Page 20 of Charm City Rocks
“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 MargotfuckingHammer.”
People cheer, and Margot knows what’s coming, like a musicalinevitability. 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.”
“Hey, Tim,” says Margot.
“Emma,” says the singer. “You’re awesome, by the way.”
“Dave,” says the bassist. “Ditto on the awesome thing. Welcome to Baltimore.”
No glam names yet—a bad sign, she thinks. “So, ‘Power Pink,’ huh? We giving ’em what they want?”
“Fuckin’ A we are,” Emma says, and she tells Tim that she’s taking lead, “obviously.” She goes to the mic, and Tim and Dave assume their positions to her right and left. Margot slides her boot into the kick drum. The light over her head makes the cymbals glow perfect and gold.
The bar has gone quiet, and Emma is looking at her, waiting. This is exactly what Nikki used to do.Ready, rock star?she’d mouthed before every Burnt Flowers performance ever, from those little clubs to cramped TV studios in skyscrapers to windy open-air festivals to jam-packed auditoriums across the country. Because everything started with Margot and her drums.
A strand of hair falls across her face, but she leaves it. Cellphones—dozens—rise up, the dots of their tiny lenses homed in on her. Margot relegates everything that isn’t the drum kit to a peripheral fog, and then she slams her sticks together four times.
“Five, six, seven, eight!”
Chapter12
“Goddamn. I mean, goddamn. Seriously. That was…that was…shit. I’m sorry. I don’t usually swear this much. But, Margot, holy shit. Could you hear yourself up there?”
