Fall From Grace: The Dance Thriller, Part 2

Maybe It Isn't A Lie

U.S. Airways Arena
Andover, Maryland
Sunday, November 30, 1997
(10:00 pm)
********************

The pain began right at the end of "Second Hand News".

Sufficiently cloaked in one of the hand-stitched shawls that Barbara had shaken her head at and said was overpriced, Stevie quickly took to the area just in front of Mick at the drums, chugging water from her bottle upon which she'd scribbled Stevie and Baby Robin and three small hearts on a piece of masking tape as a crude name tag to identify each person's drink. "Silver Springs" was next in the set, and Stevie knew she had to avoid the sharp pains that were shooting through her lower back every few minutes and plug on through. This was the last show of the tour; in about thirty minutes, The Dance would be over. "Silver Springs" was a special song - it was Barbara's song, and it was the song Stevie had fought Mick over when she'd put out Timespace. It was also the song she'd never get over not being included on Rumors; in many ways, she'd always thought, it told her side of the events of 1976 even more than "Dreams" or "Gold Dust Woman". She had made sure the taped concert, which had been playing all over both MTV and VH1 since its premiere in August, featured her best "Silver Springs" ever.

Drinking water like it was the antidote, Stevie was thinking how funny it was that twenty years after she'd passed the road sign for Silver Springs, Maryland and thought it was a beautiful name for the paradise that was what she and Lindsey could have shared then...and twenty years later, there she was in Maryland, about to sing the song to him as she stood onstage seven months pregnant with their child, the engagement ring he'd given her on her finger.

She couldn't wait until they were married and the baby was born and they could live in their new Silver Springs, where she would be his only dream and his shining autumn ocean crashing.

It was Christine who noticed how pale she looked, how thirsty she was as she chugged water. She put a hand over her shawled shoulder and asked, "You okay there, Mommy?"

"I'm fine," Stevie assured her. "Got to be hydrated so I can be a shining autumn ocean!"

Christine knew she was lying.

Stevie resumed her place at the microphone, fiddled with the colorful streamers and ribbons on the stand as she always had. Christine motioned with her finger as she stood at the keyboard for Lindsey to come to her, which he did, guitar in hand, the chords dragging on the stage floor behind him. He suddenly had a memory of the concert they'd given in October 1982 on the Mirage tour, just about a week after Robin's death, when Stevie had done her best to keep from breaking down during "Sisters Of The Moon" but begun to cry before the bridge and he'd had to take over the singing. He could still hear himself singing, "They like to wrap her in velvet, but does anyone know her name?" Not too long after that, he'd spied out of the corner of his eye during the guitar break John leaning over the keyboard, bass in hand, informing Christine that Stevie was crying. He'd done his best to comfort Stevie without a free hand, finally just resting his head on her back as she cried, whispering, "You're almost done, baby. You've got this. She's here watching you, angel, and she knows you've got this, okay? You're not alone."

"She's not okay," Christine said, cracking her knuckles to get ready to play the keyboard. "I think she's in pain of some kind but she's not talking. The stress of this all...you can't have her going into premature labor or anything like that, L.B."

"Jesus Christ, that's all we need! There's a fucking lunatic stalking her...Look, we'll do 'Silver Springs' and if she's not okay she's not okay. We stop. Fuck the encore."

"Now you're talking," Christine said with a wink. "We've got to watch our girl here."

Lindsey returned to his microphone and looked over at Stevie, who responded to the question she knew he was asking with his eyes by nodding a bit uncertainly and gripping the mic stand harder than usual. Lindsey was worried, but he didn't let her know that.