Talk To Me: The Dance Thriller, Part 1

We Both Know There's Something Happening Here

Paradise Valley, Arizona
Sunday, March 30, 1997
(8:00 pm)

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"Look, I won't make fun of you watching that stupid Lois and Clark show if you don't make fun of what I'm watching. Deal?"

Stevie was lying in bed with her dog at her side, pajamas on, watching the opening credits to Touched By An Angel on her television at the foot of the bed and trying not to laugh too much as she talked to Lindsey on the phone. She'd given as good as she'd gotten with the teasing, telling him she didn't know how on earth he could be sitting down to an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman, and he'd told her that her choice of TV viewing was equally as silly. She knew that one of them would inevitably say they had to go soon, that they had to unwind and watch their show and that it had been good talking again, but tonight, she thought, it had to be her turn to hang up first. She'd been getting entirely too clingy during these phone calls all week and she knew it. She was not going to overstay her welcome, as it were, and risk Lindsey thinking they were more to each other now than they were.

But she really didn't want to be the one to hang up the phone.

"It's a deal," Lindsey said, a chuckle in his voice. She wondered what he looked like right now, if he was smiling. "I guess your show is pretty fitting for you, if you think about it."

"How do you mean?" Stevie twirled the cord attached to her French-style bedside phone in her fingers, making a mental note to have her nails redone before she flew to Los Angeles to begin rehearsal with the band. Several red nails were starting to chip.

"Well, Touched By An Angel - and mind you, I've only seen the commercials for it - is a show about a beautiful woman who is a real-life angel living on earth, and she helps people when they are down with her own special brand of magic." She could hear Lindsey breathing on the other end of the call before he added, deliberately, "They wrote that show for you, Stevie."

Now she really didn't want to hang up the phone. She tried to think back to the last time Lindsey had called her angel in conversation...Wednesday night, she recalled. It had been long after midnight and they'd been talking for hours, mostly about the music of the 1960s and how Jim Morrison had not, in fact, been the member of the The Doors to write "Light My Fire" but by all four of them, John Densmore trying to keep up with the depth of Jim's themes and feeling intimidated. She'd admitted somewhere in the middle of that piece of classic rock trivia that she'd never felt intimidated when presenting her lyrics to him years ago but that she had felt the slightest bit ashamed that she hadn't taken formal piano lessons, and he'd said, "You can't start playing piano the proper way now, for God sake. Your music is perfectly imperfect, angel. Like you."

She hadn't been able to breathe for a long time after that remark, and she'd wondered if he'd heard her stammering as she'd tried to force her brain to respond normally to him despite the pounding of her heart.

She was just about to say she had to go when Lindsey beat her to the punch. "Listen, I'm going to go and let you watch your angel show," he said, just the hint of good-natured teasing in his voice. "Get yourself all tucked in with the dog and I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Okay," she relented with a sigh. "You go watch your Superman show and I'll try not to make too much fun when I see you in L.A. next week."

Fleetwood Mac's official rehearsals for the reunion concert began next week, and Karen had already rented her a place to stay while she was there. She'd been up half the night the previous night writing a new song, her contribution to the setlist, just as both Lindsey and Christine had promised to do. She had to admit, for the first time in her life, she was intimidated to present the lyrics to the band in Lindsey's company, because he'd instantly figure out what she had written about.

The new song was called "Sweet Girl".

"When do you get in, Stevie?" Lindsey's question broke into her thoughts, and Stevie realized she hadn't been on earth in about a minute.

"Huh?" She cursed herself for admitting her lack of attention.

"When do you get in?" he repeated. "I was thinking that we could go out to dinner or something when you get here, have a little Buckingham Nicks reunion dinner before we head out to start up with The Mac. We haven't really seen each other since..."

Lindsey broke off, knowing he didn't have to finish the sentence Stevie was already finishing in her head. "We haven't really seen each other since that Sunday morning two years ago when you left for Arizona after we spent the weekend in bed together every second we weren't working on "Twisted". She took a deep breath and said, "Yeah, that would be nice. I get in on Tuesday afternoon at about three."

"Then it's a date," he said. Once again, Stevie wondered if he was smiling. She knew he was this time. "We can work that out when you arrive. Right now I'm going to go and reheat this pizza I have waiting for me, and watch, as you call it, my Superman show."

Stevie giggled; she couldn't help herself. "Okay. And I'll watch my angel show," she said, not knowing that about a thousand miles away in a house in the Hollywood hills, Lindsey's heart had just skipped a beat as soon as he'd heard her giggle. "Good night, Linds."

"Good night, angel." And he hung up first, not knowing that a thousand miles away, Stevie's heart, too, had skipped a beat at the sound of a nickname she'd worn long ago, one of the many ways he'd told her he loved her.

Stevie sat in bed for a full minute after he hung up, her little yorkie Sara Belladonna at her feet and looking up at her with a confused expression, the receiver of the phone still in her hand as she smiled at something a million miles away, a million years in the past...or maybe not so far away at all.

It was the buzzing of the disconnection of the phone in her ear that jarred her back to reality. Stevie hit her finger against the dial button a few times until the line was clear, and then quickly dialed the phone number of Lori and Christopher's cottage next door to her house. When she heard her brother's voice on the other end of the call, she quickly realized that Lori, whom she'd expected and hoped would answer, was most likely busy upstairs putting Jessi to bed.

"Christopher..." She could barely contain the nervous smile on her face, and she knew her brother could hear the combination of love and a little bit of fear in her voice. "When Lori gets done putting Jessi down for the night, tell her we have work to do tomorrow. I leave for L.A. on Tuesday morning and I have got to put the finishing touches on the demo of 'Sweet Girl' before I set foot on that plane!"

In his own living room, sitting down to watch Lois & Clark: The Adventures Of The New Superman, Christopher Nicks took a bite of the slice of their mother's homemade apple pie he'd just cut for himself and said, still chewing, "Stevie, when are you going to fess up and tell me who that song is about? Lori and I have been placing bets."

Stevie laughed in spite of the personal nature of the song. With a long, elaborate sigh, she said, "Oh, Chris...I think you already know the answer to that."

There was silence for a moment, and then the sound of her brother's own sigh of resignation before he called out to his wife upstairs, "Lori, I owe you ten bucks!"

Stevie laughed again and said, "I don't want to hear it out of you two. I mean it, Chris...your six-year-old kid could be more mature than that!" They both laughed, two siblings who'd seen it all, helped each other through most of it, and at the end of the day, supported whatever the other decided to do with their lives, romantic or otherwise. Then, twisting the phone cord in her finger again and dreaming of Lindsey's finger twirling around in her hair two years ago on the night the song had been inspired, Stevie said, "But seriously, Christopher...the demo. It's got to be done tomorrow."

She knew that these all-night marathon phone calls with Lindsey since the Fleetwood Mac reunion had taken shape were about a lot more than teasing each other about their choice of TV shows to watch on a Sunday night.

They were about a second chance, and she was not about to arrive in Los Angeles without the song that explained exactly how open she was to second chances every since that weekend when he'd held her in his arms and called her his sweet girl.

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