“Anything cold would be wonderful,” he said gratefully. “I’ve been walking for hours. God, it’s hot out there. Look, do you suppose I could use your shower before we get talking?”
“Of course. You know where it is. Wups—half a minute.”
She went quickly to the bedroom, shut the door behind her, popped the tape and put it and its box under the bed. After a second’s hesitation she took off the vibrator and put that under the bed too. Then she adjusted the air unit to sweep the musk from the room, opened the door, and told him to come ahead. She was dimly aware that she was on dangerous ground. But she heard herself say, “I’ll bring you that drink,” as he disappeared into the master bathroom.
She was back with the drink nearly at once. She saw her hand reach for the bathroom doorknob, and forced it to knock instead. “Here’s a knock for you,” she punned, and he reached out for the drink. “Thanks, Ruby.” She glimpsed a third of his bare upper torso and kept her face straight with a great effort until the door had closed again. Then she stood there, wrestling with her thoughts, until she heard the shower start up. The urge to go through that door was nearly overwhelming.
Well, she thought, there’s only one way to defuse this. She went to her bed and stretched out on it. She switched the TV to the movie channel with the sound suppressed. I’m perfectly safe until the water stops, she thought, and when it does I just turn the sound up and pull the robe over me. Between my hair-trigger and this damned drug, there should be plenty of time. Reassured, she parted the robe and began to masturbate furiously. Just a door away, she thought wildly, that’s the closest I’ve been to really cheating since I wrecked my first marriage.
The bathroom door opened and he emerged, dripping wet, the shower still roaring behind him.
They both froze in shock. She could see each individual water droplet on his body with total clarity, could see her tiny reflection in half a hundred of them, dancing with reflected TV light. His hair was still mostly dry. His erection was rampant. There was a mole just below his left ribs. She knew she would never forget the sight of him as long as she lived. “Was there something you wanted?” she heard herself say.
It took him two tries to get his voice working. “I won’t lie to you, Ruby. I was looking for your laundry hamper.”
Her weirdness quotient had been exceeded long since. “My laundry hamper.”
“I was jerking off in the shower, and suddenly I wanted something that smelled like you. I’ve wanted you for a long time, Ruby—you know that.”
His penis twitched with his pulse. It had a different curve than Paul’s. She spread her legs wide, and framed her vagina with her fingers. “Do you think this will smell enough like me, Sam?”
He came to her at once.
In the midst of it all, she momentarily regained enough rationality to be stunned at how good it was. One of the things that had helped her overcome the infrequent temptations of the last twenty years had been the awareness that on a purely physical level, no brief encounter with a stranger could ever be as satisfying as what she got from a husband who had devoted himself to a study of her body, of her likes and dislikes and her unique personal erogenous zones. Why, the logic went, risk all that for a seven-second spasm that was bound to be inferior? As Paul liked to say, familiarity breeds content.
She had failed, she now saw, to allow for the possibility of telepathy. Or rather, for the possibility that telepathy might come to pass between two people who had not spent years working on it. Sam seemed to sense her desires almost before she did, or else miraculously had precisely dovetailing desires of his own. Nor was he catering to her; there was a delicious selfishness in the way he plundered her.
She revelled in the newness of him, glorified in the discovery of hair where she was not accustomed to finding any, of bones and muscles knit together in unfamiliar ways, of an unmistakeably differently shaped penis, a mouth that tasted different. She had always known that variety was sweet, but in the more than two decades since she had foresworn it she had not thought she missed it. Now it enraptured her. And there was an extra fillip to her joy, for she had only had two other Caucasians in her life, and one of those a woman, and the straight hair snarled in her fingers now was a sweet mystery. For the first time in her life she came with her legs up in the air, and clawed deep tracks in his back without knowing it.
When she could see and hear and think again, she realized that he was still in her, still hard, still thrusting. All at once she was horrified at herself and what she had done. It was in her mind to expel him and roll away, to stop short at least of that one final symbolic infidelity, the acceptance of someone else’s sperm. She wanted to do so very much. But she could not do it to Sam—poor, dear Sam, who had not asked to be involved in her problems, and had gone too far to stop now. She saw that she must, for her honour, do her very best to bring him off, and then send him home and never never never be alone with him again.
Which gave it all a sort of bittersweet poignance that, after a short time, was startlingly erotic—she felt herself being caught up again in the passion she was dutifully trying to fake. His knowing hands caressed her flanks, came up to knead her breasts against his chest, slid up her throat to her hair. Her breath came in noisy gulps, and she knew she was getting close again. His hands left her hair then and curled over both her ears, a split second after he murmured “Give me your tongue,” and automatically she did and as he sucked it hard between his lips and came like gangbusters her eyes opened wide as they could go and looked into his from a distance of a few centimeters. His eyes were sparkling. She clutched at the top of his head and felt where the scalp flap had been resutured, and as his hands came away from her ears and went down to push her legs out straight beneath him she heard him whisper in her open mouth, “Happy Annibirthary, darling—Sam said to give you his best,” and her heart—there is no other way to say it—came.
