Page 38 of Charm City Rocks
“Hey, Clance. Nice night, huh?”
“Baseball and beers, my man,” says Clancy.
“We’ll take two.”
Clancy gives Margot a sly wink. “Hope you don’t mind me saying, miss,” he says. “But I like you more than that giant kid he usually shows up here with. You fit better in the seat.”
Margot says that she doesn’t mind at all, and Billy swipes his credit card. “I’ll tell Caleb you said hey.”
“Good deal. I’ll be back. You two look thirsty. Like your cap, miss. Suits you.”
Someone yells, “Fancy Clancy, beer me!” and Clancy is gone in a rush.
“You know a lot of people, huh?” says Margot.
“Nah. Everyone knows Clancy. He’s a local celebrity. NPR did a feature on him a couple years ago. Sorry I didn’t introduce you. You got mad at me when I yelled your name during the Margot Hammer Incident. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention.”
Margot sips her new beer—a big stadium can. “The Margot Hammer Incident?”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I call it.”
Margot looks around. “Well, knock yourself out,” she says. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”
She’s right. Since they started their walk across town, Billy has been absorbed in the space immediately around him and Margot, like they’re in a protective bubble. A quick 180 scan, though, is all it takes to see how many people are aware of them.
“It’stotallythem,” someone somewhere says. A guy in an Orioles jersey gives Billy a nod on his way up the stairs. “Respect, dude.” A woman a few rows over is definitely taking their picture. Someone else nearby, a guy, says that Margot is surprisingly short.
“Who knew so many people have the Internet?” Billy says.
The Orioles third baseman pops out, and a woman somewhere behind them says that she thinks Margot deserves something good to happen.
“How does this work, exactly?” Billy asks. “Do we pretend people aren’t looking at us? Do we act like we can’t hear them?”
“You guys are adorable!” a young woman at the other end of their row shouts. She’s in her twenties, wearing a sideways Orioles cap. “It helps when they saynicethings,” Margot says as she tips her beer at the woman.
“Isn’t it exhausting?” he asks.
Margot looks up. The first handful of stars are doing their best against the stadium lights. “You’ll get used to it,” she says, and it might be the most thrilling thing anyone’s ever said to him, because it sounds like a promise.
The Red Sox score a bunch of runs. Between innings, the stadium crew entertains the crowd. A guy in a bird costume dances on top of the dugout. Pretty girls in orange tank tops throw T-shirts into the stands.
When the Red Sox are finally out in the sixth inning, the “kisscam” appears on the large scoreboard screen, and the whole stadium watches. An elderly man and woman, a young husband and wife, two shy teens in matching hoodies. Each is shocked, then embarrassed, before kissing to polite applause. The whole thing is sponsored by a local florist. Then Billy sees someone who looks very much like himself: a man in a cardigan beside a woman in an Orioles cap. It isn’t until he hears “Power Pink” being blasted over the stadium’s PA that he realizes the man is him and the woman is Margot.
“Oh,” he says.
People around them cheer; some sing along with the chorus. Not everyone was looking at them before, but noweveryoneis, and Billy feels his stomach drop. An old man in front of them turns in his seat. “You see that up there?” he says. “That’s you two. Means you gotta kiss. Those are the rules.”
“I guess we should,” says Billy.
“Yeah, probably,” says Margot.
He’s seen hundreds of kiss-cam kisses. Sometimes they’re chaste little things, followed by smiles and giggles. Sometimes either the guy or the girl hams it up for the crowd. One time, Billy saw a guy turn away from the mortified girl beside him and pretend to kiss his beer. When Billy’s mouth touches Margot’s, though, despite the rising volume all around them, he somehow forgets that they’re in the middle of a stadium.
He takes her chin. The bill of her cap bumps his forehead, but she adjusts and then sighs into his mouth as they sink into each other. Four seconds, maybe five. But who knows, because it feels like slow motion.
“Okay, that’s enough,” the old guy says. “Come on, there’s kids here.”
Chapter24
