Page 56 of Charm City Rocks
“Let’s go, bitches!” shouted Nikki.
Anna and Jenny fell into line behind their lead singer. Margot, though, froze. She thought of just leaving. She could bolt through the back door where the crew took their smoke breaks, and she could wander into pedestrian traffic in her rock-and-roll outfit. She would make it home, relieve the nanny, curl up beside Poppy, chain-lock the front door. Margot wishes now, of course, that she had. Everyone would’ve been screwed for a few chaotic minutes, but they’d have figured it out. The host, Chris Rock, would’ve done some jokes about musicians being assholes and thrown the broadcast to commercial. The pull to the stage was too strong, though, like a gravitational force. Drumsticks in hand, Margot walked.
“Hit ’em hard, love,” Lawson said somewhere behind her.
Anna looked back over her shoulder, her expression pleading,Let’s just get through this, okay? We can figure everything else out later.
Aside from glow-in-the-dark strips of tape, the stage was pitch black, so people wearing headsets escorted them to their marks. Margot sat on her stool. Her kit was on a raised platform, five feet above the rest of the band. Her earpiece went in, courtesy of a young man with a goatee. “You good?” he asked.
Margot somehow nodded that she was. Twenty-five yards away, Chris Rock was bathed in studio lights, reading from a prompter. The director’s voice spoke calmly in her right ear. “Greetings, Burnt Flowers. Fifteen seconds. Lights’ll go up when Rock cues you, then you’re on. Break a leg.”
Margot looked beyond her cymbals. Anna was to her left, Jenny to her right, waiting. Between them, center stage, stood Nikki. Crop top, jet-black eyeliner. She smiled at Margot. “Ready, rock star?” she mouthed.
“…the four baddest white chicks I’ve personally ever had the pleasure to meet!” shouted Chris Rock. “Give it up for Burnt mother-effing Flowers!”
“Cue band,” said the voice in her ear as the lights went up. “Cue band,” the voice said again more urgently. Margot didn’t know what to do, so she did the only thing there was to do. “Five, six, seven, eight,” she whispered.
Her delay threw everyone off, so they were immediately out of sync. Nikki looked back before doing the little opening-verse bunny hop she’d come up with during rehearsal. Anna and Jenny adjusted, angling toward Margot. Her eyes met Anna’s.
Don’t do this.
Nikki started singing, her back to the band, and Margot watched her friend from behind, slinking in her leather pants. Other than the first few rows, the crowd was hidden behind pulsating lights. The eyes she could see, though, were aimed, as always, at the lead singer. Nikki had everything. Therealstardom, the attention, the literal fucking spotlight. Anger welled, like adrenaline, which caused her timing to speed up. Nikki looked back again, touched her left ear, which was her symbol for them to slow down. Margot was louder than she’d been at soundcheck, so she drowned the other three out before the engineer pulled her levels down. That same engineer pulled her down again seconds later, but it was no use, because Margot was hitting her drums harder than she ever had before. Halfway through the song, Nikki moved up from the front of the stage. She sang still, but her eyes asked,What the fuck, Margot?
The kickdrum came apart when Margot’s right foot broke through the strap. She felt the calluses on her palms open, and her hands went slick with blood. When her left stick cracked, she kept hitting, unfazed. When her high-hat cymbal came loose, she punched the stand and sent the whole thing crashing. Voices shouted in her ear.
Anna stopped playing first. She stood, bass at her hip. Jenny played a few more chords before giving in to a splitting burst offeedback, then it was just Margot and Nikki as the singer tried to power through disaster.
Fuck her,Margot thought.And fuck this.
She was still hitting her drums when she stood, and then she kicked the base of the kit and it fell off the platform. If Nikki hadn’t scrambled out of the way, it would’ve crashed down on top of her. The mic wired to the falling snare broadcast Nikki’s scream.
All the eyes that had been so dutifully trained on Nikki were now, finally, on Margot, and the audience fell silent. Just offstage, Lawson stood with his mouth open amid a swarm of scrambling crew.
Fuck him, too.
“Well, goddamn, ladies!” shouted Chris Rock. “That’s what I call rock and roll!”
Chapter34
“So, you’re the world-famous Billy Perkins, then?”
“That’s me,” he says. “Nice to finally meet you.”
He wonders iffinallyis the right word. It’s only been a few weeks with Margot, but those few weeks have felt longer, more significant. This probably has something to do with the fact that he and Margot are living together. He didn’t ask her to move in, exactly, and the closest they’ve come to discussing their current arrangement was when Billy invited her to go shopping, but he’s woken up beside her every morning since she arrived, and now he’s meeting her daughter on FaceTime.
“And you must be Caleb,” says Poppy. “I’ve been misled. You don’t look all that tall.”
Caleb laughs and crumples his napkin. They’re at Kooper’s Tavern in Fells Point, sitting outside beneath a large umbrella. His phone is propped up at the center of the table against a water glass. They used it to call Poppy, because Margot’s phone was nearly dead.
“In fairness, he’s sitting, Pop,” says Margot.
“Right, well, hello from San Francisco, both of you. It’s a pleasure.”
Caleb croaks out a word that’s probably meant to be “Hello.” Despite being a giant, his son still gets nervous around girls. Earbuds in, head tilted, Margot’s daughter is just lovely. The resemblance to her famous dad is obvious: that narrow face and impossible jawline. This would be unnerving if it weren’t for the obvious traces of Margot. “You’ve got your mom’s eyes, Poppy,” says Billy.
“I do, don’t I? I’m a brown girl with blue eyes, thanks to this one.”
Billy sets his hand on Margot’s shoulder. “Lucky you, they’re beautiful.”
