You May Be The One

Prologue: I Was A Starving Child

Santa Monica, California
Saturday, January 30, 2010
(11:30 pm)
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"I'm going home now, Stevie. Do you need anything?"

Karen Johnston was zipping up the front of her black Patagonia down jacket as she appeared in the open bedroom door. Stevie was tucked away in her bed, propped up against the pillows with Sulamith lying across her lap like a belt as she watched TV and wrote in her journal, glasses on the tip of her nose. She looked up when she saw Karen and smiled.

"No, I'm fine," Stevie said. "Saturday Night Live is on, and I'm just going to watch until I'm tired and go to sleep." She coughed into a balled up tissue she held in her hand. She'd had pneumonia for two weeks now - the main reason Karen was still hanging around at eleven-thirty on a Saturday night - but she was finally on the mend. When she was done coughing, she looked up at Karen in the doorway and smiled. "I'm fine; it's cool. Don't worry." She held her fingers up in the peace sigh to elaborate her point.

"Okay." Karen had pushed her glasses up on top of her head earlier, and she lowered them into position so she could drive home. "I'll call you tomorrow at about ten, okay? I love you."

"I love you too, hon." Stevie smiled again, winking too as she said, "And take that cherry-cheese danish home, please! I don't want to have pneumonia and be fat!"

Karen was laughing as she turned to leave, saying, "Fine, fine, I'll be the fat one..." They were both laughing until Stevie heard Karen shout out to her, "And don't forget your meds!" The door locked behind Karen on her way out, and Stevie heard the click.

She was alone.

Jon Hamm from Mad Men was involved in his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live on the TV screen. Sulamith was openly snoring like a buzzsaw stretched across her lap. Stevie sighed and sank lower into her bed, trying to pay attention to the television and not obsess over the argument she'd had with Lindsey over the phone earlier that day, when he'd called to ask if she was well enough to attend the Grammys tomorrow night, and then wound up fighting her about making an album with Dave Stewart. She knew he was hurt.

"And who do you think you are, trying to dictate who I can and can't work with, Lindsey?" Stevie was just as angry as he was as the subject of Dave Stewart became the topic of conversation. "This isn't Fleetwood Mac business, okay, this is MY stuff! You've never given a damn about my stuff before!"

"That's because you've never DONE this kind of a thing before, Stevie!" Lindsey said. "And I'm not trying to DICTATE to you...I just..." He trailed off, and she could hear a lot more in the silence as she had with everything he'd already said. "You could have asked me, you know. If you needed someone to produce it...you know I would have said yes if you'd asked."

"That's just it, Lindsey..." Stevie sighed audibly into the phone. "I know no such thing."

"How the hell can you SAY that to me? Aren't I the one who's been turning your songs into gold for almost forty years? Aren't I the one who understands what you're trying to say in a song when no one else does?"

"Yes, but you are also the one who left my signed copy of Bella Donna on the studio floor and walked out of the room thirty years ago. You've made it clear that my solo stuff is NOT your concern...and so I got Dave to do it. End of story."

"Jesus, Stevie...every time we get into this kind of a thing you bring up the goddamn Bella Donna album!" She could hear the frustration in his voice growing every time it was his turn to speak. "I have told you a million times I was sorry about that...I was not exactly the nicest person on earth thirty years ago...and neither were you, quite frankly...none of us were."