Running Down A Dream

There's Something Good Waiting Down This Road

Somewhere between Los Angeles, California and Berlin Germany...
Tuesday, October 4, 2022
(6:00 pm)
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"That Arizona sky burnin' in your eyes...You look at me and, babe, I wanna catch on fire...It's buried in my soul like California gold...You found the light in me that I couldn't find...So when I'm all choked up but I can't find the words...Every time we say goodbye, baby, it hurts...When the sun goes down and the band won't play...I'll always remember us this way..."

Stevie had played the soundtrack to A Star Is Born by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper on repeat for weeks after she and Karen had gone to see the movie in the theater. They'd gone to see it on a rainy Sunday afternoon in October 2018, and while Karen had enjoyed the movie quietly with a tub of popcorn and a box of Sno-Caps, Stevie had gotten the nachos and watched her actual tears falling onto the chips and into the phony yellow cheese. So much of the relationship between Lady Gaga's character and Bradley Cooper's had reminded her of Lindsey and herself - with a gender reversal because in the movie, it was the man's addiction that had gotten in the way - but that had been nothing compared to the songs. "Shallow" had made her cry, "I'll Never Love Again" had made her cry...but "Always Remember Us This Way" had been the one that had really gotten to her. She'd watched enough of the E! channel to know that Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper had worked hard on the songs, and she somehow felt as though they had broken into her house in the middle of the night and stolen her journals from 1968 to the present.

Stevie sat in her first-class seat with the map on the screen in front of her telling her she was somewhere above the North Atlantic. There was an elderly woman seated beside her who had a tiny white poodle with her on her lap, and Stevie had spent some time petting the dog, whose name was Samantha, and telling the woman how much the dog reminded her of Ginny, her first dog, the little white poodle that had slept in between her and Lindsey for years.

Now she was listening to music on her phone. She had finally accepted and iPhone as a gift from Dave Stewart some years ago, but she had never connected it to a cellular service provider. She used it as a camera, and Karen had added thousands of songs into iTunes for her over a series of afternoons until everything she liked was at her fingertips. The lyrics to "Always Remember Us This Way" made her think of the summer of 1997, sitting in Christopher and Lori's backyard and smoking a joint, listening to Steely Dan and reclining against Lindsey in a lawn chair, perfectly content in Arizona surrounded by family and by the man she loved.

"Lovers in the night...Poets tryin' to write...We don't know how to rhyme, but, damn, we try...
But all I really know...You're where I wanna go...The part of me that's you will never die..."

Stevie felt as though she were on an episode of that old show This Is Your Life, listening to the song and thinking back on the past fifty years, awed by just how many of her memories - good and bad - included Lindsey. Maybe that was why the past four years had felt so strange, she thought...Lindsey was not a part of any of those memories.

She remembered the very beginning of the pandemic, when Karen would cover up within an inch of her life and go to the grocery story for them, watching the video to Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber's "Stuck With U", which was basically a collection of people, including Ariana and Justin themselves, happy to be stuck at home with their loved ones and taking time to reconnect, even if the reason was terrible. She'd watched friends and lovers and old and young people and their pets, twirling around to the music and having fun at home, and while Karen's company was just fine...she couldn't help but wonder what the lockdown would have been like if she and Lindsey had been together. She imagined dinners dropped off by no-contact delivery people in bed in front of Netflix, Lily and Luna at their feet, digging through their old vinyl collections and dancing like fools to the Rolling Stones and Donovan and Iron Butterfly and The Guess Who, getting stoned to Led Zeppelin and making love to Marvin Gaye and Barry White no matter how cheesy Lindsey would have complained that it was. She imagined they'd lie in bed in the dark at night and discuss everything and nothing, FaceTime the kids - Is that what that video call thing was called? Did I get that one right? - and maybe once in awhile sit out on the terrace at night and take in the ocean breeze over a bottle of wine - No, a joint...remember who you're dreaming about, Stevie! - and go inside to catch Seinfeld and eat the rest of the pizza they'd abandoned earlier that night.