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cellarfulofnose · 13 days

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Sack of Potatoes

John's harmonica overdub session for Thank You Girl.

At the sound of an engine approaching and idling, every head in the room went up. The studio looked like a house full of dogs. Beside her, Geoff swallowed, and Reggie thought he might start panting.

The main attraction had arrived, she guessed. In her year as a technical assistant, the most outrageous Beatlemania Reggie had ever seen came from men in jackets and ties. They didn't shake and cry like the girls, didn't scratch policemen and piss themselves. But they would go deathly quiet and ramrod straight, tidying this and that in the room like it was the bloody Queen they were expecting.

Of course, Reggie harbored all the same complaints against monarchists. From an early age, she'd truncated Regina, as much to distance herself from Her Majesty as to foil boys' attempts to make up vulgar rhymes about her. Besides which, she'd needed a snappy androgyne nickname to get ahead in the mod crowd, like her girlfriends Bobbi and Blake.

In any case, she didn't care for this quasi-holiness that her colleagues bestowed on rulers and rockers alike. Grown men, peering out the window over each other's shoulders like babes at the behest of the Good Humor man's chime, all for one lousy Beatle of the bunch.

That, to Reggie, was the kick in the pants. It was only John coming in. They were all gathered here, inhaling each other's cigarette smoke and nervous sweat, so that a school dropout her brother's age might record twenty-eight seconds of harmonica. And she wouldn't even get to see Ringo.

Malcolm had made a sort of huffing noise earlier, when Mr. Martin announced they were to hold a special session for John's overdubs. Reggie confronted him, and he merely shrugged. John was all right, he admitted. Just a bit crass. Made off-colour jokes when asked to be serious.

"He'll like you," he assured her. She hadn't asked.

Geoff snickered. "You'll know if he doesn't."

So he wasn't a politician. That, Reggie could respect. But she found out the previous night's show had been cancelled at the last minute. John, it seems, wasn't feeling well. What terrible ailment could have struck him down in his prime, forced him to shatter the dreams of ten thousand girls (and more than a few men)? Reggie hardly dared ask. Yellow fever? Scarlet fever? Dengue?

A cold.

"Bloody awful cold," Mr. Martin had appended, probably in reply to her incredulous expression.

Reggie said nothing. She didn't recount the time he had called her to work when she was soaking her sheets with fever, then tutted disapprovingly when she asked for a paracetamol. There wasn't much she could do but grit her teeth and bear it. If John was truly as miserable as the legend held, he was sure to be a fright to work with. She gave it five minutes before he started shouting at people to bring him a hot water bottle.

A car door slammed. The boys by the window turned their heads, watching John's path. Reggie poured tea.

She didn't hear the studio door open, but all the breath seemed to go out of the room, as if John had changed the barometric pressure.

"How are you feeling, John?" asked Mr. Martin.

A brief silence and scattered laughter. If Reggie had to guess, she'd have said that John pulled some amusing expression, or horrific gesture. She glanced up out of sheer annoyance. Her eyes started to drift away, but just as soon, her gaze flitted back.

John was ghost white. That was the first thing she noticed. Next in her study of colour contrasts, his formidable nose. Reggie tried not to gawk, really tried, but it was glowing. It was that bad.

There was nothing to say about his hair, really. Only it looked like a normal man's hair, leading Reggie to wonder if he'd really been wearing a Beatle wig all along. His small eyes...she couldn't see what colour.

Before she could spend any more time lamenting the sight of his nose, John wrapped a fist-size wad of facial tissue around it and blew feebly. Reggie's stomach flipped. There was half a second of sound, and from that brief static she knew the fresh tissue was spent beyond any future use. What's more, she knew John's sinuses were no clearer than before. What a sound—what a sight. As with a train wreck, she felt compelled to look despite her stomach's protest.

John rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a clean tissue. A small avalanche of balled-up sheets bounced to the floor as he freed them. Too busy abusing the next tissue, he didn't seem to take any notice of his loss. Reggie's throat tightened to see the discarded tissues linger on the floor like tumbleweeds. No one moved to pick them up. She curled her fingertips into the safety of her palms. That duty couldn't possibly fall to her.

