You May Be The One

How It's Lasted So Long Is A Mystery To Me

Santa Monica, California
Thursday, May 6, 2010
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"She went upstairs to her room last night at, like, nine or some ridiculous time like that. No one has heard from her since and we're all terrified to knock."

The four women in Stevie's life who'd been there through many different iterations of what it meant for Stevie to be locked behind a bedroom door were all gathered in the kitchen at ten o'clock the next morning wonder which iteration this was going to be. Lori had been there from the beginning.

She remembered when Stevie had locked herself away for days compulsively lining up cocaine against a black piano top, then snorting a line and completely reworking the entire setup, explaining to Lori that if she just got it right, if everything lined up exactly as it was supposed to, Joe would call and say he was sorry he'd ever told her to leave him alone and Lori would get to wear a Maid of Honor dress after all. She remembered when Stevie being locked behind closed doors meant she was holed up in her closet with her keyboard and her dog, writing "Sable On Blonde" because her house was haunted. She'd seen Stevie locked behind closed doors because Jenny Fleetwood was in town and she was still lying in bed with Mick telling him he reminded her of The Beast, doing lines off of each other's bodies and thinking it was the funniest thing in the world. She remembered her locked in her dressing room because it had just hit her that Robin would never get to hear The Wild Heart and she was crying all over again at Red Rocks as if Robin had just died yesterday. She also remembered 1998, when Stevie had appeared at her front door in Paradise Valley, Arizona and cried behind her closed bedroom door for about a week straight before entering the kitchen for coffee and announcing to both Christopher and herself that Lindsey had gotten another woman pregnant and she'd told him to go do the honorable thing, and then locked herself back into her bedroom for another week before emerging one Saturday afternoon and taking Jessi's hand and saying, "Come on, baby girl! Help Aunt Stevie pick out a new puppy!"

"I think we all know exactly what she's doing behind closed doors this morning," Karen said, looking from Lori to Sharon to Mary and shaking her head in disgust. "Or should I say...who she's doing behind closed doors this morning."

"Oh my God," Mary said, "do you think so? Seriously? After everything she went through with that selfish prick...seriously?"

Sharon brought her little white dog down to the floor to run to the water bowls Stevie left out for all of the dogs in the house. She said, "If she wasn't such a glutton for punishment, I'd agree with you, Mary...but she seems to love the selfish prick." She smiled at Lori's burst of laughter at her turn of phrase. "Who the hell knows?"

Kellianne appeared in the kitchen then and kissed her mother hello before heading directly for the coffee pot and taking the last of the coffee. Turning around the others, she said, "So I'm to assume there's barely any coffee left because you're all engaged in a what-the-hell-is-Stevie-doing meeting?" She smiled at the collective nods and yeses from the four older women who stood around the island countertop. She rolled her eyes. "Fuuuuuuck...Waddy'll die when he gets here and sees this little impromptu intervention staging here...you know what she's been doing in there since nine o'clock last night, right?" She looked at the blank stares from her mother and the three other women who's known Stevie as long as she'd been alive. "My window looks right into her bedroom window if I'm in my living room late enough for the light to hit it right." She sipped her coffee and looked away as she said, "Not to be too gross here, ladies, but if I saw what I saw...it's no wonder she's been pining for that man since 1976!" Kellianne was all giggles on her way back up to her loft apartment with her coffee mug in hand. She winked at Karen on the way out and said, "You called it!"

"Shit." Karen rolled her eyes. "Lori, can you please take one for the team today? I have a fuck ton of phone calls to make to be sure that Reese Witherspoon's people sign off on her being in the film if Dave releases it and they use the 'Cheaper Than Free' scenes...I cannot have her crying on my shoulder on a conference call!"

Sharon, who'd said the least of everyone in the room, shook her head and said, "You never know, hon. This could be it...I mean...I run into that wife of his every once in awhile because we have the same friends in the riding community...ugh!" She rolled her eyes and said, "He's not a happy camper. Believe me, this has a happy ending if we wait long enough."

********************

They had been awake for an hour now but neither of them had the energy or the desire to get out of the bed.

Stevie and Lindsey had woken up a little bit after one o'clock, realizing they'd dozed off together for about two hours. It was Lindsey who'd squinted his eyes without his glasses handy to see the flashing green numbers on the clock radio beside Stevie's bed, laughing to himself about her old-fashioned, anti-technology ways. It's 2010 and she had a clock radio! He thought of the iPod dock that woke him up every morning to the tune of "Brown-Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison, his wife having already been awake since six to start her day with the kids and her interior design business and missing the little reference to what was really going on in his heart. 

"Wake up, sweet girl." He'd seen the 1:14 flashing in his eyes over the love of his life, who was sleeping almost completely on top of him, her tiny body covering half of his, her arm draped over him so that her little fingers curled up around his opposite shoulder. He knew she never went to sleep this early no matter what time she went up to her bedroom for the night, so he didn't want her to miss any of her routines - removing her makeup, caring for the dog, or anything else he knew about her nightly rituals from those beautiful days when he was still a part of it all, usually watching from their mattress on the floor with a guitar in his hand until he fell asleep that way and woke up to her prying the guitar away and covering him with kisses until the instrument he held was replaced by the girl he loved. He began to stroke her hair, kissing down at her until he felt her wake up reluctantly with a little whine that sounded like his Stevie and made his heart leap in his chest.

"Mmmm...so happy I took special care to make up your guest room," she teased, and they both laughed. It was clear he was not going back there tonight, or ever again.

They took turns in the bathroom, getting cleaned up and brushing their teeth and Stevie removing her makeup, a good deal of which she'd cried off earlier, and when their pajamas had been replaced on their bodies they crept downstairs for drinks and snacks in middle of the night, Lindsey reminding Stevie of the nights they'd spent together at his parents' house in Northern California when they were first together, giggling their way down to the kitchen in the middle of the night during tickling endurance wars and taking turns cautioning each other to stop laughing or they'd wake everyone up. They felt like they were those twenty-something kids again, bringing a late-night meal of water, Coke, pretzels and baby carrots upstairs with them, and placing Sulamith back onto the bed and watching Arsenic And Old Lace together under the covers, finally making love one more time, quietly and lazily side by side, before falling asleep in each other's arms with the remnants of their late-night slumber party snacking on the floor beside, once again, their pajamas.

The trouble now was, according to Stevie, that the coffee was downstairs and they were upstairs, and coffee didn't go get itself. She informed him of this fact as they lay side by side, facing each other in the morning sunlight and Lindsey began leisurely kissing up the length of her bare arm, telling her sweet girl was the perfect nickname for someone so delicious.

"Not to be indelicate, Linds, but little dogs also don't feed and walk themselves," Stevie said, giggling at the way it tickled when his lips made contact with her arm on the inside. "We do eventually have to get up from this bed...even if it's the greatest place on earth right now." She stretched herself out and relaxed against the pillow with a little "Mmmm" that made his heart stop for a moment.

"I'm not sure about that," Lindsey said, looking across the bed and into her eyes. "Something is missing." He smiled at her raised eyebrow of concern, and she smiled back when he said, "Get over here."

Stevie inched her way back into his arms where she belonged. "But I really do need to take her down and let her out," she murmured into his neck as he wrapped her up in his arms and the cover in one graceful motion. She exhaled against him with a sigh, and Lindsey closed his eyes to the sweetest sound in the world and was dozing off again as Stevie poked him gently and said, "Five more minutes, baby, tops."

They were home.