“She kept the deposit because we broke the lease, Sly. She didn't do anything wrong.” His anger permeated the apartment, and I was shocked and scared at him lashing out and destroying property that way. It was a mean-spirited and flagrant use of force.
“It doesn't matter. She shouldn't have done it.” He turned and walked out, kicking the front door against the wall. I stood in the apartment, trying to grasp what had happened and where I was going. I had not doubted moving in with Sly until this moment. It was too late to turn back. I closed the door gently and walked to where the cars were parked.
Sly was behind the wheel of the Cord Duesenberg. I followed him around the curving road in the T-Bird, my arms holding the steering wheel tightly as the pile of clothes in the backseat shifted from side to side. Stevie followed in Sly's camper. She brought his musical equipment, clothes, Stoner the Great Dane, and two new dogs—Max, a bulldog, and Gunn, a pit bull.
At the top of a hill, Sly turned on his left blinker. I steered the T-Bird into the circular drive of 2622 Coldwater Canyon.
The house was a mansion that looked out over palm tree–dotted hills winding to Laurel Canyon. The front door opened into a curved hallway, and stairs ascended to the master suite. An archway opened to the white country-style kitchen. In the sunken living room, a grand piano sat near French doors leading to an expanse of lawn and a swimming pool. I walked through the furnished rooms, awestruck.
Stevie dutifully carried in Sly's clothes, the dog food, and guitars. She looked like a tiny version of Sly, with knee-high leather boots and tight jeans tucked inside them. Her dimpled cheeks strained as she struggled with the load of clothes. Sly brought the amp and my box of books, trying to catch my cheek with his lips. He had gotten over his anger quickly—I was still reeling.
The three sniffing pooches pulled on their leashes, Gunn snapping at Max's stout leg. Stevie put Gunn in the study and the other two dogs on the patio behind the kitchen.
Sly took me in his arms and danced me through the living room. “Do you like it?”
“Of course,” I said. But my mood was somber.
Stevie finished and called a taxi to return her to the office. Sly pulled out a vial of coke and gave Stevie and me a hit. Hug- ging me, he apologized for his actions and held me until I said I forgave him. We sat outside on the patio by the pool. Hibiscus bloomed in front of columns, thick ferns were wet with drops from the sprinkler, and hot pink bougainvillea with long, spiky thorns climbed up the trellis. I had seen Sly's desire for power when we were around his friends. I could tell that everyone was afraid to disagree with him. He had actually asked them to “cosign his shit,” meaning, “tell me what I want to hear.” I thought it was crude and narcissistic. In the studio, everyone applauded his solos. Yet, when we were alone, Sly was not a show-off. He asked me my opinion and said I was like a wise Indian maiden. He called me Princess Running Water. Today had been the first time I had seen his “other” side.
Sly interrupted my thoughts. “You want to go eat?” “Sure,” I said. We walked through the garden to the driveway, Sly's arm around my shoulder. He put the top down on the Cord, and we zoomed over the hill to the Good Earth in Westwood. He played his music, holding my hand when we stopped in traffic, and he parked the roadster a few meters from the restaurant. He leaped over the door without opening it. Hugging me and kissing my neck, he linked his arm through mine. Heads turned as we walked. Sly's looks and swagger created an aura of drama everywhere he went. Sitting face-to-face in the soft light of the restaurant, we ordered Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream and went home to our new house happy as before.
1971
In early summer, Sly's aunt died. He wanted to attend the service, so we flew to the Bay Area. A limo took us to his home- town of Vallejo for the funeral. Afterward, I went to Mom and Dad's for dinner. I was glad to see them, but I wanted to get back to Sly so we could return to L.A. on the midnight flight. Kitsaun drove me to meet Sly and Freddy at Wally Heider Studios. When we walked into the music-filled control room, Sly was snorting coke from a small mirror on the side of the soundboard. The engineer and Freddy were pushing knobs on the board, adjusting the bass levels.
Sly looked up. “Hi, honey,” he drawled. I leaned over to hug him. His eyelids drooped, and his body was stiff. “How's it sound?”
“Great, but you look tired.” I looked at Freddy. “Have you two eaten?” He shook his head to say no.
“We had better get some food.”
