Storms (4 page)

“You have the most fragile shoulders I've ever felt”, he murmured.

“Fragile?” I asked.

“Fragile feel. That's what I meant”, he explained. “You have a fragile
feel
to your shoulders. I love them.”

He seemed unembarrassed by this
Lindsey.
declaration.

I looked at Richard, who rolled his eyes, and I started to laugh. “I think that's the first time in my life that anyone's complimented my shoulders!” Since I was five foot five and weighed 101 pounds soaking wet, I was not too surprised that he thought my shoulders felt fragile.

Halfway through the movie we both stopped pretending to watch the gorilla. We clasped each other's hands tightly as I laid my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. A feeling of utter contentment came over me and I listened to his breathing and felt his heart beating under my hand on his chest. Finally there was a dead gorilla, the world was saved, the fragile woman had stolen the hero's heart, and the three of us walked back to our car and drove to the studio.

Richard climbed out first and held the door open for me. Lindsey shook his head. “She's not going anywhere. We're going to take a drive.”

“God, Lindsey”, Richard yelled. “‘Mick and the others arrive tomorrow! You can't—” His words were lost in the squeal of Lindsey's tires as we sped out of the parking lot. As we drove down streets shaded with palm trees, Lindsey began to talk to me. “I have to tell you something, Carol.”

He pulled over to the side of the street and turned off the ignition. My palms started to sweat as I waited for whatever horrible blow he was about to deliver.

“I've been seeing a girl. We've been going out almost three months, and I spent the night at her house two days ago.”

My world was crashing around me as I listened to his words. All I could do was nod for him to go on.

“What I need to tell you is this. I spent the night at her house and I didn't touch her. We slept in the same bed, and I couldn't bring myself to touch her. All I did was lie there and think about you. I want you. I know you're living with someone, Carol Ann, but you can't deny that there's something amazing happening between us. Will you see me? Do I have a chance?”

I threw myself into his arms and kissed him hard. I was shocked, flattered, breathless, and incredibly relieved. Words started spilling out as I told him about my relationship with John. I told him about my daughter. I saw a reflection of the sorrow I was feeling on his face as I poured my heart out to him. As he stroked my hair and whispered that I did right by my child, I felt as though he was taking part of my pain onto his own shoulders. I chose her family, I told him in a low voice. She has two brothers and a beautiful home and will go to college. It's in the contract I signed. And one day, I sighed, maybe we'll find each other. Blinking back tears, I looked into his eyes.

I told him that I wanted to be with him too; that all I did was think about him, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I promised him that I would see him, but as long as I lived under the same roof as John, I couldn't and wouldn't take what we had together to the next level. I couldn't do that to John. Instead I'd start the painful process of breaking up with him so that I could move out.

As I listened to myself saying all of these things to Lindsey, I realized how ready I was to start a totally new life. It was time to move on. With or without Lindsey, I wanted to be free of my past and the everyday reminders of what I'd lost with Claire's adoption.

It took us ten minutes to drive to West Hollywood. It took us an hour to drive back to the studio, for at every stop sign and every red light Lindsey and I leaned toward each other and kissed passionately. When we arrived at
Producer's Workshop we sat in the parking lot and kissed some more. A yellow glow of light spilled out from the opening door of Studio B as Richard pushed the heavy door open and screamed Lindsey's name into the quiet night.
“Lindsey!
Lindsey, I need you! Goddammit,
please, please
come back inside!”

Lindsey and I looked at each other, then with a sigh we said goodbye and I got out and climbed into my car. After one last wave I drove home.

I walked into a dark house, quietly removed my clothes, and climbed into bed beside John. As I closed my eyes I felt Lindsey's kiss again, and fell fast asleep with a smile on my face.

The next morning, as I struggled into the building through the pelting rain, he was waiting for me with a matching smile. He wiped the rain from my face tenderly. “Do you think you'll have time to come over and listen to a few of our songs today?” he asked. “You'll be one of the first outside of the circle to hear the finished mixes and Richard and I really need an outside opinion. If you hate it, you have to promise to tell us.” The words rushed out as Lindsey's fingers danced up and down my arm nervously. I looked down at his hands and for the first time noticed how long his fingers were. His hands looked incredibly strong, yet graceful somehow. The hands of an artist.

