A thunderstorm rumbled over the Florida Keys during the night. High winds overturned pool chairs and garbage cans and roared through palm branches. Marisol lay awake in her bed for much of the night listening to the storm, her thoughts whirling like the wind lashing against the shuttered windows.
Paul and the rest of the band were scheduled to fly out at noon, and the imminent goodbye filled her with the usual dread. Marisol's flight left three hours later. Maybe during the five-hour flight, she would figure out how to approach her parents about moving to England. She still couldn't grasp the idea that it might actually happen, that Paul had asked her to move in with him, that he was expecting her to say yes. It didn't seem real.
By morning the rain had turned into a fine mist. Mr. Sosa wandered the grounds, checking for storm damage. Breakfast was quiet. The lads all seemed a bit distracted, probably thinking ahead, the way they always did, to their show that night and the final week of nonstop touring before they flew home to England.
Marisol had just finished helping Mrs. Sosa with the breakfast dishes when the phone rang. "It's for you, mi alma," Mrs. Sosa said, handing Marisol the phone. "Someone named Donna."
"Donna? Is my Mom okay?"
"Yeah, everyone's fine...um...are you alone?" Donna's voice sounded quiet yet somehow intense.
"Kind of...I can talk. What's going on?" Marisol couldn't imagine why Donna would call her here. She would've had to have gotten the number from Marisol's parents.
"Listen, I hate being the one to tell you this, but you're going to find out anyway because it's in Photoplay...and I didn't want you to be blindsided..."
"What? Okay, Sarah Bernhardt. I'm sure it's not as dramatic as all that. Has my name been linked with Paul in some magazine?"
There was an uncomfortable pause. "Donna?"
"Mari, I stayed with my dad last weekend in Bel Air for my stepmom's birthday, and the caterer was one of the ones who took care of the Beatles while they were here last month, and she talked...a lot."
"Okay...so?"
"She said Paul had a girl with him while he was here. An actress named Peggy Lipton. This girl really went after him, pulled all sorts of strings to get to him...I wasn't going to tell you, but she wrote about their so-called romance in Photoplay, and it's on the newsstands...so I thought you might want to say something to Paul before he goes home so you can at least hear his side of it?"
Marisol brought a shaky hand to her forehead. Donna's voice was a low buzz barely audible beneath the sound of the blood pounding in her ears.
"Mari? I'm really sorry. I wish I was there. I'm worried about—"
"Have to go," Marisol managed to say before she gently replaced the receiver and hugged herself tightly to control the shivering.
She always suspected it happened. Paul enjoyed sex and loved women and there was no way he was going without for three months. Random hookups on the road were one thing, but reading about it, having her friends telling her about his dates on the road? Having a relationship with a girl less than a week after he'd left her in San Francisco? No. This could not be happening.
Celebrity caterers like to talk. Maybe they were exaggerating. Maybe the actress made it all up to try to get attention. Everyone was always trying to get something from the Beatles. Marisol pushed away from the counter, forcing herself to keep it together, at least until she saw the story in print with her own eyes.
Ignoring Mrs. Sosa's worried frown, she stumbled into the living room, praying she wouldn't run into Paul before she could get her thoughts together.
Mercifully, Paul was in the bathroom, probably brushing his teeth again. He brushed his teeth ten or twelve times a day.
Ringo and George were smoking on the veranda, watching the raindrops from this morning's shower drip from the palm trees. Ringo held a caramel-colored kitten while another wound itself around George's legs.
"Hey, what do these cats eat?" George asked, his hands stilled on the guitar for once so he could hear her reply.
"I don't know," Marisol said, pushing her hair out of her eyes, her mind a million miles away. "They're practically feral now. The housekeeper feeds them and they catch lizards and mice and those giant palmettos I imagine."
"I knew it," George said. "You toss them a bit of sausage and they pounce on it and hold it still with their front paws. I said to Ritch, whatever they've been eating, it's still alive when they find it."
"You know there's something weird about their toes?" Ringo asked.
Marisol sighed. "I don't know. Listen, I have to run to the store. If I'm not back by the time you guys leave, I want to wish you a safe journey and all that."
George stood and slung his guitar around to the back so he could give her a half hug. "Thanks for everything. It was gear."
Ringo stood and eyed her for a moment. "All right?" he asked. "You look a bit wobbly."
