Marisol had early classes on Paul's first morning in California. She fed and watered the horses and let them out to graze, with Paul beside her watching and keeping up a lively commentary. He and Neil were on England time and had been awake for hours. They insisted on driving with her to school, where they drank coffee and sampled pastries in the Student Union Building and wandered around the grounds. No one expected to see a Beatle on a college campus in Northern California, and with Paul's hair combed back and his glasses on he looked like just another student. When they tired of the college scene, Neil and Paul took Marisol's car into town and browsed the local record stores and bookshops, making it back to campus by noon to pick her up.
The sun was hot and they took a cool dip in the pool, then had lunch and sunbathed for a few hours until it was time to meet Marisol's best friend Donna.
It turned out Paul and Donna were not a match made in heaven. Donna thought he was too full of himself, and he thought she was, to put it in his words, a right bitch.
They drove into the city in Donna's car, because it was a red convertible Mustang with a white leather interior, and you couldn't get much more fun than that on four wheels. And because Donna liked to drive so she could be in control. They drove downtown first, checking out the scene, but ended up on the other side of the city at a small Irish club a short block from the beach.
It was a Monday night and quiet. A single performer sat onstage with an acoustic guitar, singing what sounded like Irish folk music.
"This music is boring as hell," Donna said. The others ignored her, discussing whether or not to order Irish beer and what sort of appetizers they wanted. The pretty waitress had a lovely Irish brogue and Neil chatted her up, asking where she was from and how she liked living in the States.
Two beers in, Donna decided to pick at Paul. "Hey Liverpool. Who does your eyebrows?"
"Aw, sod off." Paul gave her a tiny smirk.
"No, they're beautiful, really. I would kill to have eyebrows like yours." Donna eyed him speculatively. "They're perfect."
Under the table, Paul squeezed Marisol's hand. Above the table, he gave her a wink.
Donna narrowed her eyes. "And your mouth is beautiful. Like a woman's. Maybe we should call you Paula." She smiled an evil little smile. "Hey Paula."
Marisol sighed. "Donna, what is up with you? You're acting like you have diarrhea of the mouth or something."
Paul smirked for real this time. "Maybe we should call you "Donna-rhea."
"Oh yeah?" Donna arched a brow. "I'd like for you to be GONE-a-rhea."
Neil laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.
Marisol slapped her palm on the table. "Okay, that's it. I'm going to the restroom, and when I get back, you two will have kissed and made up." She stood, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder. "I love both of you, and you must pretend to tolerate each other in my presence. It's only for a week, you can do it," she said, giving Donna a smack on the back of the head on her way past.
When she came out of the bathroom, Paul was standing outside the door in the darkened hallway. He was on her in seconds, pushing her back against the wall, capturing her mouth with his. He pushed her blouse out of the way, tasting her collarbone. "Hello, beauty. I thought you'd never get back. Is there a lock on that door to the loo?"
"Um...I th-think so...why?" She was stammering, her heart racing.
He sucked at her lower lip. "Let's find out, shall we?"
She opened her mouth to say something about germs in public restrooms, but Paul slipped his tongue inside, sliding against hers, in and out between her lips in an unmistakable rhythm. He pressed her against the wall, one knee parting her legs, and the last coherent thought in her head faded away. Whether he wanted to do it in a dirty restroom or in a cable car at the top of Lombard Street at rush hour, when he set his mind to convincing her with his mouth and hands, she was oblivious to anything or anyone else. She wrapped one leg around the back of his thigh, her hands on his hips, gasping as he pushed her harder against the wall.
"Oh for god's sake. I can never unsee this. My eyes are bleeding. You're so gross." Donna made a disgusted noise as she pushed past them into the women's restroom.
Paul lifted his head, gazing down at Marisol, his eyes dark and unfocused. "I think she likes me. I think it's going really well."
Marisol took another minute to peel herself off of Paul and collect her thoughts before following Donna into the restroom. Donna was reapplying a coat of Passion Pink lipstick. Their eyes met in the mirror. "I need you to back up off of Paul. He's having to restrain himself from giving you a good tongue lashing."
