Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 2: Dreams

Listen Carefully To The Sound

San Diego, California
Monday, October 3, 1977
(10:00 am)
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"Blueberry pancakes? Is this my birthday or yours?"

Lindsey had just thrown on a denim button-down shirt, which left open over his shorts, before he went over to the rolling table wheeled in by room service while he was sleeping. He sat down to his plate of blueberry pancakes, which Stevie had ordered with the card outside their door last night but he had forgotten about. Lindsey had been preoccupied when she did it, sitting on the bed and playing his acoustic guitar, picking out random songs he'd told her were stuck in his head and he had to get them out. At some point he'd begun playing a very familiar instrumental song called "Stephanie", and Stevie, just back from her doctor's appointment and reeling from her news, had begun to cry.

"Stevie? Are you crying?" She said beside him on the bed as he played, hotel service request card in one hand and pen in the other, and when his version of the song "Drift Away" had turned into "Stephanie", her tears had been inevitable. He was still playing...sort of...when he said, "Oh, angel, you don't have to cry...it's just 'Stephanie'." He stopped playing then and looked at his crying fiancé, touched and puzzled at the same time. "I always play 'Stephanie' in there somewhere to warm up, or to practice..."

Stevie took a deep, ragged breath. "I just...I forget sometimes how beautiful it is," she said. She came towards him on the bed and he set his guitar down on the floor, knowing what came next. She was sitting in his lap and lying across his chest and her arms were around him and she was crying into his denim shirt. "I love you so much...and it's just such a beautiful song..."

Lindsey let her cry it out and then told her to check off on the card for the hotel that they would need laundry service because he was running out of clean underwear.

"So what'll we do with ourselves today?" Lindsey asked, piling bacon onto his plate and trying to remember not to hold some out to the dog by instinct. Ginny was at home with Robin because San Diego was so close to home. "I had planned on my birthday being on stage, so really, the floor is ours here."

Stevie emerged from the bathroom in a little pink fuzzy robe. "It's your birthday, Linds. Whatever you want to do is what we'll do." She sat down at the table and poured two cups of coffee. "Tonight's canceled but if I know J.C., he's going to cancel tomorrow night too because he won't want to have a fill-in for John at all and we'll just wind up checking out of here...which is fine by me...because I have packing to do for Australia and unpacking at home, and Robin wants to go to the movies to see Julia with Jane Fonda." She sipped her coffee, watching him think. It was so cute, she thought, that Lindsey was so intense a thinker that there was no hiding it. I love this man, she thought. I love this complex, overthinking, beautiful man.

She could not wait another second to tell him.

"We'll figure it out," he said, referring to their plans. "Maybe if we get out of here today we can swing by the hospital and I can meet my birthday twin!" He chuckled over his coffee and asked, "Why'd they name the kid Jodie?"

"It was John's cousin who died," Stevie said, remembering her conversation with Christine about the name. She set down her coffee and looked across the table at him, hands folded. "Linds?"

"Mmmm?" His eyes were on his plate.

"I have a birthday present for you that I wasn't going to give you till tonight, after the show...but the show is canceled and I can't wait." She could feel her smile.

"Ah, nice! Let's have it!" He pushed back in his chair. "Bring on the presents!"

Stevie was smiling so hard it hurt her face. She almost wanted to laugh. She was nervous, she was excited, she was giddy, she was almost jumping in her seat. She rose from her chair and took him by the hand and let him to the end of the bed where she sat him down, both of them giggling with anticipation. She thought for a moment how he was expecting a gift in a box - and she had those tucked away for him in her luggage - and she sat down beside him and held his hand.