"That was him?" Paul nudged Jean. His eyes were wide, and he was staring at the door through which John had just left with the officers. "Jean. That was really him?"

"Sorry," Agnes broke in, "I'm confused. Did you know that guy?"

Jean inhaled sharply; for a moment there she had forgotten to breathe. She was lost for words – it was too much, too much.

"Ma'am?" The officer at the front desk had cocked his head and was watching her. "Can I help you?"

She made her way toward the desk, her mind racing, with Paul and Agnes following her on either side. What now? Did she ask about John or her parents? Should she even ask about her parents?

"Um, there was an act of vandalism," she began, "in my neighborhood."

"I see." The officer plucked a pen from a swirly metal pencil case next to his computer, then rotated in the chair toward a legal pad and began writing something down. "Do you know who committed the vandalism?"

"No," she said faintly.

"What happened, exactly?"

"Someone painted something on my parents' house. A slur, I think."

The pen stopped to perch over the paper, and the officer looked up to watch her. There was something in his eyes that was probing her, something she didn't like. "What type of slur?" he asked cautiously.

She stared at him. A feeling of unease dropped into her stomach and spread there, like ink.

"Um–" Her voice faltered. "Um, I don't know exactly what it said."

"Has a slur ever been used against your family before?"

She knew what he was asking – he wanted to know if they deserved it, if they had earned whatever word they had been called. If they were gay, or foreign, or interracial…Any answer to that question would be a forfeit in and of itself. Why the hell was she even here? Dana was smart – if going to the police was the smart thing to do, then Dana would have done it. Jean could have kicked herself.

"What are you asking?" asked Agnes.

"I think the young lady knows what I'm asking," said the officer, still looking at Jean.

"You know what," she said slowly, "never mind. I overreacted."

The man stared at her. "Any…deviance in your neighborhood," he said, "is probably something the police should be aware of. Don't you think?" His voice was very quiet.

Deviance. "Yes," said Jean, "but I haven't even seen it myself, I probably just overreacted. Thank you. But never mind."

Paul seemed to take this (correctly) as a cue that the subject needed to change. Stepping forward to shift the focus of the conversation away from Jean, he asked the officer, "Pardon me, sir, but who was that man they just led away?"

"I'd like to know that myself," Agnes muttered, but Jean and Paul ignored her.

The officer's gaze slid from Jean to Paul, and then down to the paper he had been writing on. Then he shrugged, crumpled up the paper, and tossed it away. "Disturbing the peace? That guy?"

"Yes."

The officer turned back to his desktop computer, rapidly losing interest in the conversation. "John Weston Lennon," he said dully. "No, Winston – John Winston Lennon. Finished his paperwork just now."

"What's he done?" Paul looked oddly invested, for someone who had never even met John before.

The man glanced up at Paul with only his eyes, his body and face still entirely disinterested. "He a friend of yours?"

Paul looked unsure of what to say, so Jean jumped in. "Friend of a friend," she said quickly.

Jean could tell from the corner of her vision that Agnes was staring at her, but she said nothing. She could explain later – if it was even the best decision to explain at all. She hardly knew Agnes, and for all she knew, the girl would think it was all crazy.

Then again, it was going to be hard to leave here and not want to talk this all over with Paul right away.

"I'm sorry," said the officer, who didn't seem sorry at all as he returned his gaze to his computer screen. "But I can't discuss his crimes with you. It's confidential."

"Confidential?" Paul started in disbelief, but Jean cut him off.

"Can we see him?"

"You're not family," said the officer, "so no."

The conversation felt like it had hit a dead end. Agnes kept trying to make eye contact with Jean, who kept looking at the police officer and pretending not to notice. The officer was paying attention now only to his computer, until he realized a moment later that the three of them were still standing there and lifted his gaze once again, raising his eyebrows this time.

"Was there anything else?" he asked dryly.

A sinking feeling settled into Jean's stomach. "No," she muttered, turning away. Paul looked like he desperately wanted to keep pressing the officer, but she met his eyes first and gave a minute shake of her head. They made their way out of the fluorescent air-conditioned station and into the street, where the sun was beginning to set, spreading orange light over the tops of the buildings.

