And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 74: I Must Go, Duty Calls Me

    I stopped; Paul had re-entered the room. "What did Jim want, Paul?"

    He looked conflicted, upset almost, walking over and sitting down next to John, thinking before ehe suddenly spoke. "Da said to either get a job or get out of the house. He found a starter for me, a cable-winding firm, some shite like that." He stared at the wooden table, slowly rubbing a finger across the surface.

    "Blimey, yer da isn'y usually so aggressive, mate," George commented.

    Paul groaned. "I know. I just..." he brought his fingers to his temples. "Maybe he's right. I mean, we're playing, but for what? Mere pennies? Birds? When we were in Germany, things changed here. Everyone's playing dramatic-sounding instruments and bloody synchronized dance routines and whatnot. Can you do a synchronized dance routine, George? Bring in the crowds and such?"

    George gave me a quick glance, a joke about to roll off of his quick tongue, but relented. "No."

    "I can," John whispered.

    "Shut up," Paul muttered from next to him. "I'm going home."

    "Macca—" John protested, but Paul stood up and took his bass from next to him, walking out the same way he came in. "See ye lot tomorrow."

***

    "Well, she's my baby, don't you understand

    That I, I, I, I, I'm her loving man

    Said I got a woman way cross town

    She's good to me, oh ho yeah

    Well, that much is alright

    Well, that much is alright

    I got a woman

    Way cross town

    She's good to me

    Oh ho ho yeah...!"

    We finished the last note on a harmony, him reaching into a falsetto and me doing a little vocal run. He laughed in delight and I joined in until we were both snorting unceremoniously in the grass.

    "What was that, Lennon? Don't like my voice? Don't like my Mariah Ca—my lovely, graceful vocal runs?"

    "Mariah? Ye said Mariah," he pounced on me, grinning, crawling towards me and settling into my lap like a cat. "Who's that?"

    "Pop singer in the 1990s. Did some crazy vocal runs. Sometimes over the top, actually." I attempted to demonstrate but burst out in laughter when I hit a sour note. "Never mind. No one quite does it like her—no, John, don't even try."

    "But Cora, I could be the next Mariah," he protested. "Blimey, what kind of a name is that? Sounds foreign, almost. Ye know, it's like you, Cora, yer from a different continent or something, something I've never heard of before. Like the Looking-Glass House from Lewis Carroll. Full of things I've never heard of before." I felt the slight touch of nose on the surface of my leg.

    "That's not fair, giving all the credit to me. You must give all of it to history," I told him. "Thirty, forty year difference makes it all. So much is happening. Even right now! People are doing everything one could possibly think of. All over the world! It's quite amazing to think about, how all of our lives are interconnected."

    John breathed out. "You know, I want to make an impact on the world."

    And you will. "I know," I said quietly. "Me, too."