this meant, but he accepted a white towel and fluffy bathrobe from the woman. He was let into a large locker room, which was immaculate and smelled like tea tree oil. Remy slid into the robe, tied it tightly, then opened the door to the sauna itself, a place of hissing and herbs and air so full of steam, it nearly felt like he was drowning.
“Vivi?” he called out. The sauna room wasn’t big, perhaps the size of a large family room back in Florida—but it was layered with mist and steam, making it impossible to see much. He could, however, make out two large dipping pools, teak benches, and what looked like smooth slabs of rock.
“Finally,” he heard her say. She sat up—just enough that the top of her head poked through the mist above one of the rock slabs.
“Finally?” he said, making his way to her. He sidestepped one of the pools and shuddered when he could feel just how icy the water was even from a few feet away.
“I’m being impatient, that’s all,” she said. “Also, apparently Finnish people do this every day. So they’ve clearly figured out the secret to life.”
“Oh, yeah?” Remy said, approaching the slab. Vivi’s hair was slicked across her head, and he was fairly certain her face was free of makeup—though her cheeks and lips were so bright, bright pink from the heat that it looked like they’d been stained by her cherry-red lipstick.
“Yep,” she said and then sat up a bit farther, enough that Remy saw—not to his surprise, exactly, but to his pleasure—she was naked. Her skin was shimmering with moisture, and the angle she was at made her torso curve in not the most flattering but in the mosthumanway he’d ever seen. He smiled.
“The idea is you take the robe off, you know,” she said with a clever smile.
“See, if you’d waited for me, I’d already know that,” Remy said, but he untied his robe and let it fall to the floor. She reached for his hand and pulled him toward the slab, which, now that he was next to it, he read on a placard was made of crystal, “for healing.” She curled against the side of his body, letting one leg drape over his thigh, and he felt the tension in his eyes, his temples, his jaw, fall away.Healing, indeed.
