Say You Will Part 2: The Tour

Sometimes She Remembers

Boston, Massachusetts
Monday, May 26, 2003
*********************

"I'm sorry about the carrot cake, Stevie, but I guess it's just not as popular a dessert item as you'd like to think it is."

Karen had been feeling guilty all through Stevie's birthday dinner about the fact that the seafood restaurant she had chosen had lots of options on the dessert menu - chocolate blackout cake, red velvet cake, cheesecake - but not Stevie's favorite. Karen, Sharon and Jana had taken Stevie to dinner for her birthday just a few hours after landing in Boston for their show the following night, and with nothing on the schedule until sound check tomorrow afternoon, Stevie had suggested that they all take the party to a Boston pub for a few drinks, making Cheers jokes the whole time, and it had been shortly after ten o'clock when Carlos Rio had showed up at the bar to give Stevie a hug and a kiss and order her a martini to match his own to help celebrate her birthday. The evening had ended abruptly when Karen had announced she wasn't feeling well, that her lobster dinner wasn't agreeing with her, but Stevie had been on her way to drunk and she wasn't sure that was a good idea given her mood, so she'd been more than happy to call it a night and join everyone else in the back of the limo to the hotel.

"I'm fine about the carrot cake, Karen." Stevie laughed and her hand dropped to the knee of her assistant, who say next to her in the limo and had looked at her watch about five times since leaving the bar. She said, "Don't worry; we'll be home soon, and you can do whatever damage you need to do in there...you know, because of the lobster."

"The conversations we have..." Karen rolled her eyes and laughed, and Stevie did too.

Joni Mitchell was playing in the car upon Stevie's birthday request. "Help Me" from the Court And Spark album was the current song, and Stevie stared out the window at Boston and tried unsuccessfully not to internalize the lyrics...

"Help me, I think I'm fallin' in love too fast...It's got me hopin' for the future and worryin' about the past...'cause I've seen some hot, hot blazes come down to smoke and ash...We love our lovin'...but not like we love our freedom..."

She knew that Lindsey knew something was wrong. They had carried on just as planned for the past few weeks, singing the new songs and the old songs to stadiums of fans and then retreating to the comfort of her room at the hotels they stayed at to make love and sleep peacefully in each other's arms when they were done, but there was something she wasn't sharing, a resentment that was not really anger but more of a disappointment in a reality she had no one to blame on but herself when she'd agreed to the affair - that he'd taken his wife and kids away for the Memorial Day weekend with the Fleetwoods and that the family outing just happened to tale place on her birthday. She hadn't exactly had a terrible birthday; there had been a great meal and conversation with the girls, great martinis and Carlos' dance moves in the corner of the bar when someone's money in the modern CD jukebox had payed for "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste Of Honey, an old disco song she and Christine used to love and dance around like fools to in their hotel rooms on the Tusk tour, usually with a dozen Dunkin Donuts and a mirror piled with white powder laid out on the table to enhance the party. It had been fun, she'd been sung to over chocolate cake...but the one person she'd wished more than anything could be holding her hand as she blew out the candles was not. He was somewhere in New Jersey with his thirty-two-year-old wife, watching his two adorable kids build sand castles on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, Stevie was fifty-five today and had experienced an epic hot flash right after she'd eaten her birthday cake. "I'm getting older too..." she thought with a wince as the streets of Boston rolled by outside the car window.

"Sulamith was sleeping with Mana in my room when we left, so how about I keep her for you so you can get to sleep and we don't disturb the dogs tonight?" Karen was looking at her watch again as they rode up in the hotel elevator some time later. Sulamith and Mana, Karen's yorkie, were getting to be best friends after not exactly getting along in the beginning.