Page 41 of Charm City Rocks
“Hey, man,” says Billy. “How are you?”
“Good. But I don’t remember requesting no Madonna.”
“Hold up a sec.” Billy guides Margot back to the piano bench. “You don’t know any Stevie Wonder, do you?”
“Not off the top of my head. Do you know that guy? Do people just yell at you from the street?”
“Sometimes, yeah. Here, you can help me.” He finds his iPad under some books. “I have to cheat on this one. I didn’t practice.” He searches his sheet music app and sets “Superstition” on the stand between them. “You play these,” he says, pointing. “I’ll play these. Ready?”
Billy starts, then Margot comes in after him. “Goddamn right!” he hears from outside. The dog barks a few times. “That’s what I’m talking about, Piano Man!”
Billy returns to the window. “What do you think?”
“I think I’ll take that over some old white lady any day. I’ll swing by next week with some more requests. Maybe Jay-Z. Need some hip-hop in this neighborhood.”
When the man and his dog are gone, Billy lets his eyes linger on his view of Fells Point. By next week he’ll be gone, of course. As far as goodbyes go, however, this isn’t so bad, because Margot is there at the Steinway. She pushes her sleeves up over her elbows and looks at the keys like she’s trying to decide what to play.
“I know I said it before, but you really do look great in that hat.”
She touches the bill. “It’s kind of itchy, but I like that it’s like I’m hiding.”
He sits again and takes the cap off her head, sets it on the Steinway. “Why would you want to hide, though?”
She doesn’t respond, but he gets it. The world hasn’t seen her in a long time, and that’s probably not an accident. There’s a red line across her forehead from the cap rubbing against her skin, and he kisses her there. The small overnight bag she brought sits by the door next to their shoes, and he’s not sure what to make of it.
“You like the Stones, huh?” she says.
“Well yeah,” he says. “Who doesn’t?”
“ ‘She’s a Rainbow’ is pretty good,” she says. “I like this one, too.”
Billy sometimes does a warm-up exercise during lessons. He and a student will take turns playing for each other, and they’ll see how many notes it takes to name the song. Despite having a good ear, it sometimes takes Billy a while. Songs out of context with no lyrics, even great ones, have an elusive quality, like seeing someone you know in a crowd and not quite remembering their name. That’s not the case now, though. He recognizes “Let’s Spend the Night Together” right away. “Yeah,” he says. “A classic.”
She doesn’t play the whole thing, just the intro. She plays it again.
“People always want you to pick, right?” he says. “Beatles or Stones. Can’t we just all agree that they both changed the world? Why do we have to—”
Margot starts the song again, louder this time, cutting him off. She’s not looking at the keys now; she’s looking at him.
“Oh,” he says.
Chapter26
Margot can’t believe she did that, the Stones thing.
She can practically hear Poppy in her head.Who, even, are you, Margot Hammer?
She blames the kiss cam. You wouldn’t think kissing someone in front of thousands of people on a jumbotron would feel intimate, but it did.
The anatomy of a kiss: two people lean in, mouths touch, eyes close, lips part just barely. All those things happened, like always. Other things happened, too, though, like a joyful feeling in Margot’s chest, like that sensation right before you laugh. She reached for his hand and found it near his lap just as his other hand took her by the chin. Based on the kisses before theirs on the screen, Margot supposes it was just meant to be a peck. Their kiss, though, lasted, like neither was quite ready for it to end.
People kept cheering even after the game started again. Margot—flushed still, heart racing—thought,I’m going to sleep with him.
It was the second time in her life she’d felt this way with such certainty. The first time had been the night she met Lawson at a Super Bowl party on the immense penthouse terrace of anobscene luxury apartment building in Battery Park owned by a tech mogul. Three of the four Burnt Flowers were there, forty stories up. Jenny had ditched at the last second, claiming a migraine. Nikki was inside at the bar pretending to know the first thing about football, so Anna and Margot, the band’s rhythm section, stood near a glowing space heater at the edge of the terrace.
“Is this caviar?” asked Anna.
They assessed the small pile of gunk on Anna’s appetizer plate. A cigarette hung from Anna’s lips.
