Storms by Carol Ann Harris Page A

him no rest, I’d find those creatures and destroy them.
    Our roles, in this one night, had reversed. He wasn’t my fairy-tale protector. I must be his. This was the part I had to play, this part, kneeling at his feet, watching over him. Making him better.
    He pulled me to him and kissed me, hard and desperately. The door was flung open suddenly and Ray Lindsey almost fell into the room. “It’s crazy out there! Keep this door closed!” he barked over his shoulder at one of the security guards. “They’ve let the punters in already! It’s hell!”
    â€œCarol”, Lindsey asked, his voice drained, “I hate to ask you this, but could you go across to the dressing room and get me a Myers’s and Coke?”
    â€œWhatever you need”, I said.
    â€œYou’ll be OK?”
    â€œFine!” I said with a courage I didn’t feel, but the cocaine created the courage for me as security men formed a cordon to keep the crowds off my back and I struggled through the crush of bodies to the dressing room, expecting to find Stevie, sobbing still, distraught. Instead I found an empty room reeking with the stench of stale tobacco, spilled alcohol, and raw fear. There were linear tracings of white dust on the bar, where empty bottles perched drunkenly. And there, on the shabby sofa, was one abandoned sequin-scattered shawl.
    As I moved across to mix Lindsey’s drink I caught sight of myself in the scuffed mirror—a thin, pale girl with pale hair wearing a white satin blouse smeared with blood. Lindsey’s blood. And that image will remain clear for all time: the sequined shawl—cheap, gold, splaying out rainbow light—and on my shirt a deep slash of blood, dried to black.
    This Carol, this reflection in a mirror, wasn’t the same person who’d arrived five hours earlier. That Carol had been a young girl who felt as if she were on the outside looking in. Starry-eyed, feeling as through she were arriving at a party—a guest who was only there to see how the beautiful people lived, dressed, and behaved.
    She now knew that she was not a guest. She was one of the hosts of the hottest party in town. Lindsey and his fellow band members were theparty; and as the woman he loved, I was now a princess in the royal court of Fleetwood Mac. Cinderella had come to the palace to stay. In every fairy tale I’d ever read, once the heroine of the story found her prince or knight in shining armor, she was automatically transformed into a great lady who lived happily ever after within the walls of her lover’s kingdom. I didn’t recall ever reading anything about her having doubts that she belonged in that kingdom. No—love and love alone was all she needed.
    This is my fairytale
, I said to myself,
and it’s no time to change the rules.

5
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
    During the first month of the U.S.
Rumours
tour I stayed behind in L.A., working at Producer’s Workshop, for, unlike everyone else in my new world, I had a “normal” job. The time seemed to fly by, and things once again stabilized for me. I loved my little apartment and I loved my job. I missed Lindsey every minute, but his calls every night helped to ease the loneliness. On show nights he called me at 1 A.M. or later and we would talk for at least an hour.
    After being away only a week Lindsey insisted that I fly out on the weekends to join the band. So every Friday night a long, black limousine was waiting for me in the parking lot of Producer’s, attracting stares and attention from the ragtag group of tourists, junkies, and hookers passing by on Hollywood Boulevard. Upon arrival in whatever city Fleetwood Mac was playing that night, I was whisked straight to the venue to meet up with Lindsey and the band.
    Just like a reverse Cinderella, when the clock struck six I was off and running to my prince, instead of away from him, for the next three Fridays. As each weekend came