Eleanor woke up scared. She had had such a dream! She was in some crowded dance ballroom, and suddenly all the lights had gone black. And she screamed for help, when someone came behind her. "Keep on walking till you see a light at the door". She walked, and the light was the lake at the backyard. And she turned behind to see who was the man who had helped her...but all she could hear was the sound of someone walking back into the darkness. On the shore there was James, as an old gentleman. He took her for a ride on a multicoloured boat, and, seconds before she woke up, he said something to her. "I said keep on going, my love. Help will come. And you must hold on. Love will keep you alive."
Then she woke up. At the table by the bedside, she saw the feather she found yesterday on the boat. Angel feather. What that supposed to mean? She left the bed, going to make some tea. She needed to wake up. Settle down that idea on her head, and see what she could take from that. Try to think a bit rational, for once in her life. No emotions, just the reason. No heart, just brain.
All the rational feeling went away when she heard the sound of some car crashing at the front door. Scared, she went to see what happened.
The highway was empty, and there was a filthy white Rolls Royce smacked on the oak tree in front of Double Fantasy. Eleanor just looked. Danny would have a fit if the tree got any destroyed. The boy of the Rolls left the car. It was some twenty-something guy, dressed in some overused leather jacket and jeans, hair dropped on his eyes ( no wonder he wrapped himself on the tree! ), thin lips and a scared expression on his face. He looked to the car and sighed.
"Oh, gosh, here I almost met me match. Hey, lady, are you the owner of the house? I am sorry ‘bout the tree! You see, the car lost its breaks and I...", he stooped, staring at Eleanor for some seconds. "Well, well, well, look at that, ain’t you Eleanor McGuire? The singer of the Five-Piece Band?"
Eleanor laughed a bit. Dressed in a blue bathrobe, hair all messed-up, tired of the overnight rowing, she was recognised by someone. She managed to answer. "Yes, it’s me. Not on the best mood, but it’s me."
"Well, I am a truly fan of your band. Been There is an outrageous record. And Love Uber Alles is wonderful, my favourite!". He got closer to her, and extended his hand to her. "Let me introduce myself. I am Harrison. Winston Harrison."
And he grinned. Eleanor froze in amazement. "Hari? Damn it, is it really you?", she asked, and was answered with a tight hug. "How come you didn’t recognise me, kid? Did I change so much?", he asked.
"No! I wasn’t wondering I’d meet you like this!"
"C’mon, confess you weren’t expecting to see me ever again!"
"I prayed every day and every night to have you back, dear Warlock.", she said. "What were you doing?"
"Running on the highway to go to London. Well, too late. I lost the brakes, the meeting...and the car!"
She laughed. "A heavenly match"
"I am not sure if the guy I supposed to meet will think about it, dear."
"Come inside, Warlock Harrison. Let’s have something to drink and commemorate your unlucky comeback!"
Over tea and sandwiches, they passed thru of what each other were doing over the years they were apart. "I was in UK all the time. Listening to the Five-Piece everywhere I stopped. Some days I used to finish myself over some dusty jukebox in some dusty pub, listening to In The Loving Memory. You would laugh of me, such a grown-up in tears, only because of a song. But there I was, baptised in my tears, crying a drunken river. I was missing those days badly."
"Yea, those were the days.", she said, and went silent for one second.
"Ell, I heard about James. I am sorry. I wanted to go to London, and attend to the funeral...but I was locked in some hospital in Oxford."
"Oh my Lord! What happened?"
"Some fist fight who went out of hand. Are you seeing this scar here?", he said, pointing one huge brown marking that crossed the top of his forehead from one end to another. "The guy had a jack-knife. Man, it was a waste. I would have killed him, but he took the first step, and I ended up at the hospital. I bled all my old blood. The doctors thought I was gone...but I am a tough guy and here I am telling you this."
"You never change, do you, Hari?"
"Never saw a reason to, actually. So, how’s the gang? Mary, Danny, Daniel, Brittany?"
