“You’re a cute couple,” she clucked, walking back to her car. “Let’s regroup after the New Year. I’ll have fresh listings for you then.”
That weekend, Joe had a boys’ night out, with my blessing. It felt like a practice run for our impending cohabitation. The first two and a half years of our relationship had been feast or famine. Joined at the hip for weeks at a stretch, we’d separate for seven to ten straight days. I was ready for a natural ebb and flow to things, a little daily back and forth.
Joe had finally cleaned out the big bedroom, so I had somewhere comfortable to sleep while he hit the town with Sean Penn, Harry Nilsson, and Harry Dean Stanton. At 4:00 a.m., he stumbled in, grinning drunkenly, before falling into bed and smooshing his backside to my body. “Snuggle bunnies,” he murmured—his term for our nightly cuddling—and I complied happily. I spooned him, my breasts pressed to his shoulder blades and belly flat against his back. I entwined our legs, kissed his neck, and traced my nails along his arm and hip. He faded into dreamland, and I didn’t give one thought to boys’ night out.
A couple days later, we went to Santa Barbara to visit Richard Richardson (Joe’s friend, a music store owner) who lived in a big, old house with a massive wine cellar. Rick the Bass Player had been teaching me about wine for two years, slowly refining my palate, but nothing prepared me for the scope of Richard’s collection. I trailed him through his basement racks, agape at the inventory—what I could see by flashlight, anyway. No explanation was given for the lack of electricity, and the question on my lips was washed away by a ’67 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild (chosen for my birth year, at Richard’s insistence). That one bottle could’ve paid two months of my rent, making me wonder how high Richard’s electric bill was, and if one case from his cellar might not cover it.
What stuck with me most was that I felt sad for him. This dimple-cheeked English teddy bear of a guy owned a beautiful, potentially incredible, house that was kind of going to waste. To willingly live in the dark like that… I mean, it just seemed crazy.
•••
Joe had a gig in New York City on New Year’s Eve. We flew there on MGM Grand, the fledgling airline so exclusive and luxurious I thought they’d mistaken us for royalty. I spotted supermodel Linda Evangelista in the lounge, wearing sunglasses and looking bored. I wondered if her jet-setting lifestyle made it hard to find love, or if she made too much money to care.
The day of the show was hectic for Joe. He said he’d see me at the venue and that I should stick with Smokey until then. That suited me fine. Though Smokey was on the clock, it felt like hanging out with a friend. My secret attraction was alive and well, but so was the expectation that it would pass. Outside the hotel, Smokey pointed out a woman across the street, tall and plain, clad in a parka, scarf, and ski cap. When the light changed, everyone else crossed, but she stayed on the corner. Smokey asked if I knew what she was doing, and I said waiting on a friend, obviously.
“She’s working,” he said with a smirk.
I was incredulous. “But it’s freezing!”
To work the street in those bitter temperatures was a harsh and sobering thought. I knew I had it good. Maybe not Linda Evangelista good, but a privileged life, nonetheless. I also knew it could disappear overnight and that I had no safety net. I’d been there before, after Dad’s bankruptcy when I was fifteen. That’s when I’d started drinking regularly. Security and stability were transient things. Life turned on a dime, there was catastrophe around every corner. The odds of street work in my future were not high, but higher than the supermodel life. I didn’t dwell on the thought, but I didn’t smirk about such things, either. The reins of my life had never been firmly in my hands, but I could try to be more present, I thought…now and then. A little less high, a little less drunk when special moments came around. I capped it at two beers that night.
From the rear of the Cat Club, I took in the scene, the cycle of energy between Joe and his fans. I’d never create anything so grand, but that the man responsible for it wanted me at his side, well—that was big. Joe once said I’d saved him from nothingness, but it was he who’d saved me.
I made it backstage as the countdown began—three, two, one, Happy New Year! Everyone cheered and kissed their partner as Joe craned his neck, looking for me. “Where’s Kristi?” he shouted. “Where’s my baby?”
