Page 47 of Caught in a Storm
“You know all that stuff about Billy meeting Margot Hammer a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
Aaron leans close to the glass. “She’s…um. I’m pretty sure she’s standing in our driveway.”
Chapter 29
Turns out Billy did say what Margot thought he said last night. He’s moving. Today. Right now, in fact. There’s nothing weird about that. People move. It’s where he’s moving that she still doesn’t fully understand.
They’re in his car, which is towing a small U-Haul trailer. His Mercedes reminds Margot so much of her mom and dad’s ancient Volvo station wagon that she feels like she’s traveled back in time as Billy weaves his way across the city through narrow, potholed streets. She thinks of her first drum kit sliding around in the back on their way home from the thrift store. Her mom let her hold the sticks, which she used to smack away at the back of the driver’s seat. Her dad smiled in the rearview mirror. “Don’t know if you know what you’re doing, Margie, but that sounds pretty good to me.”
The leather interior of Billy’s car—the Champagne Supernova—is faded, cracked in spots like an old couch. The floormats are as thick as carpet, and the whole vehicle smells like Billy. She noticed it when he opened the door for her earlier—a big whiff of him—and she’s annoyed with herself for letting it turn her brain to fog. Having sex this morning probably contributed to that, too.
Margot again imagines her daughter’s voice in her head. Last night and this morning? Shit, Mum. Get it.
They woke in their underwear. Billy put on some music and climbed back into bed beside her. He ran his fingertip up and down the drumstick tattoo on her left arm while he went on about the tricks to making the espresso machine work. Something about holding a lever and not putting in too much milk. She hardly listened because it felt so good to be touched like that, like the nerves on the surface of her skin were connected to every other nerve in her body. Eventually she pulled him on top of her.
“Oh, yeah, okay then,” he said.
They stop at a red light. Two teenage boys step into the intersection with squeegees. One sprays blue liquid on the windshield while the other wipes, smiling at Margot.
“Hey, guys,” says Billy through his open window. “Careful. It’s a classic.”
“We gotcha, man.”
He gives them a few dollars and they hustle off to the next car.
“So, where are we going again?” she asks. “Where does…she live?”
“A neighborhood called Roland Park. Not quite the burbs, but close. Nice place.”
No amount of Billy-scented European leather, no number of morning-time orgasms, could make her dimwitted enough to not find this strange. “So, she’s…your son’s mom?”
“Mm-hm. Robyn. You’ll like her. Wound a little tight, but she’s great.”
“And you’re moving in with her…above the…garage?”
“Not moving in,” he says. “Just staying awhile. It’s her and her husband’s place. You’ll like Aaron, too. He looks a little like the murderer in American Psycho, but super nice guy.”
“You’re all…friends?”
Billy steers around a pothole the size of a small bathtub and smiles—finally, it seems, picking up on the long pauses between key words. “Sounds weird, right?”
“Maybe a little.” Or maybe a fucking lot.
“I know. It’s not, though. It was Caleb’s idea. We’ve never lived together in his lifetime, Robyn and me. I think he just wants that for a little while, even if I’m on the other side of the driveway. But seriously, it’s nothing. Rob and I are friends—like, partners, like in Caleb, Incorporated. That’s all. It’s nothing.”
Margot looks through the windshield. One of the squeegee boys missed a spot—a single, anxiety-inducing line of blue liquid spreading in the breeze. He called her Rob, not Robyn, just now. She noticed that. She noticed, too, that he said “nothing” twice, and she imagines the utter back-assed absurdity of moving into one of Lawson’s pool houses.
Oh, hi, Margot, Willa Knight says, looking up from a downward goddamn dog while she does yoga in a bikini. You want a Vitaminwater? This is nothing, right? Nothing!
They drive along a highway called 83. They catch up to the moving truck that’s hauling the Steinway and follow it onto an exit. Then they move slowly through a tree-lined neighborhood with bike lanes and cozy-looking midsize homes. Billy was right when he said it wasn’t quite the suburbs. The houses sit close together, and the streets are lined with cars and bus shelters. There are Black Lives Matter signs and Orioles flags and bumper stickers with crabs on them, and joggers and dogwalkers.
“Just up here a bit,” he says.
Maybe Margot’s being unnecessarily dire. She does that sometimes. As they pass a coffee shop and a little market called Eddie’s, Poppy’s voice starts up again.
What? You’re worried about some boring lady in the sorta burbs? She probably wears mum jeans and crochets throw pillows with little inspirational messages on them. Stop it. You’re Margot fucking Hammer!
