And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 5: The Works of Yoko Ono, 1933-2001

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."