His baby was held up by a security guard who’d mistaken her for a crazed fan. When I finally broke free, Joe scooped me up in his arms, the only place I belonged or wanted to be.
•••
In January 1991, we found our new home—a split-level, ranch-style house on a quiet, dead-end street four blocks up the hill. The back and side yards were Saltillo tile, with two grassy areas for the vegetable garden Joe wanted. Beyond the blue-gray swimming pool was a sloping, massive sprawl, overgrown shrubs and ivy cut through by a narrow walking trail. Privacy trees cushioned the lot on three sides then opened up for a full view of the Valley. At 2,500 square feet, it was perfect for our needs, and also just dated enough to be a fun remodeling project.
It was functional, flawed, and full of potential—much like the couple hoping to buy it. Joe said he would, under one condition. “If I have to spend a million bucks on a house and pool, I better see you skinny-dipping daily.” I squealed and threw my arms around him.
After wrapping up the new album, he flew to Kansas to judge the Miss USA pageant. When he returned, he closed on the house and carried me over the threshold. I giggled uncontrollably as he fumbled with the lock, trying not to drop me. For the next two weeks, he sidestepped my every mention of moving in.
It was the exact scenario I’d hoped to prevent—too late to register for spring semester, another half year wasted. “I’m not getting any younger here,” I quipped, but neither of us were laughing.
I dropped it when Joe’s Uncle Buddy died. We’d flown to Wichita the previous month, expecting the worst, but the crisis had passed and we’d returned to LA, staying at the Bel Age. One morning at 2:00 a.m., while we were walking down the hall to our room, Joe had been pensive, and I was trying to engage him in lighthearted conversation. I told him I’d heard Vanilla Ice was throwing a party somewhere in the hotel. When he asked who that was, I broke into a chorus of “Ice Ice Baby,” thinking it might make him laugh.
His mind was somewhere else. He stopped walking and shuddered.
“What is it, Joe? You okay?”
He looked up. “Uncle Buddy just died.”
I didn’t know what to say. We continued to our room. The next day, Smokey called to say he’d booked us on a flight to Wichita. He’d gotten the call from Joe’s family. “Uncle Buddy died last night.”
“What time, exactly?” I asked.
“Around five,” Smokey said. “Eastern.” The very time Joe had shuddered.
•••
After the funeral, we returned to LA, where Joe suggested a housewares shopping spree. I didn’t bother stating that shopping for a home I might never live in didn’t sound like fun to me. I wanted the house to have everything it needed, and based on Joe’s previous residence, I didn’t expect it to happen without my assistance. I’d spent two and half years showering at the penthouse without so much as a plastic liner to keep the water in.
I vowed to have fun with it. He did not make it easy. First, he shot down every set of towels I showed him. “I want brown,” he snapped. “I told you: plain, dark brown.”
“Yes, but you need a second set when they’re in the laundry. And look how pretty the mint green is.”
“Put them in your bathroom, then.”
“My bathroom?”
“The upstairs hall bathroom is yours—mint green your brains out. For me, brown.”
I stacked both colors at the register, then added mauve, navy, and burgundy. ‘Just brown,’ my ass, I thought. I would make that that house livable if it killed me. (Besides, he was giving m
e a bathroom, and that was something.) My mother had swooned to hear of our housewares spree—my fantasy, she’d said—though it wasn’t the fun I’d made it out to be. Still, I managed to get his approval on three bathroom rug sets, soap dishes, tissue box covers, trash bins, hampers, candles in every color, and one standing towel warmer. Cookware was Joe’s decision. Placemats and napkins, by mutual agreement. He selected a toaster, wok, blender, coffee maker, and flatware pattern. I picked out a fabulous set of cactus-stem wine glasses. Next, I looked at china patterns, but of a hundred on display, I liked only one—loved it, actually, for its bold yet sophisticated design. It occurred to me that Joe would think the whole idea of fine china silly, and I decided I was done shopping. Then Joe called me over to the same display wall and pointed at that very same plate.
