Page 55 of Charm City Rocks
“Hello?”
“Nikki?”
“Margot? Sorry. I sort of freaked out when you actually answ—”
Margot hangs up. Ten seconds later, her phone rings again. She answers, aware that she in no imaginable way should. “What?”
“Margot?”
She’s rehearsed things that she might someday shout at Nikki. She wishes now that she’d written those things down, because her mind is a barren, horizonless nothing. “What do you want?”
“Um, did youliterallyjust call me back so you could hang up on me, you psycho?”
“Yeah,” says Margot, “and I’m about to do it again.”
—
Inside, Billy is sitting in The Rocker while Alice jams out in a full rock-and-roll pose, leg up on the coffee table. She stops when she sees Margot, turns shy.
“You’re back,” says Billy. “Did you hear that? ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine.’ Alice just blew my eardrums out. I’m probably gonna have to go to the hospital after this and get them reattached.”
“Sounds really good, Alice,” says Margot.
“Oh,” says Alice, “thanks. I’m…you know, figuring it out.”
“You okay?” asks Billy, because Margot must look like she’s not as she stands at the door with a grocery bag dangling from her wrist and a knocked-out expression on her face.
“I’m just gonna put this down. I don’t wanna interrupt.”
Not counting the small bathroom, the apartment consists of two rooms. The kitchenette and main sitting area make up one. Margot steps into the bedroom and closes the door as Alice starts again from the top.
The bedroom is a mess, not because they’re slobs but because they’re two people in transition—the way hotel rooms always look like a bomb has just gone off. Margot’s overnight bag sits on her side of the bed, her new clothes stacked beside it. The floor is lined with Billy’s unpacked boxes. A cardigan hangs from the bedpost. She sits on Billy’s spinning desk chair and lets herself slowly rotate. An old box of Billy’sRolling Stones sits at her feet.
The last time Margot spoke to Nikki, Margot said she never wanted to see her again. Ever. It was a week after the MTV Video Music Awards. Axl had arranged for the two of them to meet at Stage Dive, and Nikki stood next to a stupid fax machine like some beautiful, sad-looking deer, head hung, hands shoved into her pockets, belly-button ring twinkling. “So that’s…it? Like, it’s over? For real?”
As Alice’s guitar wails on the other side of the bedroom door, Margot starts sifting through the magazines, noting each cover. Stipe, Green Day, Springsteen, Britney. She stops when she sees Nikki, Anna, Jenny, and herself.
“The Flames Go Out.”
—
Margot was more nervous than usual that night.
Big, multi-act shows were stress machines of logistics and strung-out crew members. Their third album,Incessant Noise,still felt new, so Margot had to think through every move. Anna would stay close so they could talk with their eyes and get through the performance together. Still, Margot was uncomfortable.
Axl wore an all-black suit. He kept calling out vaguely threatening words of encouragement backstage, like “The whole world is watching, girls!”
Lawson was there…somewhere. An odd concoction of famous people milled about, and models in tight dresses stood frowning in the corners of the room, looking hungry. Eminem walked by. Jenny bobbed her head to something on her headphones. Anna held a gin and tonic and a cigarette and stared down at the red bass in her lap. A young woman with a buzz cut wearing an MTV lanyard shouted, “Burnt Flowers to stage B in two minutes!” No one knew where Nikki was.
Margot did a breathing exercise to relax herself and played the intro on her thighs.
Lawson appeared first, entering from a dark hallway. Margot’s eyes found him, as they always did. And then she saw Nikki beside him. The room was a shitshow—people everywhere, pressed together. Margot could see, though, that Lawson and Nikki’s proximity to each other wasn’t an accident. She didn’t know where they’d been, but they’d been there together.
Time slowed as she observed more things. Lawson’s shirt wasn’t quite right, crooked. Nikki’s cheeks were flushed. Then, just before separating, Lawson’s and Nikki’s hands touched. Just a graze—pinky to pinky—followed by nearly imperceptible smiles.
Margot might have been able to explain these things away to herself. Any threads of doubt snapped, though, when she saw that Anna was looking at her. Anna had seen what Margot saw, and she’d seen Margot see it. Margot found out later that Anna knew. And then she found out that Jennydidn’tknow—not technically—but suspected.
“Burnt Flowers, you’re up!” the buzz-cut girl shouted. Then she spoke into a headset. “Burnt Flowers is en route. Repeat, Burnt Flowers is en route.”