“Bob Ezrin's down for Studio A. I have to see him first. Then I'll come across”, I promised, checking the day's schedules.

“Make it soon!” Lindsey said, kissing the tip of my nose before he left me to it.

Bob Ezrin was the young, hip producer of Pink Floyd. He arrived and began to talk up a storm about his new band, the Babies, that was recording that day, and at the same time started asking a lot of probing questions about me. Not too personal; more professional than anything. With my mind entirely on Lindsey waiting for me in Studio B, I breezily answered his questions, cutting him off in mid-sentence more than once, then finally excused myself and ran to Studio B, cursing the driving rain that seemed to be trying to pummel Los Angeles clean during that torrential winter.

There were five people sitting around the console: Lindsey, Richard, and three total strangers. One of the strangers was hunched over a large hand mirror chopping up white powder. He looked up at me and smiled.

“Just in time for a white Christmas! Hi, you must be Carol Ann, you're just as Lindsey described you! I'm Mick, Mick Fleetwood.” His voice was soft, elegantly British. I liked him immediately.

He rose, carefully set the mirror down on the edge of the mixing board and took a few steps toward me. My eyes widened as he stretched both arms over his head before extending his hand to me. He was one of the tallest men I'd ever seen. His head seemed to almost brush the ceiling as he looked down, smiling. He wore his brown hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail and was dressed like a character from an Agatha Christie novel, in an elegant tweed suit complete with a watch fob dangling from his pocket.

I blushed, murmured hello, and looked over at the man and woman still seated in front of me. The woman, striking, statuesque almost, had a disheveled blonde pageboy cut and held a large vodka tonic in one hand (with a half-full bottle of vodka sitting on the floor beside her) and a Marlboro Red in the other. She jumped up and I heard Christine McVie's laugh for the first time. Loud and raucous, it rang out with enough passion and vitality to make all of us start laughing with her. She gestured to me to sit down, just like an old friend. Lindsey grabbed a chair from against the wall and moved it next to him. I sank onto it.

The final stranger approached. John McVie, Christine's ex-husband. Wearing a red Hawaiian shirt and baggy surfer shorts (belying the 50-degree temperature and rain) he came over with drink in hand, leaned down, and kissed me on the cheek. “So you're to be our first critic! Be kind to us”, he said. “If you hate our songs, tell us in a nice, flowery way. It's too early for us to get completely smashed, which we will if we're subjected to ridicule.” British humor—it went with the British weather outside.

And then the music began to wash the room, like rain. I closed my eyes, wishing I were next door, back in Studio A, where I wouldn't be in the position of judge and jury to people I barely knew; warm, kindly people who looked as if they'd stepped out of a costume party.

After the first thirty seconds of Christine's song “You Make Loving Fun”, I sat up straighter in my chair. This was unbelievable. There was a sharpness in the backing track that I'd never heard before, each instrument distinctly picked up, faded out, the vocals enriched by three contrasting harmonies.

“Dreams” came next and I heard Stevie Nicks's voice, low, haunting, and sensual. I was lost. As each song came and went I realized that I was listening to an absolutely unique sound. There was so much love and pain; so clear, so agonized, so raw, and yet so precisely directed and produced. I stared wide-eyed at Lindsey, who threw his arms around me and whispered
into my ear, “You like it, don't you?” Richard pushed the stop button on the twenty-four-track tape machine and the room fell deathly quiet.

“Lindsey, I don't know what to say. It's incredible. I love it. Oh my God”, I said, swallowing back the lump in my throat, “this is the most amazing album! It's going to be huge!”

Christine's delighted laughter rang out as Mick jumped up with the mirror in his hand and, with a bow, ceremoniously handed it to me. So that's what Mick meant when he said it was a white Christmas? That mound of snow? I looked at the mirror, looked at Lindsey, and said in a hesitant voice, “Umm … no thanks. I'll take a rain check. Have to work!” I hoped I'd passed whatever test it was meant to be.

