On With The Show (Original Series Part 4)

Prologue: In That House On The Hill

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Brentwood, California

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"It's not like I have a say in the matter, goddamn it! You know as well as I do that this is how it runs, and it's not up to only me!"

Lindsey Buckingham stood at the kitchen island at his home in Brentwood, trying to enjoy his leftover birthday cake. He had been performing in Chicago on Friday night, his sixty-fifth birthday, so Kristen and the kids had prepared balloons and presents and sung to him over a chocolate layer cake reading Happy 65th B-day in blue icing that was shaped like a guitar. It was LeeLee who'd come up with the idea, and Kristen had gone to a bakery in Hollywood last week and special-ordered the chocolate guitar cake for her husband, not letting on to her fourteen-year-old daughter that she was so angry at Lindsey that she'd been tempted to boycott his milestone birthday altogether. He had barely been home for half a year, most of which he'd spent locked away in the studio at home or in Santa Monica, and now he had started up again on a Fleetwood Mac tour that would take him away through the following fall. Kristen was livid.

"I just don't understand why you can't say to Mick, 'Listen, we just got home from being out there, we have lives, we aren't thirty anymore, so let's take a break.' It's not hard!" Kristen stood near the stainless steel refrigerator which still hung open after Lindsey had pulled the bakery box of what remained of his birthday cake - the neck of the guitar - and began to dig at it with a fork from the open dishwasher, no plate or knife or napkin to speak of.

"Kristen, I'm exhausted, I'm flying to New York tomorrow morning, and we have to do two shows at the Garden before we appear on the fucking Today show...so please let me enjoy my guitar cake in peace," Lindsey pleaded, trying not to shout. He knew Stella was in the den with her brother, watching him play with his Playstation, and although Will had heard it all before, he didn't want Stella to know that her parents had been at each other's throats since he'd returned home from the previous tour in January. The arguing had been going on all year, shouting matches that were mostly whisper-shouting matches when any of the kids were around, full-on screaming when they weren't.

"Did the old Welsh Witch book you on the Today show to give you more to do so she could cling to you and tell more stupid stories that nobody gives a damn about?" Kristen closed the refrigerator door, and Lindsey, who'd been chewing a bite of cake, swallowed hard in an attempt not to shout at his wife in defense of his girlfriend. He was walking a fine line there, he knew, but he had had just about all he could take of the jabs at Stevie. No matter what their relationship, even just as band mates and friends, the insults were uncalled for.

"For your information, NBC called because Christine is back and it's actually of interest to people...fat lot of good that does you because you didn't even come to the welcome back party!" Christine's official return to the band had been celebrated with a big party at the Beverly Hills Hotel in July which doubled as her birthday party, and at the last minute, Kristen had pulled out, claiming she had to see a client whose living room she was redecorating.

"The only redecorating you're doing that night is you changing how you deal with all of this stuff," he'd said to her the night she'd announced she wasn't attending Christine's party. "It's like I'm getting a complex over this - people think my wife is a phantom!"

"Better a phantom for a wife that a ridiculous old gypsy for a partner," Kristen spat back at him, and as she'd left the studio, where the argument - as well as most of his afternoon - had taken place, she said, "Go to your Fleetwood Mac extravaganza and twirl with your sister of the moon and make a fool of yourself. I'm out." And she'd slammed the door on her way out. Lindsey tossed the pair of headphones he was wearing across the room, and he pulled out his phone immediately, needing to vent to his best friend...but he stopped himself before dialing because his best friend was Stevie.