Page 20 of Caught in a Storm
“Can I tell you again that I’m sorry?” Billy shouts.
“Whatever!” Margot says. “It’s done!”
“My son is—”
“It’s done, man!”
Billy recoils, like she’s shoved him.
Shit, Margot thinks. He’s a nice guy, and she can see in his eyes that he likes her—that “crush from back in the day” thing. Of the four members of Burnt Flowers, Margot elicited the fewest crushes, she supposes, but she had her fair share, and they always looked at her like Billy’s looking at her now, like he’s hoping she doesn’t ruin everything by being different than he imagined.
Beth sets a new beer in front of Margot—a colorful label, not Natty Boh. “His royal highness, the Lord King of Baltimore, thinks this beer is more befitting of your station, Ms. Hammer!”
The second song is better, “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s. The lead guitarist has taken over the mic, and she’s very good. Gustavo is bobbing his head, enjoying the show. Billy is pretending to watch the band, but Margot can see that he’s glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, and she wonders if it’s so bad to be liked.
Poppy was back in New York for Christmas last year. They walked together through the holiday market at Columbus Circle and talked about men—specifically, the lack of men in Margot’s life.
“But I don’t like very many of them,” Margot told her daughter.
“Well, why would you?” her daughter asked. “Most are dreadful. I wanna push them into traffic, generally speaking. But, well, surely not all of them, though, right? And the occasional shag is okay, now and again.”
She looks at Billy’s cardigan. His jeans, sneakers. During all that ridiculous shit before at the record shop, he was nice to Margot—concerned for her, in a dopey way—and he was protective of his weirdly tall kid. She pokes his arm now. “Hey!”
Billy turns, and Margot tries to think of something nice to say. Maybe she’ll compliment his choice of Neil Diamond song or tell him that it’s cool that he didn’t turn out to be a murderer or sexual predator. But then the band abruptly finishes the Go-Go’s, and the girl who’s just been singing says something into the mic. It’s garbled, because acoustics in bars are shit, but she gets the gist, because now everyone is looking at Margot.
“At first I thought I was hallucinating up here,” the singer says. “But nope. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got an honest-to-God rock music goddess in the house right now!”
Margot doesn’t move. “Oh shit,” she whispers.
Beth claps while Gustavo yells, “Woot woot!” Beside Margot, Billy smiles. “You don’t think she’s talking about me, do you?”
The Horse You Came In On is smaller than it was a moment ago. Hotter, too.
The singer is looking at Margot, her hand over her chest. “I mean, it just seems like any other gig. You put on your sexy outfit, and you start playing, and then you look out there and you see Margot fucking Hammer.”
People cheer, and Margot knows what’s coming, like a musical inevitability. She looks quickly at the drummer. Her kit is basic but nice, cared for. Margot imagines the weight of the sticks in her hands, smooth against her palms. When she was a teenager, Margot used to bite her sticks. She’d sink her teeth into them hard, but not quite hard enough to make them splinter in her mouth.
“Can we get you to come up here and join us? Pretty please? Just one song…or maybe, like, ten songs? We can negotiate the details.”
“ ‘Power Pink’!” shouts Beth. “Mama feels like getting pregnant again!”
A big, joyous collective groan and more cheers. People start chanting Margot’s name, breaking it in two: Mar-got, Mar-got, Mar-got. Billy tips his fancy beer to the stage. “No, she’s definitely not talking about me.”
She’s off her barstool and walking before she even realizes it. As she weaves through people, she understands how much she wants this. Maybe she doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe she barely ever did. Fuck it. Right now, Margot really, really needs to hit something.
The drummer hands over her sticks. She’s so young up close—a kid in too much makeup pretending to be a rocker.
“Sorry about this,” Margot says.
“Sorry?” she says. “Ha! You’re saving me. I have no idea what I’m doing up here.”
When Margot sits, the rest of the band gathers at the front of the kit. The bass player is older, maybe late twenties. “If we don’t play ‘Power Pink,’ I think that bartender’s gonna burn the place down,” he says.
“Do you know it?” the female singer asks him.
“Close enough,” says the bassist.
“My dad used to play it,” says the dude who choked through the Killers song. “I can figure it out. Hi, Margot. I’m Tim, by the way.”
