"The first thing a good pilot does every morning is look at the sky to check what the winds will be," Nick told Marisol. "The success of an emergency landing can depend on whether you land into the wind or downwind."
"The success of an emergency landing" was evidently pilot speak for "whether you live or die," Marisol supposed.
It was the morning of Paul's concert, and Nick had taken Marisol up in the Piper Cherokee for her final flying lesson in England. She now had 20 hours of flight training and could soon qualify for a sports pilot certificate, which would come with restrictions: she could only fly light aircraft, only during daylight, and not in airspace which required communicating with air traffic control. But if she continued taking lessons in California, she would soon have a private pilot's certificate.
The wind was shifting, and Nick decided that made it a good day to practice touch and go landings. Nick showed Marisol how to determine wind direction even when there was no windsock by observing smoke, dust clouds, or even crop movement or a body of water. Marisol was so absorbed in flying that the afternoon slipped away. By the time they returned to the originating airfield and shut down the aircraft, she was hours late leaving for Paul's concert.
There was motorway construction all along the way and far too many roundabouts, where she would queue in a long line, moving forward two feet at a time, then drive around in a tight circle until she could manage to lurch out onto the correct road.
Roundabouts were one thing she was not going to miss. Thank god for American traffic lights. The light turned green and you knew it was safe to go, the decision was made for you, leaving Americans free to think about more important things, like fast food fried chicken and french fries and pizza, all of which she missed.
After a traffic snarl at a one-lane bridge, it was clear she was going to miss the concert entirely. Frustrated, she drove instead to the hotel, five miles out of town, to wait for Paul there.
It was a blow to have missed the concert, but Marisol contented herself with the fact that she'd gotten one more lesson with Nick. Flying made her forget everything else. Her problems seemed to fade away as soon as she got above them. "Ah, it's good to be back in the air again," Nick would say the instant the wheels left the runway. And it really did feel that way to her too.
All of the Beatles and Neil seemed exhausted when Mal brought Marisol up to their floor. They slumped on the hotel furniture, legs sprawled, nibbling at plates of egg and chips and drinking whisky while they focused on a small black and white television set.
"Where the blurry hell have you been, love?" Paul pushed his plate away and pulled Marisol onto his lap.
"Somewhere over the blurry Channel, mostly," Marisol said.
"Were there a lot of roundabouts along the drive?" Paul asked.
"Um...not really...why do you ask?"
"No reason," he said with a little smile. He had ordered a bottle of Chablis for her and began pouring a glass. He winked at her as he placed the wineglass in her hands.
"It's such a shame to leave now that I have you so well trained," she said, smiling at him.
"Exactly my point." They clinked glasses and he watched her take a sip before gulping his whisky.
"How was your show? What did I miss?"
Paul shrugged. "Nothin', really. Same as always."
"We showed up, made a lot of electronic noise that no one could hear, and barely escaped with our lives," John said.
"If it weren't for "God Save the Queen" we'd have been flattened long ago," George added.
"They stand and listen like good little British girls until "The Queen" ends and then they race out to tear off our clothes," Ringo explained.
"So we have two minutes and thirteen seconds to vanish, basically," Paul said. "But thanks to Neil and Mal we always seem to pull it off."
"What are you watching?" Marisol asked. Their television show seemed to be wrapping up.
"I dunno, some new show. It's about this old bloke called The Doctor and his group who travel back in time like, in a police call-box, of all things. This time they ended up with a tribe of cave people creating fire or some shit."
"Really? How was it?"
"It was good, I guess," Paul said.
"It'll never last," George remarked.
"Oh, I dunno, it might be a keeper," Neil said. He had just brought in a film projector and was setting it up in the center of the room. John, Paul, George, and Ringo had all bought 8mm movie cameras, Marisol was told, and they'd been amusing themselves on the road making arty films.
