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

 

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

 

 

George saw the look in Gwendy’s eyes and moaned. There were times when his life seemed so much like a poorly written short story it was positively beyond belief.

 Sol U. Harte-Harrison exclaimed, Oh, sh—

Yes, this is quite a development. Brian Harrison trod on the end of Sol U.’s sentence with practiced ease. The question is—now we know, what do we do about it?

First time either of you’ve made sense in years. Toofelft Harrison nodded in approval.

So while his internal debaters went off to exchange ideas about the new problem, George stood dumbstruck. This was one more thing he just did not need to deal with at this juncture. Maybe if he’d had about five hours more sleep…Well, “maybe” didn’t enter into it. Five hours’ more sleep and he’d have taken advantage of the situation like a shark at a beginners-only surfing tournament with a “balance a bucket of chum on your board” event. But not now, when his eyelids felt like a hundredweight of bricks on a wobbly coffee table. Ask any great lover in history and he (or occasionally she) will tell you right off: None of them would have such progress along the path of social interaction without being extremely well rested. The party of the second part tends to take it personally, they explain, when you nod off in mid-advance. This is why it is vitally important that you get a good night’s sleep.

Sleep is also beneficial for reflexes and communication between the brain and the body; this is why George, bereft of his forty winks, did not respond with alacrity to the heavy footsteps and off-key humming of Vernon Miller Senior as he advanced in the direction of Gwendolyn’s room. In fact, he had to be pulled into Gwendy’s bedchamber—the nearest sanctuary from the motel-keeper available at short notice—with John and Althea.

This was Gwendy’s lucky night. Now she had a story she could tell in boasting tones to her grandchildren: She had a Beatle in her boudoir. (In fact, she had two, but that didn’t count because she only liked the one. The other she could’ve lived without.) Now, she swiftly realized, was the time for all good women—well, all right, not good women exactly—to come to the aid of the party. She turned to George. “Y’know, you always were my favorite Beatle,” she murmured in that coy and unassuming manner that only the rather shy, clever, bookish type of girl can pull off properly—the intellectual girl’s answer to fine clothes and hourglass figures. “Most of my friends like Paul better, but I think you’re the handsome one.” She took a step forward.

George took a step backwards. “Yeah, that’s just gear, isn’t your dad on his way over here? I think your first priority oughta be seeing he’s thrown off the scent, don’t you?”

Gwendy took another step forward. “Yah, but after that? I have a poem I could read you. I wrote it about you, y’know.”

George took another step backward, and had had to begin to lean back or else he and Gwendy would now be touching at the nose, a prospect the thought of which obviously pleased her much more than it did him. He felt himself bump into a rather unsteady bookcase with Gwendy’s record player on it, and realized with a plummeting feeling in his gut that his balance, along with his chances for discovery, both rested on a walking knife edge named Gwendolyn Miller. Given her apparent sense of priorities at the moment, this was an exceptionally dispiriting thought.

There was a knock at the door. “Gwendy? Why’re you still up?”

If Gwendy had heard her father at the door, she didn’t acknowledge it. “So, how’s about it? Will you listen to my poem?”

George made a rapid assessment of how he felt. He was terrified, irritated, fatigued, dispirited, anxious, maybe even a touch despondent—and that didn’t even begin to encompass the breathtaking variety of physical discomforts he was undergoing. That settled it. This was the widest range of emotional and physical distress George had felt since his adolescence.  “Are you sure,” he whispered, quashing wistful thoughts of bed and dreams, “it couldn’t wait ‘til you’ve shooed your father off?”

She blinked. “I oughta go get rid of him, shouldn’t I?” she said as if the thought had only just occurred to her. “Let me do that.” So saying she went to open the door and affected a yawn. “Yes, Dad-dee?” she asked in a surprisingly convincing impersonation of one recently woken.

“I was just wondering why your light was on, kitten. It’s awfully late, y’know.”

“Oh, that? I was having a hard time falling asleep, and I put some music on. Must’ve worked better than I thought.” She yawned a bit more to emphasize the point. She was a very adept liar—George had to give her that. With a series of major miracles, including the momentary total blinding of Vern Senior, he figured, the narrow-minded Midwestern motel owner might just be fooled into not noticing Althea jammed into the closet, John just behind the door, and George bent backwards on one foot, one stray puff of air away from noisily toppling into his daughter’s music collection.

“All right,” he finally replied in the sincere tones of the oblivious parent. “It’s just it is late, honey, and—I thought maybe some of those European boys were giving you trouble or…or something.”

Gwendy laughed the giggle of the daughter who knows she has her parent safely in the dark. “Oh, Dad-dee,” she tittered in a voice that almost dripped with syrupiness, “you know me better than that.”

No, he bloody doesn’t. George bit back a particularly acerbic wisecrack.

“Well, just as long as you’re okay.” He certainly sounded convinced enough to George. “G’night, Gwendy.”

“G’night, Dad-dee.” The click of the door shutting cued three uncannily simultaneous sighs of relief from around the room.

“So as I was going to say,” said George after John and Althea helped him reposition his center of gravity, “we wanted to ask you if you’d seen your brother Vernon about the place recently. It’s sort of important that Althea here” —he gestured in her direction— “doesn’t miss her appointment with him, on pain of lifelong heartbreak and anguish, sort of thing.” He turned back to the younger Miller daughter. “You wouldn’t happen to have some useful information as to his whereabouts, would you?”

“Dunno.” She glanced meaningly from George to the notebook of her poetry. “What about my poem?”

“I dunno. What about your poem?” During the least five minutes or so George had necessarily placed romantic verse in the position of low man on the priority totem pole.

“What about my chance at happiness?” Althea cut in, panic seeping into her voice around the edges.

“What about my chance at happiness?” Gwendy pointed, by way of elucidation, at George.

“Now, hang on—”

Gwendy gave George a slightly hurt look. “I’m in love with you, you know,” she added, rather matter-of-factly for a girl enamored. “The least you could do is hear my poem.”

“What about my happiness, come to that,” muttered John. The look on his face could only be expressed in words and phrases that would excite scandalized comment in the nightclubs and back alleys of Hamburg. The die appeared cast and he did not like it one tiny bit.

“Oh, that’s it!” Althea stamped her foot. Obviously she’d have to start the ball rolling. “John—shelve your sex drive a minute and use the brain between your ears, it needs the exercise. George, quit having the apoplectic fit, you don’t have any reason for it. Gwendy—if you don’t tell me how I can find your brother and I end up not meeting him tonight, I will personally call your mother and tell her—at length, with evidence—about your regular ‘borrowing’ of my history notes. Have I made myself clear?”

If looks could injure Althea would have been confined to a wheelchair by now. Then, with a look that, if translated into verbiage, would have shocked even John to hear it in the nightclubs and back alleys of Hamburg, Gwendy admitted: “Yeah, I’ve seen him. I saw him about forty, fifty minutes ago, said he was gonna go keep a lookout for you on the second-floor balcony. He figured he couldn’t miss you coming across a flat parking lot. He was going in the direction of you guys’s” —she nodded toward the two Beatles—“rooms. Why don’t you go ask one of your bandmates? They may’ve seen him. Sorry I couldn’t be of any more service.” She ended with a crackle of rebellious sarcasm.

John pondered this. “Couldn’t hurt to ask Ritch about it, could it? How’s it strike you two?”

Althea shrugged. “Fine by me.”

“Well, I’ve gone this far already.” George sighed. “Sounds like a plan. Hey, see if we can ask Paul too.” He smiled, not a little wryly. “If he’s not busy or anything.”

 

 

 

***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? ;-)