As soon as they were back in the pickup truck, Agnes turned in the driver's seat to face Jean. "Did you know that guy?" She twisted around to look at Paul in the backseat. "Both of you?"

"Friend of mine," said Paul.

"My ass," said Agnes shortly. "You didn't recognize him, Jean did – but as soon as she did, you seemed like you knew who he was. What's with that? I'm not starting this car until you answer," she added.

Paul and Jean exchanged glances, and then Paul shrugged.

"Hey," he said, "if she thinks you're off your rocker and you lose a friend, it's no skin off my back."

Jean sighed. He was right – why should Paul care if Agnes knew?

Turning back to face Agnes, she said, "He is Paul's friend. They just haven't met yet."

Agnes frowned. "What?"

"For God's sake, Jean," Paul broke in, "you've always got to phrase it in the most cryptic way possible. Look, Agnes," he said, "apparently there's this big band, or there was anyway, back in the sixties, and now the whole world's forgotten about it. I was a part of it, and my friend George, and that fellow in there, too. Jean recognized us, and now she's trying to bring us all back together – or something."

Agnes closed her eyes for a moment, as though she was trying to process it all. When she opened them again, she said, "I assume you've got a valid reason for believing her?"

"She recognized us," Paul said again, "that's three of us now, she knew our names – and she knew this song I'd written that I hadn't ever shown anybody."

Agnes' eyebrows were knitted together. Slowly she said, "You know, she did say something weird, that first day of class – she said she recognized you. And she acted like I should have recognized you, too. Like you were famous."

"Because he was famous," said Jean. "They all were. It's just that – for some reason – I'm the only one who remembers it now."

Agnes shook her head, then looked back over through the windshield, at the lights of the police station across the parking lot. "So that guy–"

"His name's John Lennon," Jean said. "He's one of them. We were looking for him and thought we'd hit a wall, but…that was him."

Agnes blinked. Jean fully expected her to start laughing, or to get angry with them for playing a trick on her, or at least to shake her head again in disbelief. Something.

Instead Agnes demanded, "So you're just giving up?"

Jean stared at her. "What?"

"The universe has pulled itself together for half a second and done something magical for you," Agnes said plainly. "You find the guy you're looking for, and that's it? You're just going to fold and drive away?"

Jean secretly admired her sudden determination, but she was also a little annoyed. "Well, what am I supposed to do?"

Agnes paused for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision. She pushed open her car door and walked around the wide front of the trunk, and when she reached Jean's side, she held out one hand to Jean. In it she held a small chain with the key to the car.

Jean frowned. "What are you–"

"Take it," Agnes said simply. "Go to your parents' house and deal with your crisis. I'll keep watch here and call you when he comes out."

"Agnes, that could be hours. If he even comes out tonight at all."

"So," she said, "I'll get myself some good old police station waiting room coffee."

"I don't think that's a thing," said Paul helpfully, from the backseat.

Jean shook her head. For some reason she still felt resistant to it – taking Agnes' dad's car and leaving her here by herself. And like she had been thinking before, if either one of them was going to find out about her parents, she would rather have it be Agnes than Paul, even though she still couldn't have entirely said why.

"You're not changing my mind," said Agnes. "I'll call you right away, I swear. Now go."

Jean was still hesitating, so Paul pushed open his own door, came around, and grabbed the keys out of her hand. "For Christ's sake," he said, and then slid into the driver's seat himself and shut the door.

Agnes was still smiling, standing there on the pavement outside the car, and Jean still felt lost. "Why?" she asked Agnes, as Paul turned the key in the ignition and she felt the old truck thrum to life beneath and around her.

Agnes shrugged. "I like helping," she said.

Then they pulled away and left her alone in the police station parking lot, waving at them as they went.

