Storms (37 page)

Around midnight our front-door security man admitted a beautiful girl with long, brown hair into our foyer. As Stevie rushed to meet her I quietly asked Mick who she was. “Why, that's Sara Recor, Stevie's close friend. I'll try to introduce you when I get a chance, Carol. I know you'll like her”, Mick replied as his eyes followed Stevie—not the girl with the long, brown hair.

Watching Sara climb our sweeping staircase with Stevie by her side, I studied her with interest. Then, distracted by another party guest, I soon forgot about her. But I'd be reminded soon enough. Within six weeks Sara would commit the ultimate
coup d'état
, turning Fleetwood Mac's soap-opera
world upside down. And the next time I saw her she and I would discover that we were destined to become lifelong friends and allies.

Within two days of the party, a crime wave at our house began. As Lindsey worked at Village, I was spending the night at home alone, still recovering from our party. Upstairs ironing in front of the TV, I heard glass breaking down in the kitchen and the heart-stopping noises of someone walking through our house.

For the next fearful half-hour I locked myself in the bedroom, called the police, and sat on the floor, waiting in terror for help to arrive. After the LAPD thundered through our back door, I was told that an intruder had broken a window in the maid's quarters with the clear intent of burgling our house—and God knows what else if he found a woman alone. The arrival of police cars and sirens scared him away. Luckily for me, the heavily armed cops got there before the burglar made it upstairs to where I was hiding. As the police questioned me I told them of our recent party and they explained that although we lived on a beautiful street, the worst elements of Hollywood were only five minutes away. And the valets, limos, and beautiful people coming to our front door alerted every criminal in the area that ours was a house worth robbing. Lindsey came rushing home after my panicked call and we were told to put in an alarm system—immediately.

The next day we called an alarm company and had a $7,000 alarm system installed. We knew, of course, that our state-of-the-art system would only
warn
of us danger. It wouldn't keep it out. If someone wanted to get to us badly enough, then we were entirely dependent on how fast help could reach us. But for a while at least, it made us feel safe.

I spent the next two weeks in the studio with Lindsey. Alarm system or no alarm system, I hadn't gotten over the trauma of the break-in. It was much easier to not think of it as I sat, listened to the music of the next album, and partied along with Lindsey and the rest of the band and studio crew. But as much as I was relieved to be surrounded by the Fleetwood Mac family, the happy atmosphere that had existed in the studio a month before Halloween was no longer present. It had been replaced with an intense and strained mood. And it was pretty damn easy to figure out the source of all the tension. Stevie and Mick were barely speaking to each other. What had been such a love story only a month before had somehow gone terribly wrong.

Is it Jenny? Has Mick decided to go back to his wife after all?
I wondered as I sat chewing my fingernail, trying to figure out what was behind the simmering tension that seemed to spark every time the two of them got within five feet of each other.
Mick seemed so in love with Stevie at our Halloween party! Obviously they've had a huge fight of some kind. But most fights get resolved within a few days, and whatever's wrong has been going on for two weeks now—at least as long as I've been here. I haven't seen Jenny, so I doubt if Mick's gone back to her. She would have put in an appearance in the studio by now. So what the hell has happened?

Stevie wasn't talking about it. She was keeping pretty much to herself and not speaking to any of us. I could understand her not confiding in me—after all, she and I were still getting used to being friends. But she wasn't speaking to Christine or John or Richard either—at least not in the studio. She seemed angry, frustrated, and, from what I could tell, deeply hurt.

There was a look in her eyes that didn't go away: it was the look of a woman who felt betrayed. And although the communication between Stevie and I had finally, after almost two years, become comfortable, it wasn't on a level where I felt I could reach out to her and see if I could do anything to help. And even if it were, I had a feeling that whatever the problem was, there was nothing that any of us could do that would make it go away.

