Page 17 of Charm City Rocks
It feels like something being torn open, but Margot wills her eyes not to fill.
“Do you know if she’s still making music?” Rebecca asks.
“Is she what?” Axl sounds annoyed.
“She had instruments. Her place, it was like a little studio.”
“It doesn’t matter, Rebecca,” says Axl. “Margotdoesn’t matter. She hasn’t for years. The most interesting thing about her is that she managed to get knocked up by a movie star. End of story.”
Margot holds the cheap hotel wineglass, unable to get a full breath.
Axl brought her flowers when the band officially broke up. He showed up at her apartment door with a big bouquet and a bottle of wine. Lawson had moved out and the apartment felt big and empty. He told her how talented she was. He told her that he still believed in her, even if she didn’t believe in herself. But no, Margot isn’t going to cry. Not for this fucker.
—
“Whoa there, you okay, miss?”
The bellhop is a tall, slightly stooped man with gray tufts of hair above his ears.
“I’m looking for a bar,” she says.
He laughs, like,Aren’t we all?“Well, you’re in luck, miss. There’s a whole city full of them out there.”
“No, a specific one.” She stands in her unlaced boots trying to remember details of the bar she saw earlier. She looks back at the hotel entrance. She’s never run away before, and she imagines Rebecca coming after her, fists clenched. “I don’t know,” she says. “It hadhorsein the name, I think.”
“Okay. Could be a couple different ones. You know which neighborhood?”
She remembers Billy rattling things off. “Fells something,” she says. “Fells Point?”
The bellhop smiles and whistles at an approaching cab. “Lookat us, coupla masters of communication, you and me.” A yellow car squeaks to a stop at the curb. He opens the door and gives Margot a little wink. “Take this young lady to the Horse You Came In On,” he says. “And make it quick. Looks like she could use a drink.”
Chapter10
Billy is at the Steinway back in his apartment trying to figure out how to play “Power Pink” on the piano. It isn’t an obvious song for keys, what with all the power chords and rage-drumming, but in his experience you can play anything on the piano if you sit with it long enough, because the piano is the greatest instrument ever made.
Lately, his go-to song to teach his beginners has been “She’s a Rainbow” by the Rolling Stones, because Billy always gets a kick out of hearing kids slowly work through those perfect opening notes. Maybe it’s time to change it up, though, switch to something more raucous.
Saturdays are the only days Billy doesn’t have lessons. His weekdays are full, Sundays half full. No one has been more surprised by the success of Beats by Billy than Billy himself. It started on a whim after he and Robyn broke up—a way of filling the time—and it took off from there. His accidental career.
Billy’s grandma taught him to play. She was a long-fingered natural, but a classicist, so she insisted Billy learn by playing the oldest, deadest, malest artists in the history of music. When he started Beats by Billy, he hung signs downstairs at Charm CityRocks and in coffee shops and bus shelters around the neighborhood. He included his tagline and general philosophy: “Because Music Should Be Fun.”He let his students play what they wanted to play—whateverthey wanted to play—and it somehow worked. People liked it. They liked him.
When his grandma passed away ten years ago, she left him a modest sum of money. She labeled it “Billy’s Steinway Fund” in her will. It wasn’t quite enough, so Billy made up the rest by selling his old Yamaha piano and digging into his savings. The first song he played on the Steinway was “Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C Major” by Bach, in his grandma’s honor. The delivery guys hadn’t left yet, so they stood and listened, still sweating from hauling the gorgeous monster up the narrow metal staircase that ran around the side of Charm City Rocks to his door.
“Wow, man, you’re really good.”
“Thanks.”
He stares down now at the bass staff on his sheet music while his left hand struggles to produce something that sounds like rock and roll. Like most Burnt Flowers songs, “Power Pink” starts with drums. He’s been at it for nearly two hours, and his head is starting to hurt. This is work, technically, but what Billy’s really doing is thinking about Margot Hammer.
Is it possible to miss someone you only knew for five minutes? He figures yes, especially if you’ve also known that person for twenty years.
“Hey, Billy! Billy! Wherefore art thou, Billy?”
He goes to the window and finds Gustavo standing on the sidewalk.
“Hey, sexy,” his friend says. “What’re you playing? I don’t recognize it.”
“Oh, nothing,” Billy says. “Just working on some lesson plans.”