"I'm sick of this place, it's a bore. Let's walk to the beach," Donna said.
"Dee? Can you tone it down, please? He's really a sweet guy. You're being kind of a bitch."
"He's no Dan," Donna said, her voice petulant. "Dan thought the sun rose and set with you. This one, he thinks all he has to do is lift a brow and the panties drop."
Marisol lowered her eyes, scuffing the toe of her sandal at a worn spot on the wooden floor. It was kind of true. Paul looked at her, she melted. And what was so wrong with that, exactly? "Look, Dan is gone, and Paul makes me really, really happy when we're together."
Donna made a scoffing sound as she dropped the lipstick into her bag. "Don't forget, Mary Sue, falling in love isn't about who makes you feel the best, but who makes you feel the most miserable when they leave."
"Great advice." Marisol looked over her shoulder, her hand on the doorknob. "Got a dime? I need it for the Suicide Hotline."
Donna grimaced, joining her at the door. "Okay, I'll sheathe my claws, but if he hurts you, I'll dismember him."
Marisol slung an arm around her friend's neck. "Thanks for playing, Crazytown."
Back in the car, they drove south down the coast highway with the top down and the radio blaring. Even Donna cheered when a Beatles song came across the air. The parked near an old military installation on top of hundred-foot high sandstone cliffs with spectacular views of the ocean. A brief walk through a copse of trees led them to a pair of old concrete gun emplacements from World War II where soldiers used to watch for the Japanese invasion that never came.
Paul and Marisol hunkered down out of the wind in front of one of the pillboxes. A hundred feet below them, dogs frolicked on the beach. Tourists never found this place. It seemed to be only dog walkers and the occasional history buff. The sun went down in a picture-postcard display over the Pacific, but Paul and Marisol barely glanced up. They were too busy whispering and giggling and staring into each other's eyes to notice.
Neil and Donna sat a few yards away, their backs against another pillbox. Donna talked about surfing in La Jolla while Neil seemed to hang on her every word. When the sky darkened, Neil and Donna headed down the steps to walk on the beach, leaving Paul and Marisol alone. Paul pulled her in front of him, his arms wrapped around her chest, placing small nibbling kisses on the back of her neck.
"My dad thinks I should get married," he said after a few minutes.
"Oh really. Does he have anyone in particular in mind?"
"Don't think so. You'd be a good candidate though."
Marisol didn't respond. She leaned back against his chest, her pulse hammering in her ears. Married? The thought was equally thrilling and terrifying.
"Why does he think you should get married?" she asked finally.
"He says it would settle me down, and settle the girls down."
"Oh. NOT a good reason to get married."
"So...you don't think it's a good idea?" He tilted his head to look at her, a smile tugging the corners of his lips.
She wondered if she would ever stop feeling the jolt to her heart when he smiled like that at close range. She chose her words carefully. "I think you're a little young...maybe."
"Huh. This is coming from the girl who was engaged at what, seventeen?"
She sighed. "I didn't have all the options you have. You're a Beatle. Why would you restrict yourself to just one girl?" She really, really wanted to hear how he would answer this question.
He rested his chin on her shoulder. "Because I'm a human being. Everyone longs for that soul connection. Even a Beatle."
A quiet minute passed before he told her, "Ringo and Mo are getting serious, and George has met someone. Looks like I'll soon be the last single Beatle."
"Nice." Another reason for more girls to set their caps for Paul, she thought. He'd be the only single Beatle, the object of even more fan adoration. Fantastic.
He got to his feet and reached a hand down to help her up. "Head down to the beach?"
The beach was windy and cold, but Paul insisted on removing their shoes and walking up to the frigid surf.
"Is it always this fookin' cold?" he asked.
"You will never dip your toes in a warm ocean in San Francisco," Marisol promised. "It's romantic though. Doesn't it make you want to go home and crawl under something warm?"
