Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 3: Storms

Never Have I Been A Blue Calm Sea

Venice Beach, California
Friday, October 12, 1979
(9:00 am)
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The sound of a nine-month-old baby boy screeching in his high chair and banging on the tray with his fists was keeping Stevie from hearing what Paul Fishkin was trying to tell her on the phone.

Aaron was refusing his breakfast of baby oatmeal and letting everyone in the room know it, while in her own high chair inches away, Julia happily stuffed Cheerios into her mouth one by one with her hands.

"I'm sorry, Paul, will you hold on for just a moment?" Stevie covered the receiver in her hand and looked at Lindsey, who sat at the table with a cup of coffee and was turned around in his seat, trying unsuccessfully to calm his son down and get him to eat. Stevie rolled her eyes and said, not so nicely, "Linds, if he's not going to eat it, don't force it, for Pete sake! Just..." She let out a exasperated sigh. "Just clean him up and bring him back upstairs, will you? I have to take care of this."

No you don't. That was what he wanted to say, but he didn't dare. He wanted to tell her that getting Paul Fishkin to contact Jimmy Iovine to talk to him about making a solo album when they were about to drag two kids under two along on a year-long international tour with Fleetwood Mac was the most asinine thing he'd ever heard.

But he didn't.

"Lindsey!" she shouted across the kitchen. "He's sitting there with the fucking oatmeal all over..." She sighed again, more of an angry grunt. "Goddamn it, I can't do everything, Lindsey, I cannot do everything!"

A week of back-to-back press engagements and a constantly crying son had turned Stevie into a person he didn't recognize. She barked at him. She rolled her eyes. She didn't say please or thank you. She had told Mick to take his goddamn African tusks out of the studio and shove them up his ass.

They had not had sex in eight days.

Without a word, Lindsey lifted his crying, dirty son out of the high chair and took him upstairs to get him cleaned and dressed for the day. Downstairs, Stevie was talking to Paul Fishkin and taking care of Julia, the phone cradled in her shoulder.

"It's going to be straight-up rock and roll, but we're going to sound like the female version of Crosby, Stills and Nash," she told him. "Lori Perry and Sharon Celani and I have been practicing our harmonies like crazy for this."

"Hey, sounds cool to me, Stevie, but Jimmy has his hands full with Tom Petty's album at the moment," Paul told her.

"Well fuck, Paul, I'm about to go on tour with the Mac in two weeks with two little babies...so I guess we'll just put a pin in it for the time being." A song Stevie had written for the album a few nights ago was running through her mind as she spoke, thinking of Lindsey upstairs taking care of Aaron and the fact that it had been over a week since he'd touched her.

"Creature of the night, it's been almost a week...Can you love me only?"

"Sounds like a plan, kiddo," said Paul, with whom she had become close in Sausalito three years earlier when he was a sound engineer on Rumors. "Say hi to your old ball and chain, okay, and I'll be in touch once I run it by Jimmy."

"Thanks, Paul. I really appreciate it."

Stevie hung up the phone and immediately turned to her daughter in her high chair. She had finished her Cheerios and was drinking apple juice from her sippy cup. Julia was eighteen months old now and getting more and more animated every day, saying more and more words. Stevie slumped down into a chair at the table and took a sip of her long-ago abandoned coffee, which was cold.