And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 64: Shell Shocked

    "Right, at least I don't smoke cigs like all these people puffing on cancer sticks upstairs," Danny sneered, tossing the joint across the cellar where it settled in a dark patch.

    "This is Ringo's cellar," I said helplessly. "Ringo fuckin' Starr. Gonna be the world's richest drummer in the world soon. And ye just threw a joint in his basement."

    "I'm a house guest," he started and then suddenly stopped. We sat for a while and I was soaked in recent memory. If remembering my 2013 past life was like bullets recalling the events of the past hour was like a slow burn, slowly coming to the realization that they were real. My hands instinctively clutched at my heart, my fingers grasping at the skin at my chest as if they were a blanket, a solace to the stabbing pain in my chest. I still couldn't get it through my head.

    "Cora?"

    "I'm fine," I whimpered, collapsing myself into a cluster of apple bags, looking the very opposite of fine. Danny hesitated and reached towards me in a slight movement, then changed his mind. "Want one?" he asked instead lamely, producing another joint from his flannel pocket. I wasn't even aware flannels had pockets. His flannel was like John's coat, never ending pockets. John's coat, which produced two bottles of coca-cola that day in Strawberry field.

    "Danny, Danny," I said, choking up. "Pot isn't going to solve all your problems."

    "You're right," he said resignedly. He put the joint back in his pocket. We sat there, me against the cold bags of apples, him a few inches away, looking right at home in Ringo's cellar. I expected him to ask about what happened, but I supposed I explained it all. Something was building up inside of me; I tasted extreme hurt, conflict, a little anticipation, all whirled together in one broken body sitting in the darkness of Ringo Starr's cellar. Suddenly I was leaning on Danny's left shoulder, which surprisingly didn't reek of pot but of another scent. It smelled like home; it smelled like the floral gardens of my home in Chiswick.

    "What are you—"

    "Just hold me, Danny, please," I said. His arm tentatively crept around my waist and stopped, thinking better of it, and he put his arm around my bare shoulders. I sat, feeling the need to be with someone, to touch someone, to treat someone like a temporary blanket as stared off into the dark cellar and replayed my night like a VCR. It couldn't be true. We sat for a while while the party dwindled. I felt right at home in the dark, nursing a wound, wondering if John and I were going to be okay.

    "Danny."

    "What?" he asked, meaning to sound irritated but I saw the sympathy on his face.

    "You're really here, aren't you? Bloody hell," I laughed. "You really made it, huh. Huh..." I pondered this into silence. Evidently he didn't want to explain, or didn't feel like it at that moment, because he brought his face close to my ear and I waited for an answer, but his head swung away from me and all I could see was the back of his head, disembodied from the arm that sat on my shoulders.

***

    Danny eventually led me up the stairs. We emerged in the warm kitchen light and the first thing I saw was Ringo leaning against his kitchen counter sipping from a steaming mug. "I'm sorry, Ringo," I said quietly. "I've been a shite guest."

    He walked over to me and patted me on the shoulder, saying, "Oh, Hamburg girl, ye have every right to be upset, love."    

    "Did I ruin the party?"

    "Most of them left a little while ago. Had nothing to do with ye."

    I looked round the house, indeed most everybody was gone, leaving behind the typical remains of a house party: bottles and cake and mussed up couch cushions. In the corner George sat on a kitchen chair holding a mug identical to Ringo's.