Dear Sean

Nineteen

Then I got the news about Paul.

“Where’re you going, Harrison?” I asked casually, as he hurried to leave the studio.

He shot me a glance.

“Haven’t you heard about Paul and Linda?” he asked, touching the doorknob slightly, possibly to escape if need be.

“What about him and Linda?” I said with a forced chuckle. I hadn’t said his name aloud in two weeks.

He was getting married.

I watched it on the telly.

Paul smiled and waved, showing off a hairstyle that was something like an overgrown moptop, shaggy and dark. I stared at his yellow tie, the one he’d gotten from Mike so long ago and insisted he hated, though that wouldn’t explain why he still had it. It matched Linda’s blazer. I wondered if she knew the tie’s story.

They climbed into their car, trying to disentangle themselves from the press that was following them in.

A shot of them hugging through a window appeared on the television screen, and I knew it was done. Then they walked out, petals raining down on them, trying to part the crowd of devastated fans with tears running down their faces and clicking cameras with anxious questions.

“Paul, what’s it feel like to be married at last?”

“It feels fine, thank you.”

I muffled a scream into my hand.

Paul’s wedding was May 12, 1969. I got married to Mummy eight days later.

Gibraltar was a very long way from home. Not as far as I’d gone on tour, or for business; I’d traveled all over the world really, but I felt cut off from everything here.

I felt homesick, and slightly nervous. Shit, the last time I’d done this, I’d ended up with Cyn and Julian, stuck in the suburbs.

But last time I suppose I had a better alternative, a reason to feel that my marriage was a trap, keeping me from what I really wanted, from what I really needed. Now this was it. She was it. Paul was married, and I might as well get married, to keep at least one person in my life with some kind of commitment.

John Winston Lennon does not do well with commitment.

I straightened out my off-white suit, the closest I had to wedding clothes, and took a deep breath.

The story doesn’t end there, though, does it? It keeps going. Every day, I kept seeing Paul, he kept showing up at the studio, every day.

“Alright, well I think we should run over Silver Hammer,” Paul said, pointedly avoiding my gaze, but I obeyed him anyway.