Rubber Soul
Rubber Soul
But I don’t believe in this stuff, he thought, enjoying himself hugely. I said I didn’t, weren’t you listening?
He sensed amusement in those around him—Mum, Dad, Stuart, Brian, Mal, and the rest—but not in response to his attempt at irony. It was more like the amusement of a group of elders at a young man about to lose his virginity, amusement at his too-well-understood bravado. It was too benevolent to anger him, but it did succeed in irritating him. He determined to do this thing as well as it had ever been done.
Dead easy, he punned. New and scary and wonderful, that’s what I’m good at. Let’s go!
Then the source of the bright green light came that one increment nearer, and he was transfixed.
Oh!
Time stopped, and he began to understand.
And was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and yanked backwards. Foot of the line for you, my lad! He howled his protest, but the light began to recede; he felt himself moving backwards through the tunnel, slowly at first but with constant acceleration. He clutched at Dad and Mum, but for the second time they slipped through his fingers and were gone. The walls of the tunnel roared past him, the light grew faint, and then all at once he was in interstellar space, and the light was lost among a million billion other pinpoints. A planet was below him, rushing up fast, a familiar blue-green world.
Bloody hell, he thought. Not again!
Clouds whipped up past him. He was decelerating, somehow without stress. Landscape came up at him, an immense sprawling farm. He was aimed like a bomb at a large three-storey house, but he was decelerating so sharply now that he was not afraid. Sure enough, he reached the roof at the speed of a falling leaf—and sank gracefully through the roof, and the attic, finding himself at rest just below the ceiling of a third-floor room.
Given its rural setting, the room could hardly have been more incongruous. It looked like a very good Intensive Care Unit, with a single client. Two doctors garbed in traditional white gathered around the figure on the bed, adjusting wires and tubes, monitoring terminal re
adouts, moving with controlled haste.
The room was high-ceilinged; he floated about six feet above the body on the bed. He had always been nearsighted. He squinted down, and recognition came with a shock.
Christ! You’re joking! I done that bit.
He began to sink downward. He tried to resist, could not. The shaven skull came closer, enveloped him. He gave up and invested the motor centers, intending to use this unwanted body to kick and punch and scream. Too late he saw the trap: the body was full of morphine. He had time to laugh with genuine appreciation at this last joke on him, and then consciousness faded.
After a measureless time he woke. Nothing hurt; he felt wonderful and lethargic. Nonetheless he knew from experience that he was no longer drugged, at least not heavily. Someone was standing over him, an old man he thought he knew.
“Mister Mac,” he said, mildly surprised.
The other shook his head. “Nope. He’s dead.”
“So am I.”
Another deadpan headshake from the old man. “Dirty rumour. We get ’em all the time, you and I.”
His eyes widened. The voice was changed, but unmistakable. “Oh my God—it’s you!”
“I often wonder.”
“But you’re old.”
“So are you, son. Oh, you don’t look it, I’ll grant you that, but if I told you how old you are you’d laugh yourself spastic, honest. Here, let me lift your bed.”
The bed raised him to a half-sitting position, deliciously comfortable. “So you froze me carcass and then brought me back to life?”
The old man nodded. “Me and him.” He gestured behind him.
The light was poor, but he could make out a figure seated in the darkness on the far side of the room. “Who—?”
The other stood and came forward slowly.
My God, was his first thought. It’s me! Then he squinted—and chuckled. “What do you know? The family Jules. Hello, son.”
“Hello, Dad.”
“You’re a man grown, I see. It’s good to see you. You look good.” He ran out of words.
The man addressed began to smile, and burst into tears and fled the room.
He turned back to his older visitor. “Bit of a shock, I expect.”
They looked at each other for an awkward moment. There were things that both wanted to say. Neither was quite ready yet.
“Where’s Mother?” he asked finally.
“Not here,” the old man said. “She didn’t want any part of it.”
“Really?” He was surprised, not sure whether or not to be hurt.
“She’s into reincarnation, I think. This is all blasphemy and witchcraft to her. She cooperated—she gave us permission, and helped us cover up and all. But she doesn’t want to hear about it. I don’t know if she’ll want to see you, even.”
He thought about it. “I can understand that. I promised Mother once I’d never haunt her. Only fair. She still makin’ music?”
“I don’t think so.”
There was another awkward silence.
“How’s the wife?” he asked.
The old man winced slightly. “Well enough, I hear. She went right back out the window a while back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorriest thing I’ve seen all day, son. You comfy?”
“Yeah. How about Sean?”
“He doesn’t know about this yet. His mother decided not to burden him with it while he was growing up. But you can see him if you want, in a few days. You’ll like him, he’s turned out well. He loves you.”
A surge of happiness suffused him, settled into a warm glow. To cover it he looked around the room, squinting at the bewildering array of machines and instruments. “This must have set you back a packet.”
The old man smiled for the first time. “What’s the good of being a multimillionaire if you can’t resurrect the dead once in a while?”
“Aye, I’ve thought that a few times myself.” He was still not ready to speak his heart. “What about the guy that got me?”
