Page 79 of Caught in a Storm
“No,” she said. “I like Billy. I might like him a lot. But I don’t want to be with you because of you.”
“Well, shit,” he said. “That hurts, love. It’s my teeth, then, innit?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Now, with the star fruit behind her and stands of more weird fruit and produce ahead, Margot finally drops her chai tea into an overflowing recycle bin.
“Not for you, huh?” Robyn asks.
“Eh,” Margot replies. “I mostly run on coffee, alcohol, and anxiety.”
Robyn looks around, leans closer. “Well, that lady over there at the green bean stand sometimes has mimosas. Wanna check it out?”
Margot isn’t really a mimosas kinda girl either, but sometimes in life you have to adapt.
* * *
—
“I almost got a tattoo because of you.”
The chill from last night is gone—burned off by a sunny, breezeless morning—so Margot’s sweater is around her waist. She looks down now at her own arms, fading ink on bare skin. “Yeah?”
“He thought you were so cool. I don’t know if he’s downplayed it, but Billy really liked you back then.”
Margot sips her plastic cup of spiked orange juice, unsure what to say.
“He was my boyfriend,” says Robyn. “I knew he loved me. But he had this crush on you. I’d catch him reading about you in magazines. And he’d play your albums and be like, ‘Robyn, listen to this tempo change’ or whatever, like I had any idea what that meant. He was crazy about you. But we were so different, you and me. That annoyed the shit out of me. Is that weird? You were, like, my nemesis. I was pissed at you, a total stranger.”
Margot looks up at the woman before her—taller, skinnier, lighter hair, angled cheekbones. Robyn is right; it’s like she’s looking into a mirror that reflects opposites.
“Obviously, I didn’t know you,” Robyn says. “You weren’t even you. You were some famous chick. It’s not like he’d ever actually meet you, right? Ha! But do you know how much it messed with my head that my boyfriend was nuts about someone who looked absolutely nothing like me? Who was different from me in every way?”
Margot might know a thing or two about that. “Well, if it makes you feel better,” she says, “you’re very pretty.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“No,” says Margot. “You’re prettier than me. It’s an objective fact. The first time I saw you, I did that thing in my head. I was like, ‘She’s prettier than me, goddammit.’ ”
“Well, thank you,” says Robyn. “You’re pretty. And you’re cooler than me. Obviously. Just look at you. God, I could never pull those boots off. Anyway, why do we do that? It’s not healthy.”
Just then, a blond mom in yoga pants who is arguably better looking than either of them walks by holding a giant bag of carrots. She’s wearing an infant on her chest in a BabyBjörn, and Margot and Robyn both look at her ass.
“Doubt we’re gonna solve that one here,” Margot says. “I mostly blame the Internet.”
Robyn buys strawberries. Margot offers to carry them, because the cloth NPR tote bag Robyn brought is starting to look heavy.
They continue, moving at museum-stroll speed. Some twentysomething girls tell Margot that she rocks. Others notice her, too. Margot senses photos being snapped by poorly concealed iPhones, their computerized clicks just audible. When they make it to the last stand of the farmer’s market—a guy in an Orioles cap selling locally sourced goat cheese—Margot and Robyn stop. It seems like Robyn has more to say. “Robyn. You’re not still pissed at me, are you?”
Robyn laughs. “No, of course not.”
But Margot watches as the woman’s face changes—a slow, downward slide.
“Maybe a little,” says Robyn. “I know how sweet he is. And he’s very gentle, right? The way he is with Caleb—his students. And he’s nice. Like, he’s a legitimately nice person. And you think, how can someone be as nice as he is? Nobody’s that nice. Not anymore.”
To Margot’s semi-horror, she sees tears form at the bridge of Robyn’s nose, like last night at dinner, and she thinks of the kettle back in the kitchen: a harmless-looking thing that boils over in seconds. “Are you okay?”
“He is all those things,” Robyn says. “He was back then, too. But he was also a fucking moron. Completely directionless. No motivation. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. I had no choice. What was I gonna do, wait around for him to spontaneously become an adult?”
