Tango In The Night Part 1: Big Love

Prologue: Listen To The Wind On The Water

Fleetwood's On Front Street
Lahaina, Hawaii
Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 24, 2022
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"Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel...Come get up, my baby...
Look at that sky; life's begun...Nights are warm and the days are young...Come get up, my baby..."

The entire restaurant was alive with the sound of about twenty chattering people, a few barking dogs, and the sound system pumping out David Bowie's "Golden Years" as they waited for dinner. Mick and Lindsey were the only two missing pieces to the puzzle, and Stevie was looking out the back window as she waited for her husband to arrive, smelling the autumn ocean crashing nearby and thinking of "Silver Springs". Two men she loved, one of them her husband of thirty-five years, had disappeared this morning to take care of the Big Secret. Neither of them would tell her anything, and neither would Christine or John, both of whom she assumed were in on it but weren't talking. She closed her eyes and tried to forget she was hungry and the aroma of the Thanksgiving dinner that smelled almost as good as her mother's was wafting in through the kitchen. Instead, she focused on the ocean she'd loved for over seventy years, the first time she'd ever seen it in real life.

Stevie would never forget the first time she had seen the Pacific Ocean.

She was three years old, her brother hadn't been born yet, and her father had just moved his young family to Los Angeles, California and purchased a bar. Barbara cooked the foods on the menu, Jess tan the business, and her grandad came over every day to sing and drink - mostly drink - and he'd stand her up on the table to dance and sing along with him.

One Saturday morning, she'd been woken up by Barbara and assumed they were going to the bar, but instead Barbara had told her she had to wear her new yellow bathing suit with the little duckies on it...they were going to the beach. Barbara wore her own bathing suit under a sundress and a big floppy hat, and Stevie was already planning to ask her mother if she could wear the hat too.

"You are in luck, Teedee-bird!" Barbara told her daughter. I got you a big hat of your own! It will protect your eyes from the sun and you'll look just like Mommy and everyone at the beach will say, 'Look at that pretty little girl in her big floppy hat and the cute little duckies on her bathing suit!'"

It had been only Barbara and herself that day on the sand - Daddy and Grandad were working, Barbara explained - and they were going to have a special day just the two of them. She'd packed a basket with peanut butter sandwiches and cookies and apples and iced tea, she'd brought along a pail and shovel that also had yellow duckies on it so her little Teedee-bird would match for her big special day, and she'd shown her how to dig in the sand.

The best part, though, had been the ocean.

Barbara had started her off small, taking her by the hand and bringing her to the shore where the sand was muddy and wet and felt cool and funny at her feet, held her up with both hands to jump over the waves as they splashed over her feet and then her shins, and before she knew it, they were in the ocean together and Barbara was holding her out like a pizza in her arms and telling her to kick her little feet and move her arms like she had in the little pool they used to go to last summer in Arizona, that she was an even bigger girl this summer and she could swim even better if she learned. She had never felt so happy or safe in her whole life than being held by her mother in the water, or wearing her big floppy hat as she dug a big hole near the big white bedsheet they'd laid out on the sand and filled it with water collected in her yellow ducky pail, or when hours later, in the backseat of the Studebaker with the afternoon sun streaming in as Barbara drove home in her big black sunglasses that made her look like a lady from the movies, Stevie had fallen asleep, damp and exhausted, as her favorite song on the radio, "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd Have Baked A Cake" by Eileen Barton, played and Barbara happily sang along.

"Well, I don't know where you came from...'cause I don't know where you've been...But it really doesn't matter; grab a chair and fill your platter, and dig, dig, dig right in...If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake...hired a band, goodness sake!"

Next thing Stevie knew she was in her new big-girl bed, she was dry again, she wore her little pink cotton nightgown and her hair was all combed but still smelled like the ocean, and Barbara was laying her down in her darkened bedroom for a nap. Nickie the cat jumped up on the bed next to her. She'd been the one to name him Nickie Nicks when Daddy brought him home; she'd thought it was funny and couldn't stop giggling.

"How did you like the beach today, Stephanie? Did you have a good time?"

"I loved the beach, Mommy," she said, grabbing onto her baby doll for her nap.

"What was your favorite part?" Barbara was tucking her in.

"I like the water," Stevie told her mother. "I like the digging but it was hot...so the water is the best part I think." Stephanie was very articulate and highly verbally advanced at three years old, but her little voice was sleepy as she spoke, clutching her favorite baby doll with the blonde hair and the red dress and the eyes that closed when she put her down.

"We live near the water now, baby...we can go whenever we have a free day and it's warm enough. Would you like that?" Barbara watched Stephanie nod as she closed her eyes. She smiled down at her daughter and said, "Go to sleep now, Teedee...you had a big day and you need to rest, okay?"

"Okay, Mommy." Stephanie's eyes were already closed and she was already starting to dream. The sun was shining and the ocean waves were crashing, and she was twirling around and dancing in the water up to her knees, and on the shore, Mommy was waiting for her with her arms open wide with a big, fluffy white towel. She ran as fast as she could, her wet feet picking up sand but she didn't care. She reached the towel and Mommy wrapped her up and she decided that when she was a grownup, she was going to live at the beach in a big house where everywhere she looked, she could see the ocean.

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"He's not here yet, and the food is ready to come out in, like, five minutes." Christine looked at Stevie with concern in her eyes and a glass of wine in her hand.

"He'll be here," Stevie assured her. "He had to make a last-minute stop he wouldn't tell me about on the way from wherever the two of them went this morning." She couldn't help but smile, her eyes turning down towards the floor past her own glass of wine.

"Your husband is full of secrets these days, isn't he?" Christine said, a not-so-serious conspiratorial tone in her voice. Actually, she was just having fun. Stevie's husband had called her several months ago, before she'd come home from the end of the first leg of her first tour since Covid in June. He'd told her all about his plans, the big surprise, and Christine had sworn herself to secrecy.

"I guess I'll find out soon enough," Stevie relented with a sigh. "But I'm hungry! Shit! He needs to be here so we can all dig in!"

No sooner did she say those words did the door to the restaurant swing open, and Mick and Lindsey appeared, dressed in leather jackets and ready for Thanksgiving dinner. They got a rousing cheer from the twenty or so hungry dinner guests, glasses raised to greet them, and Stevie, her eyes lighting up at the sight of her husband smiling at her, ran through the crowd and threw her arms up around him.

"Thank God, baby! I'm starving and I missed you!" She kissed his lips and their foreheads met, and she looked into his eyes and saw up close the love she'd seen in them every Thanksgiving since their first one as a married couple...although she'd actually seen that love in his eyes years before that, the years they'd spent together in the band, no longer together but knowing that would never last.

"Let's eat," her husband said. "I'm starving too...and then I'm going to announce the big surprise."

Everyone took their seats at the table, which was just small tables from the restaurant dining room pushed together, and Stevie took her place beside the man she'd married thirty-five years ago, at the end of a long, painful year had almost torn the entire band apart and she'd almost lost him - and everyone else she loved - forever.

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