Reggie searched the room for signs that she wasn't going crazy. Every eye was trained on John. She wanted to scream at the hungry way they stared at him, a band of hunters watching Diana bathe. Only Malcolm seemed to notice the tissues had fallen, and he was probably calculating how much they'd go for on the art market. It made Reggie—well, sick. Only one person here could know how she felt, and she half believed he deserved it.

"You've a harmonica in there somewhere, I hope," Mr. Martin said.

John listed his head toward Mr. Martin, ear first. He was stuffed to the gills, it seemed; could have hardly heard his own name in a dead silent room.

"Harmonica," Mr. Martin repeated. "Mouth organ."

John gurgled something into his tissue muffler. Judging by the way Mr. Martin chuckled, it was a single blunt curse. "Quite all right. We're very resourceful. Say," he addressed the room, "has anyone got a spare—"

"hh'tSchfh!"

John turned inward and buckled with a sneeze. Reggie jumped nearly out of her skin.

"...harmonica? Bless you. Anyone?"

Another sneeze rattled out of John, and another, caught fast and muffled to dull thuds in his tissue-paper muzzle.

"Bless you, John." Reggie didn't know if it was sheer professionalism or some kind of paternal instinct, but Mr. Martin looked so unaffected by his proximity to a sneezing John. Not that she was filled with sympathy for him. Nothing of the sort. But she was beginning to see the wisdom in postponing the last night's show. If he was anything like this yesterday, the front row would have needed rain slickers. The Beatle bug was bad enough when it was just mania. It wouldn't be right to expose half of teenage Britain to something this bubonic. Even as an autumn-leaf rustle of Bless yous began to fill the room, she couldn't bring herself to join in the ritual. It would be like condoning it. It would be like worship.

"Bless you. I have." Malcolm forked his over to Mr. Martin, who thanked him and waited patiently for John to finish sneezing.

"ha'tsCHgh!"

"God bless you." Malcolm's harmonica sat perched between Mr. Martin's fingertips as John tucked away his ruined tissues, yanked out another handful, and blew his nose. Reggie's eyes watered. God, the noise! More than one man turned away.

"How are we supposed to get anything recorded?" she whispered to Geoff.

He frowned. "Cold gone to your heart?"

Reggie rolled her eyes. It wasn't that she didn't care about John's suffering. She just didn't want it to spread.

John gave the harmonica a testing honk, and coughed. Mr. Martin cued everyone to retreat behind the glass and flipped the Recording light. Wheels of tape began to whir.

"Thank You Girl," said Mr. Martin, king-like, "track two, take one. Whenever you're ready, John."

There were only a few chairs, so most men sat on equipment. Reggie stood, arms folded.

"I'll give you a four-count, and you come in right on beat one." Mr. Martin held up his left hand in preparation to cue John, as his right hovered over the Play button.

"Have we started?"

They were the first clear words Reggie had heard John speak all morning. Perhaps clear was stretching the imagination too far—he sounded like a goat, thick and bleating. It was a much deeper, rougher voice than she expected to come from him. She'd heard his speaking voice before; just never fresh from bed, she supposed, and phlegm-wrecked.

"Start any time you're ready."

John looked pained, so Mr. Martin continued, "Need a moment?"

"I've gotta sneeze." John's eyes screwed shut.

A murmur rippled the room. Mr. Martin said, "That's all right."

Reggie was so busy watching the roll of tape diminish, it took her a few moments to consider that she might actually have heard "I'm gonna" mangled by congestion into "I've gotta". But that would suggest that a sneeze was imminent, and this one seemed shy about making an appearance.

John slowly covered his open mouth with a tissue. "Get on with it," someone muttered, and was immediately shushed.

Mr. Martin kept silent until John blinked dazedly and his shoulders lowered. "Whenever you're—"

The indecisive sneeze snuck up on all of them. Even John could barely cover his nose in time.

"ah'tchhuh!"

"...ready..."