And I started to notice that Stevie was writing constantly in her notebook, her eyes following Mick as he walked back and forth across the studio. There was sadness in her gaze. Her eyes were so full of pain and tenderness that my heart ached when I looked at her. As she sat next to me on the couch I caught glimpses of what she was writing in her large leather-bound book and I saw that she was working on song lyrics. In a month those lyrics would belong to one of her greatest songs, “Angel.” And it was all about Mick.

But before I heard the song, I'd already know what happened between them, and I'd know the reason behind her feeling of betrayal. I'd find that out the night I met the woman who would become my best friend for the next twenty-five years: Sara Recor.

As I stepped out into the dark, rainy night I hesitated before I punched in the alarm code outside our front door. Even though I'd been bored beyond belief at home in studio-widow solitude, Mick and Lindsey's solution to my restlessness left me with mixed feelings. They'd urged me to pay a first-time visit to Sara Recor, Mick's new live-in girlfriend.

I'd heard from Lindsey a couple of weeks earlier that Sara Recor had moved into Mick's mansion in Bel-Air. With this news, everything about Stevie's mood in the studio just a month before became crystal clear. Mick hadn't gone back to Jenny. He'd fallen in love with a new woman—a woman who was one of Stevie's close friends.

I felt a slight twinge of guilt as I climbed into my car. Was I betraying Stevie by going up for a friendly night with the girl who had supposedly broken up her relationship with Mick? I wasn't sure. But Lindsey and Mick wanted me to go and I shrugged off my uneasiness as I tried to justify going.
There are two sides to every story—and anyway, if it's weird when I get there, if I don't like her, then I'll just come home
, I thought as I drove through the streets of L.A.
I really have no idea what happened between the three of them, but I'm about to find out. In my place Stevie would do the same. It's the Fleetwood Mac way, after all. Everyone always knows everyone else's business—and this mystery needs to be solved.

After a harrowing drive through the hard rain, I pulled up to Mick's open front gates in exclusive Bel-Air and drove as close as I could to the front of the huge house. Clamping my hat down tight on my head, I jumped out of my car and ran to the front door. Icy rain soaked through my clothes as I
waited impatiently for Sara to answer it. Suddenly the door swung open and there she was, with a bright smile on a face surrounded by long, brown hair, dressed in a flowing dress that reached down to her bare feet. As we stood and looked at each other we somehow knew that we were kindred spirits. It would be, to quote
Casablanca
, “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Pulling me in out of the rain, Sara gave me a long hug and then pushed me away at arm's length, to look me up and down. “I was so excited when Mick called and told me you were coming! I'm so
bored
tonight!” And before we knew it, we were laughing and talking as though we'd always known each other. She immediately ran upstairs to grab a dress for me out of her closet to replace my soaked jeans and T-shirt and once I put it on, we stood side by side in one of the many full-length mirrors throughout Mick's house and started to giggle. We looked like sisters—one blonde, one brunette—but our facial features, hairdos, and the way we stood were almost identical.

After we were done admiring ourselves Sara led me into the living room, where the only light came from an open fire and a dozen candles sitting on the floor and on tables scattered throughout the exquisitely furnished room. As we sank down onto a rug in front of the fire Sara whispered into my ear, “Wait here! I have a surprise for you!”

She left the room briefly, returning with a plate containing a huge heap of cocaine. “Mick doesn't know this, but I found his secret stash!” With a silvery peal of laughter Sara quickly made a row of lines and handed me the plate. Snorting it up through a rolled-up dollar bill, I almost choked as the powder went straight up my nose and down my throat. After slapping me on the back, Sara handed me her glass of wine and I took a swallow, grimacing at the bitter taste.

Suddenly I noticed movement in the background, like a shadow that had crossed the doorway and then disappeared from sight. Before I could say anything Sara grabbed me by the shoulder. “She's doing it again!”

“Who is? Is there someone here with us?” I asked nervously. With the rain and the candles, the atmosphere conjured up a ghost story and I half expected to see a white apparition appear next to us at any second.

“It's Mick's secretary! She's always creeping around in the background. I feel like she's eavesdropping but I can never really prove it. It gives me the creeps. I don't think she likes me very much. Actually, I don't think anyone likes me very much, Carol”, Sara told me with a forlorn note in her soft voice.