“Don’t argue,” he said. “It’s the only one I like.”
I just smiled, thinking, It’s a sign.
A Woman Knows
Back in Austin, I sold my beloved ’82 Cutlass Supreme, with double-tinted windows and burgundy velvet interior, packed up my apartment, crated my cat, and boarded a one-way flight to LA.
It was spring, a perfect time for fresh starts. Optimism bloomed in me like bright orange poppies along the Pacific Coast Highway. The move was not only a relationship landmark but a personal homecoming. Being forced to leave San Diego in my teens had instilled a restless dislocation in me. Eight years of gnawing uncertainty lifted and released with the first coastal breeze to hit my skin as an official Californian again.
Something lost had been found…and then some. I had true love, big fun, and a semblance of security. What more could a girl want? I would’ve been satisfied with the first two. I would’ve settled for just the first one.
I still doubted my deservedness. I was reading A Course in Miracles and trying to learn to love myself, but I needed someone to prove I was worth the trouble first. Joe took that leap by moving me in—and it was big one. Arriving at the house, I walked around in a daze. This is my home. This is my home? It took a while to sink in.
The heart of the house was on the bottom floor—a large living area we dubbed the playroom, with a fireplace, full bar, and French doors to the backyard patio. Outside, Joe placed an all-in-one workout contraption that we used twice and never again. Inside were a pool table, jukebox, dartboard, slot machine, stereo, and our combined record collections (95 percent his). We strung twinkle lights as window treatments and plastered ceiling beams with Got Any Gum? stickers. After hanging a few gold records on the wall, Joe pronounced it done and moved on.
One floor up was the living room, dining, kitchen, and study; the latter furnished with Joe’s treasured mementos, reference books, platinum records, his late father’s office desk (Joe’s birth father had died when he was a baby), and a stately leather wingback chair, angled just so in the corner. It was meant to be his personal sanctuary, but he surprised me. “You can come here to write,” he said. “Use my father’s desk for that anytime.”
Our contractor, Rian Jarvis, oversaw a list of renovations that changed and lengthened daily on the new homeowner’s whims. We knocked out a wall to enlarge our bedroom and make it part Zen-like retreat with rice paper accents, tatami mats, and a rock garden where the closet used to be. The ceiling was redone with a swirly-spikey plaster design, like two hundred square feet of meringue topping.
The ceiling treatment alone took two men a full week of hard labor. Rian was a skilled craftsman and savvy contractor but also a friend, and he convinced Joe to wrap it up. Rian tried to include me in the delicate conversation, but I had no idea how to talk about money, much less rein in Joe’s spending. For the first time, I wondered if we were living beyond our means, but Joe didn’t talk about money either, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. I left the men and went to decorate the one space that was mine. Ten minutes later, Joe appeared with a finishing touch for my bathroom.
“What’s that?” I asked, fully aware of what a toilet seat looked like. Also, that I preferred the existing white one to the black-etched monstrosity Joe intended to replace it with.
“It’s from the Record Plant,” he said, referring to the famed recording studio. “Used by some of the greatest musicians in the world. Jimi Hendrix sat here. This thing is priceless.”
I chewed my lip. If he noticed the contrast between that dingy piece of memorabilia and my shimmery mint color scheme, he didn’t say.
“Thanks, babe,” I mumbled, unsure why it bugged me so much. Exiting the bathroom, I saw the bigger picture, and I was suddenly fine with it.
The movers had arrived from Texas, and Rian’s men had placed most of my furniture. Joe’s and my possessions were officially comingled; his throw pillows on my sofa, my lamp on his dresser, his double screwdriver dripping condensation on my breakfast table. We lived together. I wandered out to the driveway and stood soaking up the sun. It was a perfect seventy-two degrees. Rian’s men were painting the garage door trim, and I was mesmerized by their meticulousness. In a rush of euphoria, I realized I was both cared for and being taken care of. I felt excited contentment, like coming home from a long journey and walking into a surprise party.
Joe walked up holding a crossbow.