"hh'SSHhyiw!" John's hair tossed as his head whipped forward.

"God bless you." A sage grin could be heard in Mr. Martin's voice. It put Reggie off a bit to see a man so committed to patience, a professional Sisyphus. She wondered where all that frustration went.

"Should I tape that over?" Geoff whispered.

Mr. Martin paused, then shook his head. "Everything's of some value." He raised his left hand, and after making sure he'd caught John's eye, he counted up four fingers.

At the press of the Play button, the harmonica note joined the instrumental backing like a handshake. Reggie's eyebrows went up. John's timing was seamless. She hadn't been expecting much from his tone, but it was positively blue.

Then the hiccup. A short off-key wheeze, a snatch of breath between long, smooth notes. He'd sniffled too hard and brought out an extra note, beyond the two he'd been tasked with playing. Malcolm sighed softly as Mr. Martin gestured to stop the recording.

John lifted the headphones off his ears, still sniffling. "Could you hear that?" The sound of his voice made Reggie's chest hurt. She swallowed dryly and resisted the urge to clear her throat.

"We'll try it once more," Mr. Martin purred. "As soon as you're ready."

Half a minute (Reggie counted) and two rounds of tissues later, John raised the harmonica to his lips. There was a drooping heaviness to his eyes; Reggie had heard he tended to squint when he scorned his glasses, only now it looked like he wanted to open them but couldn't quite. His thick brows met in a slight furrow. His nose was red as a drunk's, giving the overall impression of a sad Emmett Kelly tramp. As a matter of fact, he had clearly missed a shave.

"Thank You Girl, track two, take two."

John took a huge breath in preparation and sneezed it back out, exactly on his cue. This time, the sigh was collective. Reggie only flinched a bit. Malcolm met her gaze curiously and she looked away.

"Bless you. Take all the time you need," said Mr. Martin. Then, as an aside, "Reggie, darling."

Reggie unfolded her arms.

"Some tea with honey, I think?"

John coughed wickedly, holding his throat with each awful bark.

Reggie nodded at her feet. "Yes, sir."

---

In the time it took her to procure honey and serve tea, John had ruined seven more takes. No matter how quickly they tried to breeze through it, no matter how much time Mr. Martin allowed for John to blow his nose scarlet and raw, he couldn't go long enough without sneezing, coughing, or trying to catch a breath through his snuffling nose.

Reggie's face felt hot. It grew horrible to listen to in the isolation of the kitchen, having to guess what was going on. Occasionally Mr. Martin's soft rumble, or the sharp cry of the harmonica, would break up the monotony of John's weary ah-choos. They hadn't seemed so loud in the booth. But they cut through to the kitchen as if the walls were made of paper.

The opening notes rang out again, indicating the previous take had been unusable. Poor man, Reggie thought, then caught herself. Just because he was in agony didn't give him the right to inflict it on everyone else. Besides, she wasn't paid to care.

She tried to let her indifference show as she approached John later with the tray. He was hunched over in a chair, head in his hands, massaging the bridge of his nose.

"With honey," Reggie said. It came out softer than she intended. John gave no sign that he had heard.

She took a breath. "John."

Still ignorant of her presence, he sniffed, and something in his head squeaked. In a fit of impatient nerves, she nudged his foot with her own.

He looked up with a start, blinking severely against the light and the sudden change in altitude. A small cough escaped his lips, and he drug the back of his hand under his nose.

Reggie acted like she hadn't seen. "With honey," she said plainly, offering him the cup and saucer.

John took it without thanking her and began to slurp loudly. Reggie winced. She'd heard they had perfect manners; she'd heard they were swine. Nevertheless, she supposed it was hard to sip tea politely without being able to breathe through one's nose.

She wanted with all her might to leave him to it, but Mr. Martin had insisted that John drink it all in one go, and it was Reggie's job to see to it. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Luckily, John didn't seem to need encouragement. He sipped and sipped, pausing in between each to steal a few increasingly heavy, sniffly breaths.

The teacup shook in his hand.

