The days passed like moving through Jell-o; it felt like three weeks instead of three days that John was staying with me. After John and I had breakfast the next morning we walked we walked around Chiswick, a slow walk next to each other, me pointing out various structures like shiny abstract buildings and the newest car models. John kept his hands behind his back as we walked. He was still wearing the Hawaiian shirt but had changed into a pair of my father's jeans. He was wearing his leather jacket (which I had come to appreciate), and had kept his black boots and was wearing a cap tilted at an angle which showed off his auburn hair, still in the Elvis phase before Astrid had styled his hair. I had to look up at him against the sun, and I felt like he was glowing.
He made fun of some things and admired others. The 2013 skinny pants he appreciated; they reminded him of the teddy boy era he had gone through that had driven Mimi crazy. "You should meet her, Cora," he had joked. "You'd get along fine. Bring along yer mother's teapot." I thought of Mimi, from what little I knew about her, but then he stopped and peered into a window. "What's this?"
It was a little packie shop. "D'ya want to see what's inside?" I asked him. "I bet they have sweets and things that they didn't have in 1960."
"Sure." John's hand brushed against my jacket pocket as he led the way inside. I tried to see straight as I walked beside him, looking at him, but all he gave me was a silly face. The sunlight from inside dimmed as we came face to face with packets of digestives and boxes of tea. A sleepy shopkeeper was thumbing through a magazine.
John looked around wonderingly. "What would you like, sweetheart? I'm inclined to try a few of these myself," he joked, holding a pack of skittles. "Never seen 'em before." I picked up a sandwich and we went to the counter. John thumbed through his wallet and shelled out an odd looking coin, tossing it across the counter. The man picked up the shilling and frowned. "Four pounds. What's this 'ere? We don't use these anymore..."
I reached for my wallet. "Oh, that was a mistake. I got it, John."
The man ignored my outstretched money. "No, no, love, look..." he glanced up, his face flushed with excitement. "You go on and take anything you want. Anything. Just pay with the coin."
John shrugged his shoulders and began stuffing his pockets. A smile tugged its way to my lips. We existed the store and crossed the street walking by the park. People were milling about, enjoying the Saturday September weather.
"Park, then?" he asked me.
"Not today," I told him with a mischievous smile. "Today, I'm taking you somewhere else."
We paused by the bus stop and I sat and undid my sandwich. He pulled something out of his pocket—the packet of skittles. "Where are we going?"
"I said it's a surprise," I told him as the bus came on and I brushed his hand away from his pocket, letting myself pay for the bus fare. John smiled up at me, a look in his eyes I hadn't seen before—it was something more. His look had a pang of sadness, and a little smile played with the corners of his mouth. I looked at the ground. It was too much to look at him. He sat leaning against the bus chair, contemplatively chewing a sandwich and smiling, enjoying the weather, and looked away.
We sat down.
"You seem to know an awful lot about me," John said. Having finished the novelty of the skittles, he had started ripping open a box of Pocky.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, you know about Paul, and George. So now I need to know about how you know."
I faced him and looked at him. He looked so real, now dressed in modern clothes and staring at me. He could have been born in the nineties, like me. I shook my head a little, smiling and dodging as he swiped the chocolate covered biscuit stick at me. "The only assumption I can make is that someone wrote about me in some book and that our little band got slightly famous, right? Maybe in some fan magazine or such. A vintage copy of the Mersey Beat. I can only hope."
I laughed silently inside. Slightly famous! Slightly famous. "John, I wouldn't tell you either way. Maybe you guys only make to Hamburg and maybe you'll make it bigger than Elvis. I'm not telling you."
"Why not?" he asked me. I could feel his senses getting excited, like he was on the brink of knowing something huge. And in a way, he was. After all, he was their leader. I would want to know what the future of my band was. "Tell me."
"Because I can't," I said, struggling to find the words. "It'll affect how you think. Assuming you get back, you'll keep going with this band of yours, and if I tell you what happens it'll change history. You don't want to do that."
He twirled a pocky stick around with his thumb and index. "I suppose," he said at last. I caught something. "You miss home, don't you?"