Lindsey eased the mirror out of my hands and took a rolled-up twenty dollar bill from Christine. I hadn't fooled him. He'd realized I'd never done a line in my life and wouldn't know where to start. “Make a line, inhale it. It wakes you up—it, well, it just keeps you going. You don't have to do any if you don't want to.” He offered it to me again and I shook my head. I wasn't sure why he was pleased that I didn't want any, but I could tell that he was. I was as embarrassed as hell that I was so unsophisticated. I watched in fascination as the five of them made huge, messy lines and inhaled them through the rolled-up bill, straight up their noses. Almost immediately the room was filled with frenzied voices and nervous laughter. John and Christine quickly lit their Marlboros, while Richard and Lindsey shared a joint.

“‘Gold Dust Woman' needs something”, Lindsey announced through the smoke. “It's not atmospheric enough.
So
… we brought some sheets of glass and set up microphones in the parking lot. We want to record the sound of splintering glass and work it into the song.”

Mick's eyes fired up with a devilish gleam. He rubbed his hands together fiendishly. “I want to be the one who gets to crash the glass! Me, me! I'm the tallest! I'm the best glass-breaker in the friggin' world!
Let's do it!”

He scampered into the rain with Richard by his side. I stayed in the control room with Lindsey and listened to the hysteria from the parking lot booming through the huge speakers in the room. It took Richard five minutes to stop Mick from laughing, but once he did, the sound of breaking, shattering glass was recorded. The finished version of “Gold Dust Woman” begins with an unearthly tinkling that sounds dark and ominous.

It changed the whole vibe of the song. This was the first of many times that I'd see Lindsey's genius at work.

I looked at my watch and with a start realized that I'd been in Studio B for almost two hours. “My God! I have to go! I've completely abandoned poor Bob Ezrin and his new band!” A shadow crossed Lindsey's face and he seemed about to say something. I knew he didn't want me to go, but I had to. I leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, yelled goodbye to John and Christine, and flew out the door. Lindsey called after me, “Leave your number on your desk! I need to talk to you about something special—”

“OK!” I shouted back and returned to my abandoned work, the songs I'd just heard resonating in my head.

I left my home phone number propped up against my desk calendar. I hadn't figured out yet how I was going to end my relationship with John. I didn't want anyone to get hurt. But what could you do when you've already heard the glass break?

The phone at home rang around 8
P.M.
John was locked in his studio working on the latest bootleg release from his label.

“I miss you”, Lindsey's voice whispered. I shivered head to foot.

“Me too”, I whispered. I didn't want to break the spell of intimacy by speaking out loud. It was better that way. He felt so close. If I reached out, I could almost touch …

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” I could hear Stevie's voice in the background and realized that Lindsey was trying to keep from being overheard. “The band's having a private dinner to celebrate the finish of the album. It's at a French restaurant on Melrose. Please come. Be with me, huh?”

“I'll—” I struggled to work out an excuse for John as Lindsey waited silently. “I'll tell him I'm with a client!”

“I hope to be much more than that, little girl. I'll see you tomorrow, OK?”

“OK”, I murmured, and put the phone down just before John emerged from the studio.

Oh, I was scared. I really was. Terrified. Playing around had never been my style, and I didn't know whether I could carry this off, but the next night I knew I had no option. Lindsey had claimed me. I was his girl. And it was my choice to accept the claim.

I parked up on Melrose that next night, just behind Lindsey's car, as arranged, and he raced out and held me until I thought I'd break into tiny pieces. Dressed head to toe in black velvet, wearing spike heels, and with a heart on fire, I drifted into the restaurant on his arm, into a private, exclusive dining room, lit with the flicker of candles reflected in gilt-framed mirrors. Two chairs at the long, linen-draped table stood conspicuously empty, obviously reserved for us. I sat down on Lindsey's right and looked up and down the table. Christine was opposite, beaming. John and Mick took places of honor at each end, and among the guests were technicians and roadies I'd already seen in the studio.