Page 82 of Top Shelf

The typing bubble disappears, then returns before it’s gone again. I want to keep talking to her, but I don’t know what more to say. This morning, before I left, Heidi spent fifteen minutes searching for a blue notebook she keeps her studio contractor and builder notes in.

This involved opening three other notebooks, accusing me of tidying it away somewhere, finding two pens she had already replaced, and eventually deciding she had put the blue one somewhere “extremely sensible”, but she had not remembered where.

Me: Did you find the blue notebook?

Heidi: Jesus Christ.

Me: Is that a no?

Heidi: We were having a nice moment, Karlsson.

Me: We can have both a nice moment and a notebook revelation

Heidi: It was in the drawer beside the printer.

Me: You said you checked there.

Heidi: Yes, I checked the drawer. It was under the spare printer paper, which means it was basically camoflage.

Me: It is white paper in a white drawer.

Heidi: EXACTLY. You are distressingly invested in my notebook ecosystem.

Me: You have seven.

Heidi: Only five are active notebooks.

Me: So you got the contractor’s number?

Heidi: Yeah. I did

I smile at the screen. Five active notebooks sounds ridiculous until you live with Heidi long enough to understand that each one has a purpose. Studio. Moreno. Personal. Things she needs to remember now and things she is afraid she will forget later. There are lists inside lists, reminders on her phone, pens in almost every bag she owns, and still occasionally something important disappears beneath a stack of printer paper.

She works harder at being organized than anyone I know, but I think that is the part people miss. They see the notebook she cannot find or the three alarms she sets for an appointment. I see how much thought goes into keeping everything moving, and how many small systems she has built around herself so she can do all the things she expects of herself.

I do not think any of it makes her difficult. Mostly, I think she has too many things worth remembering because her brain rarely gives her only one good idea at a time. She can watch an athlete move and see three different ways to help them, and she can walk through an empty studio already thinking about equipment and programming, and the person who might need something nobody else remembered to plan for.

Half the time she interrupts herself because another thought has arrived before she has finished explaining the first, and the impressive part is that most of those thoughts are good, too.

Of course she needs five notebooks. I would probably need ten if my mind moved as fast as hers.

By the time we get back to the hotel, there is barely enough time to shower, repack, and head for the airport. I sleep badly on the red-eye, folded into a seat built for someone several inches shorter than me. I text Heidi after we disembark, more from habit than expectation.

Me: Landed.

Her reply comes while I am waiting for my bag.

Heidi: Good. Drive safe.

I assume that is all. She has Moreno at eight-thirty, and studio access after lunch, and a list she keeps on the kitchen counter long enough to require her own admin person. Her schedule has become a battlefield, so by the time I reach the apartment, she should be gone.

She is not.

I open the door to the smell of coffee and find her in the kitchen, dressed for work in black leggings and a bright crop top. Her hair is twisted up in a way that draws my eyes straight to the slope of her throat, and her laptop bag is already waiting by her feet.

She is bent over the counter with a notebook open, crowded with color-coded boxes and arrows.

Moreno 8:30–1. Studio handover. Flooring final. Insurance docs. Reformer supplier call. Zoe launch copy. Sloane referral for admin. Ask Halbrook about access codes.