It was nearly dark by the time the truck pulled into Jean's driveway, but the word on the garage door was so glaring and thick that Jean felt sure she would have seen it there even if it had been midnight. Fags. It was done in red spray paint, and before it had dried some of it had dripped down the door in thin stripes. It looked a little like blood in the darkness.

Jean shut the car door behind her and started heading up the drive, trying to look straight ahead so that she didn't have to see either Paul or the word, but when she reached the front door, Paul hadn't followed her.

She turned. He was standing in the middle of her yard still, staring at the word on the garage door with a strange look on his face, caught somewhere between horror and a failure to understand.

"Come on," she said wearily. Her voice was quiet, but there was no other sound on the block that could have kept him from hearing.

"Are your parents–?"

"Yes."

The answer left her before she was even conscious of thinking it. She was too tired, too tired not to trust Paul. This was Paul, so she trusted him. That was it.

Before she even had time to wonder if she had made a mistake, Paul asked in a hoarse voice, "Who would do something like that?"

"I don't know. Come on."

She pushed open the door without knocking, and at first seemed to find the house empty. The lights were off, and she could hear the heater running, but everything else was still. For a moment, everything looked like it would on a normal night, back in high school, Jean coming home late after being out with friends – the wooden floors all covered in mismatched knotted rugs, the frozen smiles of old black-and-white movie stars lining the walls behind plastic frames, the cat-shaped cuckoo clock ticking on the wall. The house was modestly sized, and it had always seemed to Jean to open up in the darkness – probably because Dana always cleaned everything extensively at the end of the day. The openness now seemed less inviting than usual, and instead eerie, unsure. Then she heard hushed voices coming from down the hallway.

"Mom?" she said, drawing closer, and at once the voices stopped.

Cassie appeared in the opposite doorway, the one that led into the kitchen. She was wearing paint-stained jeans and a loose jacket that had once been red but had somehow faded into orange a little with time – Jean recognized it instantly as Cassie's sleep jacket, her rainy day jacket. But Cassie didn't look sleepy.

"Oh, Jean," said Cassie, and then Jean was there in the doorway with her and they were hugging. Jean breathed in the smell of the jacket, and even though she had only been at college for a few weeks, it suddenly felt like years. Cassie smelled like home, and yet at the same time none of this felt like home at all.

"I'm sorry," whispered Jean.

"It's okay." Pulling away and looking over Jean's shoulder, Cassie asked, "Who's this?"

Paul was standing alone in the hallway, and to his credit, he didn't look awkward at all. "I'm Paul McCartney," he said, and held out his hand for her to shake it.

She did, managing a smile. "It's nice to meet you, Paul. I'm Cassie."

The whole exchange sent a momentary current of something through Jean's heart. She felt warm and sad all at the same time. There had never been a moment up until now when she had wished more strongly that the rest of the world could only remember – and if not the rest of the world, if nobody else, then at least Cassie. Jean liked the Beatles as much as the next average person, but Cassie loved them. The number of times she had talked about Paul to Jean – and now here he was, in the flesh, shaking hands with her, and she didn't even remember.

Cassie led them into the kitchen, where Dana was sitting at the table there, her head leaning into one hand as if she had a headache. At the sight of Jean she stood up, smiling a little, and pulled Jean into a hug.

"This is Jean's friend, Paul," Cassie told Dana.

"It's nice to meet you."

"Likewise," said Paul.

"What were you guys talking about?" asked Jean, lingering near the table but not sitting down. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to sit down. "Before we came in?"

Dana and Cassie exchanged glances, and there was a certain weight there that Jean recognized instantly. Dana, of course, was the one to answer – Dana always took the reins on things like this, things that mattered.

"Nothing really," she said. "Just what we're going to do next."

Doesn't sound like nothing to me, Jean thought. "What are you going to do next? You're not going to move, are you?" She hoped that they didn't, and then a moment later she hoped that she did. She knew this home, this neighborhood, she loved it here – but she also didn't want to feel anxious all the time, knowing that her parents were living in a place where people knew about them. They were probably thinking the same thing.

"We've been talking about it," said Dana.