“I do”, I said immediately, meaning it.

She gave me a hug, her eyes brightened for a second and then, with a sigh of resignation, she asked me if I'd like to know the story of how she and Mick fell in love. Once I'd heard it, she said, maybe then I'd understand why she felt so alone. I nodded and she reached out and took my hand, before telling me one of the most convoluted stories I'd ever heard.

She began by explaining that her husband was Jim Recor—Kenny Loggins's manager—and that although she was living with Mick, she was still technically Jim's wife. During the 1975 Loggins and Messina tour, Fleetwood Mac was the opening act at a few of their shows. It was during this time, Sara said, that a friendship was struck up between Jim Recor and Stevie Nicks on the road. Sara wasn't touring with her husband at the time, but she soon found out that Jim really, really liked Stevie. And Stevie liked him. Sara was modeling in New York when Jim flew there to see her. During that visit, he told her that he was very close to Stevie, but assured Sara that nothing untoward had happened between them. He raved about Stevie so much, Sara said, that it was a bit hard to take. But nonetheless, she took Jim at his word and tried not to worry about it. Jim urged her to meet Stevie and this put her mind at rest, because why would he suggest that if there were hanky-panky going on between them? Sara didn't want to go into it, but I got the feeling as she told me the story that there was more to it than she was willing to admit to me—or herself.

So Sara flew out, met Stevie, and introduced herself with the words, “So you're Jim's little road friend?”

We both burst out laughing, almost choking as we tried to catch our breath. Finally able to speak, I gasped, “Oh my God! You actually said that?”

“Yep. I didn't know her. And I didn't know if I wanted to … so yeah, I said that.”

“What did Stevie say?”

“Well, not much, actually. She just kind of nodded and it was pretty awkward. She just kind of got up and left the room really fast.” As we both began laughing again, Sara and I took a moment to savor the thought of Stevie Nicks at a loss for words, for this was not something that occurred often.

“Anyway”, Sara continued, “Stevie and I slowly became friends and I really grew to love her. She's really special and we got along well. I mean,
after a while, I didn't really care about what
might
have happened between my husband and Stevie—it was pretty much over between Jim and me at that point anyway. I mean, I love Jim and we're good friends, but that's what my marriage was about by then
—married
friends. And I know that at the very least Jim had a major crush on her—but whatever. Who wouldn't? So I didn't ask either of them, because I really didn't want to know. And I still don't.”

Sara went on to tell me that by the time she came to our Halloween party, she was over at Stevie's house all the time. She said that she kept making eye contact with Mick on the night of our Halloween party and that she was immediately attracted to him. And that was when she first started falling for Mick. But because of his relationship with Stevie, she tried not to pursue it. But every time Mick came to see Stevie, she couldn't help but see him as she was always there with Stevie. And, well, sparks started to fly between Sara and Mick.

One day she and Mick were left alone in Stevie's house and they decided to go for a drive. Not just a drive to any old place. Oh no, that would have been too
normal.
Mick took her to the small house he'd bought for Jenny on Little Ramirez Canyon. That house was now vacant because Jenny had once again packed her bags and gone back to England with Mick's two daughters. He'd told her that his affair with Stevie was now over, but of course it wasn't and she rightly believed he was lying.

Once there, Mick declared his feelings for Sara and she for him. Neither of them wanted to hurt Stevie. And she didn't want to hurt her husband, with whom she was still living. Everyone involved felt like crap about destroying Jenny's world and it was a huge mess.

As Sara broke off to catch her breath and snort a line I sat open-mouthed, trying to keep it all straight in my head. I felt dizzy from trying to follow the trail of women and homes that all had one thing in common: Mick Fleetwood. But Sara wasn't finished with her story yet. The next thing, she said, is that she started spending as much time with Mick as she could, but there was still a big problem. She hadn't told her husband Jim that she'd fallen in love with Mick. And, of course, Mick and Jim were also friends!