He didn't say anything for a while, and seemed to be wrestling with the question of telling me or not. After a while, he gave a quick nod. "I miss Liverpool, and playing with the lads, and the Germans."
"Go on."
And so he told me more about Hamburg and Liverpool, and I listened with genuine interest. He told me about how they met amazing people at the clubs in Hamburg like Astrid and Klaus, how they washed in the club's washrooms in the morning ("you have no idea how nice it is to take a shower at your house," he told me) and the glorious food that Mimi made for him whenever he came home, oftentimes later than midnight, with her disapproving but secretly loving glances she gave her nephew as he devoured fish and chips and steak.
***
John's excitement visibly grew as we entered the museum. I could tell by how he talked more whenever there was something that particularly interested him. There were some framed exhibits on the way to the escalator, and he stopped in front of one. It was a bunch of line drawings, cut up and pasted into one big drawing with the word YES spray painted in red on it. It reminded me vaguely of Yoko Ono's art, but I kept my mouth shut.
There were many Londoners walking around the Tate; no one paid any attention to John or me as we stepped inside the galleries and began to look around. We walked up to a sculpture of a man without a head, and John and I looked at it for a while. I snuck a glance at him and he at me at the same time, and we burst out laughing, stumbling into the next room.
John knew a lot about art. He could name Van Gogh, Monet, Magritte, and so much more. Obviously, he didn't know any contemporary artists, and I had the pleasure of introducing some of them to him. He loved all the art, from the smashed ones to the pieces in which the artists had to use fine hairs to create the precise lines of a drawing.
"Isn't it amazing, Cora," he told me, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "I really like this. Reminds me of Elvis' 'Blue suede shoes.'"
"'Lo, mate," someone said, tapping John on the shoulder. We turned around, surprised. It was a boy, obviously an art school student by the way he was dressed. He was wearing an oversized American Vegas shirt over a pair of baggy jeans and beat up sneakers. His blonde hair was tied with a rubber band.
"I like the fit, mate," he said, gesturing at John's outfit. "Vintage. Where'd you buy?"
The influx of modern vocabulary clashing with the Scouse made me laugh a little inside. John looked confused. "It's antwacky to you, innit?" he addressed the boy. My mouth dropped, and I couldn't help but let a giggle escape my mouth. The Scouse never seemed crazy until he actually used it. What was interesting, though, was that John seemed to amp up the usage when he talked to the boy.
"Thanks, mate," John said, clapping the soundless boy on the shoulder. "I got it at me gran's." He chortled as we walked away, and I called back, "Sorry, mate, he's not from around here—he's a Scouser."
"Were you trying to tease him?" I asked John, still laughing, as we exited the first room. He smirked. "He was blaggin' me head."
"You nutter," I delivered my usual response, but my joking response was cut short by the exhibit that lay ahead: THE ART OF YOKO ONO, 1933-2001.
2001?
I'm sure my heart stopped and then jump started again. "Oh my..." I could barely hear myself speak, and then I was shaking my head softly. Reality hit me again, and I blinked.
Slow it down.
But... Yoko couldn't have died, right? I'm pretty sure she was still alive. At least, before John came to me. I had read about her on Twitter, writing something about peace and love and the importance of water and the like. I had skimmed over it then but I was sure it existed. My heart racing, I stumbled out of the room, catching a glimpse of her exhibit in which John helped, pieces of a bedroom cut in half, everything painted white, except obviously John's contribution didn't exist. I couldn't tell John this. I couldn't. I sat down on a bench and hugged my stomach, feeling like my head was going to explode. John walked behind me, anxious.
"You okay, love?" John asked. "D'ya want to leave?"
I did and I didn't at the same time. "I just need some time," I muttered, hugging my stomach and looking at the scuffed toes of my Doc Martens. We sat there on the bench while he took an occasional interested glance at Yoko's exhibit, and every second we sat there I felt strange, strange emotions. Images flashed through my mind: the two of them on that Rolling Stone cover, the two of them feeding Sean, the two of them recording an album.
"D'ya want to look at the other exhibits?" I finally asked and we walked away from Yoko's exhibit, an ice cold guilt splashing through my veins, but not before John gave it one searching look.