"Probably not too far," Cassie added quickly, "just to the other side of town or something like that–"

"Nothing's been decided yet," Dana cut her off. She sounded a little terse.

"Oh," said Jean. She shifted where she was standing. She wasn't really sure what to say, and she knew Paul must have felt even more awkward than she did. "You could move to Cavern City," she said then, brightly. "You'd be closer to me, and it's far enough from here that you wouldn't know as many people."

"I did suggest that," said Cassie, glancing over at Dana.

Dana shook her head. "It's just a lot to think about, Jean. If someone reports us here, it might not matter where we move – they know our names, so changing addresses might not even help."

"So you're going to stay?"

"I don't know. Can we even talk about – who is he again?" she asked, looking straight at Paul but addressing Dana. She sounded exasperated and didn't exactly come across as friendly, but Paul didn't look offended.

"He's a friend," Jean jumped in before Paul could say anything. "We can trust him. Right?" she asked Paul.

"Sure," he said, as though that should have been obvious.

"'Sure,'" Dana mimicked him. "This is serious, Jean. It's our lives."

"Mom," said Jean, stunned. "I said we could trust him."

"Fine." She waved her off. "But look, I'm sick of being the only person around here who takes these things seriously. It's exhausting."

"Day, we all take it seriously," said Cassie, but she sounded more tired than argumentative.

"I know, but just – Jesus. I don't want to have to be the one pointing out the facts and making the hard decisions all the time. I'm not the bad guy here, I'm just trying to protect you guys and somehow it always seems to come off that way." Her hands were on her hips now and she was looking back and forth between Cassie and Jean; Dana wasn't the type to avoid eye contact when she was confronting people.

Jean didn't want to argue with her, not when she had just gotten here, and Cassie never wanted to argue with anybody, so neither one of them ended up saying anything. After a moment Dana sighed and said, "I'm going to sleep. Goodnight."

"I love you, Mom," said Jean softly.

Dana gave in and pulled her in for a hug. "Thank you for coming." She said it into the hair that fell over Jean's ear.

When they pulled apart, Cassie said, even more quietly than Jean had, "I love you, Dana."

"I love you, too," Dana muttered without turning around, and then she was gone from the room.

Cassie smiled weakly at Jean and Paul. "She'll come around," she said.

"You both will," said Paul unexpectedly.

She looked at him. "What?"

"I mean you'll come around to each other," he said. "Right?"

There was a moment's pause, and then she smiled. Her eyebrows knitted just slightly and she smiled as though she hadn't seen him at first, but did now. "Right," she said. "It was nice meeting you, Paul."

He nodded. Then Cassie hugged Jean goodnight – "Turn off the kitchen lights when you go up, all right?" – and headed out and down the hallway toward her and Dana's room.

Jean realized then that she was hungry, and that in fact neither she nor Paul had had any dinner, so she rummaged around in the fridge until she found some Styrofoam containers of leftover Thai food, then led him out of the kitchen and up the narrow staircase so that they could eat it in her room.

She expected it to feel strange stepping back into it, having been gone at school, but it didn't – perhaps she hadn't been away long enough. It felt nice actually, natural, seeing the squashed twin mattress on the floor in the corner, the wooden dresser with all of the old makeup and nail polish she never used anymore, the dark sea-blue walls covered in her own paintings and sketches. Paul halted a moment in the doorway when they walked in, staring around in awe.

"Jesus, Jean," he said. "These are really good."

She felt herself blushing and tried to stop, annoyed with herself. "Thanks."

"I mean honestly." He paced around the room a little, stopping to gaze at what seemed like every single scrap of drawing paper and canvas. Her charcoal sketches, her watercolors. She had paintings up of every house and apartment building she had ever lived in, of Dana and Cassie and herself and some old friends from her childhood, of random barns and fields she'd caught glimpses of through the car window. "You do everything," said Paul, and his voice was full of reverence. "I had no idea. It's incredible."