Marisol didn't meet his eyes. "Sure. Just need to grab a few things from the store."
"Take care of yourself then," Ringo said, pulling her in for a hug. "Careful of the puddles."
Outside the gate, a police officer stood chatting to a small group of girls. Their conversation stopped and all eyes turned her way as she pushed a bicycle through the crowd and locked the gate behind her with a shaky hand. The bicycle had belonged to her Papa and was too big for her. She straddled it clumsily, feeling her face redden at the sound of her name whispered by strangers staring at her, speculating about her. Judging her.
After a wobbly start, she got her balance and peddled furiously to the nearest drug store. On the rack in the back of the store were scores of magazines. She snatched up the latest issue of Photoplay. There it was, on the front cover, beneath her boyfriend's smiling face, in bold red type: "Model/Actress Peggy Lipton reveals romance with Beatle Paul!"
Her handbag slid off her shoulder onto the floor. Ten pages in was a black and white photograph of Paul sitting on a stool with a pretty slender blonde standing and smiling beside him. The words swam in front of her eyes and she didn't bother trying to read them. Just seeing the picture felt like a stab to the heart.
Slowly, like an old woman, she bent over, picked up her purse, and held it protectively to her chest, as the world lurched sideways on its axis.
Back outside, the humidity felt like an oppressive blanket. Marisol stuffed the magazine in her handbag and stood beside the bicycle, forcing herself to breathe normally. This was not the end of the world. She'd been through worse. Her fiance, the love of her life, had died. That had felt like the end of the world, and somehow she had picked up the pieces and moved on. She could do it again. But this...this was different. It was both painful and humiliating. Her fists clenched on the handlebars. She desperately longed to be home, where she could hide in her room and cry for a solid week. But first, she had to confront Paul. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt, give him a chance to explain, and if he couldn't, she'd have to somehow stop herself from ripping every hair out of his head.
There were more than a dozen fans now at the front gate and two police officers standing guard. A new fishing rod was propped against the fence with a card attached. Years after Papa's death, fans still left gifts in front of his Key West home: paintings, books, fly rods, bouquets of flowers.
"Can you ask the Beatles to come out?" one of the girls asked when Marisol climbed off the bike to open the gate. A camera clicked two feet from her face and she fought the urge to bat it away.
"Eleven o'clock," Marisol said without looking up. She almost hoped the girls went crazy and ripped Paul's shirt off his back. Or mussed his hair. He would hate that.
Paul was crawling around on his hands and knees in the television room, picking up articles of clothing. None of them ever hung anything up. He picked up a sock and sniffed it and grimaced. "Ringo's," he said, throwing it back down. He scooped up another sock, smelled it and kept it.
Marisol stood over him. "Got a minute?" she said through clenched teeth.
Paul glanced up from his position on the floor, looking startled at the clipped tone of her voice.
"Sure, baby, what's up?"
She strode away, still catching her breath from her frantic ride back to the house. When he followed her into the bedroom, she swung the door closed behind them and slung the magazine on the dresser. Please, she silently begged. Tell me there's nothing to this.
Paul glanced at the page and froze. She watched the color drain from his face before he turned again to her. There was panic in his eyes, in those eyes she loved. "Mari, sweetheart, look—"
"Don't call me sweetheart."
He reached for her and she jerked her arm away. "Don't touch me."
He ran a hand through his hair, that hair she loved. "Listen, Mari, I can explain. I was gutted when you didn't show up for our show in L.A., and I rang you all day long—"
"I was at the doctor in the city with my mother." She bit off the words, glaring at him.
"I know that now...but I phoned all the next day and kept getting your maid, and I gave her our phone number, and you never rang back..."
"Bianca barely speaks English, Paul. And I was working in the winery. And I don't know what this has to do with you having another girl the minute I didn't show up." Her chest was heaving, and she had to push the words past the lump in her throat.
"Look, Mari, this bird meant nothing to me. She's an actress and she wants to be a singer, although her voice is shite, and clearly she planned all this to get the publicity—"
Marisol started to crumble inside, the first loose, tumbling stones before a landslide. "Did you sleep with her?"
