And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 60: Cora, Of Chisel-Wick

"Me bloody ears are still ringing," I told John, slowly reaching up to touch one of them. "He really let us have it."

    "S'all right," John said. If he was shaken he didn't show it. He gave his guitar a couple of strums and let it hang by its strap, reaching into his pocket to grab a fag and a lighter. Through the packed crowd (they must have known it was our last night) I cast a wary glance at Eckhorn. He wasn't looking at John—oh, now he was. I watched his face turn livid. "Rauchen nicht drinnen!" he hurled the insult at the offender dangling from John's fingers. The crowd glanced at him and John, raising their eyebrows at the sudden entertainment. "Sie glauben nicht, dass ich Ihren Lohn andocken kann? Ich werde zur Polizei gehen," Eckhorn threatened, and he and John had a staring contest for a while before John silently took the unlit fag from his lips and put it back in his pocket.

    Having decided to go back to the Top Ten after our midnight rendezvous (I had stretched out my maximum amount of guilt for the day), I realized it was two hours since we were supposed to be on stage. Two bloody hours, I thought to myself as I urged him faster and faster back towards the club. His layer of magic ignorance to time which he had cast on me a couple of hours ago was wearing thin. The headmaster was coming back and the cane didn't look so great.

    John on the other hand seemed more relaxed than anything. "How can you walk so slowly?" I asked him, my words surrounded by nervous laugh. "We're already late."

    "He'll have to wait then or start without us."

    "Paul is going to be livid," I murmured. Images of an angry Paul joined the symbolic headmaster one in my head.

    "You know who isn't going to be angry?" In response to my questioning glance, he responded, "Me. And you. You're not angry, are you love?"

    I slowly shook my head.

    "Good. You and me. That's all that matters." In spite of the situation I let loose a small smile and his grip tightened around my waist. What a man God had created when he had made John Lennon. He took out a cigarette and lit it. "Want a puff?"

    I barely hesitated. "No."

    His eyebrows raised, corners of his mouth raising, sensing a challenge. "One puff won't kill ya."

    "Cancer will," I retorted back, but the stick in his hands looked strangely appealing. I remembered seeing a movie with Katherine and Martin and they were both smoking, me breathing in the secondhand smoke from their lungs. What are you even thinking about? I scolded myself, and then I surprised myself. "Give 'er here."

    He suddenly stopped and said, "Ye really want to try?"

    I panicked. "Yes."

    "All right." His demeanor changed. He became softer, more gentle as he gave me instructions on what to do. I placed my lips on the stick and inhaled. Almost immediately my body rejected it and I coughed violently, sending the little black particles back up my windpipe and into the open air. My eyes began to water. "Fuck," I coughed. "That goes hard."

    John was laughing, almost dropping the fag. I put out a hand. "No more."

    "No more," he agreed. He looked at it for a while and relit it, puffing at it. I gave him a squinty-eyed look. "Me and that thing, never." I suddenly realized I had tasted a cig, I had tried one. Well, don't blame me if you get lung cancer, I had told him back at my house, and now I had gone back on my word. Visions of Danny floated before me and for a minute I felt foreign to John, but that scared me so I held on tight to his hand and leaned against him. He was always a good amount of touchy, at times a little much but he was always there when I needed him. I looked at him and I felt a wall of support.