She felt a warmth inside of her then, a love not for Paul but for herself, for her room, spurred by Paul. She loved this room. It was where she felt talented and, even more, where her talent was of consequence. The rest of the world, it seemed, could have cared less about art, about drawing and painting and probably Jean herself, but here, this room, was where art was everywhere. She thought suddenly of George's room, of the walls covered in posters of musicians, and wondered if he felt the same way.

"Thanks," she said again, meaning it a little more this time, and then she sat down on one end of the mattress, leaving room so that he could do the same. He sat down across from her and she opened the Styrofoam box, handing him a fork, and together they started in on the day-old pad Thai.

"Are your parents going to be okay?" Paul asked her, after they had been eating for a few minutes and the gnawing feeling of hunger had subsided.

Jean shrugged. "They always are, I guess," she said. "They're both pretty freaked out, I think, and since they've got different personalities it comes out in different ways. But they love each other. They'll be fine."

"Do they fight a lot normally?"

She thought about that for a moment as she chewed. "As much as anybody," she said finally, once she had swallowed. "Like I said, different personalities, so they're bound to clash a little bit every now and then. Mostly, though, no. Cassie doesn't like fighting, and Dana thinks it's a waste of time except when she really cares about something."

"That's a good perspective, I reckon," said Paul.

"What about your parents?" she asked. "Do they fight?"

He laughed. "As much as anybody," he said, echoing her words. "But I had a good childhood, you know, it'd be ridiculous to complain."

That was good to hear. She realized now that she didn't know anything about any of the Beatles' backgrounds – if they had grown up rich or poor, if they had any siblings, what their parents were like. She and Paul talked for a while over the leftovers, trading off stories about their families and friends and their lives growing up, and sometime after midnight they both started drifting off. It wasn't until Paul's eyes started to droop in the middle of his own mumbled sentence that it occurred to Jean that maybe she should track down some blankets and make him his own makeshift bed on the floor, but she was so tired and it was so dark and there was room enough for the both of them on the full, anyway, and Paul didn't seem to mind. A moment later he was completely asleep, lying on his back on one side of the mattress with his head still tilted in her direction.

She hesitated just half a moment further, but then the urge to sleep overpowered her and she gave up, laying her own head down on her pillow. If Paul had any problem with sharing a bed with her, he could take it up with her in the morning.

In fact, Paul never made it to morning. He jolted awake several hours later, inexplicably energized and thinking about Agnes.

His first thought was actually that, fuck, he had fallen asleep in the middle of talking to Jean – but then he saw Jean lying next to him on the mattress, facing away from him, her upper body lifting and falling in a steady rhythm as she breathed. The room was dark – maybe one of them had turned off the light at some point, or maybe it hadn't been on to begin with. Either way, he moved slowly as he got up from the mattress, careful not to make any extra sounds so as not to wake Jean, feeling his way around in the dark until at last his fingers closed around the doorknob.

They had never heard back from Agnes. They had left her there at night, with no car and possibly no money, unless she'd had some on her already. And no food. He felt even guiltier remembering how quickly he and Jean had gone through that pad Thai, not having had dinner before they'd driven to Ajax. As he padded quietly down the stairs in his socks, he wondered whether it would be rude to grab some food now from the fridge or something, to take there for her, but decided against it. He didn't want to make a bunch of noise in the kitchen, and they could easily get food somewhere as soon as he picked her up.

He had seen Jean leave the key ring on a hook by the door in the entry, so he grabbed it now on his way out, closing the door quietly behind him. Then he jogged down the front steps and slid into the driver's seat of the pickup truck. It wasn't until he turned the key in the ignition and saw the time light up on the dashboard that he realized what time it was: just after four-thirty in the morning.

There was no way she would still be there, he thought as he pulled back out of the driveway. She must have gone somewhere else by now. Nobody just loiters in a police station parking lot until four-thirty in the morning. Still, he felt he had to check anyway – it was all he could do, really, and he felt this strange feeling of anticipation, like something was going to happen and somehow he knew it was important that he be there. He couldn't have fallen back asleep if he'd stayed in Jean's room; he knew even now that he would have just laid there in the darkness, shifting around, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what it was he was missing.