***
At the gift shop, I had my nose in a Van Gogh book, standing by the book selection when I felt a sharp blast of air on the back of my neck.
"Boo."
I jumped, my shoulders rising in a jagged motion. "John, sod off," I laughed, brushing some hair out of my eyes. His hand rested at the edge of the book display, curled around something. "Found something ye fancy?"
"Just this." I picked up a little Monet card, fit for wallet size, just £1. After I paid, we walked out, John whistling a merry tune, his hands in his pockets. As we stood by the bus stop in the dark, I couldn't help but notice his smirk.
"What, do I have something on my face?" I told him.
"No, but I got this." He reached out of his pocket and unfolded his fingers to reveal a small object, a porcelain salt shaker shaped and painted like a cat. My eyes widened; I didn't want to confirm what I has just seen. The bus suddenly came with a honk and I stumbled on behind John, putting the coins through the slot mechanically.
"John, you stole the fucking salt shaker," I hissed at him, and someone near us looked up sharply. John looked a little taken aback at my reaction. "So?"
"So it's wrong."
A defensive look came over his face. I was incredibly unnerved by how John found it so easy to leave, looking like a regular customer, whistling with his hands in his pockets. He actually stole. This was the side of Lennon I didn't know, whether it was from that vintage Meet the Beatles! magazine I owned or press clippings or really anything. I didn't know anything about him. But what could I do? This was obviously a problem. I looked down at the Monet replica I had picked up, my hands shaking. It was beautiful from just looking at it, but when I peered close at it, it was a huge mess.
Like John, perhaps.
"I thought you'd be okay with it," he said. "Hell, I thought you were cooler than this. I thought you were like one of the lads, cheer me on. Bullshit, Cora. You're—were—still are a top bird, ye know that? I thought I'd made it clear. So what if I stole. It's bollocks of them to overprice things anyways."
"That is not the point," I hissed at him. We were both standing, unaware of the many seats around us, and the bus swayed and I crashed into him by accident. He gripped my shoulder and pulled me upright. "It's not your business anyways."
"It's not my—! I was with you, and I brought you into this world—"
"You sound like George's bloody mother. I brought you into this world—" he mimicked. I turned away and collapsed into a chair, the whole thing was bearing on my soul too much. It had begun to rain outside, great wet drops splattering on the bus windows and making the whole world iridescent when the streetlights shimmered through the water. He sat next to me, the fight seemingly having left him. "I'm sorry, love, really I am. I just wanted to get something nice, I—" he cut himself off and retreated into his seat, looking despondent. I leaned towards him, almost touching him, and then fell away.
I was starting to see that John was like a thunderstorm. He could be so beautiful and yet so terrible. He wasn't what I had expected whenever June and I would talk about Harry and Paul—oh, lord, Paul—as if they were actually going to date us. John was better, and also worse, his edges spilling out of the container that I had put him in in my mind. I was trying to control him and mold him to the modern era but that wasn't as easy as it sounded.
It didn't even matter. He wasn't supposed to be here, Yoko bloody Ono was dead, and John Lennon had stolen from the Tate museum.
What was I doing?
I couldn't stay mad at him for long. It was still raining outside, and Londoners were still carrying their bags, hurrying to their various locations. I reached for his arm. He pulled it away. "I don't deserve this, Cora," he said quietly. There were pink patches on his cheeks. He really was sorry. "But, why, John?" I asked him. "Why would you even think of...?"
"I don't want to say," he said in an even quieter tone.
"You can talk to me," I said.
There was a silence as he looked at his boots, and I glanced out the window to give him some space.
After a while, he spoke up. "I steal. A lot. Back in my time they don't have these fancy cameras that can track you. There was this art store, run by two old ladies, and whenever I would ask them to get me something on the high shelves I'd be filling my pockets with the pencils below..." he trailed off and wouldn't look at me.
"But why, John?" I repeated.
"I don't know... I guess because it could happen, I did it... and everyone was doing it, it was common," he finished. And I understood again and again that fifty years beforehand was so different than now. I chuffed him lightly on the shoulder and said, "Let's see that little cat."
"His name is Mr. Lungs," John said. I exhaled and allowed myself a small smile.