Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 4: The Dance

It's All About Protection

North Hollywood, California
Friday, April 18, 1997
(10:00 am)
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"I swear to God, Chris, it's like putting my head in the fucking oven!"

Stevie was in the dressing room of the rehearsal space, fiddling with her hair in the mirror while she described to Christine the hot flash she'd had the previous night. Christine, who would be fifty-four in July, completely understood what she was talking about. Christine began to gaze at herself in the mirror for a moment as Stevie spoke, slightly unhappy with the way her own hair had no come out that morning. She'd recently cut it shorter, and she wasn't sure the look was working for her. She'd compensated by adding more eye makeup, but now she was rethinking that as well.

"I completely get that," Christine said. "I remember this one time a couple of years ago when Olivia came home and found me pressing a bag of frozen broccoli to my chest to cool down...it was something else!" Now over the hump of menopause for the most part, Christine was still occasionally hot, but she knew by talking to Stevie that she was in the thick of it, and she felt for her friend, who was five years behind.

"Oh, I've surpassed you, my friend," Stevie said. She turned around to face Christine, and in a lower tone of voice, looking around first even though they were alone, she confessed, "Last night I woke up at, like, two in the morning and stripped off every stitch of clothing and went into a cold shower...literally in the middle of the night...and Lindsey woke up to the water running and asked what was going on. I said 'nothing' and strode back into bed naked and damp."

Christine laughed out loud. "I'd say that must have made Lindsey happy, but I can't imagine you'd be in for that kind of thing if you were feeling that way."

Stevie leaned in closer and said, "On the contrary, Christine." She gave Christine a look that made both women laugh then. "I swear to God, I'm always the opposite of everything...I'm supposed to be having a lower sex drive, aren't I? Why can't I keep my hands off of this man? For God sake, I've been having sex with him since I was twenty-two years old! Shouldn't I be faking headaches or something to get out of it by now?"

"Everyone's different, Stevie," Christine offered as the only logical answer she had on hand. She added another then when she said, "And not everyone is married to Lindsey Buckingham, after all."

This time it was Stevie who laughed out loud. "You're right there, Chris," she said. It was no secret that Lindsey was an attractive man, that he left women crushing on his wherever he went...even though it was only Stevie he was interested in after all these years. She looked back into the mirror and said, "Listen, why don't you go out there ahead of me...I'll be along in a minute. I have to gear up for this, take a few breaths...you know."

Christine put a hand on her friend's shoulder and nodded. "You're going to be fine, Stevie. You've done press like this before."

"Yeah, but not really...not since Street Angel...at least not of this magnitude...since I weighed a hundred and seventy pounds and was zonked out of my mind." Stevie didn't just look nervous; she suddenly looked visibly terrified. Christine made a mental note to send Lindsey in after her. Lindsey was the only person who could reach her when she got this scared to perform.

This morning, before their rehearsal in the afternoon, the five members of Fleetwood Mac were having a photo shoot followed by an interview to promote their concert for MTV, which they were filming in May. Everyone else was already filling the space beyond the dressing rooms as the camera crews set up, and Stevie could hear the booming voices of Mick and a few other men talking about the Blind Faith album cover art with the picture of the very young topless girl from 1969. Once again, Stevie was looking in the mirror, and she was holding nothing back. She began to rethink every part of her face and her body.

This is forty-nine, Stevie thought, looking at her reflection. Her birthday was a month away and it was the last one before fifty, and she wasn't sure she was loving herself so much these days. She had been starting to notice little things, things that Lindsey - blinded by love, she thought - refused to see. She saw sagging skin, fine lines around her eyes, and yet he saw none of it, insisting that he still looked at her and saw the eighteen-year-old girl who'd walked up to him at a party in Northern California in 1966 and begun to sing along with him to "California Dreaming". She supposed he was being honest about that, and she knew he loved her unconditionally and had for their entire adult lives, but still, she knew what she saw when she looked in the mirror, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to go on camera next month and be "Stevie Nicks" again without wondering if she still had it the way she had twenty years ago, before giving birth to three babies.

"Let me save you the trouble, angel. You look amazing."

Stevie suddenly became aware of Lindsey's reflection in the mirror behind her. He was smiling, which made her smile. She turned around to him and said, "Seriously? Not like a husband-butters-you-up thing but for real?"

"You'll never see what I see, angel, and that's pretty sad." He pulled her into his arms and held her there, and looked down into eyes filled with doubt and fear. "I see the most beautiful woman in any room, a woman who just has to smile once and all the electricity in the building could go out but we'd still have light. Why do you think I call you my beautiful Stephanie all the time?"

"Don't stray too far from me today, okay?" Stevie was looking up at him with hope in her eyes now. "I need you with me out there. Like when they start with the questions and all...stay close to me?"

"I would pick you up and hold you in my pocket if I could, sweet girl." He kissed her forehead, knowing she'd just applied lipstick. "Don't worry. I will be like glue, okay?"

"Okay." Stevie began to relax, and Lindsey felt it as he held her. It amazed him that after all these years, they were still such anchors for each other, each of them able to take things on by themselves just fine but taking them on much better together. He had to admit, he'd already planned on sticking by her side today during the interview anyway. There was some gravitational pull for him when Stevie was around, something that told him that as much as he thought he had everything together - and he did - he needed Stevie to make it whole.

"I'll go out first, pick a spot to stand in unless they direct me, and then you come in when you feel like you're ready." He smiled. "Deal?"

"Deal." He pulled her close for a hug, and into her hair he whispered, "And I love the black sneakers with the dress."

Stevie, who'd injured her hip awhile ago, was wearing black sneakers with her usual long black dress instead of high-heeled boots that were her trademark, and he'd known as he'd watched her dress that morning that she was afraid they'd make her look like a silly old lady.

"I love you," she whispered back, wondering how he could read her mind that way.

Lindsey pulled away slowly, and as he turned towards the door he said, "Don't take too long, Stevie Nicks. We need you."

With a wink, he disappeared into the hallway. Stevie took one last look at herself in the mirror. She heard Kim, one of the members of their press team, call out to her from the hallway, "Is your hair okay?"

"It's fine," Stevie called back. She took a deep breath and walked off towards her husband and their three best friends, and The Dance had officially begun.

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