Page 94 of Caught in a Storm
“Agreed,” said Anna. “Fuck that guy.”
The three women—old friends, bandmates once and again—stood in a loosely drawn triangle staring at one another. Finally, Anna slid her jean jacket off and tossed it on the floor. “Well, if we’re gonna do it, let’s do it, then,” she said, then she turned her bare right arm over so they could see the four bass strings tattooed there. Jenny’s leather jacket fell next. She’d been marked with the neck and head of an electric guitar from the crook of her elbow to just before the veiny intersection at her wrist. Margot pulled her sweater over her head, revealing her drumstick tattoos, and they put their arms together. They got their tattoos the week before their first tour. They linked arms like this before significant moments as a band. Nikki has a microphone tattooed on the inside of her wrist, its black cord snaking down her forearm and up her bicep. She didn’t arrive until nearly noon that first day, though, so she missed out on this.
“You gotta get that shit touched up, girl,” said Jenny, poking Margot’s arm.
“I know,” she said. “I missed you two, by the way.” And Margot meant it.
Jenny and Anna smiled, because they’d missed her, too, then Anna asked, “You think we can manage to do this without murdering Nikki?”
* * *
—
“That’s hot!” says Wave in Margot’s headphones. He’s the producer, Marcus Wiley, but he goes by Wave. He’s produced Nikki’s last three solo albums, and he’s wearing leather pants and yellow-tinted sunglasses.
Nikki comes out of the control room with her smoothie. “Yeah, definitely hot,” she says. “But, like, is it hot enough?”
Margot and Anna slide their headphones off. Anna looks at Margot. “What does that even mean?” she whispers.
From the couch, Jenny takes the pillow off her face. She isn’t asleep after all. “Sounded the right amount of hot to me, Nik.”
“So, right now it’s very boom boom boom boom, you know,” says Nikki. “What if it’s more like, boom-biti-boom, boom-biti-boom?” She plays air drums with her non-smoothie hand. “I think that’s where the hook’s at. Like a hip-hop beat.”
“A hip-hop beat?” says Anna.
“These aren’t hooky songs,” says Jenny. “They’re rock songs.”
“Jenny, have you even seen our Google commercial?” says Nikki. “ ‘Power Pink,’ you know, that song that’s currently playing every ten minutes in every major market on Earth right now, is hooky as fuck. All our best stuff is. It’s how we got on the radio in the first place. We can wear bracelets and put purple streaks in our hair and call ourselves rockers, but we’re pop just like everyone else.”
The three nonlead singers look at one another.
This has been the dynamic so far: them and her. It always had been, to a degree, Margot knows, because she understands that every band has that one member who’s the face—the one who’s just enough of a megalomaniac to want to stand up in front of everyone else with no instruments to hide behind.
Nikki sets her smoothie on a guitar case, puts her hands together like she’s about to say grace. “Sorry, I’m being…” she says. To her credit, Margot thinks, she’s doing her best at rock-and-roll democracy. “Maybe we just…try it?”
A click from the speaker above them, then Wave’s voice from the control room. “Yeah, I’m with Nik on this one, ladies. Hooky’s where it’s at! What-what!”
Anna puts her headphones back on. “Well, there’s a shocker.”
* * *
—
The driver asks Margot if the temperature is good. He asks her if she wants a Vitaminwater, or a mint, or a Red Bull, or anything, and Margot remembers taking the subway to and from Threshold when they were recording their first album. She’d walk the streets at whatever stupid hour it was and just assume she was about to be murdered.
It’s only a little after 9 p.m. now, though. They broke early tonight, each of them leaving by themselves in large black SUVs. She should be tired, but she’s not. She looks down at her phone and thinks of Billy. She does this less and less now, but she still does it. You could hardly call it a breakup, because were they even together in the first place? She’d just shown up there; he’d never technically asked her to stay. The label they’d given him was a joke—“manfriend”—like whatever they were didn’t quite warrant seriousness. Their nonbreakup breakup happened so quickly, like a car accident. Margot can forgive him for telling her to leave, but she can’t forgive him for so adamantly refusing to come with her. His kid. A midsize city. A record shop. A couple of buddies. An occasional free pretzel. He chose these things over her, and it hurt. Still does. Worse, he had the nerve to tell her that he was happy. That really hurt.
“I can just get out here, if that’s cool,” Margot tells the driver.
He looks up at the mirror, hesitant, because he’s undoubtedly been told to take her directly to her building.
“What’s the worst that could happen, man?” she says.
Margot waves from the curb as the SUV asserts itself back into traffic. She’s only a few blocks from home, but she’s not in a hurry, because it’s an empty home. That’s the thing that pisses her off most about having met Billy. Aside from a few plants here and there and an occasional mouse in winter, Margot has been the only living resident of her apartment for years, but she’s never thought of it as empty until now.
A few people smile, nod in recognition. There are more celebrities per capita here than in Baltimore, so she’s less of a sighting.
A block up, she sees an enormous pink phone on the side of a building. It’s the same building from which Lawson’s stupid beautiful face once hung, and she shakes her head at the absurdity of it all. Her phone rings. Poppy usually FaceTimes around now—six in the evening California time—as she walks home from work.