"It's so sexy when you talk dirty." They kissed and ran from the tide and played with a few of the random off-leash dogs. Before they left, Paul made Marisol promise to return with at least one of her dogs to play in the waves while the sun was shining later in the week.
In the evenings, Paul and Marisol sat by the outdoor fireplace next to the pool, a bottle of wine close at hand. Paul spent hours playing the guitar, blissing himself out, surprising himself with something new. Then they would snuggle under a blanket in a lounge chair, watching the sky for falling stars, listening to the music of nature: the yip of a coyote, the hoot of an owl, the leaves rustling in the oak trees by the house.
When everyone else was asleep, or when they were too tipsy with wine to care about being caught, they would sneak away to Paul's room and make love and giggle and whisper until late in the night. When Paul fell asleep, Marisol would tiptoe back to her room to catch a few hours of sleep herself before her alarm went off.
On Tuesday afternoon the four of them drove back into the City, stopping at the huge record stores on Upper Haight. Paul bought an armful of new albums, mostly R & B. They strolled through Golden Gate Park and reclined on the grass beside a lake with a lunch of sandwiches and sodas.
"Where are your swans?" Paul asked.
"No swans," Marisol said. "We're allowed to eat them here. We don't have a queen telling us what to do, you see."
At dusk they drove up a narrow curvy road to the top of Twin Peaks with a trunk full of helium balloons and twelve one-dollar bills.
Marisol divided up the bills from the back seat and handed out markers, and they wrote notes on the money. Paul showed her what he had written: Paul McCartney was here, Buy more Beatles records, and Paul loves Marisol. She chewed the end of her pen thoughtfully before writing I love Paul, PM + MH surrounded by a heart, and I left my heart in London.
She leaned over the seat to see what Donna was writing. Donna reached around and pushed her face away. "Shove off, loser."
Marisol saw Neil writing something about Liverpool before he covered the money with his hand. "God, it's not a huge secret. You guys are so weird. We're releasing them to the Universe and you won't even show me?"
They carefully lifted the trunk and tied each of the dollar bills to the end of a string attached to a balloon, then released them one by one at the edge of the cliff. The wind grabbed the balloons, violently scattering them in all different directions over the sparkling city.
With the balloons all on their way, Paul and Marisol crossed the parking lot and began climbing one of the peaks to see if they could view the Bridge from the other side. They walked up a dozen of the crumbling, dirt-covered steps, no handrails, clinging to each other and fighting the gusts. Marisol turned to take a picture of Paul with the city behind him but had to give up. She couldn't hold her hand steady because of how hard the wind was pulling it. It was like being outside in a gale, the wind whipping so violently they couldn't hear anything else above the roar.
"I feel like I may be literally blown off this mountain tonight," Marisol shouted.
"This shit just got real." Paul grabbed her hand and pulled her back down to the relative safety of the parking lot, where the peaks blocked the worst of the wind. They sat on a stone wall watching Market Street light up as the sun went down. On top of San Francisco, with a view to the ocean, the wind whipping their hair, Paul gripping her shoulder and stealing kisses, pointing at the balloons rising higher in all different directions, laughing about the way they'd almost died trying to climb the peak... Yes, this was it, Marisol thought. The happiest day of her life.
On Wednesday after classes they stayed closer to home. Paul and Marisol took the horses up into the hills, spread a blanket in a forest of fir trees, and made love, taking their time, slow and sweet.
They rode back down to the house, picked up Neil, and drove to the tiny town of Bodega, to see where Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Birds early last year. Farther up the coast, they drove past miles and miles of cattle ranches and dairies before hiking to the cliffs and sitting at the grassy edge, watching sea lions sunning themselves on the beach more than a hundred feet below.
That night they watched television in Donna's tiny apartment in Petaluma. Paul and Marisol snuggled on the couch, making eyes at each other until Neil and Donna left to go pick up a pizza. As soon as the door closed behind them, Paul and Marisol reached for each other, huge grins on their faces.
"Do you know when I'm around you I feel like I just got out of prison, all the bloody time? Do you think that's natural?" Paul asked between kisses.
