Where's Margot? Part 1

Part 1/4, New York City, sometime in the early 1990s. Meet Ben.

The bodega cat on top of a stack of New York Post papers yawned and stretched as Ben walked into the shop. Its tail covered George Bush’s face while it scratched feebly at the words “Clinton” and “election” printed in bold black ink. Cans of Coca Cola were piled high by the register and strips of individually wrapped beef jerky jutted from a dirty glass jar like an improvised bouquet.

“Hey Raul. Can I get a small coffee?” Ben asked the aging man behind the counter. The owner nodded and prepared it. Ben had work to do and needed the jolt.

“You doin alright kid?” Raul asked. He slid the coffee across the counter as Ben counted out his coins.

“Yeah, I’m great, why?” Ben said.

“You look like hell, is all.”

“You’re lucky your coffee is good,” Ben joked.

“And you’re lucky it’s cheap,” Raul shot back.

They smiled at each other and Ben left, the cat’s tail now framing Bush’s face like a wig, and he entered the adjacent building to go home.

In the foyer, he scrambled to open the mailbox, juggling the keys and the coffee. Hot drops of liquid dribbled expectantly down his thumb as he angled the cup ever so slightly. He licked his hand. With the other, he found a wad of envelopes and junk mail, shoved it all under his arm, and slammed the mailbox closed. He walked up to the top floor of the apartment, creaking on every third step as if the architects had penned a symphony into the staircase’s design.

Unlocking and kicking the door open, he slipped out of his canvas shoes, feeling the cold floor through the holes of his white cotton socks, and scattered the envelopes across the tiny kitchen table, searching. Bill. Political flier. A letter from his grandparents. Another bill. Another flier. Chinese restaurant menu. Thai restaurant menu. Circular from Gristedes, as if he’d ever shop there.

Then he found it.

Finally.

The glossy postcard featured a city skyline and the words “Bonjour de Montréal” in cartoonish letters. He flipped it over. She was cryptic as ever with this message, but Ben knew her code was always meant to be cracked. That was the point. It had always been the point ever since they were kids. He read her scrawling. One line said, For boats, not a dock, not a wharf. Look closer. The second line said, Not a sub or a grinder. And drop the ‘H’.

Ben sat and sipped his coffee, picking apart the riddle. Overthinking never served him well.

“Docks, wharfs, so maybe a port” he said to himself. “And obviously it’s a hoagie…so port…oagie. Portoagie? What the hell?”

The final line of the post card simply read, 6PM, November 9.

He sipped more coffee.

“Wait,” he mumbled again. “Look closer. Gaze. Stare. Pore…”

Then the caffeine kicked in and he laughed.

“Peer!” he shouted to no one. “Peer-ogies. On geeze.”

He looked at the Canadian postcard once more and the deception revealed itself. The U.S. postage and a New York post office processing stamp made one thing undeniably clear: Margot was back in town.

Exactly one week later, at 5:55PM, Ben was standing outside of Veselka, bathed in smell of steamed pierogis – the riddle wasn’t flawless, but they loved eating them at Veselka – and he pulled his army coat around himself, pilfered from his grandfather’s old trunk many years ago.

Then he saw her.

Her black hair was a bit shorter, without the bangs she had last time, an oversized peacoat hanging off her thin frame. Clacking softly in her well-worn leather boots, she picked up her pace as she ran towards him, and they embraced, arms thrown around each other squeezing to secure the other like boa constrictors who hadn’t eaten in months.

She stepped back to look at him, or up at him, since she was a full head shorter.

“You look awful,” she said.

“Your riddles are getting weak,” he retorted.

She tousled his unkempt brown hair. They hugged again and entered the restaurant.

They ordered too much food and had difficulty eating pierogis and pickled cabbage between smiles and laughs as Margot recounted her latest adventure, her trip to Montreal. Before that it was a week in Istanbul. Before that, camel rides in Morocco.

“I didn’t think it would be so uncomfortable,” she said between bites. “I don’t want to know what it’s like to give birth, but I think being on a camel might have given me enough insight.”

“And the food?” Ben asked.

She rolled her eyes.

“Obviously fantastic. You need to get out of here, man. Hit the road. You haven’t lived until you’re nibbling kibbeh while the call to prayer blasts across the city,” she said unaware of how pretentious she sounded. But she wasn’t pretentious. Ben knew it was just Margot being Margot, the world traveler that he always aspired to be. He was in awe.

It wasn’t the first time, either.

Since kindergarten, they had been best friends. They found common ground in their sole similarity, which was also the difference that set them apart from everyone else. Living in suburban Pennsylvania, they weren’t typical by any means in a sea of normalcy, where 2.5 kids and picket fences in all shades of white reigned supreme. Margot was adopted from China. Ben grew up with his grandparents. Neither of them really knew their birth parents, and as children, from this grain of sand, a lustrous friendship grew. It bordered on dependency, even as Margot pursued a life on the road while Ben hammered out a life in New York resembling something respectable as he cobbled together enough teaching gigs to pay his rent.

He looked at her across the table and smiled, thinking of how much they had – and hadn’t changed – now that they were twenty-four. Something glimmered on her shirt.

“I can’t believe you still wear that,” he said.

She put her hand on the little dragonfly brooch, sparkling green and red. 

“It’s the only thing I take with me everywhere. Well, that and my passport. You should feel honored,” she said.