Cigarettes were lit, and more whisky was poured. Marisol settled back beside Paul, eager to see the artistic splendor that had sprung from these four creative geniuses. Neil operated the projector while Paul provided narration, George quietly chain-smoked, John lay across the bed with a bottle of scotch, and Ringo flitted around the room making humorous comments and clowning around.
They watched for an hour: four almost identical films of street lights, cars passing, men digging holes, a seagull swooping from a balcony, a man alone in a field repairing a stone wall in the fog and rain.
"Why did you all make the same exact movie?" Marisol asked as the last film wound down and the lights were turned on.
"Well, why do you bloody think, Hemingway?" John tapped the ash from his cigarette, not hiding his annoyance. "We're all trapped in the same bloody car and the same bloody hotel rooms, aren't we?"
"Hey, I talked to that farmer fixin' the wall," Paul said. "It was up in Yorkshire when we stopped for petrol, nobody around but this farmer. He owned both fields on either side. There was an opening between the fields anyway where a gate should be, so no discernible point to fixing it. So I watched him awhile, and I finally walked up and asked why he was standing out in a cold rain rebuilding a wall. He looked at me like I was a prat and said, "Because it's fallen down, of course."
"There you are," John said. "And that is why the British countryside is so unfailingly lovely and timeless. You can thank your Yorkshire farmers for that."
Neil held up two movie film canisters.
"Billy Liar," George called. The others nodded their consent.
While Neil threaded the film, Paul tilted his head toward Marisol. His eyes scanned her face before slipping to her mouth and down...down again. Then he leaned in and whispered into her ear, "I can't believe I get to touch you tonight."
The clicking of the projector drowned out Marisol's sharp intake of breath. Paul was looking at her as if he might devour her at any second. Goosebumps spread along her skin at the suggestive tone of his voice and the longing in his eyes. She trailed her nails down his arm and linked her fingers with his and tried to send a message with her eyes. A message that said something like "You, me, your room, now."
Paul merely squeezed her hand and looked back at the screen. Billy Liar turned out to be a British film about a young man from the Northern provinces with scriptwriting ambitions and Julie Christie as his girlfriend. Ten minutes into the film, Marisol theatrically stifled a yawn. Five minutes after that, she did a pantomime sweep of her watch in front of her eyes. "Goodness. Is that the time?"
Paul stood and picked up the bottle of Chablis. "Right. I'm off to Bedfordshire, lads."
"Off to Shagfordshire, more like," John said drily.
"Don't be a knob," Paul said, pulling Marisol to her feet and fitting an arm around her waist.
"Give her an Aussie kiss for me, Pauly," John said, crudely wagging his tongue.
"Jog on, you nutbag," Paul said.
"I don't understand a word you two weirdos are saying," Marisol said.
"Come 'ead and I'll show you," Paul whispered, letting the door close behind them.
Paul went straight to the portable record player in his room and turned it on. When a familiar piano riff began to play, he turned and gave her one of his sexiest smiles.
"If I go, a million miles away, I'd write a letter, each and every day..."
Sam Cooke's soulful voice filled the room.
"Uh oh," Marisol said, grinning.
"Uh oh?" Paul held out his arms.
"This is the one that makes my knickers drop." She walked into his arms.
"Knickers? Where'd you learn that word?" He began to turn her slowly around the room.
"From my British...lover."
"Aren't you a lucky lass."
She pretended to be concentrating hard. "I only wish I could remember..."
"Come here."
He dipped his head and kissed her, his mouth soft and delicious and tasting of scotch. He kissed her slowly, carefully, tasting her. He kissed her like kissing was the only way they had to communicate. His fingers stroked her cheek, her ear, the back of her neck. Her arms went around his neck, her fingers curling in his hair. He sucked on her lower lip and she made a whimpering sound.
He pulled back and cupped her face in his hands. With a fingertip, he swept her bangs to the side so he could stare more clearly into her eyes. "I can't get enough of you, Mari, do you know that?" He kissed the corner of her mouth and bent his head to nibble at her jaw.