"Are you cold?" Reggie blurted. The studio was notoriously drafty. She didn't even like to wear miniskirts to work in the summer, never mind early March.

John looked at her, right at her, and shook his head. "Too hot," he rasped, then cleared his throat in one gruff blast. "'M fucking sweltering." He sniffed wetly and swigged his scalding tea.

For the first time, Reggie noticed the light grey half-circles of sweat under his arms, the dew gathering at his hairline, a very slight flush on his pale cheeks. Her hand twitched—she tucked it to her side and froze before it could get anywhere near his forehead. Embarrassment like fever coursed through her, scorching her face. Had she already contracted something fatal? Some disease of the brain?

"Ah fuck."

He looked at her desperately, his eyes filling with tears. When he shoved the cup and saucer at her, Reggie was too baffled to do anything but take them. She opened her mouth to relay Mr. Martin's orders. He was to finish it in one sitting. She had to make sure he—

John threw an arm over his mouth, but a gasp sliced through. He turned as far away from her as he could. She heard him pull for air, making his shoulders lift once. Her stomach fluttered in fearful anticipation.

Nothing happened.

He heaved a disgusted sigh. Reggie's flutters had turned a bit sour themselves, the sickening swoop of missing a step on the stairs. She felt her palms begin to sweat. She closed her mouth.

No sooner had he faced her than he cruelly grabbed his nose, crumpling in on himself like a fist to keep from letting out the wayward sneeze. The sound was an arrow in the heart.

"ah'knxgghh!"

Now Reggie couldn't keep her mouth shut. "Mr. Martin says you ought to drink the whole—"

She didn't know how he summoned the air for what came next. By all accounts, he'd sealed off his mouth and nose to keep the sneezing under control, but his body wanted it badly enough to override his defenses and force a quick gulp of breath. It was his downfall. He trembled terribly and fairly exploded with the second sneeze, all the more violent for his efforts to strangle it.

"haH'NGcshhew!"

Reggie hissed in pain as a rivulet of tea spilled, piping hot, over her hand. She hurriedly straightened the cup and looked around to make sure no one had seen. Her speech was long forgotten. He was holding back, she realized, on her account.

John muttered something vulgar, just as easily Bloody hell as Fucking hell behind his hand and oppressive congestion. He threw out a "S'rry" as well before disappearing into a bundle of tissues.

"Bless y—"

Her whisper was drowned out by the first crackling blow. John barely had to expel any air to do it, his head was so full to bursting. He blew once more and coughed, coughed and coughed.

Reggie couldn't remain there a second longer. She spun around and retreated to the kitchen, hot tea sloshing dangerously in the cup. When she realized she was still holding it, it was far too late to backtrack and return it to John. Instead she splashed it down the sink, then washed the cup until she was sure her fingers would blister.

---

Mr. Martin was pacing.

"Have we got enough tape?" asked Malcolm.

"Hm?" Mr. Martin looked up from biting his nail. "Yes, of course."

Malcolm and Reggie looked over to Geoff, who gave them a shrug and an uneasy expression. Depends.

"Only I wonder if it wouldn't be..." Another tech shifted anxiously as he searched for the words. "...kinder to send him home."

"Kinder to whom?"

"Well, he's...Look at him, George, he can hardly stand up."

John's cough could be heard through the glass. Reggie squirmed.

"He's already had to miss one show," Ken added.

"Yes." Mr. Martin stopped pacing. "I'm going to ask Mr. Epstein to keep him from tonight's show as well."

"Ah, George, the girls, think of them, eh; you'll break their hearts—"

Mr. Martin put up his hand for silence. "If we drag him back here again tomorrow, he'll be bed-bound for the duration. Better we get it finished now and send him home when he can rest."

His steely eyes fixed on each of them individually. "Good. Thank You Girl, track two, take fifteen."

Reggie was sure she wouldn't be able to listen to this song when it debuted. By now, the first wailing note of the harmonica doused her in a cold sweat. Like the deathly click of a pistol's hammer, the sound was a portent of disaster. She couldn't even look out at John. Any minute he'd...

