My Heart

When I Stand Before You

Santa Monica, California
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
(9:30 pm)
********************

She said Dave was going home soon. What the fuck is he still doing here then?

Lindsey was sitting on the sofa across from Lori, trying not to remember that once upon a time thirteen years before, for a brief moment, Lori Perry Nicks had been someone he considered his sister-in-law, even if it was just for those beautiful few months in 1997 when it looked as though he was back in the Nicks family fold for good. He was also trying to find a way to steal a glance at his watch without Lori noticing and thinking that he was bored, because he was not bored at all.

He was just incredibly pissed off that Dave Stewart had said he was going home an hour ago and he was still there, drinking in Stevie's every word. He had to admit, he was surprising himself with the level of his own jealousy. He had been so quick to say yes on the phone the moment Stevie had asked him to come and help with "Soldier's Angel" for many reasons - not the least of which was the excuse to see her again - and he had been made well aware of the fact that Dave Stewart had become a permanent fixture in her home while he was producing her album, but he hadn't counted on it hurting so much to see them getting along so well together.

Stop being an idiot, he told himself. Dave's one-night stand with Stevie was a cocaine-and-alcohol-induced blur almost thirty years ago. He is a married man, a father.

He quickly reminded himself - and then quickly made himself try to forget - that the same had been true of Mick Fleetwood in 1977.

"I thought it was marching," Stevie was saying when his mind tuned back in to the scene that was occurring around him in the living room. She was standing up as everyone around her sat down. She'd been pacing around the room as she described what had led her to compose the poem that had become the song "Soldier's Angel", and she was holding court now, Lindsey sitting in front of her where she stood at the crackling fireplace, talking about how she'd come up with the idea.

"It was like soldiers marching off to war," she continued. "And I was little - I was, like, in the fourth grade or something...and it continued on and on and on, and finally I realized that I used to, like, put my hand up in a way underneath my ear that made me hear the blood pulsing..." She put her fist to her ear to demonstrate what she was talking about. "I finally figured out as I got older that that's what it was, but for many, many, many years, I thought, well I'm hearing soldiers marching off to war."

It was Lori who caught the look on Lindsey's face as Stevie spoke, as well as the fact that he'd taken up the hem of the sleeve of his jacket to look at his watch. At first she got angry because it looked as though he was rolling his eyes, and because he'd checked his watch as if he'd been waiting too long for a bus. She'd known Stevie and Lindsey since 1971 and she'd seen him roll his eye at her before when she'd gone on for too long making a point...which, Lori admitted to herself, was sometimes true. Lori had also seen him tell her to stop it, that it wasn't "The Stevie Nicks Variety Hour", as he used to call it, and she used to get furious with him about that, knowing that Stevie only went on and on when something meant a lot to her, and there were just so many words in her head that she couldn't get them out fast enough. She was ready to confront him about his eye roll later...and then she realized what she was looking at from across the room in her seat next to Glen Ballard.

The poor man was petrified! Lori knew how hard it was for Lindsey - private, imploding, intense Lindsey - to sit in a room surrounded by Stevie's team in a life she lived that had nothing to do with him and their life together, the one he had been asked to leave behind twice. She was looking at a man who'd told Stevie to "go her own way" thirty-three years ago and never expected that when she did, she would create something as rich and passionate and fun and elaborate as this. He looked like it was his first day at a new school.