“What the—”
“Cool, right? Let’s christen the place.”
The painters dropped their brushes and scattered in all directions as Joe demonstrated proper stance and hand positions.
“I’m not sure about this… Is Rocky out of the way?”
“Rocky’s fine. Aim high and don’t hit a window.”
I aimed it at the only structure without any. Rian’s crew returned to find two arrows jutting from the garage door, inches from their freshly painted trim.
Joe loved it. “Makes a statement.”
“Yeah, there goes the neighborhood.”
Once Rian and his crew had left for good, Joe continued tweaking things, adding personal touches here and there on a nightly basis. Every day for weeks, I’d wake to find phones, lamps, and light fixtures installed in different rooms than they’d been eight hours earlier.
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “Just curious… This is what you do while I’m asleep?”
“Pretty much.”
“When will you be done?
“Never,” he said. “If I finish, we’ll have to move so I can start over.”
I let it go. I liked not knowing what each day would bring.
•••
I also loved the homebody routine: collecting our mail, grocery shopping, spooning him to sleep, and waking to study every inch of his body and commit it to memory. I’d comb and trim his eyebrows, then rub between them with my thumbs, trying to smooth his furrows. One time I went to bed, still coked up, scowling in my sleep, only to wake with those same creases on my face. They lasted for two whole days.
I was twenty-three and (usually) crease-free, but I didn’t feel pretty in LA. Joe told me I was beautiful every morning, no matter how disheveled and makeup-free. He also loved watching me get dolled up, standing in the doorway captivated by my hair-and-makeup process. One day, watching me paint my nails, he remarked, “I love that you’re always so perfectly groomed.”
I laughed. “It’s the least I can do, considering you let me quit work and gave me my very own bathroom.”
We befriended our neighbors, Bert and Penny, and had them over regularly for cocaine and cocktails. We’d swim and shoot pool, and on one occasion we dropped acid. It was a first for Bert, he later revealed (right after I nearly traumatized the man by walking him through our backyard, which, unbeknownst to me until just then, was in the midst of a massive spider infestation). Another night, Penny called our house in a panic. Bert was on a rampage, talking crazy and waving around a knife to block her escape. Joe went over and calmed Bert down—I have no idea how—then brought Penny back to our place for the night.
Bert had a huge hom
e, much bigger than ours, complete with separate guest quarters. Penny could’ve easily moved into the guesthouse for a few days, time enough to pack her things and figure out where to go. Bert was refusing to let her step foot on the property at all, and it was legally within his rights. As they were unmarried, Penny’s presence was dependent on Bert’s good graces—and he had apparently gone temporarily insane (though he did let her back in eventually). Things were no different on my side of the fence, but I wasn’t worried. Joe would never do that to me.
Tidying the playroom one day, I came across some papers in the stereo cabinet, a contract of some sort that awaited our signatures. Joe’s habit of turning every enclosed space into a junk drawer made for a constant organizational battle. I usually put such things in his downstairs office (a three-hundred-square-foot junk drawer with windows), but upon closer inspection, I returned it to the drawer. It was the first cohabitation agreement I’d ever seen, and the concept made sense to me. In fact, it seemed rather generous—not that I’d know the difference. I didn’t think in those terms, but apparently Joe’s lawyer did. He’d put in writing that if we broke up, I’d be provided funds to relocate and finish college. I planned to sign it whenever Joe asked, but he never did. He never said a word about it.
•••
Rick the Bass Player lived two miles away—one, as the crow flies—and when they weren’t hanging out in person, he and Joe communicated via CB radio. Not a day went by when they weren’t in contact. I adored Rick and never tired of his company. Like most of Joe’s friends, he was sweet and entertaining, without expecting all that much from me.
Joe planned a small housewarming dinner for a few close friends. Setting the table, I realized that despite our extensive housewares spree, we hadn’t thought to buy a tablecloth.
“No problem,” Joe said. He ran to the linen closet and returned with a fitted bedsheet.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“What? It’s clean.”
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