"I don't know if it's natural, but it seems to be contagious." She locked her lips with his as they stumbled to the back of the apartment.
Thirty minutes later they were sitting innocently on the couch, playing a hand of cribbage, when Neil and Donna got back with the pizza.
Donna looked at Marisol, her brows drawn together. "Is your hair wet?"
"Yeah, I took a quick shower."
"Hmm. Wait...what?"
Marisol opened the bottle of wine she'd brought from home and they ate in the living room in front of the television. Marisol couldn't help noticing Donna staring at the floor the whole time they were eating, not saying much. After dinner the girls carried the empty glasses and plates into the kitchen while Neil and Paul went outside on the balcony to smoke.
"Are those your socks?" Donna asked the moment the door closed behind them. "On Paul's feet?"
Marisol realized Donna had not been staring at the floor for the last fifteen minutes but at Paul's feet.
"Yeah, so? His feet were cold so I gave him mine and I took a pair of yours." She wiggled her toes. "So yeah, thanks. I'll wash them and give them back."
"All I can think right now is that if he's wearing your socks then he's definitely wearing your panties. Did you have the sex? God. You two are so gross."
"Yes. We had the sex. Goofball."
Donna groaned. "Was it in my bed?"
"No, of course not! If you must know, it was in the shower, which is how his socks got wet. Don't ask."
"Ugh. Don't worry."
"I'll say one thing for you, Hemingway. You have some good-looking friends," Neil said in the car on their way back home.
"She's off limits, cowboy. I could never explain it to Angela if you hooked up."
"No worries. Little Miss Hollywood isn't interested in a roadie from Liverpool."
"Not even a roadie for the biggest band in the world? You sure about that?"
"Leave that one alone, Neil." Paul interrupted their musings. "That one is a man-eater."
"Yeah, she could hurt a man," Neil said wistfully. "If he was very, very lucky..."
On Paul's last night in California, they rented a room in an old-fashioned motel a block from the ocean and not far from the airport. Neil's room was two doors away and he turned in early, claiming he needed to rest up so he could hit the ground running when they landed in London and the Beatles headed back out on the road.
Paul sat on the end of the bed with his guitar, plucking out a tune, his eyes on Marisol. She pulled up a chair across from him, her feet propped on the bed beside him.
"California is very nice," Paul said softly. "Very nice to me."
Marisol smiled. "I think so too."
"Do you think you could ever leave it, though? Live somewhere else, like, say...London?" He leaned in, his eyes searching back and forth from one of her eyes to the other, as if the answer would appear in one of them.
Her heart lurched. "Of course. When I have my own money and I can support myself, I wouldn't hesitate. I mean...my grandma...she might need me nearby."
"Yeah. There is that."
He began to sing to her, really more of a riff with ad-libbed words, some of them not quite rhyming, but it sounded like the prospect of four months on the road was wearing on him.
"Will you still be home, will you still be here,
will you love me in the same way I love you?
Dirty laundry and a heart that sings your name,
will your smile still be from ear to ear,
will your heart still be the same,
will you still be here when I get back home?"
Her hand went automatically to her heart. "Oh...That's so beautiful. What is it?"
"Just a little ditty. I call it Mary Soul."
She laughed. "Are you going to record it?"
"Oh no. That one is only for me, and a pretty little girl I know with windblown hair and a great smile."
"I got you a little something," she said, unable to stop smiling.
He put down the guitar. "I hope it's five-foot-five and smells exactly like you."
She laughed. "Not exactly." She rummaged in her suitcase and brought him a small package.
His eyes lit up as soon as he saw the plastic device inside. "A portable tape recording machine?"
"It's a prototype of a compact cassette player, made by the Japanese. This company called SONY. It's going to be at the World Fair in New York this summer. My dad had some kind of sweet connection and got one."
"God, this is fantastic, Mari. I can record songs, lyrics, in the car or wherever I'm thinking of them."
He pressed the play button and his eyebrows shot up at the sound of Marisol's voice."Hi, baby. Wherever you are on June 18, remember that I'm thinking about you all day and I have a big wet kiss for you when you get back to me. Happy birthday, I love you, Paul."
