And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 18: What Do I Do Now, Featuring George Harrison, The Shrink

I was back in my room.

    "Hello?" I blinked. My voice sounded clear—I had drunk so much last night that I supposed—wait. My eyes snapped open, and I gasped.

    I was back in Chiswick.

    Sunlight was streaming in through the windows. I tossed off my comforter. My room was eerily quiet, and I could hear the silence bleeding through the air. I was wearing my gray dress and my sheer stockings, the same outfit that I had travelled to Hamburg in. I yawned, and grabbed at my pillow. It felt real enough. My room looked the same.

    Did I drink that much last night?

    "Cora." A sudden voice from beside me, casual, calm.

    "John?" automatically slipped out of my mouth. I shot a quick glance to my left. No juice. It was Danny. Fucking Danny, wearing an old flannel and jeans, standing over my bed, his hands in his pockets looking smug. I haven't seen him in forever. His thin, hazy face brought back memories of a few weeks ago and a couple years before that. The party, the fight John and I had, how we made up. The memories swarmed around in my brain like a swarm of angry bees. My head was beginning to pound, and I began to panic. Where was he?

    "Lennon. John. John. John," Danny mimicked sneeringly. He looked at me with steely gaze. "I've figured out your secret, my dear," he continued.

    "Shut up, Danny," I groaned, and wondered what the hell was giving me that bloody headache.

    "Your room is reacting, Cora," Danny said, watching me. "It's on red alert, did you know that? This wasn't supposed to happen."

    As soon as he said that it all made sense to me why my head felt like it was bursting. The walls were flickering. And they weren't flickering randomly. It was Beatles posters and Beatles newspaper clippings and pens and my jacket. They flashed and they were there and they flashed and they weren't there. I looked down. My dress and tights. Capris and bralette and sweater and heels. Dress and tights.

    "Make it stop," I screamed, my voice rising to a yell, and my wild eyes searched for Danny but he had suddenly disappeared. In his place stood the man with the perm, wearing a scared expression.

    "Michael," I yelled to take away the focus of my pounding headache. "Who the bloody hell are you? What is going on?!" I noticed tiny movements: my fists, grabbing at my floral quilt, my right foot, twitching. I couldn't get out of bed. Michael didn't respond. He looked at me like he wanted to say something, but he couldn't, his mouth opening and closing like a dead fish. Everything else was flickering madly.

    "Make it stop," I cried, and I felt for my partner, the man who slept next to me for a whole month, who I clung on to when I had nightmares, who would stay up late and just talk to me, but I was alone, and he was absent. "John, John, shit...! John..." my cries grew louder and the Michael finally got through. His mouth opened wide and I heard a deep voice that wasn't his say, "Things were never meant to turn out like this," and I interrupted with "Lennon, where the hell are you?" and the lights stopped and I was thrown back onto the hard back wood of a couch.

    My eyes flew open.

I was breathing heavily and only slightly aware that my mouth was open, and that I had screamed. I was lying on my bed in Rosa's room. I looked down at myself; nothing was flickering or moving at all, I was in the same clothes that I had fallen asleep in. A wall clock read out 3:56. I opened my mouth to speak but found it hard to do so. My mouth tasted like garbage. "What was that," I managed to croak.

    It was a fucking dream.

    I was still in Hamburg. Danny was not Michael. And John—I would find him in the morning.