Page 115 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Once in the studio, I busied myself with all the administrative tasks that needed doing before students arrived. I opened the door to the Walnut Room, pulled up the blinds on the street-facing windows to let in the sun, and replaced the empty water cooler jug. It was heavier than I expected, but I eased its transfer onto the cooler with the barest hint of a magical breeze to nudge it along.

All that was left was a quick sweep of the area by the front door. It got dirty very quickly, and Robert often forgot to take care of it before leaving at the end the night.

Inside the broom closet, I saw a stray sheet of lined paper on the shelf with the cleaning solution. I picked it up, intending to throw it away—but when I looked at it more closely…

After all that time studying his marked-up road map, I’d have recognized Peter’s neat, crisp writing anywhere.

CLEANING: NIGHTLY SCHEDULE

Sweep & mop floors (toothbrush for grout)

Take out trash (trash bags are in broom closet; trash day is Wednesday)

Wax floors in Walnut & Magnolia & Sweetgum rooms on alternating weeks

Dust furniture

(Reminder: ask Z whether I might play different music while cleaning than what is programmed in their system. Current music is either terminally relaxing or relentlessly upbeat. Both are stressful.)

A wistful smile crept across my face. Only Peter would find Enya, Florence & the Machine, and the acoustic sitar music we played in most of our classesstressful.

As I swept the floor—badly; I’d never been good at cleaningwithout magic—I thought of how scrupulously clean Peter had kept our studio when he’d worked for us. How eager he’d been to have something to do, even if it had been janitorial work we hadn’t paid him for.

Where was he? What was he doing now?

I didn’t want to think about it. Thinking about it would lead me to make bad decisions, like initiating another text conversation with him. Or even worse—calling him.

It would also force me to admit how much I missed him.

When I walked out ofmy ten a.m. Yoga for Beginners class the following morning, Lindsay and Becky were putting up goat-shaped window clings of varying sizes on the studio’s street-facing windows.

The big event was now only two weeks away. To my continued bewilderment, people seemed legitimately excited for it. Local media kept calling to get sound bites for the community newspaper and social media. While this attention was likely due to a complete lack ofactualnewsworthy events going on in our community, handling press calls was still taking up a weirdly large amount of our time.

I usually loved the slow, easy pace of life in Redwoodsville, but there were times I missed urban living. This was one of those times. New York City, for example, would not be losing its collective mind over a yoga studio having a goat day.

“Why are you putting those up?” I asked, bemused. “Aren’t tickets already sold out?”

“Yep!” Lindsay said, eyes on her work. She was applying a robust-looking female goat to our largest front window with surgical precision.