He thought there was no one in the parking lot when he first pulled in, but then he saw her, sitting on the curb next to another figure in a green hooded jacket. When he parked the car and got out, he saw that it was another girl, younger than them, with two light brown braids coming down on both sides of her shoulders. They were lumpy and had hair sticking out of them at random angles; it was as though the girl had been sleeping, and had only just woken up. Her skin was very clear and she wasn't smiling.

"Hey," yawned Agnes as Paul walked toward them. She didn't stand up. "He hasn't come out yet. Thought you'd be sleeping."

"I thought you'd be sleeping," he shot back. "Why didn't you call us? We didn't mean to leave you here all night."

She shrugged. "It hasn't been that bad. I've got company."

Paul looked at the girl in the green jacket, who had been staring haggardly up at him and showed no sign of wanting to speak. "Hi," he said doubtfully. "I'm Paul."

She nodded once, letting her head hang slightly forward and then picking it back up again. Her look said, I'm done with this bullshit, and nothing else. Then she reached into one of her jacket pockets, pulled out a small index card that had yellowed along its crease, and handed it to Paul.

He unfolded it. In hand-scrawled black pen it read, PAUL MCCARTNEY.

He looked at her and frowned. "Did Agnes tell you?"

The girl didn't answer, and Agnes shrugged, as if to say, Don't look at me.

"Who are you?" Paul asked the girl.

The girl looked over at Agnes, who handed him another index card: PILGRIM.

"Pilgrim?" he said. "That's your name?"

"'S what I've been calling her," said Agnes. "She's not very informative."

"Do you know her?"

"No. She's nice, though. Keeps me awake."

"How's that?" asked Paul, again doubtfully. So far he hadn't seen the girl do anything other than sit there and pull out an index card.

Again Agnes shrugged.

"Okay," said Paul, deciding to give up for the moment, "well, I came to relieve you, Agnes. I can't sleep anyway, and you must be exhausted, so I thought we'd switch places. You can take the truck back to Jean's house and sleep there, and I'll keep watch here for John." Glancing sidelong at the other girl – Pilgrim? – for a moment, he asked offhandedly, "Do you know John, too?"

She cocked her head and gave him a look that could only be described as flat and fed up, as if to say, Are you fucking kidding me? The "fucking" included. Everything about her exuded teenage apathy, the exact sentiment of why-did-you-people-wake-me-up. It struck Paul as a little uncalled for.

"It would be nice to get some sleep," said Agnes thoughtfully. She looked perfectly awake, but exhausted at the same time; her eyes were red-rimmed and baggy. "Are you sure you wouldn't mind?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

She looked over at Pilgrim. "Would you mind?"

That same flat look was still in the girl's eyes. She gave no answer, verbal or otherwise.

Agnes sighed. "All right," she said, getting to her feet. He handed her the keys, and she clapped him on the back as she passed him, walking slowly to the car. When she turned it back on, the headlights startled Paul, but not Pilgrim, who made no effort even to shield her eyes.

As the pickup truck rumbled out of the parking lot, Paul turned toward the girl, knowing there was some question he wanted to ask but having no idea how to phrase it, but she was standing up and brushing off her jeans. She put both hands in her jacket pockets and started walking away across the darkened parking lot.

"Hey," he said, "where are you going?"

One hand emerged from the jacket, and she turned around only briefly, just to flick another folded index card in his direction. He stepped forward to pick it up off the grainy asphalt and unfolded it, wondering whether she would ever want any of these cards back, and read:

JOHN LENNON.

"Hey," he shouted, looking up, but she was already gone.

He sat down after twenty minutes of pacing, and about an hour later he began to get bleary-eyed. Cars rolled one by one into the parking lot and officers headed inside, but he kept off to the side, and nobody asked him who he was or what he was doing. Lights came on up and down the street, and gradually the sky rose from its deep black into a flushed dark blue, and then the sun was visible all at once through distant suburban trees and cracks between the buildings, and the air was cold and pink. Paul's head was numb and he was shivering, and the world was beginning to blur when the door finally opened and John Lennon came out.

