Page 21 of Charm City Rocks
Billy isn’t articulating himself very well.
He saw Burnt Flowers years ago, from the cheap seats in Philly. Robyn surprised him with tickets, and they drove up from Baltimore. It was a solid show, but nothing like what he just witnessed.
“Power Pink” blew the roof off the Horse You Came In On. For the first thirty seconds, people stood watching, mouths open. But then there was a collective realization in which everyone remembered all at once that it’s an absolutely perfect rock song. By the time Beth climbed onto the bar to shout along with the chorus, people were dancing and jumping. Passersby gathered at the front window to look in, like,What the hell’s going on in here?
Outside now, Billy and Margot sit on a bench looking out at the Inner Harbor and eating cinnamon pretzels. Billy breathes in, tells himself to at leasttryto be cool and maybe speak in coherent sentences.
“That singer, Emma,” Margot says. “She was pretty good. The guys, though…”
The two men had trouble keeping up. It hardly mattered, though, because they quickly became superfluous.
Margot takes a bite of her pretzel.
“Try to get as much of the sauce as you can,” Billy says. “It’s the best part. You have to go full dunkage to really appreciate it.”
Gustavo threw in an extra cup of caramelized sugar for Margot—a reward, he said, for shaking the whole neighborhood. She sinks her pretzel as far into the little cup as it’ll go and takes another bite. “Okay, yeah,” she says. “Thatispretty good.”
Some guy yells into his phone across the street. “This rocker chick lit it up at the Horse earlier!…I don’t know!…Yeah, I can’t remember her name—something weird! But she was fucking awesome!”
Margot rolls her eyes and laughs as she wipes a glob of sugar off her bottom lip.
Billy likes the way she laughs—like a kind-of laugh, like she’s trying not to. “Your name’s notthatweird,” he says.
“We sounded okay, you think?” she asks.
She licks the glob of sugar, and Billy marvels at the understatement.
She sat in for five songs—four Burnt Flowers tracks and a cover of “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince. You’d never guess Margot and Emma had just met; they sounded like they’d been rehearsing for weeks. As good as the performance was, though, Billy keeps thinking about the moment it was over. As everyone applauded, Margot set her sticks down gently on the snare drum, stood up, and did a little bow. Then, probably because he was the only person there that she knew, Margot returned to her spot at the bar next to Billy.
“You’re the best drummer I’ve ever seen,” he shouted into her ear over what had quickly become a standing ovation. Beth rushed over and told Margot that she could have free Natty Boh at thebar for life. “I’ll write you an IOU and everything!” Then—with no idea what else to do—Billy held up his hand and offered his rock-and-roll crush a high five. Before slapping his palm with hers, Margot smiled at him. Like,reallysmiled.
A breeze blows in off the water now. “When was the last time you played in front of a crowd?”
She takes another bite. “The MTV thing.”
“Oh,” he says. “Wow.TheMTV thing.”
“Mm-hm. The one and only.”
Billy hasn’t seen the clip from the MTV Video Music Awards that she’s referring to in years. He was watching it live that night, though. At first, when Margot kicked her drum kit off its stand and pushed her cymbals over, he thought it was all part of the show. Everyone did. Confusion set in quickly, though. Before cutting back to a stunned-looking Chris Rock, who was the host that year, the camera moved into a close-up of Margot’s face as she stood over the wreckage. Her eyeliner had just started to run down her cheeks.
TheNew York Postput the angriest picture of her they could find on its cover the next morning. “Margot Hammers Away.”Rolling Stonechronicled the event later that month, detailing the band’s immediate split and Margot’s separation from Lawson Daniels. Billy and Robyn had recently broken up. The apartment they’d shared above Charm City Rocks—theirapartment—had becomehisapartment. He remembers feeling sad for Margot—this famous drummer on whom he’d had such a silly crush—because he knew what it was like to have something important be so suddenly over.
He takes a bite of his pretzel. “Well, welcome back,” he says. “We’ve missed you.”
A police boat zips along the inky black surface of the harbor,and Fells Point buzzes behind them. He’d stop time here, too, if he could, because it’s a perfect moment. But then Margot says, “Well, thanks for the pretzel.”
“Oh, of course.”
He implores himself to say something else.Use your words!he thinks. Finally, he manages, “We could get another beer if you want. Beth didn’t make me pay for that IPA I ordered for you, so I still technically owe you one.” He tries to laugh, to make it sound casual, because it’s embarrassing how badly he wants her to stay.
She stands, and he stands, too. “Thanks. But I should go. I think I’m gonna grab that cab over there.”
Billy has sometimes wondered over the years if there’s anything he could’ve said to make Robyn stay—some insight, a bit of hapless charm, some promise he could’ve made that would’ve saved them. He wonders the same thing now, too. Unfortunately, like then, he doesn’t have much. “Well, if you’re ever in Baltimore again…”
Margot Hammer is already walking away. She steps off the curb, jogs toward the dented yellow car outside 7-Eleven. Billy watches her climb into the backseat. He waves as the cab passes, but she’s not looking at him. One headlight burns brighter than the other. Then she’s gone.
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