It just became so perfectly clear to me that I had been holding on tightly to the possibility. The possibility of Daisy.
And suddenly, I was having a very hard time with the idea of letting that go. Of saying, “Never.”
Daisy: I saw Billy Dunne as he was coming off the stage and I didn’t trust myself to say a single word to him. I couldn’t be around him. So I waved goodbye and I left.
Karen: After we got offstage, I accidentally bumped into Graham and I said, “Sorry,” and he said, “You’ve got about a million things to be sorry for.”
Graham: I was angry.
Karen: He seemed to think that his pain was the only pain that mattered.
Graham: I started screaming at her. I know that I called her names.
Karen: He didn’t have to go through what I’d gone through. And I knew he was hurting. But what right did he have? To yell at me?
Warren: I got backstage and Karen and Graham were screaming at each other.
Eddie: I grabbed Karen’s hand before she could hit Graham.
Rod: I brought Karen back into one of the rooms backstage. Somebody grabbed Graham. Kept them apart.
Graham: I tried to find Billy. To talk to him. I needed somebody to talk to. When I found him in the lobby at the hotel after the show, I said, “Man, I need your help.” And he cut me off. He said he didn’t have time.
Billy: Camila and Julia had gone upstairs and I’d hung back. I was standing in the hotel lobby. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. There was so much going on in my head. And then, before I knew it I was … [sighs] I was on my way to the hotel bar. I was walking, one foot in front of the other, to the bar to get a tequila. That’s what I was doing. That’s what I was doing. I was walking to the bar to get a drink when Graham came in to find me.
Graham: He blew me off. I said, “It’s important. For once, please. I gotta talk to you.”
Billy: I couldn’t do anything but focus on what I was doing. My voice was calling to me and telling me to go get a tequila. And that’s what I was going to do. I couldn’t help anyone else. I couldn’t do anything for anybody.
Graham: I’m standing there in the lobby and I know I look like I’m struggling. I’m on the verge of tears. I don’t cry. I don’t think I’ve cried more than twice in my life. Once when my mom died in ‘ninety-four and the other … The point is I needed my brother. I needed my brother.
Billy: He grabbed my shirt and he said, “With all the shit I’ve done for you our entire lives, you don’t have five fucking minutes to talk to me?” I took his hand and I pulled it off of me and I told him to go away. And he did.
Graham: You shouldn’t spend that much time with your brother. You just shouldn’t. You shouldn’t sleep with your bandmates and you shouldn’t work with your brother and there was a lot of shit that if I had it to do over, I would do differently.
Karen: I went back to the hotel and I slammed my door shut and I sat on the bed and I cried.
Warren: Eddie, Pete, Rod, and I smoked a spliff after the show. Everybody else was nowhere to be found.
Karen: Then I went to Graham’s room and I knocked on the door.
Graham: I understood why we couldn’t have a baby. I did. But I felt so alone. In what I’d lost. I was the only one who felt like we’d lost something. I was the only one grieving. And I was mad at her about that.
Karen: He answered the door and I stood there and I thought, Why did I come here? There was nothing I could say to him to fix anything.
Graham: Why couldn’t she see the future I saw?
Karen: I said, “You don’t understand me. You expect me to be someone I’m not.”
And Graham said, “You never loved me the way I loved you.”
And both of those things were true.
Graham: What could we do? How do you come back from that?
Karen: I leaned into him and I pushed my body against his. He wouldn’t hug me at first. He wouldn’t put his arms around me. But then he did.
Graham: She felt warm in my arms. But for some reason I remember her hands being cold. I don’t know how long we stayed like that.
Karen: Sometimes I wonder, if I was Graham, maybe I would have wanted a baby, too. If I knew someone else would raise it, someone else would let go of their own dreams, someone else would sacrifice and keep everything together while I went and did what I wanted and came back on weekends … maybe then I might want a baby, too.
Although, I don’t know. I’m still not sure that I would.
I guess what I’m saying is that I wasn’t mad at Graham. For not understanding me. And, ultimately, I don’t think he was all that mad at me, for what I wanted.
Graham: We hurt each other very badly. And that is my biggest regret. That is my very biggest regret. Because I loved her with all of my fucking soul. To this day, there is a piece of me that still loves her. And there is a piece of me that will never forgive her.
Karen: Even now, talking about him feels like poking a bruise.
Graham: I knew when I went to bed that night, I couldn’t be in a band with her.
Karen: There was no way we could be around each other, day to day, anymore. Maybe stronger people could have. We couldn’t.
Billy: I sat down at the bar and I ordered a tequila neat. And it arrived. And I sat there and I picked it up and swirled it around and I sniffed it. And then two women came up to me, and asked me to sign autographs for them. Said they’d never seen anything like Daisy and me. I signed two cocktail napkins and pretty soon after, they left.
Daisy: It was the middle of the night when I got back to the hotel. I don’t remember what I’d been doing. I just remember that I was avoiding Billy. I think I probably walked around the city or something. I was still plastered when I got back to the lobby. And I turned right, to head for the bar. I remember thinking I didn’t even want to be conscious.
But I must not have realized where I was going or what I was doing because I ended up walking straight into the elevator. I thought, All right, guess I’ll take my reds and go to bed. But when I got to my room, I couldn’t get my key in the door. I kept trying but I couldn’t get it to fit. I think I was making a lot of noise.
And then I thought I heard a child’s voice.
Billy: I grabbed the glass—the tequila, I mean—I grabbed it again and I stared at it. And I thought about what it would taste like. Clean smoke. I was lost in it when the guy next to me went, “Hey, you’re Billy Dunne, aren’t you?” And I put it down.
Daisy: I was stuck out there, in the hallway. Unable to get into my room. And I slumped down on the ground and I started crying.
Billy: I said, “Yes, I am.”
And the man said, “My girl’s got a real thing for you.”
I said, “Sorry about that.”
And he said, “What are you doing down here in a bar by yourself? You seem like a guy who could be with any woman in the world.”
I said, “Sometimes you have to be alone.”
Daisy: I looked down the hall and I realized it was … well … out into the hallway comes Camila and she’s holding Julia …
Author: Wait a minute.
Author’s Note: While I have made a concerted effort to remove myself from the narrative, I have included here a verbatim transcript of one conversation I had with Daisy Jones because I am, in fact, the only one that can corroborate this essential piece of Daisy’s story.