Sly leaned on the console to stand up, but fell back in the chair, his eyes rolling up in his head, his back arching. “Sly!” I screamed. “Freddy, something's wrong!”
Sly's legs were sticking straight out. He looked unconscious. Freddy's eyes bugged out in his face. He began crying, shaking Sly. The engineer said, “I'll call an ambulance.”
“No! We'll take him to the hospital. Debbie, go get the car! Get the car!” Freddy screamed at me.
I ran outside and around the corner to McAllister, where we had parked. When I sped back to the studio, Freddy was standing outside, cradling Sly. Kitsaun was in the street, wildly waving her arms. They climbed in. Sly's mouth hung open. His eyes were closed. I sped up Leavenworth to Geary and swung right onto Scott to Mount Zion Hospital, pulling into the emergency driveway for ambulances. Freddy ran, Sly in his arms, through the automatic glass doors. I screeched into a parking place. I had never been so afraid in my life. What if he died? I loved him and couldn't believe something so horrible was happening. Kitsaun's face was ashen. She held my hand as we ran through the emergency room doors to the nurses' desk. “Where did they take him?” I asked. A nurse looked up, her face calm.
“Sly Stone,” I said. “Where did they take him?”
“Are you relatives?”
“Yes!” I shrieked. Kitsaun squeezed my hand. The nurse led us down the hallway and pointed to a room. I peeked through the window. A doctor looked up as he adjusted the flow of fluid from a glass jar hanging over the bed. Thank God, he was alive. I pushed open the door.
Sly sat propped up against two pillows, Freddy at his side. The doctor looked at me. “Mr. Stewart had cocaine poisoning. He's told me what he ingested today. If you had not gotten him in here, he could have died.” Tears slid down my face. Sly looked over at me, slurring his words: “I'm okay now, baby.”
“I'm giving him tranquilizers to neutralize the stimulant that was paralyzing his nervous system,” the doctor continued. “Cocaine is not only illegal and highly addictive, it can cause seizures and heart attacks.”
“I just need some food,” Sly droned. I lifted his hand to my cheek. It was cold. He looked haggard; his hair was pushed up in a cone shape. His smile was weak. “Give me my boots, Debbie. We're going home.”
The doctor looked at Sly and shook his head from side to side. He took the needle out of Sly's arm. Kitsaun and Freddy walked into the hall with the doctor.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe you should rest here longer.”
“Shiiiit. I'm as strong as ever.” He stood up, chucked my chin lightly, and laughed as he wobbled.
I watched him closely, ready to catch him if he fell. He sat down on the bed and scratched his head. “Where's my hat?”
I handed him the knit beanie. “Sly, I wish you would stop cocaine.”
“I will, baby, I will.”
But he couldn't do it. We went back to L.A., and instead Sly found a doctor who wrote him a prescription for Seconal. He reasoned that if tranquilizers had saved him from cocaine poisoning, he should take them all the time.
I tracked Sly like a young nocturnal animal following her mate. We slept days and roamed at night, my stomach raw from infrequent meals and from staying up in the studio snorting coke—a world of drugs and music I had never before known. Sly recorded Bobby Womack and Joe Hicks, two talented singers he wrote songs for; he also produced their tracks. I hung out, watching his musical genius, squandering my own goals and purpose. I stayed just tired enough and high enough
to be unable to reason with myself that I needed to extract myself from the wayward life I was living. As Sly got higher and higher on drugs, anguish crept into my heart, tearing a hole in it. Feeling guilty about the innocent and pure young woman I thought God had intended me to be and the way I was living, I used Sly's Seconal to hide. The barbiturate let me slide comfortably into the emptiness; the hazy numbness helped me forget how disap- pointed I was in myself. Loving Sly was a deadly grip around my life, strangling me in a menacing noose.
One evening, I stood looking over the canyon, the sun reflecting orange against the veil of smog. I turned on outside lights leading to the pool.
The doorbell rang. David, the band's manager, strode quickly into the living room. He wore a silky red ascot in his white shirt, his brown hair slicked back like a movie producer's, neatly pressed slacks over his sandals. David's eyes darted around the room. He hugged me and kissed my cheek before sitting down across from Sly. “After the exposure from Woodstock, you've got to have a strong record to continue the momentum,” David said.