"Got it?" Geoff said softly.

Mr. Martin nodded. He held his fist out to John, counting him into the next section.

The control room scarcely breathed as they watched John play. The loudest sound behind the glass was Malcolm swallowing beside her. Outside, something very strange was happening. John was making music. His notes were a little sluggish, but they came uninterrupted. Not so much as the tiniest sniffle.

Malcolm tapped his foot—impatiently, Reggie thought at first, but his head was bobbing gently to the dull rumble of Ringo's recorded back-beat. They were necktied deer in headlights, all somewhat mystified by this truth universally acknowledged, though hardly spoken aloud: the boy could play.

John played a lick so bright and bluesy, Reggie felt he must be improvising. She jumped to feel Malcolm's hand on her leg. He was staring with barely contained excitement, not at her, but at Mr. Martin.

With a chunk, the whirring of the tape stopped.

Mr. Martin took a deep, controlled breath, and spoke into the microphone. "Well done, John. Well done."

"Did you get it?" John muffled a cough into his shoulder.

"We got it," Mr. Martin smiled.

Engineers whistled and cheered. Mr. Martin shook Geoff's hand. Malcolm stuffed a cigarette in his lips and offered her the pack. She reached a hand out, then drew it back and shook her head. She thought of asking him not to light up. Smoke couldn't be conducive to a speedy recovery.

Recovery. A sudden stab of unease struck Reggie when she thought about how careless she had been today. How close to John had she stood while serving him tea, breathed his air, touched his fingerprints on the cup? All the soup in the world wouldn't deliver her if she caught this father of all colds.

Then of course, the other Beatles didn't have it. Brian Epstein wasn't down with it, and they were closer to him than anyone she could name. Perhaps John was more than usually susceptible—or more than usually careless. It wasn't hard to imagine him going out with wet hair, neglecting to button up his coat. His poor girl, pleading her case to deaf ears, promising to withhold her kisses if he should come back with a chill...

John went digging through his pocket. He paused suddenly before sticking his hand in the other one. After another moment of hunting, it was clear he hadn't found what he was seeking. His eyes widened, his brows tented with fear.

Reggie craned her neck to investigate what he was doing. She'd seen some people turn to fiends when their cigarettes were scarce, but she had a hard time believing John was short on those. Had he misplaced his wallet? God only knows where it would fit, packed in with all those tissues.

John's fear turned to a watery daze. "I need..." A sneeze was coming. "I need—"

"Yes, perfectly all right, John," grinned Mr. Martin. "Go ahead, we're finished."

John shook his head once, briefly, almost as if to cast out what was ailing him. "I—" he began, but muzzled himself with a large hand before he could get the rest out. Before one more breath could find its way in.

Reggie saw the litter at his feet and realized why.

"He's out of tissues," she lamented.

Mr. Martin did a sort of double-take glance at John, then snapped to such alertness, his hair seemed to move back on his head. "Right, who's got a handkerchief?"

Several people, including Mr. Martin, looked at Ken. He was mopping sweat from his temple with a pale purple square.

"Thank you." Mr. Martin held out his hand.

"Surely you can't be..." Ken laughed nervously. "I mean, I've...It's dirty!"

"As God is my witness..."

While they argued, a small noise from John made Reggie turn around.

Her heart dropped into her stomach when she saw him. Instead of the cruel stranglehold he'd used earlier, he now cupped his nose gingerly, cradling it as though it were a new baby bird. Rapid, hiccuping breaths made his shirt buttons dance as his chest swelled.

"For God's sake!" Victorious at last in his hunt for a clean handkerchief, Mr. Martin blustered through the door of the booth.

John's body went fully tense. There was no more slack, no further for his lungs to expand. He couldn't hold it. Reggie caught a quick glimpse of his miserable expression as he went for a Hail Mary, employing both his hands to yank his collar up over his nose.

"John."

Mr. Martin boasted the longest legs and arms in the studio, with the possible exception of the local talent, but even he didn't make it there fast enough.