She closed her eyes, vibrating beneath his firm hands. She wanted to pull him down on top of her, feel the reassurance of his body if only one more time.
He licked her earlobe, murmuring, "It would wreck me to lose you," while his hands grew busy on her body, moving from her breasts, over her thighs, his fists bunching her skirt as he worked it over her hips.
She tilted her body into his touch, feeling him hard and ready, pressing against her. Her knees grew weak. "Please," she rasped against his neck. "The bed. Please."
His hands returned to her waist, rougher. He yanked her sweater up and over her head and unzipped her skirt, working it down her hips. Cupping her in his hands, he drew in a jagged breath through his teeth, whispering, "Put your hands on me."
She worked at his clothes until he stood there, naked and beautiful, the muscles of his bare back under her hands.
They fell onto the bed, his weight half on her, his skin hot against hers. He played her like an instrument, total body lovemaking, with see God now results. Each time they made love it was different. Sometimes it was mellow, sometimes rough and demanding, sometimes all-consuming. But every time she was with him she was lost in the pleasure, in the emotion. When he was deep inside her, she felt the bond between them strengthen. All she wanted was for it to never end.
But it always did end, of course. Morning would come, and he would drive a few hundred miles farther away from her. She squeezed her eyes closed, wanting to hang on to these few moments of feeling so held, so peaceful. This tiny space of time, this threshold between the way he'd made love to her just now and the day they would say goodbye, she cherished it and thanked it. They held each other wordlessly, his chin resting on the top of her head.
Then he kissed her forehead and rolled out of bed, lit a cigarette, and walked across the room. Marisol watched him standing beside the record player, naked and perfect, brows knit in concentration as he braced a vinyl record between his hand and his thumb and blew away the dust before positioning it on the turntable.
"It won't be long yeah," came John Lennon's voice, followed by the "yeah yeah" call and response from Paul and George.
She held back the sheets for Paul to climb back into bed. He lay beside her, smoking. Through the first two songs of With the Beatles, Paul told her all about "double-tracking" and "layering", "voice dubbing" and "instrumental overdubbing." Everything had changed since they made their first LP, Paul said. Please Please Me had been recorded in one day, basically capturing how the band sounded live. In With the Beatles, they took time to use all the new studio tricks they'd learned to enrich the sound.
Paul grew quiet as "All My Loving" began to play. He crushed his cigarette into an ashtray and listened, his brow knit in a frown.
"Do you realize the first three songs on this album, all written by you and John, are all about being away from home and coming back home?" Marisol asked.
"Huh. I guess that sums up our lives in a nutshell. You write what you know."
Paul chewed the pad of his thumb thoughtfully for a few seconds, then popped out of bed and carefully lifted the needle from the record. "It brings me down to listen to these songs with crappy reproduction when I know how good they sound in the studio."
He put the record in its sleeve and started playing a live recording of Marvin Gaye. He looked up at Marisol silently for a beat, then bounded across the room and dove into the bed, his face landing between her breasts.
"Ow! God! You're such an animal!"
He licked a path to her neck and growled into her ear. They wrestled and giggled for a few minutes, then found a comfortable position with Paul's arm under her head.
"The new album is doing great, isn't it?" Marisol asked when Paul had settled onto the pillow beside her.
"Cor, yeah. We got a silver disc for it before it was even released. Pre-orders were insane. We've done everything here now. Number one single, number one album, the Palladium, performing for the Royal Family. Now all that's left is America."
"You'll kill it," Marisol said, completely convinced.
Paul looked thoughtful. "We'll see. But it's gotten mad here in Britain." He told her about some of the recent craziness on tour—how they'd had to exchange clothes with the police at a recent show to get into the theatre. After the show, they'd fled like escaping refugees down a pitch-dark corridor into an adjoining firehouse where they'd slid down the pole and waited while a decoy fire engine lured the fans away.