He blanched, the guilt and panic naked in his eyes."Baby, listen to me. I didn't know why you didn't show up in L.A. when you were only six hours away. It hit me like a slap in the face. This bird kept showing up everywhere, getting herself invited to every party, hanging out at the pool—"
The rocks tumbled, gathering speed. Marisol lifted her hands as if about to brush away a strand of hair, but instead, she covered her face to stifle a sob. She was hunched forwards, wisps of hair falling around her face. "Please. Please stop talking."
She felt Paul closing in on her, reaching for her. She lifted her chin, her hands balled into fists at her sides. "I said don't touch me!"
He pulled back, hands rising as if in surrender. "Okay, okay...I just don't want us to say goodbye like this. I...I don't want to say goodbye to you at all. We can fix this. I don't want anyone else."
She shook her head, violently. "No. There is no us. There is no we."
"This will never happen when you move in with me. I swear it. I only want us to be together." His eyes were pleading.
"That is never going to happen. Ever."
"Think about what you're saying, Mari. I love you—"
"You LOVE me? How many other girls have there been, Paul, who just didn't get interviewed by Photoplay?" Her voice was starting to sound hysterical. She brought her hand to her throat, trying to catch her breath.
"I can be faithful to you, Mari, if we're together. I promise. We can work it out."
His words weren't even reaching her brain anymore, through the fog of anger and hurt. A suffocating sensation tightened her throat and made it hard to talk. She lowered her voice and captured his eyes with hers, wanting there to be no mistake about how deadly serious she was.
"If you love me, as you say, then you must do this for me. I want you to pack up your things and go, and do not come after me. I am about twenty seconds from falling to pieces. Please don't make me do it in front of you and Neil and Mal and all your friends."
Paul squeezed his eyes closed and scrubbed his hands through his hair. "Please don't do this to us. Please don't end it. Not like this." When he opened them, his eyes were wet, turning his eyelashes to black spikes, a glazed look of despair spreading over his face.
Her voice was barely above a whisper. "You've broken my heart, Paul. I need you to let me go. Please." With a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob, Marisol turned and fled from the room.
In her grandfather's studio, she locked the door and slid down the wall to the floor, her whole body shaking. Now that she was alone, the tears didn't come. It felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest, and she had to work at breathing.
She sat there, staring into the glassy eyes of a wildebeest coming out of the wall, wondering how she could have been so naive to let Paul break her heart. Girls threw themselves at him. He wasn't a monk. Only an idiot would trust him with her heart.
This room. So full of memories, so full of her Papa. She could almost picture him standing hunched over the black Royal typewriter as the ceiling fan whirred, the click-clack of the keys, a pause while Papa stretched and dug a tanned hand into the muscles of his back, his brow creased with pain, a muttered oath as he ripped out a page, wadded it up and tossed it in the direction of the wastebasket.
"I still miss you so much, Papa," she whispered, dropping her chin onto her knees and squeezing her eyes closed.
Muted footsteps on the stairs and a sharp rap vibrated the wood behind her head. "Hemingway? Open up."
"Go away," she rasped.
"C'mon. Let me in."
Lennon. She hadn't even said goodbye to him. "Are you alone?"
"No, I'm with the bloody Russian Imperial Army. Open up."
With a shuddering sigh, she scooted over against the wall, reached up, and unlocked the door.
John glanced at her, then away, his gaze darting around the room. "So this is where the magic happened." Closing the door quietly, he sat on the floor next to her and gathered his knees to his chest, mimicking her position.
"Macca is in bits. What'd you do to him? He looks like a sad sack of shite." He gave her a sidelong look. "And you look even worse."
Marisol stared back at him, at that face she'd come to adore, and realized that never seeing Paul again meant never seeing any of them again, and suddenly she was sobbing into her hands.
"Hey." John wrapped an arm across her shoulders and pulled her against his chest, resting his chin on her bowed head. "Don't cry over that stupid git. He ain't worth yer tears."
"I'm not crying over him," she sobbed into his shoulder. I was just thinking about...that thing with Cuba...all those poor refugees and...sharks..."
"Yeah, that's a drag." John rubbed comforting circles on her back while she cried. "I can see how that would get you down."
She finally composed herself and pulled away, rubbing at her eyes and nose. She looked over at John and touched his shoulder. "I got your shirt all wet, blubbering like that."
"S'all right. Birds cry over me all the time. Three times a day, minimum."
Her throat ached when she gave a choked laugh. Leave it to Lennon to give her something to laugh about through the tears.