John shuddered with a heart-stopper of a bottled-up sneeze. Then the gates were open. He sneezed wretchedly over and over, no pause between. He sounded like a tape loop, stuck in a rut, a worn-out groove in a broken record, hitting the same grating note time and again.

Around Reggie, murmurs of "God" and "Jesus Christ" cut through the noise. Mr. Martin stood over John as his sneezing fit petered out, allowing him to catch his breath. A strong hand on his back told John he needn't worry.

"God bless you. There you are. Get it all out," Mr. Martin said after John sputtered out a final, subdued sneeze, the saddest sound Reggie thought she had ever heard. John's hand shook as it closed around the pocket square, blindly led by Mr. Martin until he found his purchase. When he started to pull his collar down, Reggie hurriedly looked away. Her heart threatened to beat out of her chest.

It wasn't pity. Reggie wasn't about to weep for him, like Magdalene with her camphor and eucalyptus oils. But there was something so wrong-feeling about this whole mess, the uncanny sense that the world had been turned upside down. She'd seen the Emperor with no clothes on. And now she was expected to go about her business as usual? Was she the only sane person in the building? Was she the only one who wasn't?

She was in such a fog, she didn't notice that the sounds of hacking and nose-blowing had stopped, or that everyone was standing. Or that John had made his way into the booth.

A path cleared when he stepped forward, but the engineers didn't throw any palm leaves to pave the way. Reggie suspected they would have parted just as hastily for a leper.

God, he looked terrible. There was no question that he had a fever. It was cool enough indoors to eat ice cream without fear of it melting, and John was drenched in sweat. No longer sickly pale, he was now ruby red in all the wrong places. His poor nose looked like it might fall off.

With a sullen expression, he held out Malcolm's harmonica and grumbled something.

"Like what?" Malcolm asked.

"Tastes like dirt," John snuffled. Then he was gone.

The crew began to chuckle as they saw how Malcolm was holding his recovered property. As if the harmonica were a small dead rodent left on his pillow by the cat, he held it at arm's length between his finger and thumb, wrinkling his nose in mild revulsion. No wonder. After that much time in John's cold-ridden mouth, singing with air from his infected lungs, it wasn't a musical instrument but a bio-weapon.

"You'd better disinfect that before you play it," Geoff laughed, to snickers of agreement. "You'll end up with one hell of a cold."

"I'll do it," Reggie heard herself say.

Mr. Martin tilted his head, his gaze softening into a grateful "You're an angel" sort of look.

Reggie ducked her head low as she went to retrieve the harmonica. She couldn't be further from that.

"I'm goin' home and bathe in Listerine, me," she heard someone grumble as she slipped out the door.

Once she was out of earshot, Reggie took off down the hall as fast as her penny loafers would carry her. As usual, she had the ladies' lav to herself, but she locked the door behind her nevertheless. With hands that were beginning to quiver, she lifted the poison apple to her line of vision. It was a fine instrument, in her layman's opinion; silver with black accents, a dozen fine teeth all in a row.

She wet her lips and wrapped them around the mouth of the harmonica.

The warmth of the metal made the breath kick out of her chest. A wheezing song whispered out the other end, soft as a dying wish. Reggie stopped breathing. When nothing came of the noise, she allowed herself to inhale: slowly, slowly, inviting only the faintest buzz of another chord, then deeper as she got used to it. She let her air out her nose. The metallic taste flooded her tongue like blood, but there was something else too, the crude organic taste of breath. She hummed weakly. The little organ harmonized with her.

Reggie pushed her tongue into the space between keys. She touched her mouth to every part of the harmonica, until her lips couldn't map the heat anymore, until it was all warm, all wet, until she confused its steady heave-ho with the whistle and strain of her own lungs.

She caught her breath. Haltingly, she raised the instrument once more and gently ran the length of it under her nose. One clean sweep.

Then she stopped the drain, switched on the hot tap, and opened a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

#presenting the first jl sickfic since lovesick blues in JAN 23!!!#told thru an oc #only a work of fiction based on what might have happened of course...#the ending is probably the freakest thing ive written on here that didnt have to do with sex

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