George was hit in the eye with something hurled at the stage recently, and the next night Ringo was hit in the head with a shoe. Last week in Yorkshire, thousands of fans battled with the police, and sixty teens were crushed and injured in a stampede. The wildness grew daily.
"You know, sometimes I feel as if there's nothing I'd like better than to get back to the kind of thing we were doing a year ago," Paul mused. "Just playing the Cavern and other gigs around Liverpool, hustling every night, getting paid the princely sum of sweet fuck all. I suppose the other lads feel that way at times too. As if you'd like to turn back the clock."
"Do you miss Liverpool? Your family?"
"'Course. I've got bushels of cousins and aunties and uncles. But that train has left the station and there's no stopping it."
They faced each other, their heads on the same pillow, neither of them thinking of sleeping. It was as if there was too much to say, too much to finish, to waste it sleeping.
"You're a good Auntie," Paul said, his fingers stroking her hip. "It's one of the first things I noticed about you. Do you want a big family of your own?"
"I think so. I always thought I'd have four."
"Will you work, or stay home and take care of your family?"
His hand stilled and he waited for her to answer what seemed to be an important question to him.
"I don't know, I spent a lot of time with a nanny when I was little. When I was three years old my mother went to Paris for a year to take cooking lessons with Julia Child. I mean, that's great, I'm glad she makes gourmet meals, but I'd have been happier as a little kid with my mother home every night making macaroni. And maybe she should have been paying attention to her marriage. I'd like to stay home with my kids, but who knows. My dad says do whatever you want with your kids because whatever you do will be wrong."
"Your dad. He sounds a bit like Lennon."
"Ha. There is nobody like Lennon."
"My mom worked," Paul said. "I remember looking out of my bedroom window in the middle of the night, watching her peddling her bicycle through the snow, off to deliver a baby. I remember wishing she didn't have to work so hard." He sighed. "You know, I used to look around working-class Liverpool, at all the fighting, the struggling, the misery...and I thought what's the basic problem here? It's money, you know? I was just a little kid when I realized if I could find a way to make enough money it would solve everything."
"But it doesn't, really," Marisol said. "My parents have money and they're not happy. When I was growing up, my parents would throw fantastic parties, then the guests would leave and they'd be drunk and my father would make some offhand comment and my mother would start hurling dishes across the room at him. I'd lie in bed, cringing, listening to glass shattering and doors slamming. Every time they had a party we'd know not to leave our bedrooms without slippers on until the housekeeper came to clean up the broken dishes."
Paul brushed her bangs from her eyes. 'Is that why you wanted to get married at 18? To get away from home?"
"Well, I mean, sure, who doesn't want to get away from that, but I was in love." She looked away from his penetrating eyes. Sometimes it was a pain how perceptive he was.
"Do you believe in God?" she asked, to change the subject.
"Not sure. Do you?"
"Of course. I'm a human being, aren't I?"
"What does that mean? Do you choose to believe or you must?"
"Both. Because I don't want to lose people and think I'll never see them again. I want there to be something more than this. There must be."
Marisol had the strangest sensation just then. If Dan had lived, she would have never met Paul. She would have been content with Dan and built a life with him, completely oblivious to this British boy across the ocean. All of the laughter they shared, all of the kisses and caresses, she would have never known. How strange to think she would have missed all of this. One day she might have heard his voice on the radio and never given him a second thought.
Paul was quiet for a long time. She wondered if he was thinking about his mother.
She kissed that soft spot she loved just behind his ear. It was one of her favorite places to kiss, and he always reacted as if she was tickling him.
"I want to draw you." He stretched and climbed out of bed. He went to his suitcase and pulled on a pair of pajama pants. Then he handed Marisol a white dress shirt. "Put this on."
He watched while she sat up and pulled on his shirt, nothing on underneath. It barely covered the tops of her thighs. He tilted his head, reached out and unbuttoned two of the top buttons. "God, that is sexy." He posed her lying on the bed, propped on one elbow, and arranged her hair to fall over one shoulder.
