He's So Fine [Beatles / George Harrison FanFiction]

Chapter Twenty-Two: 16th February 1964

'WHERE are the damn Beatles?!' the studio floor manager demanded, bringing his face close enough to Della that she could smell the cigarette smoke - and an undercurrent of alcohol - on his breath.

She took a small step back, keeping her most reassuring smile in place. 'They're coming. They're coming right now.'

'We go live in less than two minutes.' The floor manager's face was getting redder by the second, a mixture of anger and panic and stress. He paced the floor behind the cameras, pushing his rolled shirt sleeves up past his elbows.

The room for The Beatles second Ed Sullivan show was very different from the first. The Napoleon Room at the Deauville hotel didn't have any tiered seating. The rows of chairs for the audience were more or less all ground level, so Della imagined those at the back didn't have a very good view. The audience here was older than most Beatles audiences. Richer, too.

At the front were three large TV cameras on wheeled dollies, driven by camera men gripping two handles to maneuver themselves, and in front of them, the raised platform of the stage. Dressed in a yellow gold and slate grey background, this was where the Beatles would open the show, live to the nation and in less than ninety seconds. However, the two lonely microphones and elevated drum kit without a drummer said differently.

'I know. I'm sorry,' Della said. 'They're on their way.' The floor manager glared at her, so Della added, 'I spoke to one of our road managers a moment ago and he said they were on their way down then. I'm sure they'll be here any second now.'

But it wasn't a moment ago. It was half an hour ago and the four minute journey they had to make on foot from the Beatles' hotel suite down to the Napoleon Room might easily take four hours tonight.

'It's the fans,' she said. 'They're blocking the lobby and the corridors. They can't get through without being mobbed.'

That was what Mal told her on the phone from the hotel suite upstairs. What he'd actually said was, We'll be fuckin' murdered if we try to walk through there! And Mal rarely swore.

After the scenes at the New York plaza, they warned the hotel in Miami that additional security would be required. Della knew the local police force had advised them too. The blasé guy she spoke to on the phone before they left New York told her.