Tango In The Night Part 2: When I See You Again

And I Knew You'd Never Be Mine

Bel Air, California
Saturday, September 19, 1987
(11:30 am)
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The first time Stevie had come over to Lindsey's house, his first home after they'd become millionaires, she had asked him how it felt to be living this way after the old days, when they lived hand-to-mouth and had a mattress on the floor and had to split a single cheeseburger from Bob's Big Boy down the middle for dinner some nights because they couldn't afford to order two.

He'd told her he kept expecting his parents to come in and take care of everything. Stevie had burst into laughter and told him she felt the same way at her house.

Lindsey left the house before noon on Saturday before his real estate agent arrived to begin setting up for the open house. He had nothing against his real estate agent, a middle-aged woman named Rebecca who looked a lot like Sally Struthers from All In The Family and was so cheerful. His problem was that selling the house in Bel Air was so sad, the act of a man who had tried to build a life and hadn't succeeded.

He had tried twice now to build a life for himself, a life that didn't include Stevie Nicks. He had spent a total of eight years with Carol Ann Harris, dragging her along on the Rumors tour, the Tusk tour, the Mirage tour. He'd lived with her for some of those years, paid for a lot of her life choices, done his best to help her burgeoning career in the modeling industry that never quite got off the ground, and in the end, when she'd left, she'd blamed him for why she hadn't been successful.

He'd blamed her for not being Stevie.

Cheri Caspari was different...or at least she'd started out that way. He was older at the beginning than he'd been at his beginning with Carol Ann, more mature, but, like in 1977, he was mourning the loss of Stevie in his life when he'd met Cheri. He had wanted so desperately to just be normal again, try to love someone else and build a life around that premise, and for awhile, he had. They had gone on a few tropical vacations and on a trip to Amsterdam, they had stayed home and cooked together and played Frank Sinatra on the stereo while eating spinach lasagna and garlic bread, gone to see Elton John in concert...

But Cheri Caspari was not Stevie Nicks, and his heart cried out for her every night as he lay in bed beside and tried to sleep away the aching.

In the car, Lindsey fiddled with the radio and tried to find a satisfying station. He stopped on the classic rock station when he heard the familiar sound of the Beatles, and he identified the song as "Got To Get You Into My Life". He smiled, cranking up the volume, remembering the summer day in 1966 when he'd brought the Revolver album home, and the second-to-last track, "Got To Get You Into My Life" had begun to play in his bedroom, reminding him of that night a few months earlier when he'd been at a religious youth center party with his guitar and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen had sidled up to him and joined him in singing "California Dreaming" in perfect harmony. The song explained the evening perfectly...

"I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there...Another road where maybe I could see a different kind of mind there...Ooh, then I suddenly see you, ooh, did I tell you I need you every single day of my life..."

Lindsey found himself singing along in the car, speeding along the Pacific Coast Highway aimlessly in the sunshine, and all he could see was a little girl of seventeen named Stephanie Nicks telling him to call her Stevie...and him thinking sure he would but he preferred Stephanie because it meant "crown" and as far as he was concerned he'd just met a princess.

"You didn't run, you didn't lie, you knew I wanted just to hold you...And had you gone, you knew in time we'd  meet again, for I had told you...Ooh, you were meant to be near me, ooh, and I want you to hear me...Say we'll be together every day..."