The Dance (Original Series Part 2)

For What It's Worth

"Do you know Dallas Taylor, the drummer for Crosby, Stills and Nash?"

"Yeah." Lindsey was lying on his side in Stevie's bed, propped up by his elbow with his head in his hand. Stevie lay the same way, and he was listening intently to her as she began her story. 

"He was an addiction specialist when I went away to Venice Beach to get off of klonopin," she explained. "He'd had his own issues, and he quit music because of it. Anyway, he was a terrific guy, and we hit it off. I got sprung from the place and he came over one night to visit me...actually not too long after you did...and one thing led to another."

Lindsey knew he had no right to be upset that she'd rejected his advances that night in 1994 and then taken up with someone else when he had been with Kristen two nights before this. He refrained from comment, which Stevie couldn't believe. All he said was, "Okay."

"So then tour was coming up, and they wanted me to go by bus," she continued. "A fucking bus! Remember when we went out with Fleetwood Mac in '75 and we were jumping up and down when we got our first-class plane tickets?" She smiled at the memory and so did he.

"I do. Do you remember the bathroom of the first-class lounge?" His smile turned devilish.

"Oh I do." They had merely gone in to check out what a first-class lounge bathroom looked like, but a few minutes later Stevie was standing on a toilet lid in a marble stall, wrists pinned above her as Lindsey had taken her so quickly, so violently, he'd had to use his free hand to cover her screams. Mick had wandered in to pee less than a minute after Stevie had screamed Lindsey's name into his cupped hand, and they'd remained perfectly still as Mick went about his business, singing to himself, of all songs, "Love Will Keep Us Together" by the Captain & Tenille, which had been all over American radio that year, and when he'd washed his hands and left the bathroom, Stevie and Lindsey had cracked up laughing together at what they could only hear but must have been a hilarious sight to see - six-foot-six Mick Fleetwood in his vest and red shoes singing "Love Will Keep Us Together" while peeing. 

Neither of them could hold out any longer without laughing. Stevie kicked her bare feet against the mattress and laughed into her pillow as Lindsey mockingly sang, "Young and beautiful, but some day, your looks'll be gone...When the others turn you off, who'll be turning you on? I will, I will, I will..."

Stevie continued for him, "I will be there to share forever...Love will keep us together...I've said it before and I'll say it again; while others pretend, I need you now and I'll need you then, just stop, 'cause I really love you..."

"Stop...I'll be thinking of you..." Lindsey sang that line and together they harmonized, "Look in my heart and then love will keep us together...whatever..."

Lindsey was smiling again, and he reached out to caress her cheek. Stevie felt her heart stop right then and there. He said, "We haven't done that in awhile."

"Harmonize? We do that every night...we just did it like four hours ago."

"No, laugh together in bed in the dark, silly," he said. He was still caressing her cheek. "I missed this."

"I missed you." She smiled back at him, and they stayed that way for a moment, enjoying the intimacy they had each wondered if they'd ever be able to get back to together again.

Stevie continued her story after awhile, the two of them lying in bed on their stomachs, gripping their pillows and facing each other to talk like they were at a middle school sleepover. She told him she'd invited Dallas Taylor on tour with her, not as a musician but as a friend - well, more than a friend - and that they'd spent hours looking out at the road before them and talking, Dallas giving her the courage she needed to go out and perform every night at her heavier weight, telling her she was beautiful at any size, and making out on the bus.