Sly leaned over the coffee table and tapped a few long lines of coke out onto a mirror. He rolled up a dollar bill, looked David in the eye, laughed eerily, and snorted the powder into his nostrils. “I've got the music, man,” he said.
He danced over to the tape player and hit the play button. Music jumped from the speakers, filling the living room with booming bass, horns, and B-3 organ. David stood up and began dancing, jerking his hips and arms.
It was amazing to hear the music, Sly's great talent rushing from the speakers. David sat down on the piano bench. He brought a brightly wrapped square out of his briefcase and handed it to me. “I thought you would enjoy this.”
“Thank you.” I slipped my fingers under the seams of the wrapping paper. It was a book with a deep indigo cover, silver words spiraling in a circle, Be Here Now. I had leafed through a copy of it at David's house. Ram Dass's words eased inside me, reminding me of my childhood faith, reviving an essence of God that had been escaping from my heart like sand in an hourglass.
I leaned over to David and hugged him, excited to start reading.
Sly sat down at the piano, crunching his hands along the keyboard following his new songs on the tape player with acoustic brilliance.
After a few hours, David went home and Sly went upstairs. I stayed in the living room coherent and alive, reading Ram Dass's words. When I climbed the stairs, Sly was passed out on the bed, fully clothed. I pulled the bedroom drapes closed so that the sunlight would not awaken us before early afternoon, and I began to undress him. The fur boots stuck to his sockless feet. His stomach fell inward as I unzipped the leather pants, peeling them down his legs. His frame was skeleton-like beneath his satin shirt. White powder was caked dry and hard around the edges of his nostrils. I lifted the covers over him. Climbing into the soft bed next to Sly, my body was tired and ready to sleep soundly, but my head was spinning.
I puffed up my pillow to read a few more pages of Be Here Now. Would we live like this always? I hoped not. I still dreamed we would be as we were when we'd first met, laughing all the time.
Sly snored loudly, and I did not want him sleeping on his back, so I leaned into him with my shoulder and pushed him onto his side. Hendrix had died on his back, asleep in a drug-induced stupor, choking on vomit he'd thrown up. Such a pitiful way to die. For a few minutes longer, I listened to Sly's breathing. I was listening for life.
ur days and nights followed a topsy-turvy pattern. I forgot about returning to school, caught up in the cycle of Sly's recording and gigging. For the first time in my life, I traveled outside North America. Mom and Dad had taken Kitsaun and me to Vancouver, British Columbia—but with Sly, I went to London, Paris, and Berlin. In Paris we stayed in an ancient hotel, the pulleys and cables exposed above lifts that creaked and strained, carrying us to our rooms. One night the power went out, and Sly lit candles to illuminate the bedroom and bath. It was romantic and spooky, and I giggled in the hallways as we found our way to the restaurant in the courtyard where the gas stove was working. Sly and I ate steak and pommes frites, drank water from bottles that looked like vases, and watched shadows grow into skyscrapers on the walls. I was mesmerized by the French language, which danced in my ears as we walked on streets with Africans and Arabs who wore their countries' dress. Even Sly did not look out of place beside them. I met Lynn on the airplane to London. She had flown over to meet Jerry, the saxophone player she'd just started dating. “Jerry's told me so much about you,” she said, and offered me her thin hand.
I clasped it. “It's nice to meet you.” She had heart-shaped lips and creamy almond skin.
We ate together at the hotel café, and I asked her about the novel sticking up from her bag, The Driver's Seat. We shared a mutual love of reading and writing. Lynn had been enrolled in college like me, and had dropped out to travel with Jerry.
When we returned to America, Sly asked the band to come to L.A. for a few months to record the new album. Lynn and I met again beside the pool at Coldwater. A fragrant honeysuckle vine climbed over the fence and mixed with her powdery lilac scent. Lynn was three years older than me. She told me about her family, which sounded like mine: old-fashioned values, deep spirituality, and sisters who were very close and involved in one another's lives. Late at night, we wrote poetry by firelight. Often we chose to read our poems to each other rather than smoke dope with Sly and Jerry. We talked about entering poetry contests and going back to college. Lynn's friendship brought me wisdom and laughter, and she encouraged me to write.
