Frozen Love

And If You Go Forward

Pacific Palisades, California
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
(11:00 pm)
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"Are you ready for all of the hoopla tomorrow when people see it?"

Stevie knew as soon as the little chuckle escaped her that Lindsey would know she was laughing at his use of the word hoopla. One thing about Lindsey that had found alternatively maddening and endearing for nearly sixty years was the fact that he was extremely stuck in his ways, and that included the way he talked. He was, after all, an almost seventy-six-year-old man born and raised in Northern California, and he'd sounded the same since he was sixteen years old.

She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction tonight, however, of telling him that it was endearing this time.

"Don't quote me on this, and I'll deny it if it gets out," she said, "but this is one time since I've owned a smartphone when I wish it was connected to the internet."

It was Lindsey's turn to laugh. "You know, Stevie, you don't need cell service if you want to go online tomorrow sand check it out," he informed her. "You have wifi in your house to watch TV, right? You can just get online that way."

"I'll just look on Karen's phone," she said. "She's the one who runs the Instagram account anyway."

Lindsey was standing on the balcony of the apartment he'd been renting in Santa Monica, shaking out weed from a small metal grinder onto an open rolling paper, grateful to his daughter LeeLee for having convinced him recently to finally break down and get a pair of AirPods. He had been rolling joints for sixty years and could do it in his sleep, but he'd always found it a bit tricky over the years to balance a telephone phone between his shoulder and chin when he needed both hands free...and even more tricky when he'd gotten an iPhone years ago and talked on the white wires headphones. He was always getting everything all tangled up...including one particular time in his memory on his last full Fleetwood Mac tour, the one they'd done for Christine's great return. Stevie, lying in bed beside him in his hotel room, had shaken her head and laughed as he'd fought a battle with the thin white wire, trying to use his headphones to return Kristen's good night phone call...which he'd missed because he wasn't alone in the room as she'd assumed he was.

"What are you doing?" Stevie asked him, noticing that there was a lull in the conversation. They'd been on the phone for almost an hour, she acknowledged when she saw the time on the old-fashioned clock radio beside her bed. This was the fourth night in a row that they'd done this - called each other to say something about the album reissue and then wound up talking for a long time - and tonight, for the first time of four, it was Stevie who'd placed the call.

"I'm rolling a joint," Lindsey replied honestly. "I really should've done this inside...shit! The wind is picking up out here!" He struggled to keep the marijuana flower in place as he lifted the small white paper carefully, and began rolling it in between his fingers.

"You're outside?" Stevie was in her bedroom, her journal lying open beside her on the bed and Lily and Luna lying at her feet. It was much too early for her to be in bed, but she had to be up at a normal hour the next morning. Karen was picking her up for a meeting with the tour management people to discuss changes in the plans because Billy Joel, with whom she was scheduled to perform a bunch of shows in the coming months, had canceled due to an ongoing health issue. On the television in front of her, muted because she was on the phone, Detectives Benson and Stabler of Law And Order: SVU were having another one of a thousand personal moments rooted in the fact that they were in love with each other but couldn't bring themselves to act on it after twenty-five seasons.

"Yeah, I'm on the terrace," he said. "I never used to come out here...you know...at first...but one night Will was over and he came out here and we smoked and talked and it was pretty cool...so I started coming out here every night."