Say You Love Me (Double Love Trilogy Conclusion)

And There's Not Another Living Soul Around

Santa Monica, California
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
(3:00 am)
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"The only time since the old party days was probably when LeeLee was first born."

Lindsey was lying on his side, gripping the edge of the pillow his head rested upon, looking at Stevie in the near-darkness and confessing the last time he remembered being wide awake in the middle of the night before he'd found himself on her schedule most nights. They had fallen asleep at about ten o'clock after a particularly spirited round of the "dirty girl" game, and woken up a little before two and were now in pajamas under the covers, ignoring the History Channel on the TV and talking about everything and nothing as always. Stevie smiled at him in the blue glow of the television.

"You did the middle-of-the-night feedings?" Stevie had, understandably, never inquired much about what happened in his household in the early days, when he had three small children running around and he was heavily invested in being a dad.

"Yup...for all three of them...unless I was on the road," he explained. "I used to sit up and four in the morning, watching that cranky, colicky girl actively trying to resist going back to sleep - like you could see it in her face she was trying to be defiant and stay awake - and it was 2000, you know, so you couldn't just watch any TV show or movie on an app; there was just Cable." He let out a long, audible exhale. "Did you know that the only goddamn thing on TV at four in the morning in the fall of 2000 was a looped replay of the infomercial for Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break featuring Snoop Dogg...because I do!"

Stevie, who lay on her stomach in bed and hugged the pillow around her head and was looking out into the darkness at the familiar blue eyes, burst into laughter. "You want to know what's funny...I actually do! That's when I was on my whole Trouble In Shangri-La thing and I'd be up in the hotel, watching with Sulamith and telling her in my little dog mom voice that Mommy had hit an all-time low, watching that stuff." Her laughter died down and became a sigh before she added, "I miss that little dog...that silly, five-pound, bald little baby in cashmere...she was everything."

"I know, angel." Lindsey reached across the bed and began to stroke her hair, his eyes narrowed in understanding. He remembered the morning in late 2015, after the On The Road tour, when he'd rushed over to this very bedroom to lie down beside her so she could curl up in his arms and cry her heart out over losing Sulamith, who, of all of the dogs she'd ever loved, had been the most special to her. He remembered singing "Crystal" to her just as he had in a bedroom in Arizona some years before when Barbara Nicks had died suddenly of emphysema and pneumonia just after Christmas...and just as he had a decade before that, when two planes had brought down the World Trade Center while she was in New York and she couldn't sleep, and neither could he until he got her on the phone after a long day of suffering in silence wondering if she was okay.

Stevie moved in closer to him, bringing the covers along with her. Lindsey's arm went around her and they'd assumed the position, the embrace they both knew so well after over fifty years of depending on each other in bed at night for comfort, for warmth, for sound sleep, for a moment in time that belonged only to them, no one else around but the dog. They existed in the quiet for awhile, Lily's snoring at the foot of the bed the only sound around. Finally, it was Stevie who broke the silence.

"Do you think the universe unfolds as it should?" She didn't look up at him but kept right on lying with her head on his shoulder, her arm draped across him.

"How do you mean, angel?" He looked down towards the top of her head and scratched down into her hair affectionately.

"Well like it was destiny that we both almost didn't go to the party where we met, it was destiny that Keith Olsen chose 'Frozen Love' to show off the studio to Mick...the universe unfolded."