Say Goodbye

Just A Scheme Within A Scheme

The Drake Hotel
Chicago, Illinois
Sunday, September 15, 2003
(8:00 am)
********************

Lindsey dressed himself as quietly as he could in the bathroom so as to not wake Stevie or her dogs, who were sleeping curled into one little ball of fur against her over the comforter. He turned out the bathroom light and crept back into the bedroom, which was just beginning to become illuminated by the sun beyond the drapes on the windows. He bent down to kiss the top of her head as she slept, and peaceful tangle of blonde hair and green silk looking so tiny in the enormous bed he'd hated like hell to leave. He kissed the top of each little dog's head as well and grabbed his phone and his room key to travel two floors up to his wife children to assess the damage of the life-altering night before.

He smiled to himself on the way down the hall, thinking of the blueberry pancake breakfast he'd had sent up to Stevie's room, and the note he'd scribbled on the hotel stationery minutes before.

My beautiful Stephanie,

Look beneath the silver trays from room service and you'll know I meant what I said last night.

It's time we resurrected some of those old Buckingham Nicks traditions.

Be back soon.

Love,
Lindsey

********************

Kristen Buckingham sat on the sofa of her husband's suite and cursed the decaffeinated coffee she was drinking in pregnancy that didn't do a thing but make her nauseous. She could hear the Nickelodeon cartoon playing on the TV in the bedroom where her children sat on the bed and finished their orange juice, knowing that Lindsey was on his way back from wherever he'd spent the night.

She had a sneaking suspicion of exactly where that had been, and she'd resigned herself to that inevitability the moment he'd left the night before.

Stevie Nicks. Kristen had never understood the attraction, the worldwide appeal, of that woman. Sure, she was attractive, even now at fifty-five. She remembered the Bella Donna album coming out when she was in the sixth grade, and all of the girls in her middle school class wearing their hair like Stevie and a few dressing in that bizarre gypsy style, fawning over her Rolling Stone cover article and saying when they got married, "Leather And Lace" would be all of their wedding songs. Her friend Tina had used pink permanent marker on her canvas notebook to write the quote "In the web that is my own, I begin again."

By the time she'd met Lindsey Buckingham in 1997, she had become aware of the history of Fleetwood Mac - the breakups, the Rumors album, the cocaine use, the Tango In The Night breakup that had left Lindsey out of the band for refusing to tour. It was her ex husband, Gary, an executive at Warner Brothers, who had filled her in, and she'd never forgotten his words over dinner one night when he'd come home with gossip - Stevie Nicks had entered rehab again, this time for tranquilizers.

"It was Lindsey who was the biggest help," Gary had said, digging his fork into the salmon she'd prepared. "Obviously it had to be Stevie's decision, but she was ready."

"What's Stevie Nicks got to need a tranquilizer for?" Kristen said suspiciously. "Tired of having a million dollars thrown at her every time she sings 'Stand Back' to little girls dressed in black?" She could sense as soon as the words left her mouth that Gary thought her reaction was a bit extreme.

"Stevie's had a rough couple of years," Gary informed her. "If you ask me, it's losing her best friend that set her off...but I wouldn't know. Her best friend's husband used to work with me...that whole scene was a mess."