say hello wave goodbye

18: maybe today you could put the past away (1997)

June 1997

"So I don't know if you've heard, but they have this thing called delivery..."

"Karen."

"And it's really an amazing thing. You call the restaurant, and they send somebody to drop it off wherever you want. See? It cuts out the middle man."

"Karen, " Stevie repeats warningly. "That's not the point, though, to just get him the food. I want to see how he's doing."

"Probably the same as he was doing four hours ago, " Karen says. For the third day in a row, Stevie had insisted on going to the studio in the mid-afternoon to visit Lindsey and bring him something to eat. What this really meant was that Karen had to place the order, drive out to get it, sit in traffic on the way to the studio, hang around for however long her boss wanted to stay, and then fight the traffic to get home, all while Stevie lounged in the back seat petting the dogs and reading magazines.

"What do you think I should make for dinner?" Stevie asks, ignoring Karen's complaints. "I still have some of that chicken left over from Monday, I could do something with it..."

"You have that phone interview at 5:30, don't forget," Karen reminds her.

"Hmm," she says, and it's already forgotten. That's what she pays Karen for, anyway, to remember all that shit. Her mind has been elsewhere for the last month. Things with Lindsey had been so good that it was almost scary- they hadn't spent a single night apart since the night that they taped the show, and more and more of his stuff had started to accumulate at her place. Sometimes he came back from the studio late at night, so late that she was already asleep, and she woke up in the morning to him kissing her goodbye before he headed out again. In a way, she liked those nights best of all. It would be easier for him to take the shorter drive to his own house, and he knew she'd be sleeping the entire time that he was there, but he wanted to be with her anyhow.

Of course, it was more fun when they were awake. They'd had sex every day, save for those few nights when he was putting in long hours at the studio, and they had way more than made up for those nights the next day. But that's not all they do together. They watch movies and go for walks with the dogs and float around together in the pool after dark. (Lindsey keeps trying to convince her to go skinny dipping. 'Pretend we're back in Japan,' he says, but she still refuses. Besides, she thinks there's something sexy about him pulling her swimsuit to the side, those long fingers curling inside her under the translucent veil of the water...).

The other night they drove up to their old makeout spot in the hills, but they didn't even get to second base before they had company in the form of a car full of teenagers drinking shitty beer and smoking even shittier weed. So they ended up down at the beach, lying on a blanket and stargazing with the crashing waves as their soundtrack, and it was one of those moments where you just know, even while it's happening, that you're going to look back at it 30 years from now as one of your fondest memories.

She's so, so lucky.

"How long are you gonna be here?" Karen asks as they pull up to the studio parking lot. "Maybe I'll just wait in the car."

"It's 90 degrees, you'll either die of heatstroke or kill the battery by running the A.C. for so long."

"Or, you know, you could be quick," she points out. When Stevie just stares at her blankly, she groans and turns the car off. "Come on then, we've got stuff to do at home."

"This isn't just a social visit, this is my album too. They might need me for some more vocals," she says, knowing damn well they're working on Big Love all day today. She waves to the receptionist as they make their way back to the studio where Lindsey and a few others are holed up.