Storms (26 page)

“Oh, shit!” I cried out as I followed my escort into a large office. Directly in my line of vision was Lindsey—with his head between his knees—sitting on a couch. At the sound of my voice he raised his head and looked at me helplessly. For a split second time froze as I took in the bizarre scene that greeted me. In the opulent office of one of the music business's most beloved television and radio icons sat the man I loved … with a huge puddle of vomit between his legs on the expensive carpet under his pukespattered cowboy boots. And not more than ten feet away was the icon himself: Dick Clark.

Looking on with distaste and disdain, he looked like he wanted to kill Lindsey. Actually, a more apt description would be that he was staring at Lindsey as though he were something nasty that he just scraped off the bottom of his shoe. And as I looked at Lindsey's white face, his slack mouth, and the pool of puke like a disgusting biohazard on the carpet, I had to admit that Clark might—at that moment—have a point.

My eyes quickly took in the glad-handing shots of the presenter on the wall with about a zillion rock ‘n' roll legends, smiling his famous toothy smile as he posed boyishly next to each of them, decade after decade after decade, looking exactly the same age in each and every shot. It was totally creepy, actually. Without a hair out of place or one wrinkle in his shirt in any of the pictures, Dick Clark, I knew in a heartbeat, had never, ever thrown up in anyone's office. And now, here was the newly crowned legend of the AMAs vomiting all over his foot-deep carpet.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. With an inner groan I walked quickly across the room to Lindsey's reeking body and sat down next to him. As he leaned his head against my shoulder with the pleading, soulful eyes of a hound dog that'd just had an “accident” in his master's house, I knew that somehow, someway, I had to get him out of that office and home. Fast.

As I put my arm around Lindsey's shoulders I looked over at Clark sitting behind his gleaming wood desk and felt a flash of anger begin to burn inside of me as I saw the coldness in his eyes.
Fuck him! How can he sit there and not even offer to help me? I don't care if Lindsey's ruined his stupid carpet—this can't be the first time he's seen a musician wasted!

Fired up by my anger and worry over Lindsey, who was now sagging against me moaning, I spoke sharply to the TV celebrity. “Mr. Clark? Do you think I could have some help here? Or do you expect me to carry him out to our limo by myself?”
Asshole
, I added silently.

In one smooth movement he picked up the phone on his desk and barked a command into the receiver. In seconds the swarthy escort in the ill-fitting tux materialized and walked briskly across the room to where we were sitting. Without a word he heaved Lindsey to his feet and half-walked, half-carried him out of the room. Before the door closed behind us I turned and said, “It's been a pleasure, Mr. Clark.” Getting an icy glare in response, I tossed my hair and smiled virtuously before I slammed the door.

Clark's security man got Lindsey to the waiting limo and wrestled him into the car. The driver took one look at Lindsey in his vomit-stained clothes and peeled out of the parking lot, undoubtedly counting the minutes until he could rid himself of our smelly, sick presence. Almost immediately Lindsey began to throw up again all over the back of the car. Projectile vomiting. Vile and disgusting as the smell was, I gritted my teeth and held on to him for dear life. He was as limp as a rag doll and it was a struggle to keep him in the seat as our driver turned the corners at breakneck speed.

Apologizing, I asked the driver to please put up the separation window that sealed us from his shocked eyes as he looked in the rearview mirror. I couldn't bear the thought of one more person witnessing Lindsey in that condition.
At least he didn't spew on stage
, I said to myself.
Thank you, Lord, for that!

When we arrived at our home on June Street, the driver kindly helped me get Lindsey upstairs to the bathroom in the master bedroom. Thanking him profusely, I pressed into his hand a pile of money from Lindsey's wallet, knowing that he'd earned every damn penny of it. After I heard the front door close I started stripping Lindsey's clothes off as he leaned against the bathtub, then I pushed and pulled him into the shower with me. Fully
dressed, I held him up under the warm water and stayed there with him until the smell of vomit no longer hovered around both of us. Throwing a robe over my own soaked clothes, I wrapped Lindsey in towels and pointed him toward the bedroom.