Eleanor sighed and put the cup of tea on the table. "Things are going downhill."
"The band isn’t getting along well?", he asked with some concern.
"Oh, no! Not this! We are still what we used to be....Britty is the trouble."
"What’s the matter with her?"
"Drugs, brother.", she said, plainly. "We are doing all we can to hide it from the press, but she’s not co-operating."
"Are you afraid of bad publicity?"
"What? No! I am afraid of losing her!"
Hari cringed with the shout. It was the first time he saw Eleanor so hurt about something. Not even when she was smacked by her father her anger and impotence beyond a situation were so visible, like it was now.
She sighed again and went on, sat on the coach, telling all she couldn’t tell anyone out of the circle. "We did all we could. All that was on hand. Even the cold turkey stuff, you know? But nothing seemed to work. Either way she comes back to those fucking little pills.", and then she had one ironic smile. "I took them too, I gotta confess...at the beginning, when it was way too hard to handle three or four shows by night. Tours ain’t easy. So you gulped down those pills to stay alive, to stay working. I saw I was losing my brain by doing that, and so I stopped. I can lose everything but my mind, ‘cause my mind is all I have. Mary never took them, she is a tough woman. And Danny...well, he stopped too. But Brittany went further on the game, to the point she’s now, not able to sleep or wake up without taking something."
"Is she taking something else?"
"Yea.", she sighed, then looked to him as if afraid of telling him. But she went on, anyway, not too retrained to be hiding feelings. "Have you ever heard of something called brown sugar, Hari?"
Hari froze. The years of craziness crossed his head in a lightening flash. Methadone and brown sugar... needles and pain... cold turkey has got me on the run. He knew what was going on Britty’s mind. You think you can stop but you simply can’t. You got to go on just a bit more, to have that strange sensation of living in somewhere else.
"Sometimes she looks like those characters from Trainspotting. But, most of time she’s herself - at least to rest of the world, to the press. She has a ton of make-up in the face to hide the livid skin, and wears long-sleeved clothing so nobody can see the marks of the needles in her arm. On stage she just flies away, crazy like few. But on the studio...the waves crash down on her. She loses her mind, faints, can’t even play a tune correctly. Shouts and stares at everyone. Has paranoiac feelings, and even some killing attempts." Eleanor took a long breath and went on. "I tried everything. Locked her at my house, sent her to clinics, threatened her of losing her job at the band, forbid her of playing when she was on a kick."
She stopped and leaned her head on her legs, like she always did when she felt it was too much to take. She was holding back the tears she had forbid herself of crying when she decided she had to go on with all. Hari hugged her. "Cry, baby, cry, make yer mother sigh.", he whispered to her, seeing it was the only thing she could do to erase that pain, at least for that moment.
And, like those words had some power, the tears fell of her dark blue eyes. "I don’t know what to do anymore. Sometimes I think I should give up of it all. We’ve been farther than many others, anyway...this is taking my mind away. I want to give up. Be myself again. Have something to believe, to lean on at. But...I have nothing. I have nothing more, Hari. I lost my husband and I am going to lose my best friend. I have to stop before..."
"Eleanor, don’t say this.", Hari stopped her. "Please, don’t give up. You have to finish what you started. I will be with you, now. I don’t know for what the heck I left you, to begin with. I will help you to fix this stuff."
"And what about your job? The guy you were meeting?"
"Well, I think that you will have to fill me in for that, Eleanor Rigby. You can offer me a job at the crew."
"Only if you are available to start tomorrow - ‘cause I am going to London tonight! There is a press conference tomorrow morning, down at The Submarine."
Hari broke the embrace and looked Eleanor. Hope was shining in her eyes again. She believed. That was more than enough. "Of course that I am. I am a homeless dog, you know? I need something reliable once in a while."
"Hari, that’s great!", she shouted, and jumped on his lap again. Things were like they supposed to be again. And maybe they could come back to the days when hope was Eleanor's prayer
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