Page 61 of Caught in a Storm
Billy returns and pushes a cold Natty Boh through the curtain. “Normally I’d come in and help you drink this swill,” he says, “but I just got my hair perfect.”
When she takes the can, he kisses a streak of water off one of her drumstick tattoos. She calls him a pervert, and he leaves. Her iPhone plays music out on the sink. “The Ghost in You” by the Psychedelic Furs comes on, and Margot thinks about happiness. It’s such an elusive thing; it can vanish for years at a time, and then suddenly a nice man wants to bring you drinks and kiss your arm while you’re in the shower.
The music stops and her phone rings, and Margot frowns at the shower curtain. Nikki’s call the other day has boosted her anxiety to a low, steady hum. Margot doesn’t want to talk to Nikki, but she also wants to know what Nikki wanted. They used to talk so much, about life and music and sex and the future of Burnt Flowers. And then one day they never spoke again. It was like mourning a death: awful at first and then progressively less awful.
Finally, she turns off the water and wraps herself in one of Billy’s towels. He’s playing the piano in the other room. The din of baseball commentators and the Steinway have been pleasant constants since her arrival, like a really good soundtrack. She picks up her phone and wipes the steam off the screen. The call wasn’t from Nikki this time; it was from Axl, and there’s a voicemail.
“You fucker,” she says.
This makes five voicemails from Axl. The first was quick. “Margot, we should talk.” The second was his version of an apology. “I’m told you overheard me being unkind. I regret that. But I think we can both agree that I’m not kind.” The third was just a sigh, the fourth an even longer sigh. Now this: “Do you have any idea, Margot, how rare second chances are in this awful business? Enough of this. Let’s talk.”
She leaves the message marooned with his others, then she hears Billy singing, mostly on key. His singing voice is an octave higher than his speaking voice, like he’s in a boy band, and she smiles at her own reflection. But then she listens to the words.
“Where’m I even going? Why did I feel such fear? Will things get any better, now that I’m here?”
She pushes the bathroom door open, and Billy stops. Her notebook is propped open on the Steinway.
“I wasn’t snooping,” he says. “I made the bed. It was under your pillow. You have terrible handwriting. It’s like cuneiform. But this is great.”
Margot doesn’t say anything.
“You’re not mad, are you?”
She continues not saying anything as he flips pages. “It’s almost full.”
The residual heat from her marathon shower dissipates, and she shivers. “Those weren’t meant to be seen. Definitely not sung.”
“But they’re…songs.”
She tightens the towel across her chest. Margot isn’t mad. She’s aware, though, that this is complicated, because her notebook is a secret. Relationships are so beautifully uncomplicated at first, and then someone finds something, asks questions. “They’re not songs. They’re…I don’t even know what they are.”
He touches her words. “Verse, chorus, verse. That’s a song. Do you wanna sing it?”
“I’m not a singer.”
“So?”
“What do you mean, ‘so’? I’m a drummer.”
“Did you hear me just now?” he asks. “I’m not a singer either. Most singers aren’t singers. You ever really listen to Mick Jagger? He sounds like an old British lady. But it works because it’s rock and roll.” He turns back to the keys. “Here, listen.”
But then Caleb is yelling at them from the driveway. “Dad! Margot! You guys coming over or what?”
Margot cinches her towel again, saved by a shouting teenager. “I better get dressed,” she says. “We’re late for dinner with your son and the woman you used to have sex with.”
Chapter 36
Lawson can’t remember the last time he flew commercial. That probably sounds like a rich person exaggerating—like the ultimate first-world problem—and Lawson acknowledges to himself the pure assholery of even thinking it. But he literally can’t, as if the part of his brain that houses pre-celebrity memories has been damaged. Too much champagne, probably, brought to him on silver trays by startlingly blond flight attendants on private jets.
And it’s not just about being rich. The sheer logistics of someone like him being crammed into a flying tube full of civilians are harrowing. He was in first class, of course, which was fine enough in a pinch, but that placed him at the very front of the plane, so he was the first thing his fellow passengers saw as they shuffled aboard back in L.A.
“Oh my God.”
“Holy shit.”
“Whoa.”
“You’re…”