The shower seemed to revive him a little and he was able to stumble to bed under his own power. As I pulled the covers over him I could hear the beginning of the American Music Awards telecast from the television in the next bedroom.
Oh hell, I left the stupid TV on before we left! Please, please, Lindsey, don't say you want to watch it!
I thought. I held my breath as I furiously plumped up the pillows surrounding Lindsey, hoping to drown out the music from the next room.

No go, though. As soon as Lindsey heard the music, he groaned and grabbed my hand. “You have to go watch it for me, Carol. I just want to make sure that I didn't do anything stupid on camera. I can't remember much, but Jesus, I didn't do anything stupid, did I, baby?” he slurred in a desperate tone.

My mind raced.
Here we go—I gotta lie to him. What am I supposed to do? Tell him that by the end of the night he's going to be the star of about a billion jokes about the dangers of mixing alcohol and drugs? After tonight he's going to be the damned poster boy for the DEA!

“Oh, no, Lindsey … you were fine. Really. I'm sure that no one will even notice that you got a little bit too wasted tonight. Don't worry, hon, I'll watch it to make sure. But I don't want you to worry now. Just go to sleep, OK? It's going to be all right, you'll see!” I tried to keep my game face on as I lied to him. I couldn't bear to tell him of his rubber-leg walk up the stairs to the wrong side of the stage in front of the music industry's elite—and soon the entire country. Obviously he'd had a complete blackout of his less than stellar performance at the show.
Well, it wasn't his finest hour, that's for sure. But he'll start puking again if I tell him what he did. He's been punished enough for one night by his stupidity in getting so wasted.
Shaking my head, I peeled off my soaked ensemble and robe and threw on jeans and a T-shirt.

With Lindsey sleeping in the next room, I curled up in our new Laura Ashley bedside chair and started to watch the AMA show by myself, trying to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to witness. As Fleetwood
Mac's awards were announced, I watched with morbid fascination as Lindsey's disastrous moment on film was about to unfold.

And there was no sign of it. The Best Album of the Year was announced, the camera showed the other four band members running up the stairs, scarves and hair flowing behind them, and then Lindsey miraculously appearing as if beamed down from a space ship to stand by their side. Kind of
Star Trek
-y, but I didn't care. It was a good edit and I was so relieved that I burst out laughing.

Oh my God. I can't believe they didn't show it!
And then again, once the initial rush of relief was over, I smiled as I pictured the scene that must have happened in the few hours between the actual event and the telecast. I could only assume that the top Warner Bros. executives were burning up the phone lines to Dick Clark and the AMA brass to protect their biggest money-making asset of the moment: Fleetwood Mac.

Shit! That was a close one!
Shaking my head, I got up and went into our bedroom and looked at Lindsey sleeping so deeply that it appeared he might be in a coma—or dead. Resisting the urge to hold a mirror up under his nose to make sure that he was still breathing, I stripped off my clothes.
All's well that end's well
, I thought sleepily as I slipped into bed next to him.

Waking up at noon, Lindsey and I climbed out of bed and stumbled down to the breakfast room for toast and coffee. He was nursing a major hangover and I felt like I'd been run over by a truck—after one of the most anxiety-ridden nights of my life. I made my way to the front door and grabbed the
L.A. Times
off the front steps. Sitting on the couch, I opened it to the “Calendar” section, wondering idly if there would be anything in it about the AMAs. I wasn't disappointed. Finding the page, I let out a string of expletives that would have made Christine proud.

Up in the right-hand side was a big picture of Fleetwood Mac taken the night before at the show. Stevie, Christine, John, and Mick were all smiling happily, holding their little gleaming awards—a fairly normal pose for a winning rock band at the AMAs. And then there was Lindsey. Wearing a gigantic Mexican sombrero on his head, he was grinning like an inmate from an insane asylum while snapping his fingers like a calypso dancer in front of the camera lens.
That explains the Bozo the Clown hair
, I thought miserably as I sat frozen, staring at one of the stupidest pictures ever taken of him.

