And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 26: 1960: The Advent of Hitchcock's Psycho

***

    Panting, I shot up, still feeling like I was tasting Robin. I was in Anna's house, where the walls were white and it was 1960 and Robin wasn't even alive. I reached over and grabbed at my pillow. No John, no George.

    "Geo," I whimpered into my pillow, my mouth forming the name of the person I had slept in the same bed with last. Hands still shaking, I leaned over and took a few deep breaths. Swinging my feet over the edge of the bed, I sat up and began to dress to take my mind off the flashback. Block, Rinse, Repeat.

    When I got outside to the shop, Anna was hanging a poster in the window, her red hair tied back in a bun. "Take a look at this, Cora. This is really going to sell—them and Walters? No chance at losing."

    "What?" I asked blearily, still tired.

    "The record the Beatles did a couple weeks back. The one they did with Lou Walters."

    "Walters?" I repeated. "Oh... that one! That's amazing!" I took a closer look at the poster. There was Lou Walters front and center, and the four boys I knew and loved backing him. Paul had a little smile on his face, looking enthusiastic. John was looking like he didn't want to smile but it kept leaking out of him. George stood there, showing his vampire fangs. Ringo had a little goofy smile that was partially hidden by his facial hair.

    Anna was staring at the poster.

    "Looking for Geo?" I asked her slyly. She took a long look at me, annoyed. "No." That tinge again on her cheeks. "Nein," she reinforced in German.

    "Mmhm." I gazed at the streets beyond the window. People were walking about on Saturday morning. A neon sign with a naked lady on it kept flickering, from the night before, I suppose.

    "You can't ask me about George, Cora, why are you touching that one?" Anna asked me. Jolted back into real life, I noticed my left index finger kept tracing over John's face. His sweet, harsh, understanding, stupid face. I heard his voice in my head, tainted with early morning roughness of the voice: Do you want to know a secret? I love you...

    "Oh... that one..." I told her, at a loss for words. I finally shook my head and dropped the poster, going back to refill coffee, the boys fluttering to the ground like leaves off a tree in autumn.

***

    Anna wiped the countertop with a wet rag. "Are we just about done here?" she asked, tossing the rag into a bucket of water. "I want to relish the moment without my mother."

    I carefully avoided the last sentence she said. The verdict on art school wasn't through yet, and the both of them argued about it sometimes. "It's closing time so I'd say yes, we're done." I said. I took a glance outside; the coming autumn was bringing night to a start sooner than I would have liked. People were turning into shadow, an indiscernible quiet.

    Anna walked towards the door and flipped the open to closed. "What are you plans for tonight?" I asked her.

    "Not much. Probably going to sketch in the back or something of the sort before it gets too dark in the season," she told me. "And you?"

    "My plans are coming tonight. You should join us," I said. "We're going to the cinema."

    Her eyebrows shot up. "The cinema?" she repeated.

    "John and Paul are coming to pick me up," I said, hoisting the bucket to a shelf. "Oh, and George."

    The scraping of a chair stopped. I grinned.