He was with a woman – not an old woman, but she looked much older than she was because she had pulled all of her hair into a very tight bun behind her head. She was dressed nicely and scowling, steering John toward an Audi parked near where Paul was sitting.

Paul got up slowly, waiting for his limbs to reawaken, as though he and John knew one another and therefore he expected John to stop and recognize him. As though he had been waiting, and now the two of them were meeting up as planned.

And John did stop, as soon as he reached him.

The two of them stared at one another. John didn't look tired, despite having spent the night in the police station, but he did look a little amused. Paul blinked hard against the early morning sunlight, his eyes thick and gummy and his mouth tasting sour, and tried not to think about what he must have looked like.

"Hello," he said.

John looked him over. "Hello yourself."

The woman had stopped walking, too, but for her it was more a matter of confusion. "We haven't got any money," she told Paul briskly, and started trying to tug John away toward the Audi. He didn't move.

"I don't want any money," said Paul tonelessly.

He knew now was the moment that he was supposed to explain everything to John, to tell him about Jean and the Beatles and George and whoever the hell the fourth one of them was. To say, Come with me, trust me, we're going to be brilliant.

But for some reason, what he said instead was simply, "D'you play the guitar?"

John stared at him for a moment.

Then he smiled. An open smile, with his teeth and his eyes and his spirit. A smile that said, Come with me, trust me, we're going to be brilliant.

"I'm probably better than you," John warned him.

Paul grinned. "At talking, maybe. But I can play." It wasn't the best comeback in the world, but he was only just waking up, after all.

"You're a kid," said John.

"You're a kid, too."

"I'm older. I can tell. Plus I've been to prison now," John added.

"Jail," Paul corrected him. "They're different."

John grinned.

"For God's sake, John," the woman insisted, "do I need to take the guitar away?"

"All right, Mimi!" He sounded annoyed, but he extended his right hand to Paul. "I'm John," he said.

Paul shook it. "I'm Paul."

"John," the woman started again.

"Mimi!" Shaking his head with irritation, he dug a phone from his pocket and handed it to Paul. "Well, don't just stand there," he said.

Paul keyed in his number and then handed it back.

John glanced over him one last time while he pulled open the passenger door of the Audi. Mimi had already closed her own door and was waiting inside with a look of serious impatience, drumming her long fingernails against the steering wheel.

"You're too young," said John, "honestly."

"And you're too cocky," Paul replied. "Honestly."

John shook his head again as he shut the car door, but he was also smiling, just a little bit, as the car started up and pulled away. He was trying not to show it and he was actually very good at not showing it, but Paul could tell easily – more than easily, reflexively. He hadn't known he could ever feel this comfortable reading somebody he'd never met before.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, he felt alive. The Audi pulled out of the parking lot and began disappearing down the street, and Paul was alone in the lot and he felt awake and relieved and electric. He had been thinking about everything Jean had said about him and John, about the songs they were supposed to write together someday and the successes they were supposed to have, but it wasn't even the songs and the fame and the concerts he was thinking about right now. It was that feeling when he and John had first made eye contact, when they'd shaken hands. Like he had existed in two places at once, and like someone new he hadn't known about before now existed inside of him, too. He knew almost nothing about John – in a few ways he even disliked him already – but he also felt like he had found some important new link within himself, nothing real yet, just some small possibility – like by meeting John, by allowing that possibility, he had accomplished some goal he'd been speeding toward for years but had never even known he'd had. It felt like a triumph.

He pulled out his own phone now as the Audi disappeared into a land of stoplights and strip malls. The morning was crisp and pale, the sky was watercolors. He had to get back to Cavern to tell George about this, to play the guitar, to play the guitar, to feel the neck of the guitar and the strings under his fingers. He dialed Jean's number and took in a deep breath of clean air and kept breathing, in and in and in, filling his lungs with morning while he waited for the sun to arrive.