Say You Love Me (Double Love Trilogy Conclusion)

Flashback: Loving You Isn't The Right Thing To Do

Sausalito, California
Friday, July 10, 1976
(10:00 pm)
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"He's never going to go away, you know. You might as well go out there and talk to him."

Stevie stepped away from the window, the slats of the blinds falling naturally back into place as she let them go. John was standing in the courtyard of the apartment complex in Sausalito where she and Christine had recently taken two apartments, one just down the hall from the other, having lasted barely a week at the studio house where Mick and Ken had suggested they stay while they recorded the new album. John had been calling up to the window of Stevie's apartment for quite some time after realizing all the lights were off at Christine's place. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand that was fast becoming less Jack Daniels and more just a bottle, and he showed no signs of leaving any time soon.

"Let him tire himself out," said Christine. She was sitting on the living room floor, bent over the coffee table and cutting neat little lines of cocaine on a mirror with her new American Express gold card. The sound of Diana Ross' voice breathed seductively out of the speakers of the new stereo Stevie had added to the apartment the day after she got the keys, singing about her "sweet love hangover" as Stevie sank to her knees on top of an enormous green velvet pillow she'd been using as a seat for her times around the mirror on the coffee table, which, in the month since coming up to Sausalito to record, had increased quite a bit.

"I'm beginning to doubt that husband of yours ever GETS tired!" Stevie picked up the little gold metal straw Richard had recently slipped into her purse when she'd complained that snorting cocaine through rolled-up money riddled with germs was probably the reason she always had a sore throat these days and Lindsey got angry when she had to do more takes.

"How about fuck him and we just get back to what we were talking about," Christine suggested. She picked up the rolled-up hundred dollar bill that was secured by a rubber band and snorted a generous line of cocaine from the mirror.

"Jesus Christ, must we?" Stevie bent over the mirror and used her gold straw to snort a line of her own. She took a moment to hold a finger against her right nostril to make sure it all went where it needed to go. Only when she felt the familiar numbness dripping down the back of her throat did she say anything else. "My predicament is no better than yours, Chris. I have nothing more to say except that if Lindsey insists upon thinking I'm up to no good...well then, maybe I will be! Take a wild guess whose phone number found its way into my purse when we were at that boring-as-hell event before we left L.A.!" When Christine didn't answer, she said, "Don Henley!"

"No fucking way!" Christine looked up from the mirror, visibly shocked. "Are you going to call him?"

"Depends on whether or not Mr. Buckingham takes his Nice Guy Pills on Monday when we go back to the studio," Stevie said. "I mean, the awful part of it all is that if I DO call Don Henley, I'm proving Lindsey right...but if I'm doing the time I might as well do the crime...you know?"

"What do you mean?" Christine looked up from her task, which was continually neatening lines of white powder on the mirror.

"I have been accused of cheating since, like, the moment we moved down to L.A.," Stevie explained. "I told you that."

"But you DID cheat...with that guy that Bob knows...what was his name?"

Stevie snortled, and then laughed out loud. She sat back, folding her arms as if in defiance. "You want a laugh?" She leaned in over the table closer to Christine's face. "Lindsay!"

"You're fucking kidding me!" Christine's eyes widened in shock. She was holding the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill poised in midair, in between her fingers like a cigarette.