Please don’t forget that this never ever ever happened—this is merely a pleasantly odd export of my tiny little mind. Thanks! ;)

 

Misery

 

Meanwhile, the Beatle under suspicion glowered hotly in the corner of his now-crowded hotel suite. His date for the evening was sitting on the edge of the bed, nursing a drink and shivering life into half-frozen limbs; Ringo, George and another bird were tripping over each other’s sentences in a vicious battle for what remained of Paul’s already strained attention; John, who had entered behind George and the girl in a rather foul temper, had taken the only chair and was already regarding a tallish glassful of Paul’s liquor with the same tender affection one usually reserves for a long-lost lover or a sibling once thought dead. And so Paul sat—or, rather, stood, as George, Ringo, and Althea had chased him into a corner—pouty and helpless among the ruins of his golden dreams.

There are certain statements that not even the most benevolent of gods can interpret as anything other than a challenge. The declaration that now plodded across the bleak landscape of Paul McCartney’s mind was foremost among them.

That’s it, conceded Macca wearily. It just can’t get any worse, can it?

A knock at the door and the jangle of skeleton keys sent icy fingernails down the blackboards of every spine in the room. “Mister McCartney?”

Apparently it could get worse.

On the tip of his mind’s tongue balanced a torrential wave of language to turn the air blue and people’s hair white as he shoved people into a variety of hiding places. “Just a minute,” he called over his shoulder in a tone that didn’t at all resemble that of one recently woken. For all his variety of talents, Macca wasn’t much of a liar. He had quite a way to go before he could count himself on a par with practiced prevaricators like Gwendy.

Althea watched from under the bed as a rather indignant Birdy was shoved, with frequent whispered protests, into the bathroom. “Jeez. Miniskirt and sleeveless,” she muttered. “Wonder what she had in m—” Her thoughts were interrupted by silent shushing from Ringo, who had been shoved under the bed next to her. “Keep it down,” he said in a voice low and quiet enough to be barely audible. The look on his face suggested he was an old hand at hiding from motel snoopers.

John, an even older hand at evading officers of morality, had been heaved, with much protestation, into the closet with George. He’d just begun to build a meaningful relationship with a friendly young alcoholic beverage after a long and unfulfilling night, and the trauma of separation from his newfound companion was almost more than he could bear. Shut away in the near-total darkness with his bandmate at uncomfortably close quarters next to him, he silently mouthed the first naughty word that leapt to mind.

A burst of blue language also sizzled on the tip of Gwendolyn’s tongue as she watched from her hiding place beneath the stairs outside Paul’s room. He was going in! Usually Vern Sr. considered himself such an astute observer of facts—he thought he was on a level with Sherlock Holmes himself, which embarrassed her no end—that he’d never trouble himself to actually go in. If she didn’t stop her father soon, the fallout would be ugly indeed. She took a deep breath and tried to stifle her panic for long enough to figure out a plan. I’ve got to think of something!

I’ve got to think of something! The thought raced through Paul’s mind almost simultaneously. Steady on, Paul old boy, thought he to himself as he smoothed back his hair. Won’t do to panic. Just get him out of here as quick as you can. Don’t panic. “Good evening, Mister Miller,” he said with what he hoped was an amiable grin. “Anything the matter? Can I get you something to drink?”

In the back of the closet John mouthed an even naughtier word than he had before. Drinks? How many people’d had drinks? A hasty burst of mental arithmetic led John to an answer that disturbed him to his foundations.  Paul hadn’t done anything about the number of drinks glasses out! It shoulda been me this happened to, John lamented in the private silence of his mind. I could of dealt with the old snoop in half a minute—I mean, he isn’t even a proper house dick is he, he’s just a nosey old snoop—and here Paul is going over all panicky ‘cos it’s been too long since he’s gotten in trouble over a bird. Most people look the other way for Beatle Paul when he’s got a girl. I’m a better liar than he is, it shoulda been me… John pulled a face of protracted misery and frustration.

Althea pulled a miserable face from her vantage point under the bed. In his haste Paul had wedged her under the bed in a rather uncomfortable sideways position, and a nerve in her leg was being pinched rather uncomfortably. “What’s wrong?” mouthed a concerned Ringo from next to her.

“Leg hurts,” mouthed Althea in reply. “Got to shift.” Before Ringo could formulate a quiet enough protest she had moved onto her stomach, sticking the afflicted leg out from under the bed to relieve its ache more effectively.

As Althea’s discomfort abated, Paul’s intensified as he, too, noticed he’d neglected to put John’s extra glass away. Even the realization that Birdy had taken hers into the bathroom with her was cold comfort as the elder Miller eyed the offending setup on the bedside table with suspicion. “I suppose I could take you up on that, Mister McCartney,” he nearly sneered in anticipation of triumph. “After all, you have two glasses out. And one of them hasn’t even been touched! Now, I know you couldn’t have been expecting me,” he continued, sternly suppressing the self-satisfied smirk that threatened to overtake his features. “So why did you set out drinks for two, considering you should be the only one in the room after curfew?” I’ve got him now! The thought raced across Vernon Sr.’s elated mind. I’ve got the licentious little bug right where I want him.

“Well, sir,” Paul began. He groped blindly about his mind in a dark panic until—It was as though a light switch had been flipped. Like a floodlight the idea surged though every part of his brain until finally finding outlet through his mouth. “If you must know, sir, back when me and me mates played in Hamburg, we had a guy in the band named Stu Sutcliffe. He left long before we made it big, and died of a brain hemorrhage not too long after he left. He was one of our best mates, and around the time he died I try to remember to drink to his memory. We all really liked him. He was a very good friend.”

Paul winced inside even as he said it. Using the memory of the departed seemed a bit wrong, somehow, now he’d done it. But at least the motelkeeper looked as though he believed it. Maybe Paul had fudged the details a bit to suit the circumstances, but Paul had been quite sincere about the way he felt.

Inside the closet George grimaced as well, but for a slightly different reason. Stu had always been John’s unspoken territory of personal grief—and it did still bother his bandmate, even now. And now Paul had invoked his memory in order to get out of being caught in a curfew violation. He could almost hear John tensing up for something big and nasty.

John breathed the nastiest string of Liverpool invective he could possibly tack together. How dare he! He seethed as his night went from worse to terrible. It took some kind of cheek, he considered, to dig up the dead just to avoid some bad publicity. The sheer nerve of it! There was only one thing for it, he concluded. John would sooner face a little bad press than have Paul thinking he’d gotten away with wiping his feet on the sacred memory of the dead. He started to jostle George out of the way to open the closet door.

Paul and the elder Miller heard a commotion from the closet. “What was that?” said Vernon Sr. sharply as he got up from his seat on the foot of the bed.

Under the bed, Ringo and Althea exchanged alarmed glances. Althea had shoved her leg—which was still flooded with the tingle of a limb recently awoken and effectively paralyzed—out from under the side of the bed nearest the closet. Even if Miller Senior didn’t catch George and John in the closet, if he got too close to the bed he couldn’t fail to see Althea’s foot and—

As one mind everyone else in the room recoiled at the idea of the consequences, even the typically disdainful Birdy from behind the keyhole at which she’d been eavesdropping in the bathroom. Now would be just the right time for one of those miraculous save-all-of-our-bacon occurrences they’d all read about in books.

 

 

***Authoress’s note: If you’d like to use this story for anything or take it someplace, please ask me first. It’s just one little email, not too much trouble, and the odds are in your favor for a yes if you ask me nicely. I just want people to recognize the story as mine, okay? ;-)