Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,60
Shouldn’t I pack it all in? Quit on myself? Quit on everybody? Spare Camila and my girls the heartbreak later and admit who I really am.
I looked over at Daisy, she was coming up off the diving board. She had a glass in her hand and she dropped it right there on the side of the pool. I watched her step onto the broken glass, not realizing it was under her feet.
Rod: Daisy’s feet starting bleeding.
Simone: There was blood mixing with the pool water on the concrete. And Daisy didn’t even notice. She just kept walking, talking to somebody else.
Daisy: I couldn’t feel the cuts on my feet. I couldn’t feel much of anything, I don’t think.
Simone: In that moment, I thought, She’s going to be the girl bleeding in a beautiful dress until it kills her.
I felt … lost, sad, depressed, sick. I felt really hopeless but also like I didn’t have the luxury of giving up. Like I was going to have to fight for her—fight for her against her—until I lost. Because there was no winning. I didn’t see how I could win the war.
Billy: I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay because when I looked at Daisy, wet and bleeding and out of it and half-near falling down, I did not think, Thank God I stopped using.
I thought, She knows how to have fun.
Rod: I was getting Daisy a towel to dry off when I saw Billy turn and leave. I’d driven us there so I wasn’t quite sure where he was going. I tried to catch his eye but he didn’t see me until the last moment, when he went around the corner. He just gave me a nod. And I understood. I was thankful he’d come up with me in the first place.
He knew how to take care of himself and that’s what he was doing.
Billy: I told Rod I was leaving and made sure he was all right to take a cab home because I’d driven us over. He was really supportive. He understood why I needed to leave.
When I got home, I got in bed right next to Camila, so thankful to be there. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering what I’d be doing that very moment if I’d taken the whiskey out of that man’s hand. If I’d poured it down my throat.
Would I be laughing and playing a song for everybody? Would I be skinny-dipping with a whole bunch of strangers? Would I be puking my guts out watching somebody strap up and shoot heroin?
Instead, I was laying in the darkest quiet, listening to my wife snore.
The thing is, I’m a person who survives despite his instincts. My instincts said to run toward the chaos. And my better brain sent me home to my woman.
Daisy: I don’t remember seeing Billy there. I don’t remember seeing Rod. I don’t know how I made it to my bed.
Billy: I knew I wasn’t going to fall asleep that night. So I got up out of bed and I wrote a song.
Rod: Billy comes into the studio the next day. Everybody else is there, ready to get to recording. I’ve even got Daisy there, relatively sober, drinking a coffee.
Daisy: I felt bad. I did not mean to blow off the recording session, obviously.
Why did I hurt myself like that? I can’t explain it. I wish I could. I hated it about myself. I hated it about myself and I kept doing it and then I hated myself more. There are no good answers about this.
Rod: Billy comes in and he shows us all a song he wrote. “Impossible Woman.”
I said, “You wrote this last night?”
He said, “Yeah.”
Billy: Daisy reads it and goes, “Cool.”
Graham: It was clear, from the feeling in the room, that none of us, not even Daisy and Billy, were going to acknowledge it was about Daisy.
Billy: It’s not about Daisy. It’s about when you’re sober, there are things you can’t touch, things you can’t have.
Karen: After Graham and I heard Billy play it for the first time, I said to Graham, “That song is …”
And Graham just goes, “Yup.”
Daisy: It was a great damn song.
Warren: Didn’t care then, barely care now.
Karen: “Dancing barefoot in the snow/cold can’t touch her, high or low.” That’s Daisy Jones.
Billy: I decided to write a song about a woman that felt like sand through your fingers, like you could never really catch her. As an allegory for the things I couldn’t have, couldn’t do.