Not that anybody was keen on calling Los Angeles “safe.”In a car-filled, mega-populated city with some of the wealthiest and also poorest people in the world, everything felt fraught with tension.Even on a day like Thanksgiving.Even on the happiest and sunniest of days.
Stevie couldn’t drive any longer.She was too delirious with fear, wondering what might happen next.She realized that a spot she liked wasn’t far off, a sort of concert-venue-slash bar with a view of the ocean, in what had once been the “cool” area of Venice Beach.As a music lover and longtime performer, it was a place that Stevie could call home.Stevie drove there and parked in the back next to the bartender’s beat-up Jeep.Once upon a time, she’d come to this place with an old boyfriend, long before she’d made Los Angeles her home.Of the city, they’d wondered how anyone could live here.They’d hated the traffic.They hadn’t been able to catch the energy of the place.They’d longed for New York City, for the cold air, for the art and grit of their city’s streets.Stevie couldn’t have imagined she’d ever live out here.
It’s like you can’t plan your own life, she thought.Life just unspools in front of you.
Stevie entered the bar, checking her reflection in a mirror on the wall.Her dark blond hair swept wildly to her shoulders and hung in a messy set of bangs from the top of her head.She knew that her mother, Regina, had named her daughter “Stevie” because Regina herself had been called “the lost twin of Stevie Nicks,” and she’d prayed that Stevie would inherit her looks as well.Stevie did, in fact, look like Stevie Nicks, but Stevie had inherited far more than Stevie Nicks’s looks.She’d inherited her dynamic and textured voice, her wild and searching spirit, and her love of rock stars and bad boys.(This last thing was really too bad, Stevie knew.)
The things she hadn’t inherited from Stevie Nicks, of course, were her fame and her money.Stevie Franklin had once enjoyed a brief jolt of fame, but she’d never had money.She wasn’t sure how she’d survived this long, nor how she’d managed to raise a daughter in one of the most expensive cities on earth.
“Is that Stevie?”Reggie, the bartender, smiled happily from the other side of the counter and then swung out into the bar to greet Stevie properly.He had her in a bear hug before she could confirm who she was.“Of course it’s you!It’s good to see you!On today of all days!I didn’t think I’d see anyone I liked on Thanksgiving.Figured I’d be here with a bunch of loners, eager to forget it was the holiday season.”
Stevie smiled stiffly and squeezed Reggie’s upper arm.He was a little bit older than she was, ragged and worn looking around the eyes, maybe from years of bartending and cigarettes.
“I am a loner, Reg,” she said, offering a smile.
“Nah.You’ve got love,” Reggie said.“You can’t be a loner when you have love.”
Stevie didn’t betray the wave of emotion that crashed through her.“Maybe you’re right,” she lied, sitting at the bar and eyeing the beers on draft.She imagined she’d buy one and sip it for hours and hours, chatting to Reggie about things they would forget in an hour or two.She ordered the most simplistic beer on tap, a pilsner with very little taste, and asked Reggie how he was.
“Things aren’t going the way I planned, Stevie.”Reggie shook his head.“I was supposed to be a famous actor by now.I was supposed to be living in Beverly Hills in one of those mansions.My best friend was supposed to be Leonardo DiCaprio!”
Stevie laughed appreciatively.“I was supposed to be a bigger musician than Stevie Nicks herself.”
“If Stevie Nicks could hear your voice, she’d get jealous,” Reggie said.“Mark my words.”
“You’re too kind, Reggie.”Stevie waved him off.“That’s why we need you on Thanksgiving Day.The other loners and me.”
At that moment, the door opened to bring in a very skinny and tall man with a guitar hanging from his hand.
“Baxter, hey!You’re early,” Reggie said, reaching for a glass to fill with beer.“Baxter’s here to bring us some Christmas cheer, aren’t you, Bax?”
Baxter smiled, revealing teeth with wide gaps between them.They made him look like a cartoon.“I figured I’d get set up and see what was going on down here.”He glanced at Stevie, then did a double take.“Stevie!Hey!”
Stevie vaguely remembered Baxter from her early days in Los Angeles, back when she’d been a little bit pregnant and then super-duper pregnant, trying to pay her ever-rising rent with the tips she made at the bar.When she was too pregnant to play guitar, she’d recruited Baxter a few times to play for her, and she’d focused her heart and mind on singing, bellowing her sorrows into the microphone.She’d gotten her best tips right before she’d had to stop to prepare to give birth.If she remembered correctly, Baxter had sent flowers to the hospital.
“Hi, Baxter.”Stevie sipped her beer.“How are you?”
“Can’t complain too much.Just got back to LA after about ten years away.Can’t believe how different the city is.”
Stevie felt a wave of nausea.“Where were you?”
“All over the place.I traveled through Europe and went to Asia.Hey, you know, you can make a living in places like Rome and Paris if you’re a good busker.Tourists dropped buckets of coins in my guitar case every day.But I had to come back.I felt called to the American West.”He winked.“What about yourself?Are you tearing the world apart with that voice?”
Stevie felt a blush crawl up her chest and into her neck.The reality was, she hadn’t sung in years, and she hadn’t written a song in longer than that.Although motherhood had mystified and lit her up for eighteen years, it had also run her ragged.When her daughter had been very young, Stevie had wondered if she’d ever feel her creative spirit again, if she’d ever fully have access to all the parts of herself that had once felt so essential.
“Something like that,” Stevie said.
“You have to sing tonight.”Baxter gestured toward the little stage behind him.“Singer’s choice.Whatever Christmas song or oldie you like.Remember how crazy people got when you sang Fleetwood Mac songs?I bet they’d still go crazy.”
Stevie remembered it and let out a soft laugh.“I don’t know about that.”
“And what about that daughter of yours?”Baxter asked, his smile more and more sensational as they caught up.“The last I saw her, she was about two feet tall and already the spitting image of her mother.”
Stevie felt as though she’d been slapped.Keep it together, Stevie, she told herself.Then she raised her chin and said, “My daughter just had a baby, actually.A little daughter of her own.”
Baxter smacked his thigh.“Stevie Franklin is a grandmother?I’ll be dipped.You must be over the moon.I never had a kid, Stevie, and right now, I have to say, I’m regretting it.You created life that created more life.You’re a part of a lineage.Isn’t that beautiful?”
Stevie heard herself agree meekly.She tried to smile but couldn’t.
