Page 52 of Charm City Rocks
“And who took this picture, do you think?” he asks. “Are there paparazzi in Baltimore?”
Margot sits up and wraps herself in sheets. “I think I’m gonna go to the coffee shop.”
“Yeah?” he asks. “What do you do there all that time, anyway?”
“None of your business, that’s what,” she says, because she doesn’t want to tell him that she’s writing. She doesn’t want to tell anyone. Nearly every day since getting off the Amtrak train in Baltimore, Margot has sat huddled over her notebook writing things that might be lyrics but also might be nothing. Either way, she’s enjoying it.
Poppy called her out on it the other day over FaceTime. “You’re writing again, aren’t you, Mum?”
“What? I don’t know. Why? How do you know?”
Her daughter snorted. “Why are you so weird? I can just tell. And you should keep doing it, by the way. You’re less bitchy when you’re writing.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Poppy tilted her head. “He’s your manfriend, isn’t he?” she asked. “You have a manfriend.”
“Stop it.”
“Gentleman caller?”
“Oh Jesus,” said Margot. “That’s worse.”
Now Margot climbs out of bed. “I’m getting dressed.”
“Ugh,” says Billy, “clothes are stupid.”
She sits cross-legged on the floor beside her open carry-on bag and looks inside. There’s a wrinkled T-shirt, two balled-up pairs of underwear. “Shit,” she says.
“What?” asks Billy.
“I’m out of socks.”
This is the second time Margot has run out of socks since she arrived. She only brought five pairs, after all, and she’s been quietly washing them and her underwear in the stacked washer-dryer combo in the closet off the kitchenette. This, however, sitting barefoot on the bedroom floor of this apartment that isn’t hers, feels significant. Margot is a guest here. And the thing about guests is that they tend to leave right around the time they run out of clean socks.
They haven’t talked about the logistics of all this. Margot doesn’t necessarily want to, because doing so would be like shaking herself out of a very pleasant dream. She does, however, want to know if it’s cool to keep dreaming for a little while longer. “I’ve been wearing the same three shirts for two weeks,” she says. “I don’t technically have pajamas. And your shampoo is making my hair flat. I didn’t buy any at Eddie’s, because I didn’t know if—”
“Your hair looks great,” he says.
Say what you will about men, but sometimes moments like these are lost on them. Socks are just socks, right? Shampoo is shampoo. Billy, though, after a brief silence, seems to understand that something is happening here. He sets theirUs Weeklydown and looks at the clock. “I don’t have a lesson until this evening.”
“Yeah?” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go shopping.”
Chapter32
The view from Robyn’s office on the twenty-third floor looks like something shot by the Baltimore Department of Tourism. Boats floating, swaying trees against an urban landscape, planes drifting in and out of BWI airport. It’s just after midday, so pedestrians are out down below, walking in friendly groups. Across the harbor, people exercise on the greenspace behind the Under Armour headquarters.
She remembers those days, the first decade of her career, when her schedule allowed for big breaks to go to the gym and shower, maybe grab a salad. Her current day’s schedule is up on one of her four monitors now. Every half-hour block is color-coded and accounted for, stacked like Legos.
She can see her assistant, Trevor, approaching, because her office walls are glass. He smiles as he enters, sets a stack of papers on her desk. “Printed the decks for you,” he says. “A few changes to the P&L, but nothing major. They’ll go over everything at three.”
“Great,” she says. “Thanks.”
“You’ve still got that personal thing now, right? ’Til 2:30?”
“I do,” says Robyn.