John reached in his pocket and pulled out a partially smashed package of British cigarettes. He lit one and inhaled before he spoke. "Macca can be a twit, but he is a twit who cares deeply about you. You do know that, right?"
She bowed her head, her hair making a curtain over her face, so he couldn't see how his words affected her. "Yeah. Well, he has a funny way of showing it."
John rested his head against the back of the door, exhaling a breath of smoke at the ceiling.
"I guess I have an old-fashioned view of romance," Marisol continued. "It involves fidelity."
John grimaced and didn't meet her eyes. "Nobody really knows what it's like, being the Beatles. We're like circus animals, trapped in our rooms until it's time to perform again. A different town every night, but we never see anything but a plane, a car, a room, a stage, a car, a cheese sandwich, a room. My entire view of America for the last month is over the blue shoulder of a policeman. It's fuckin' stressful, and exhausting, and it's fuckin' lonely. Whatever happens on the road, in my opinion? It's just four lads tryin' to find a way to sleep at night until this is all over and we can get back home. Whatever gets you through the night."
Marisol shuddered involuntarily from more unshed tears. "Are you that over it already?"
"Hell yes. All I wanted was to play music and make enough money so I didn't have to get a real job. I never expected anything like this. None of us did. How could we? There's never been anything like this. We're doomed, you know, like monkeys in a zoo. Everyone needs space. Everyone needs to be left alone."
There were voices out in the courtyard, the slamming of a door, the distant barking of a dog. "Eppy is here now. They'll be looking for me."
They both climbed to their feet. John held his cigarette out to one side, gazing down at her.
"Can I ask you something, Hemingway? Why did you leave England in the first place, if you wanted it to work with Paul? You had him, y'know. Seems to me if you loved the lad you'd have stayed put."
"I don't know. It's not that simple."
"It's as simple as you want it to be."
"Shut up. I'm going to miss you, you jackass."
"Take care of yourself, eh?" John pressed a kiss to her forehead and was gone.
Marisol slid back down the wall and hugged her knees to her chest, resting her head on her forearms and letting hot tears leak from her eyes, feeling more alone than an astronaut. Sea birds cawed and palm fronds answered in the breeze outside the studio. Whispering about her.
Didn't you know, you stupid girl, that love is not for you.
She didn't move until the last door closed and the last feminine squeal from the front gates died away. Then she walked to the bookcase and pulled out the book that held the note Paul had typed. She tore the note into minuscule strips and let the pieces flutter into a trash can.
The door to her bedroom was open and there was a folded sheet of paper on top of her purse with her name written shakily in Paul's handwriting. She stared at it for an endless minute before ripping it into shreds, unread, and tossing the pieces in the trash.
Mr. Sosa walked in to let Marisol know there was someone looking for her at the front gate. In a daze, Marisol wandered outside to find a Pan Am representative holding her suitcase, a broad smile on his face.
"Fantastic!" Marisol said, flashing a slightly hysterical grin. "You've found it just in time for me to give you another go at it!"
She changed flights in Miami for her nonstop to San Francisco and was shocked to be met in the terminal by a reporter and a cameraman. "Miss Hemingway, care to comment on your relationship with Paul McCartney?"
Marisol sucked in a breath, jamming a pair of sunglasses on her face while the cameraman snapped away. "There is no relationship," she said through gritted teeth.
"Isn't it true that you just spent the better part of a week in Key West with Paul McCartney at your grandfather's home?" the reporter continued. "You were photographed dancing together at Sloppy Joe's."
Marisol darted into the nearest restroom, the reporter flinging a final question at her. "Would you care to comment on Paul McCartney and Peggy Lipton?"
Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely lock the door to the stall. She sagged against the door, pressing her knuckles into her eyelids under her shades and letting out a ragged sob. Why now? Of all the times for this to happen, why had the media found out about them now when it was over? She must have been a really terrible person in a former life. She must have worn slippers made from the fur of dead puppies and flicked babies on the soles of their feet to make them cry. That's the only reason she could come up with that her life should turn out this way, devastated and heartbroken over two men in a little over a year. She cowered in the toilet stall like a hunted animal until the last possible moment to catch her flight. It was time to go back to California and take care of herself. This was the very last time she would give her heart away so carelessly. This was the very last time she'd be crisscrossing the country with a broken heart over Paul McCartney.