Sly had composed a thumpin' tune, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” that was climbing the charts. The last lines were “Dyin' young is hard to take, sellin' out is harder.” I watched him ingest coke, barbiturates, and weed, and I wondered whether selling out might not be better—at least he would be alive. He got so stoned at night that his pencil would roll from his hand to the floor, and his head would nod forward. Once bright-eyed and feisty, Sly slumped over a lot, and I would have to kneel down in front of him to look in his eyes. Love became a mystery to me. I had fallen hard for Sly: charmed and bewitched by his robust energy, the twinkle in his eyes, and his commanding care for me; his manhood so much more powerful and attractive than the boys I had dated. I belonged to him, and wanted to believe he would come alive again. Rhymes and lyrics twirled out of him before his head hit his chest, and he would smile at me, reminding me of the man he was beneath the veil of drugs and demons.
Mom and Dad drove down to check on me because I did not write and call as often as I once had. I cleaned the house and tried to smooth the lines of concern on my face, but when I opened the door and let them inside Coldwater, their eyes darted quickly from me to Sly, sensing that our lives were out of kilter. I was so glad to see them, to feel their arms squeezing unconditional love into my body. We sat in the living room talking, Dad on the edge of his chair, his jaw tense, his hands on his thighs in fists as Sly tried to keep up conversation. Mom kept asking, “Who takes care of all these dogs?” I think she was afraid that was one of my jobs. “I sure wish you would go back to school, honey,” she said when they stood to leave. Closing the door as they walked down the stairs to their car, I sighed in relief and anguish. Although I was happy being on my own, their loving presence far outshone what I felt from Sly.
In late spring, Sly began making excuses for why he couldn't take me out with him at night. As independent as I was, I hated being alone in the five-bedroom house, with the dogs howling in the yard. I would call Lynn and keep her on the phone for an hour. These talks were what allowed me to hear myself admit that my commitment to my own life was eroding and that my role with Sly was changing from girlfriend to caretaker. I was merely twenty, unable to see that he was in a downward spiral that he did not want to come out of. He bought drugs from a freaky doctor with bushy white hair and a square jaw that barely moved when he talked. Lumbering along in the camper, we sometimes drove to the secluded road in the Hollywood Hill
s where the doctor lived, and we would sit in his hillside home cluttered with books and magazines covered in dust while he counted out the barbiturates, one by one. At home, Sly locked the jars of downers in the safe and sat in the living room playing piano until the drugs took effect. He'd say, “Baby, take down these lyrics,” and I waited beside him, holding my pen, eager for his muse to arrive.
The band played a gig in Fresno, and we stayed up all night. In the afternoon, Sly and I packed our clothes in silence to drive back to L.A. There was a loud knock on our motel room door.
Sly growled, “Who is it?”
“Hey, man. It's me, Bubba.”
Sly jumped up, his chest bare, and he opened the door wide to embrace a caramel-skinned man who stood about five feet eight inches, with hair so short, it looked like a shadow on his skull. “We're running buddies from way back,” Sly said to me. “My sister Rose's husband, Hamp da Bubba da Banks.” He made a song of his name. “This is Debbie.” I shook his hand, thinking he was cute in a little-boy way. His light brown eyes sparkled deviously when he said, “Nice to meet you.”
Our room was dark, even though it was afternoon. The drapes were pulled shut, making the brown furniture and shag carpet look drab and dirty. A hanging light over the table cast a sallow glow.
Hamp and Sly sat on the bed, talking in low voices. I combed my hair in the tiny bathroom, took my book from the nightstand, and sat in a chair to read. Hamp picked up his black bag and unzipped it. Sly said, “We'll be right back.” They walked into the bathroom, closing the door. After a few minutes the door opened a crack, and a voice called out, “Bring me my bag, bitch.”
I froze. Was that Sly? What had he said? I didn't move. I couldn't move. He called louder, “I said, bring me my bag, bitch!”
My face flushed. I put my book down and sat up straight. What should I do? I wanted to run, but my purse was across the room in the small alcove next to the bathroom. Panic shot through me.
Space Between the Stars Page 7