He took a small sketch pad from his briefcase and a couple of pencils and pulled a chair up to the bed. They continued talking about anything that popped into their heads.
"What are the names of your horses?" Paul asked.
"Jet is the one I mainly ride. He's gorgeous and acts like a star. Calamity—she's lived through a rough time and has a bit of a wild side, and Huckleberry is a Belgian gelding. He has a really loving, outgoing personality. If people come over to ride and they haven't ridden horses much, Huckleberry is a kind horse."
"And your dogs?"
"Brumby, Beau, and Cookie."
"What sort are they?"
"Cookie is an Australian Shepherd, mostly. They're all mixes, they're rescued."
"I'm going to have a dog, as soon as I have a place of my own," Paul said. "I think maybe an old English sheepdog."
He squinted at her. "Best relationship advice you ever got."
"Ha. This wasn't for me, but at Margo's wedding, my father told her, "If you ever go back in time, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING."
"I take it he approves of Nick."
"He was glad she'd settled down. I guess Margo had a bit of a wild side for a while there."
Paul stopped drawing and whistled between his teeth. "Nick is a lucky man."
Marisol whipped a pillow from under her elbow and flung it at his head before he had a chance to react.
"Hey, watch it." He examined the sketch with a frown, flipped the pencil over, and erased an errant pencil mark. "I bet you didn't launch pillows at Picasso's head when he was at your grandfather's house."
"I bet he wasn't lusting after Margo."
Paul scoffed/laughed. "I bet he was."
Marisol plumped another pillow under her elbow and resumed her pose with a sigh. "The best advice I ever got was from my brother. He said before you get married or move in with someone, go on a good long road trip with them. You need at least 13 hours straight in a car, at least one night in a mediocre hotel in a questionable part of town, and make sure to forget something crucial. At the end of the trip if you look at each other and say 'Where are we going next?' then you're golden. If you say 'We are never doing that again,' look out."
"When can we leave on this road trip?"
"Your entire life is a road trip." She smiled. "In your case, we'd probably need to stay home for 13 hours straight. So what's the best advice you ever got?"
He chewed his lower lip, considering. "My dad said, 'Marry the one who gives you the same feeling you get when you see your food coming at a restaurant."
Grinning, Marisol said, "So you should propose to the waiter?"
Paul grinned back at her. "Whenever I see my food coming, I'm always thinking, 'Man, that other bloke got scampi in a basket, it smells so much better than the stuffed haddock I ordered."
Marisol laughed. "And you're looking at his scampi thinking, 'you gonna finish that?"
"I'm usually thinking, 'how the feck am I going to pay for this?' Which could also apply to matrimony." He shrugged. "Guess that was better advice than the time my dad said, 'they're all crazy, Son, just pick one."
"Nice."
After a few more minutes Paul squinted at the drawing, ripped out the page and wadded it up.
Artistic temperament, she supposed.
"You're difficult to get," he said. "This artificial light, it lies. I can't draw by it."
He tossed the sketch pad and pencil on the night table and picked up his Leica camera, snapping away while she posed until she got bored of it and made faces at him. Then he put down the camera and stretched out on the bed beside her. His gaze traveled over her face. "So. Have you thought about coming back to London after Christmas?"
Marisol felt a knot rising in her throat. She really had no answer to give him. "It is practically all I think about."
Paul frowned down at her. "And?"
She avoided his eyes. "You want me to move to London, but are you even going to be there?
He stroked his chin as if he were imagining a goatee. "When we finish this tour we're doing a Christmas show until the middle of January, then three weeks in Paris, then, if "I Want to Hold Your Hand" does well in the U.S. market, and Brian thinks it will, then we'll be coming to America. Two weeks, maybe. After that, we'll be in London making a movie before we start a tour in the Spring. So yes. I'll be in London on location literally all of the month of March."
"And then you'll tour again."
