Page 52 of Caught in a Storm
They stood for a few more minutes eating protein bars and sipping the water they’d brought. For a while, nothing but mosquitoes showed up, but Billy told Margot to be patient. Then, finally, a few horses trotted out from a big barn. Among them was a lone brown cow doing its best to keep up.
“There she is,” said Billy.
“Oh wow,” said Margot. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cow run.”
Billy rested one foot on the lower rung of the fence. “She’s famous,” he said. “Well, locally, anyway. She escaped from a slaughterhouse somewhere in the Midwest a couple years ago. Just bolted, apparently. Found a gap in the fence and made a run for it. Some hedge-fund guy found out about it and bought her. Now she lives here.”
Margot watched, touched by the animal’s story. She was skinny for a cow and had pretty white markings across her wide red-brown face. “Do you think she thinks she’s a horse?” Margot asked.
Billy smiled. “Who cares? Look how happy she is.”
* * *
—
When they got back to the apartment an hour ago, they had daytime sex like a couple of dumb, carefree twentysomethings. And now they’re relaxing in bed. Margot is on her stomach, nearly dozing, while Billy runs his hand back and forth across her lower back. She loves that his hands are so soft—a piano player’s hands. He told her that he likes how rough her hands are, calloused from her sticks. With his other hand, Billy’s holding a copy of Us Weekly. It’s not just any copy of Us Weekly; it’s their copy.
“You’re obsessed with that thing,” she says.
Billy eyes her over the top of the magazine. “Well, yeah. I know you’re an old pro at this, but believe it or not, I’m not. Being in gossip magazines is new for me.”
For this, Margot thinks, Billy should consider himself fortunate.
“Whirlwind” is what they called Margot and Billy’s relationship. It’s a stupid word, whirlwind. Not as stupid as recluse, but it’s one of those words those magazines use that have the power to diminish.
Margot halted her Us Weekly embargo last week at Poppy’s request. “Seriously, Mum, you gotta see it!” the girl said.
Featured in the issue was a short article and an accompanying photo of Margot and Billy sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant by Billy’s old place. They’ve just ordered. Their water glasses sit between them, paper straws dissolving. Billy’s arm rests at the middle of the table, and Margot has, just seconds before, laced her fingers into his without even realizing she was doing it. Billy is only visible in profile, but Margot’s full, oblivious face is on display, smiling again.
Someone told her once that the tingly, gooey feelings you feel when you first meet someone eventually fade because of a trick of evolution. The reasoning is that all that lovestruck stupidity makes you vulnerable to predators. Margot rolls onto her side now and looks at the photo of herself, and that’s exactly what she sees: vulnerability. The woman on the glossy page looks like she could be attacked by wolves at any second, because liking someone is dangerous.
“Recluse No More,” reads the headline. “The whirlwind romance between former rock star Margot Hammer and everyone’s new favorite music teacher continues in…” blah blah blah.
“I don’t think former rock star is fair,” says Billy. “Once you become a rock star, aren’t you always a rock star? Like a Jedi?”
“That’s a dorky way to say it,” says Margot, “but I agree. They can go to hell.”
“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?”
