Kind Of Woman (Mirage Era: Part 1)

No Hesitation Why You Ask

Paris, France
Monday, January 11, 1982
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"So what it all boils down to is that she doesn't have a clean bill of health but it's in remission, at least for now."

Stevie had just returned from a trip to the ladies' room at a five-star French restaurant to the table where Christine sat and picked at a piece of bread, anxiously awaiting their lunch to be served and needing a refill of her wine glass. Stevie looked visibly high but she wasn't going to bring it up. These days, with Robin in and out of the hospital and Jimmy breathing down her neck to come home, whatever she needed was just fine. She'd come back to the table and begun an animated tale of a phone call she'd had with Robin's husband while Robin slept off the effects of her final chemo treatment upstairs in her own bed, in which Kim had told her everything the doctors had said as if Stevie were there in person and holding him at gunpoint for the information.

"Well good!" Christine exclaimed, holding her empty wine glass in the air. "We need refills...but then we toast! Go, Robin!" Christine's smile brought out Stevie's smile. They handled the refills when the waiter brought their food, and a few minutes later, as Stevie picked around her plate and tapped a piece of chicken with her fork, Christine took a generous sip of Bordeaux and said, "You know, you weigh like ninety pounds, Stevie. If you do that much blow you're never going to want food again."

"That's the point, Chris." She looked up at her and said, "I have a confession to make."

Christine smiled slyly and asked, "Which is it? The second solo album you've been writing since you've been here or the fact that you're sleeping with L.B. again?"

Stevie sat way back in her chair and folded her hands on the table. "How the fuck do you do that?" Christine always knew what she was hiding before she was ready to confess.

"My mother was clairvoyant...I just have eyes and ears," Christine said. "So...which one were you going to confess to today?"

"The album, thank you very much!" Stevie drank from her wine glass. "It's called The Wild Heart and I have most of it written already...including one or two songs that'll make you crack up laughing now that I know you know my other confession!"

"It's not some monumental secret, Stevie...not with you screaming 'oh God' and 'Lindsey' two doors away from me every night while I'm trying to sleep!" Christine laughed at Stevie's blushing and looking sheepishly down at her lap. "From what I hear, he's doing a damn good job, too."

"He always does," Stevie said. And with a sigh, she added, "Precisely the problem."

"I don't know that fantastic sex is ever a problem," Christine said. "But here's the question...if the sex isn't the problem, what is?"

"Can't we just talk about the new album instead?" Stevie looked up from her lap at Christine with a look that begged her to drop the subject.

"Sure...but I think you're playing with fire." Christine had heard almost every word of their argument Stevie and Lindsey had had the night before New Years, plus the screams from Stevie's usual late-night nightmares followed by the explosive round of sex that had followed. From her bedroom two doors away it had sounded pretty clear that Stevie was every bit as much in love with him even now as he was with her, and she was inexplicably angry about it. Noticing Stevie growing more and more uncomfortable, she said, "Listen, forget about it. Let's talk about something else."

"Well...it's my illicit affair with Lindsey, my solo album or my best friend's cancer. You pick."

"Fuck." Christine laughed, bringing her wine glass to her lips. "Life."