He gave an exclamation of delight. "Come here." He pulled her into his lap and kissed her, his lips warm and sweet on hers. "There better be more cassettes in that box because I'm not erasing that one."
His mouth grazed her earlobe, slow, shivery kisses that left her weak. "I have something for you too."
"I hope it's five-foot-eleven and not wearing any clothes."
He pulled back, laughing. "That's always yours for the asking, silly girl. I want to show you something else first, though."
With a projector borrowed from the owners of the motel, Paul turned off the lights and started a film. It was a movie he'd taken in Scotland, shots of their beach hideaway, Marisol waving at him from the shore, Paul turning the camera on himself and smiling, wiggling his eyebrows and winking, then switching the view back to Marisol walking down the beach. "It's a little film I made for you when we were in Scotland."
Marisol cried into his shoulder.
He held her, saying "Sshh. Tonight is for romance, tomorrow is for crying."
She somehow held back the tears. They rolled onto the bed, kissing aggressively, Marisol kneeling astride him, his arms flung above his head in surrender, their fingers interlocked.
They made love and promised each other it wasn't the last time, and with their arms wrapped around each other they fell asleep to the distant sound of a foghorn blaring somewhere out in the bay.
At the airport the next morning, Neil dealt with the luggage and left Paul and Marisol to say goodbye beside her car, standing together in the bright sun.
"Thank you for everything, I had a tremendous time. Tell your parents thanks again for me," Paul said, sounding somehow stiff and formal. He stared at her neck, her mouth, everywhere but her eyes. He licked his lips and closed his eyes, holding out his arms. He was terrible at goodbyes, Marisol realized.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning against him. He felt warm and solid. He felt like hers, he smelled like hers, and yet she had to give him back. Because, as Brian said, he belonged to all the girls of England. And this summer, he belonged to all the girls of the whole damn globe.
He held her so tightly her breath left her body. She pressed a kiss into his neck and he made a little groaning sound. "I better...uh...I should..."
"Yeah, I guess you should..."
They each took a step back, and in the stark sunlight, Marisol saw a sheen of tears in his eyes, before he fumbled in his jacket pocket for his shades and jammed them on his face. With the sunglasses in place, he looked down at her. "You'll write me?"
"Of course." She bit her lower lip and a small shudder went through her from the effort of holding back the tears. She would write to him, religiously, even though she doubted he'd ever see most of the letters since he'd be nowhere near Brian's office.
He nodded. "I'll write you too. It will go very fast, the summer."
"Right, right. I'm sure it will fly. Have fun out there." She drew in a ragged breath and squeezed her eyes closed.
"Thanks again, baby, for being so warm and inviting. Thanks for making me your import of choice."
That made her laugh a little, and he grinned, and somehow she knew they would be all right. Because even when her heart was breaking, he could still make her laugh.
He bent his head and brushed his lips across hers, the briefest kiss. Then he picked up his guitar case and strode away from her with his head down, into the terminal where Neil waited, not once looking back at her.
She dropped her head onto the steering wheel and sobbed for ten minutes until a police officer tapped on the window and asked if she was all right. She dragged her arm across her runny nose and nodded that she was all right, and the officer told her she needed to pull into the short-term parking lot to finish her crying jag.
"Will do," she said on a sob. "Thanks for being helpful."
She blew her nose and covered her puffy eyes with a large pair of sunglasses and sucked in a few deep breaths to compose herself for the drive back across the bridge. As she pulled away from the terminal, she flipped on the radio for a distraction. Paul's voice blared across the airwaves. "I've got arms that long to hold you, and keep you satisfied..."
"Oh fuck no." She flicked the radio off and stared out the front window, the scenery sliding by unnoticed. She needed to sign up for summer classes or babysit the twins more or something. Volunteer at the animal shelter? Take cooking lessons? Anything to make the hours pass. Unless she pulled herself together, this might prove to be the longest summer of her life.