Ben remembered buying it for her during a museum trip in grade school, when they explored the insect exhibit together at the Academy of Natural Sciences in the city. Other students wanted to run up the stairs like Rocky had done or go see Betsy Ross’s house, but Margot and Ben spent the whole afternoon in the science museum, dreaming of anywhere but where they were. They wandered ancient seas with ichthyosaurs, skipped across African savannas with lions and gazelle, and bounced extraterrestrially among moon rocks.

Or at least they did in their imaginations. 

But Margot, even at ten years old, knew she’d see these places in real life – in as much as those places still existed or were accessible via a Boeing aircraft. She mentioned that day, in the insect exhibit, how dragonflies could turn on a dime, even flying backwards, moving like few other creatures in the animal kingdom. When Ben saw the brooch in the museum’s gift store, he bought it for her as a souvenir of that day. It was a reminder that she could turn in any direction she wanted, go wherever she wanted. He never imagined she’d have kept it for more than a decade.

“I’m just so, I don’t know,” Ben started.

“So what?” Margot said.

“So proud? I guess?” he offered.

“Of what?” she asked, genuinely taken aback.

“You, and what you’ve done. Your travels. You always said you would go places, and you are. Literally. Every day.”

“Oh my God, Ben.”

“No really, it’s just so inspiring. I wish I could be like that.”

“Ben.”

“What?”

“Are you, like, in love with me?” she said. She exaggerated a smile, batting her eyes. 

“Margot, come on.”

“Cause seriously, I never thought it would finally happen. You never liked a girl – or a boy for that matter – so was it me the whole time?”

“Margot Victoria Westly!”

“That’s not my middle name, ass”

“I know. Now stop,” he begged.

“I can’t! Like, do I need to pick out a dress?”

“Margot!”

“And a venue.”

“Dear Lord.”

“And a date! I want to be a spring bride!”

“OK never mind. Forget I said anything.”

She picked up another pierogi and shoved it in her mouth, seemingly proud of herself. Ben remained silent.

“I get it,” she said, putting the ball back into play.

Ben huffed, dipping his fork into something red and vinegary.

“Really,” she continued.

He looked at her and nodded.

“Because seriously, I would be so so so in love with me, too, if I could be, you know?” She pushed the joke forward. Relentlesly.

His nods changed direction as he shook his head and laughed.

“You’re such an idiot,” he said.

“I know, but a very well-traveled idiot,” she said, and motioned to the waitress for the bill.

After Veselka, they got coffee from a cart on 2nd Avenue and walked back to the East Village apartment where Margot was staying with a friend from college. Ben wondered why she was here and when she’d be back and if they would ever have a relationship with even a gradation of transparency.

She was so secretive.

The thrill of Margot was never knowing. But that thrill also became painful when the travels became more intense, the stretches of time longer, the haircuts more pronounced each time. Instead of these moments together, he depended on a series of letters, postcards, and occasional mix tapes sent via mail to engage him until her eventual return was announced via riddle or pun.

He didn’t even have a phone number to call her when she left.

A true nomad.

“So where to next?” he asked her as they approached her street.

“I’m supposed to head to Vancouver for a piece for one of my magazines, but there’s also talk of Berlin, which is supposed to be really changing now. We’ll see what happens with this new president. It’s tough being American out there sometimes,” she said.

“So can we get lunch tomorrow maybe?” he asked.

“I’m on a flight to London in the morning, or else I would love to. You know that,” she said, gripping his arm. He felt tiny surges of pity flowing through her hands like a peppering of endorphins after having a limb severed. It wasn’t enough.

“I love that you’re always on the road. But I also hate it,” he said.

“I know, babe. But you’re getting my letters and reading my stuff, right?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe you can hit the road with me soon,” she offered. They both knew it wouldn’t likely happen. Ben was trying to get a full-time teaching role, taking summer classes to boost his CV. Vacations weren’t on his schedule, or part of his budget.

“Maybe,” he said.

They reached her apartment. Night had fallen and she had to get ready for an early flight.

“I have a layover in Boston. So annoying,” she said.

“At least you have a layover at all,” he joked.

“You’ll have a layover soon. I promise,” she said. Silence overtook them.

This was always the hardest part for Ben. It wasn’t that he loved her romantically – he wasn’t a sexual person and had no interest in that – but that she felt like the only family in his life apart from his grandparents. She was a sister, a friend, and a partner all wrapped into one. Every parting was an abandonment. Every flight was Hades taking Persephone away while Ben wilted and waited until she returned again. Every return was a springtime thaw fragrant with blossoming hyacinths and fields of tulips.

He could feel the chill creep into his heart as she hugged him in front of the apartment building. Her arms squeezed him, her fingers finding the spaces between his ribs that never seemed to disappear. She stepped back, the red and green dragonfly brooch catching a bit of the streetlight.

“You don’t look that bad after all,” she said.

“Your riddles do need work though,” he said.

“Ass. I’ll write you from somewhere soon.” 

She walked up the stairs and turned to look at him, striking a post reminiscent of a Vogue photoshoot.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“We’ll never look this good again,” she said. She threw a hand dramatically across her forehead and leaned back. “Margot Westly was here, bitches! Always remember me at my best.”

Ben laughed.

“Take that to the Paris runways where it belongs, kiddo,” he responded.

“I’ll do just that,” she said. 

He knew she would. 

She blew a kiss and disappeared into the building.

Ben turned and took a sip of his coffee, the liquid now cold as it seeped from beneath the plastic lid onto his fingers. He licked it off his thumb, wondering when or where he’d find Margot next.