Lindsey snatched the paper away from me, took one look, groaned, and said simply, “I'm going back to bed, Carol. Don't tell me anything about last night. I don't want to know. Jesus!”

With a sigh I watched him go. I knew that sooner or later he'd have to hear every horrible detail—but not from me. I couldn't even bear to think of it, much less talk about it. The horror of last night's debacle was still too fresh—I could still smell the scent of vomit wafting down from the upstairs bedroom. Or was it still in my hair? With a shudder, I followed Lindsey upstairs to purify myself in the shower.

He's going to hear all about it from the band
, I thought as I climbed the stairs. He was going to hear every last, miserable, embarrassing detail—over and over again. It would be an opportunity too delicious for their malicious humor to pass up. I had no doubt that every member of the Fleetwood Mac family would make him pay in spades for quite a while for his off-camera performance. And it wouldn't be pretty for him. Not pretty at all.

As I washed the smell of vomit from my hair under the shower, I thought of the Grammys looming ahead in a little over a month.
I'll keep watch over him like a hawk there! There's no way I'll let a repeat of last night happen at the Grammys, for God's sake! I have to call Bjorn—I want to look really amazing at the show. I think I deserve to go all out after the shit I went through last night at the AMAs! I know that Bjorn watched the show, and since the band won he's probably already plotting my fashion debut. Wait until I tell him about what happened off camera!

Bjorn was my new best friend. In fact, my relationship with Bjorn was my one and only new friendship outside the world of Fleetwood Mac and I prized it highly. In December he'd spotted me at Bullock's department store and introduced himself. With a face like Michelangelo's David and a body to match, he was gorgeous. Everything about him was physically perfect. He was six foot one, slender and well muscled, and had short, black hair and blue eyes that were always, always, enhanced by perfectly applied black eyeliner.

Bjorn was one of the top makeup artists in the U.S. Famous for his
Vogue
covers and his roster of celebrity clients such as Jaclyn Smith and Suzanne Somers, he'd taken me under his wing and was launching me into a new career: modeling. It was something I could do that would fit within my schedule of traveling with Lindsey on the road. I could work
when I wanted—if I had what it took, that is. With Bjorn as my mentor and makeup artist, I'd already done four shoots for my portfolio. And the pictures were great.

I'd been shooting with one of leading fashion photographers in the industry: Charles Bush, father of now-famous Sophie Bush. Arriving in the studio, I was always nervous, awkward, and shy. But after Bjorn's two-hour magical makeup sessions, a person emerged in the mirror who was almost like a stranger. It was me—but then again it wasn't. Gone was the gawky schoolgirl, replaced by a pretty, waiflike, sophisticated young woman. Just like the girls in the fashion magazines that I'd grown up admiring. After slipping into one of the couture dresses that Bjorn always selected, I would feel a confidence unlike any I'd ever known. It wasn't just the confidence that physical beauty could bestow (I
never
felt beautiful), but the confidence of being, for the first time in my life, the center of a little universe that existed inside the creative world of a photography studio. That universe belonged, for those few hours, just to me.

Carol Ann.

This probably meant more to me than it would to other young women. When I was growing up in Tulsa with my six sisters, I'd always felt very insecure. I was insecure about my looks—I'd been very, very thin my entire life, and I despaired of ever being able to even look pretty, much less desirable. I was insecure about my clothes—my family didn't have a lot of money and I wasn't able to shop for most of my school clothes. I sewed my own dresses and I'd spend hours trying to make them look store-bought. And I was insecure about my ability to achieve as much as my older sisters, who all seemed to be absolutely brilliant in school. My sisters Tommie and Margaret both made the dean's list at Tulsa University and had put themselves through college. One
of my other sisters, Sue, was literally a genius. She never got less than an A in any of her classes her entire life and had been offered full scholarships to several universities. She'd chosen OU in Oklahoma City for her bachelor's degree, and later, after moving to L.A., she would get her master's degree at Pepperdine University and her Ph.D. in psychology at USC. With sisters like these, my Bs and Cs just didn't cause a lot of excitement in our house.