“Copped it in the nick. Seems a lot of your best fans were behind bars.”
“Why’d he do it?”
“Who knows? Some say he thought he was you, and you were an impostor. Some say he just wanted to be somebody. He said God told him to do it, ’coz you were down on churches and that.”
“Oh, Jesus. The silly fucker.” He thought for a time. “You know that one I wrote about bein’ scared, when I was alone that time?”
“I remember.”
“Truest words I ever wrote. God, what a fuckin’ prophet! ‘Hatred and jealousy, gonna be the death of me.’”
“You had it backwards, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Nobody ever had a better reason to hate you than Jules.”
He made no reply.
“And nobody ever had better reason to be jealous of you than me.”
Again he was speechless.
“But it was him thought it up in time, and me pulled it off. His idea and enthusiasm. My money. Maybe nobody else on Earth could have made that much nicker drop off the books. So you got that backwards, about them bein’ the death of you.” He smiled suddenly. “Old Jules. Just doin’ what I told him to do, really.”
“Makin’ it better.”
The old man nodded. “He let you under his skin, you see.”
“Am I the first one they brought back, then?”
“One of the first half-dozen. That Wilson feller in California got his daughter back. It’s not exactly on the National Health.”
“And nobody knows but you and Jules? And Mother?”
“Three doctors. My solicitor. A cop in New York used to know, a Captain, but he died. And George and Ringo know, they send their best.”
He winced. “I was rough on George.”
“That you were, son. He forgives you, of course. Nobody else knows in all the wide world.”
“Christ, that’s a relief. I thought I was due for another turn on the flaming cupcake. Can you imagine if they fuckin’ knew? It’d be like the last time was nothing.”
It was the old man’s first real grin, and it melted twenty years or more from his face. “Sometimes when I’m lying awake I get the giggles just thinking about it.”
He laughed aloud, noting that it did not hurt to laugh. “Talk about upstaging Jesus!”
They laughed together, the old man and the middle-aged man. When the laugh ended, they discovered to their mutual surprise that they were holding hands. The irony of that struck them both simultaneously. But they were both of them used to irony that might have stunned a normal man, and used to sharing such irony with each other; they did not let go. And so now there was only the last question to be asked.
“Why did you do it, then? Spend all that money and all that time to bring me back?”
“Selfish reasons.”
“Right. Did it ever occur to you that you might be calling me back from something important?”
“I reckoned that if I could pull it off, then it was okay for me to do it.”
He thought wistfully of the green light…but he was, for better or worse, truly alive now. Which was to say that he wanted to stay alive. “Your instincts were always good. Even back in the old scufflin’ days.”
“I didn’t much care, if you want to know the truth of it. You left me in the lurch, you know. It was the end of the dream, you dying, and everybody reckoned I was the one broke us up so it was my fault somehow. I copped it all. My music turned to shit and they stopped comin’ to hear it, I don’t remember which happened first. It all went sour when you snuffed it, lad. You had to go and break my balls in that last interview…”
“That was bad karma,” he agreed. “Did you call me back to haunt me, then? Do you want me to go on telly and set the record straight or something?”
The grip on his hand tightened.
“I called you back because you’re a better songwriter than I am. Because I miss you.” The old man did not cry easi
ly. “Because I love you.” He broke, and wept unashamedly. “I’ve always loved you, Johnny. It’s shitty without you around.”
“Oh Christ, I love you too, Paulie.” They embraced, clung to each other and wept together for some time.
At last the old man released him and stepped back. “It’s a rotten shame we’re not gay. We always did make such beautiful music together.”
“Only the best fuckin’ music in the history of the world.”
“We will again. The others are willing. Nobody else would ever know. No tapes, nothing. Just sit around and play.”
“You’re incorrigible.” But he was interested. “Are you serious? How could you possibly keep a thing like that secret? No bloody way—”
“It’s been a long time,” the old man interrupted. “You taught me, you taught all three of us, a long time ago, how to drop off the face of the earth. Just stop making records and giving interviews. They don’t even come ’round on anniversaries any more. It’ll be dead easy.”
He was feeling somewhat weary. “How…how long has it been?”
“Since you snuffed it? Get this—I told you it’d give you a laugh. It’s been two dozen years.”
He worked it out, suddenly beginning to giggle. “You mean, I’m—?”
The old man was giggling too. “Yep.”
He roared with laughter. “Will you still feed me, then?”
“Aye,” the old man said, “And I’ll always need you, too.”
Slowly he sobered. The laugh had cost him the last of his strength. He felt sleep coming. “Do you really think it’ll be good, old friend? Is it gonna be fun?”
“As much fun as whatever you’ve been doing for the last twenty-four years? I dunno. What was it like?”
“I dunno any more. I can’t remember. Oh—Stu was there, and Brian.” His voice slurred. “I think it was okay.”
“This is going to be okay, too. You’ll see. I’ve given you the middle eight. Last verse was always your specialty.”
He nodded, almost asleep now. “You always did believe in yesterday.”
The old man watched his sleeping friend for a time. Then he sighed deeply and went to comfort Julian and phone the others.
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