Landslide (Original Series Prequel 2)

If You See My Reflection

Hollywood, California
Friday, April 20, 1973
********************

"I think you're out of your fucking mind and I don't even know who you are right now."

Stevie was fuming, arms folded at her chest, trying hard not to cry and wondering why that's all she seemed to be doing these days...besides working. Lindsey stood next to Jimmy Wachtel, and the two of them were looking at her as if she were the crazy one because she was not going to take her top off for the photo that would be the Buckingham Nicks album cover. This whole angry tears thing was new to her - it had only really started since they'd moved from Northern California - and she was not liking it one bit. She always seemed to be backed into a corner these days - when Lindsey changed the tempo or the melody of a song, when her creepy boss told her to smile more at male customers, when she had two hundred dollars of bills piled on the kitchen table and only one hundred and twelve in the bank, when she had to find a parking space that allowed her to exit frontward because the Toyota's reverse was officially broken now, when Lindsey looked up at her from a cloud of marijuana smoke and asked what took her so long to get home, when he accused her of flirting with Jimmy or Waddy or Richard or even Keith, for Christ sake...when all she'd been doing at his house was scrubbing toilets and sinks for his charity money so their landlord would get off their backs the first of every month about how Ginny barked when she wasn't home and there was nothing she could do about the long hours unless they intended to all three starve to death. Now she was backed into a corner again, and given Lindsey's track record with being jealous and overbearing, she was amazed he agreed with everyone else about her being photographed topless. Have you MET me? she screamed in her head at him. I am the girl who makes you turn the lights off when we have sex! I am NOT posing for porn with you to sell records!

"You know, you're just being a child," Lindsey said to her. "This is art." He seemed angry, and she wasn't sure how much of that was for Jimmy's benefit.

"This is not art...This is me taking a nude photograph with you, and I don't dig it." Do not let your tears out. Do not let your tears out.

"I think you're being silly, Stevie," Lindsey said. "It's 1973! Jesus Christ, it's not Victorian fucking England! It's just the top!"

"So because it's 1973 we have to be John and Yoko now, is that it?" She thought of the Two Virgins album sitting on a shelf at home, and how her only thought when she'd first seen the album cover was that Yoko Ono was the bravest woman alive. She added, "I spent a hundred and eleven dollars on this blouse I'm wearing, Lindsey! A week of tip money plus some money left from Grandpa A.J. from Christmas...and it's going to be on me in this picture!"

"Well...I think you're being ridiculous." Lindsey turned around and said, "Jimmy, you talk to her! I'm done," and he stormed off. It was only after Lindsey had walked away that Stevie allowed the tears to fall.

The pattern had been going on for some time now and Stevie knew how this would all go - Lindsey would get angry in front of everyone, she'd try not to cry in front of the others, he'd storm off, Keith would try to mediate with only Stevie around to hear his wisdom which was useless even though he meant well, they'd get home and Lindsey would apologize and they'd wind up having either explosive sex or tender lovemaking or both...wash, rinse, repeat. Normally she would give in to whatever Lindsey's suggestions were because he was knowledgeable about music and played an instrument whereas she only messed around on the guitar and was just starting to do the same on the piano, but this was different. This was a photo for an album cover and he wanted her topless. This was a topless photo everyone would see - Barbara and Jess and Christopher, A.J., Ruth and Morris and Jeff and Greg, Robin and the whole Snyder family - not to mention all of America. She closed her eyes, tears running silently down her cheeks, and tried to imagine Jess seeing his little girl topless beside an equally topless man with long hair and a mustache who was not her husband, married though they were in every way without the "piece of paper from the City Hall keeping them tied and true," as one of her favorite Joni Mitchell songs said. It wasn't a secret that they lived together and slept in the same bed at night...but this would be throwing it in Jess' face, in A.J.'s face...it was just...not who Stevie was - no, it wasn't who Stephanie was. Then again, these days Stevie was so tired and twisted around that she had no idea who she was anymore. That was what "Sorcerer", her latest poem, was about.