Page 56 of Caught in a Storm
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Inside, Billy is sitting in The Rocker while Alice jams out in a full rock-and-roll pose, leg up on the coffee table. She stops when she sees Margot, turns shy.
“You’re back,” says Billy. “Did you hear that? ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine.’ Alice just blew my eardrums out. I’m probably gonna have to go to the hospital after this and get them reattached.”
“Sounds really good, Alice,” says Margot.
“Oh,” says Alice, “thanks. I’m…you know, figuring it out.”
“You okay?” asks Billy, because Margot must look like she’s not as she stands at the door with a grocery bag dangling from her wrist and a knocked-out expression on her face.
“I’m just gonna put this down. I don’t wanna interrupt.”
Not counting the small bathroom, the apartment consists of two rooms. The kitchenette and main sitting area make up one. Margot steps into the bedroom and closes the door as Alice starts again from the top.
The bedroom is a mess, not because they’re slobs but because they’re two people in transition—the way hotel rooms always look like a bomb has just gone off. Margot’s overnight bag sits on her side of the bed, her new clothes stacked beside it. The floor is lined with Billy’s unpacked boxes. A cardigan hangs from the bedpost. She sits on Billy’s spinning desk chair and lets herself slowly rotate. An old box of Billy’s Rolling Stones sits at her feet.
The last time Margot spoke to Nikki, Margot said she never wanted to see her again. Ever. It was a week after the MTV Video Music Awards. Axl had arranged for the two of them to meet at Stage Dive, and Nikki stood next to a stupid fax machine like some beautiful, sad-looking deer, head hung, hands shoved into her pockets, belly-button ring twinkling. “So that’s…it? Like, it’s over? For real?”
As Alice’s guitar wails on the other side of the bedroom door, Margot starts sifting through the magazines, noting each cover. Stipe, Green Day, Springsteen, Britney. She stops when she sees Nikki, Anna, Jenny, and herself.
“The Flames Go Out.”
* * *
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Margot was more nervous than usual that night.
Big, multi-act shows were stress machines of logistics and strung-out crew members. Their third album, Incessant Noise, still felt new, so Margot had to think through every move. Anna would stay close so they could talk with their eyes and get through the performance together. Still, Margot was uncomfortable.
Axl wore an all-black suit. He kept calling out vaguely threatening words of encouragement backstage, like “The whole world is watching, girls!”
Lawson was there…somewhere. An odd concoction of famous people milled about, and models in tight dresses stood frowning in the corners of the room, looking hungry. Eminem walked by. Jenny bobbed her head to something on her headphones. Anna held a gin and tonic and a cigarette and stared down at the red bass in her lap. A young woman with a buzz cut wearing an MTV lanyard shouted, “Burnt Flowers to stage B in two minutes!” No one knew where Nikki was.
Margot did a breathing exercise to relax herself and played the intro on her thighs.
Lawson appeared first, entering from a dark hallway. Margot’s eyes found him, as they always did. And then she saw Nikki beside him. The room was a shitshow—people everywhere, pressed together. Margot could see, though, that Lawson and Nikki’s proximity to each other wasn’t an accident. She didn’t know where they’d been, but they’d been there together.
Time slowed as she observed more things. Lawson’s shirt wasn’t quite right, crooked. Nikki’s cheeks were flushed. Then, just before separating, Lawson’s and Nikki’s hands touched. Just a graze—pinky to pinky—followed by nearly imperceptible smiles.
Margot might have been able to explain these things away to herself. Any threads of doubt snapped, though, when she saw that Anna was looking at her. Anna had seen what Margot saw, and she’d seen Margot see it. Margot found out later that Anna knew. And then she found out that Jenny didn’t know—not technically—but suspected.
“Burnt Flowers, you’re up!” the buzz-cut girl shouted. Then she spoke into a headset. “Burnt Flowers is en route. Repeat, Burnt Flowers is en route.”
“Let’s go, bitches!” shouted Nikki.
Anna and Jenny fell into line behind their lead singer. Margot, though, froze. She thought of just leaving. She could bolt through the back door where the crew took their smoke breaks, and she could wander into pedestrian traffic in her rock-and-roll outfit. She would make it home, relieve the nanny, curl up beside Poppy, chain-lock the front door. Margot wishes now, of course, that she had. Everyone would’ve been screwed for a few chaotic minutes, but they’d have figured it out. The host, Chris Rock, would’ve done some jokes about musicians being assholes and thrown the broadcast to commercial. The pull to the stage was too strong, though, like a gravitational force. Drumsticks in hand, Margot walked.
“Hit ’em hard, love,” Lawson said somewhere behind her.
Anna looked back over her shoulder, her expression pleading, Let’s just get through this, okay? We can figure everything else out later.
Aside from glow-in-the-dark strips of tape, the stage was pitch black, so people wearing headsets escorted them to their marks. Margot sat on her stool. Her kit was on a raised platform, five feet above the rest of the band. Her earpiece went in, courtesy of a young man with a goatee. “You good?” he asked.
Margot somehow nodded that she was. Twenty-five yards away, Chris Rock was bathed in studio lights, reading from a prompter. The director’s voice spoke calmly in her right ear. “Greetings, Burnt Flowers. Fifteen seconds. Lights’ll go up when Rock cues you, then you’re on. Break a leg.”
Margot looked beyond her cymbals. Anna was to her left, Jenny to her right, waiting. Between them, center stage, stood Nikki. Crop top, jet-black eyeliner. She smiled at Margot. “Ready, rock star?” she mouthed.
