Page 108 of Caught in a Storm

The bartender—a guy, fortysomething, with tattoos—knows who she is, but he’s being cool about it, like Beth was. “Never heard of it. And I thought I’d heard of everything.”

“It’s from Baltimore,” she says. “It’s crappy but good.”

“Oh, well, if it’s crappy you want.” He pours her a beer, yellow and fizzy. She takes a sip and it’s perfect, then she touches Billy’s name in the contacts list on her phone. There isn’t enough time to plan what she’s going to say, because he picks up instantly.

“Hello?” he says. “Margot?”

“Hi.”

“It’s you,” he says.

She likes how he sounds, like he’s happy to hear from her. “So, here’s the thing,” she says. “You don’t get to tell me what my dream is.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Because maybe you’re my dream.”

“Really? Me?”

She looks around the bar, which is ordinary and stuffy. A few people have figured out who she is, and those people know her life story, and that’s fine. Others are oblivious, or simply don’t care, and that’s fine, too. Either way, it’s nice to be out in the world again. The man she’s talking to on the phone right now loves her for who she was, but he loves her for who she is now, too. “Yeah,” she says. “You’re my dream guy, Billy Perkins.”

“You don’t think my cardigans are too much?”

“What? I love your cardigans.”

“Okay, good,” he says.

TVs hang everywhere; one is playing the baseball game. “The Orioles are getting their asses kicked, huh?” she says.

Billy laughs. “I saw that earlier. But I’m not watching it anymore.”

“Yeah?” she asks. “Where are you?”

“You won’t believe it if I tell you.”

“Try me.”

“I’m in the Champagne Supernova,” he says.

“Where are you going?”

“Well, right now I’m just sitting here in front of my house,” he says. “I have a duffel bag. I was gonna come see you.”

Margot smiles and touches the weightless foam at the rim of her crappy beer.

“I wanted to surprise you,” he says. “The way you surprised me.”

“That would’ve been nice.”

“You think?”

“I do,” she says.

“But then I realized I have no idea where the hell you actually live.”

Margot laughs.

“I pulled up ‘New York City’ on Google Maps, but that seems vague.”