Baby You're a Rich Man

Seventeen

            Ringo opened the door, stretching and yawning slightly to go downstairs for breakfast, and when he turned the lock, he felt a sort of resistance. He thought maybe the door was slightly stuck, and rammed into it once, pushing heavily with his right shoulder.

            The door opened, and Ringo saw that the impact had shoved away two sleeping figures. Again? Ringo thought as he ran inside to find his camera. He always seemed to find them sleeping on each other.

            John stirred slightly at the sound of the shutter clicking, but Paul, usually a very light sleeper, was still frozen in his curled position underneath half of John. It made Ringo worry as to what exactly had happened at the pubs the night before.

            John stretched slightly and Ringo quickly went back into the room, hiding his camera back among his stuff. Paul he could deal with, but he wasn’t sure how John would react if he knew he’d been photographing him, and Ringo wasn’t planning on finding out.

            Paul didn’t show any reaction to the developments around him, and was still in a fetal position, his leather jacket yanked off sometime during the night, and now serving him as a makeshift blanket that was strewn across his body.

            “Paul,” John said, shaking him slightly, which produced no reaction. “Paul,” he repeated, shaking him a little more. Paul batted at his arm half-heartedly, and a pitiful groan escaped him.

            “Now what’ve ye done,” Ringo asked, looking down at Paul who had looked like he’d fallen asleep again.

            “He’s not waking up,” John said, gritting his teeth, as he grabbed Paul by the shoulders and tried dragging him into the room. Paul made no attempt to stop him, and John heaved him up onto their shared bed, having the courtesy to pull off his shoes.

            “How much did he drink?” Ringo asked.

            “’Bout… six whiskeys,” John said.

            Ringo’s eyes widened. “Better let ‘im sleep, then. There’s nothing you can do for ‘im when he’s hung over.”

            “I’ll stay until he wakes up,” John said.

            “That’ll be a while.”

            A pointed glare from John silenced Ringo, who went out the hotel room, muttering something vague about breakfast.

            Martha slinked over from the bathroom where she’d obviously been hiding, and came to lick John’s hand. She rested her head on John’s lap, yawning, and John smirked slightly; in that respect Martha and Paul were the same.

            John sighed slightly. The room was still, Paul’s soundless steady breathing testified to by the gentle and regular rise and fall of his chest. John moved over to where he’d left his suitcase, unzipped it, and pulled out his Rickenbacker.

            It wasn’t really stealing, John reasoned. After all, he’d left some money on the guitar rack, and had paid more than enough to come to the trip.

            He tuned it quickly, humming the right notes to himself from memory before getting the pitch just right. John sat on the edge of the bed; just next to Paul’s legs, and tried to assemble the bits of lyrics he’d been making up in his mind. He’d gotten an idea for a tune, and was ready to try it out; it was perfect because at the same time he was singing it to Paul, the only person he trusted with his songs, and he was also alone, unafraid to make mistakes.

            “I get high when I see you go by, my oh my,” John sang a bit shyly at first, averting his eyes from the sleeping figures.

            “When you sigh my, my inside just flies.” John sneaked a quick glance towards Paul, and he had not stirred. “Butterflies.”

            “Why am I so shy, when I’m beside you?” John couldn’t think of any lyrics to fill in what felt like an empty spot in the song, so he just skipped forwards to the next part he had worked out.

“Just the sight of you makes nighttime bright, very bright.”

“You need a chorus,” a sleepy voice mumbled. John jumped and nearly dropped his Rickenbacker and fell off the bed. He looked at Paul, who was rubbing one eye while sitting down, noticing his lack of shoes.

“Wh-what?” John stammered.

“Sounded like you were trying out a new song,” Paul shrugged. “You’re missing a chorus.” He winced and brought his hand to his temple.

“Sorry, I have a killer headache. Why ‘m I dressed?” he asked John.

Paul didn’t understand what he’d done, but John’s face fell and closed off, like he’d betrayed him.

“You don’t remember?” he said in a pained voice.

“What was there to remember?” Paul said with a nervous chuckle.

“We went to the pubs,” John said, his voice small and fragile-sounding.

Paul frowned and his eyebrows knit in concentration. “Yeah, ‘n then I was on a stage? Why was I on a stage?”

John waved his question away. “You were drunk.”

“Then we came back to the hotel… and, and the door was locked,” Paul said, as a more complete picture came together in his mind.

John decided to blurt it out.

“And you said it was our first date.”

The effect of John’s statement hung thick in the air.

“I remember,” Paul said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper.

The question that was burning on John’s lips was whether or not what he’d said in a drunken stupor still stood the morning after, but John stayed silent.

Paul cleared his throat. “’M going to get some breakfast.”

John watched him go and felt a lump start to form in his throat, and he knew it wouldn’t go away until Paul fixed it, because he’d gotten inextricably tangled in the net that was Paul McCartney.