All In Good Time - A Time Travel Beatles Fanfiction

Track 28 - You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello

February 1964

Lainey had been dead right, Paul now realized. Or her little goggley machine thingy had been right. Only six months after Paul met her, the Beatles landed in America. Walter Cronkite, that fella on CBS news, had called their arrival "the British invasion, which goes by the code name Beatlemania."

Beatlemania was an actual word, coined by the British press to describe the extreme, frenzied behavior of their fans. In the last six months the Beatles had become the darlings of Britain, breaking a slew of attendance records and NME Chart records and playing for the Queen Mother. Lennon and McCartney were described by a music critic in the Sunday Times as the greatest composers since Beethoven. And now the Beatles had a number one record. In America.

Their lives had become a blur of rooms and airports and planes and cars and stages and rooms. They woke up, fielded questions from shouting reporters, posed for pushing photographers, yelled their songs and banged out their music to be heard above frenzied crowds, and more or less followed orders from police officers who were charged with protecting them from the pandemonium that followed them wherever they went.

Not only their music, but their voices and their faces were recognized all over Europe, North America, even Australia. His dreams had come true. Paul had everything he'd ever wanted.

There was only one thing missing really. A dark-haired slip of a girl with long legs and a crooked smile who made his heart pound and his trousers grow tight just by turning her big brown eyes his way.

Lainey. His girl.

There was no way Paul could leave America without seeing her. But it wasn't going to be easy. Nothing ever was, nowadays. He couldn't venture out alone, not even in the States. He needed a disguise, and an accomplice—a trusted ally who was wily enough to wrangle him out of the hotel under the watchful eyes of throngs of adoring fans who wanted to rip him apart. He needed Neil Aspinall.

After their smashing success on American telly, Paul cornered his long time friend in the hotel suite, offering him a bottle of Scotch he'd been given by Murray the K.

"Hey mate. I need a hand when we get to Washington tomorrow. I need to get to Richmond to see Lainey. Can't be more than a coupla hours away."

"Are you soft?" Neil shouted. "Fuck no I'm not taking you out in the midst of a blizzard to get your end off. Brian would have my arse. And yours."

No amount of threatening or cajoling would change Neil's mind. Finally Paul snatched the bottle of Scotch out of Neil's hand. "Fine, you uncooperative tosser. Whyn't ya find us some ciggies then? We're out."

On the train the next morning, Paul was still steaming over the row with Neil. He was all smiles when the movie cameras were rolling and the journalists were poised with their notebooks open, but after an hour of this he retreated to the back of a private train car with his camera around his neck, pretending to shoot pictures of the miles and miles of snowy landscape as he plotted his next move.

John collapsed onto the bench beside him and propped his boot clad feet on either side of the window in front of him. "What's a matta wack?"

"Nuthin."

"Yeah? Neil says you've gone arse over tits for Miss Tits from the 21st Century."

Paul looked at John, his expression flat. "You can't call her that, John."

"Course I can't, not to her face. I call Cyn 'Tongue' you know but not to her face."

In spite of his dour mood, Paul laughed at that. "You do not." He brought the camera to his face and focused the lens on a snow covered field dotted with cows.