"You'll like spring in England, Mari. It's like a huge garden. More shades of green than you can imagine."
She drew a deep breath. "I know, but my father...he's footing the bill for college, and if I was older, say, if we were talking about graduate school and I was 21 or something and--"
"Is it money you're worried about? Because we are in the happy position of not having to worry about money. I'll feed you and house you, and you can wander around London during the day and rescue stray animals and do anything you want to do, really. You can even drive my car. I can't drive right now, so what the hell."
"I think we're getting ahead of ourselves," she said quietly.
They stared at each other across a ringing silence.
"I don't even know when I'll see you again." Paul pulled away slightly, a serious look on his face. "Are we meant to see other people?"
She placed her fingers against his lips. Oh god. She did not want to have this conversation. "I can't expect you to not..." Her voice broke and she swallowed, battling the flash of pain at the thought of Paul with anyone else. "I just want us to stay friends. To always be able to talk about anything and everything like this, and...not hurt each other, and fingers crossed that someday soon..."
"Of course. We will. But if I heard you were sleeping with someone else, I'd go mad. I'd want to bash his brains in," Paul said with quiet emphasis.
She rolled back onto the pillow, trying not to give in to the tears that threatened. "I wouldn't worry about it. It's probably not going to happen. How could anyone follow Paul McCartney?"
"Yeah. I'm a fucking legend. And yet I lost the girl."
He lay beside her on the pillow, their shoulders touching. They were quiet for a long moment. He slid a hand down her arm and joined his fingers with hers.
"Paul. Remember what you said the first time we spent the night together?"
"Oh hell. There's no telling." He rubbed a hand over his face before continuing. "I hate when people start a sentence with 'remember what you said...?' The only thing going through my mind right now is, 'oh fuck, what did I say'."
"You said maybe it wasn't our time, and that maybe our story would take longer to write," she reminded him, her voice hushed and trembling.
"Mmm. Right. I remember."
"So maybe we're only putting our story on hold while you're busy being world-famous. Someday we'll start writing it again."
Paul turned his head, locked eyes with her, and licked his lips, warming up to his persuasive best. "Just hear me out. We could find a flat together. My schedule is crazy, it's true. But you could just..." He looked away, focusing on a spot just over her shoulder. "You could enjoy the city. London is the most beautiful city, love. There are endless things to do. You've had a really hard year and maybe would be happy just having a mellow winter in England." Looking back up at her, he added quietly, "With me."
His hair had fallen into his eyes. Even partly filtered, they were so expressive she felt gooseflesh break out along her arms.
She didn't have an answer to his offer, so she didn't give one. She couldn't seem to make him understand how her parents would react to his proposal. She closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted. They lay shoulder to shoulder until she curled into his body, her hands sliding up his chest and into his hair. She pressed her nose into the muscle between his neck and shoulder and breathed in the clean smell of him: hotel soap and a hint of the ocean underneath.
She was going to miss his smell, his touch, so much about him. But not the madness that followed him everywhere. Maybe when the Beatlemania phase ended it would all be different, if Paul still wanted her by then.
Paul rolled to face her, kissing her neck, her jaw, her lips just once. He lingered, eyes open. His hands slid down her back, over the curve of her bottom to her thigh and lower, to the back of her knee. He pulled her leg over his hip, fitting her to him. Between her legs, she felt the familiar jolt of desire for him. She could feel him, too, lengthening and pressing against her. But instead of taking it anywhere, they finally fell asleep.
Marisol picked up a newspaper on her way out of town the next morning to read about the concert she had missed. A local reporter described the show this way: "I have not attended the mass torture and execution of 5,000 assorted farmyard animals, but I imagine the noise they would make would be very similar to that which forced my fingertips deep into my ears. In any case, I could hear more of the music that way."
With a paper cup of hot tea in one hand, Marisol drove away from Paul and Beatlemania and back to her grandmother's house to begin her last week in England.