“I thought they were cute,” said George Harrison.  “Kind of like us in the beginning.”

John Lennon’s ears picked up as he came in to Abbey Road 2, hearing George say that.

Before John could find something witty to say for an entrance, Paul McCartney noticed him coming in and cried out imitating an old woman,  “Ah!  Out and about like an alley cat, are you?  Naughty boy, coming in after all hours!  And where you been, now?”

“Please, Auntie, please,” said John as crimpled up his shoulders to his ears, playing along,  “I just been out to the corner to bum a fag, and I got meself nicked by wild pirates who took me to Zanzibar as part of a white slave trade.”

“Right,” said Ringo Starr, playing the role of pantomime patriarch,  “you used that one last week!  Out with you, you ingrate!”

George Martin actually smiled at that one, although he did not stop his sound check for the array of mikes he’d placed about the studio.  “Check,” he said into a mike,  “check, check one, check.”

“So who’s the ladies you fancied?”  John asked George as John adjusted his spectacles.

“What birds?” asked George as he adjusted the beads around his neck.  “That all you think of, Lennon?”

“Well, he is married,” said Paul.

“Check,” said Martin,  “check, check two.”

“Spoken like a man on a missing,” said John.  “Christ, you ever going to get Jane to say I do, man?”

“All in good time,” Paul said reassuringly, the motion of his arms going up and down making his Paisley shirt a blur.  “Can’t rush these things.”

“Well you got your upper lip furred the same time we did,” John said as he ran a finger over Paul’s mustache.  “Where’s your commitment to the band now?”

“I can’t marry and write music at the same time,” said Paul.

“Check, check, check three, check.”

“That bit about ‘Rita’ still stumps him,” George said to John. 

“Still having a try at it?”  John asked.

Paul went to the piano and started playing the song.  “Lovely Rita, meter maid…” Paul sang in a quick 4/4 beat.

“Bit jazzier now,” John commented when Paul finished, ending with the lyric about the sister or two on the sofa.

“It’s still needs something, a little…” Paul fished for words.

“Boys?”  Martin asked over the studio intercom from the control booth.  “We’re miked for the take, now.”

“I think we could take it that fast,” said Paul about the song.  “At least give it a run to see how it’ll hold up.”

Ringo got behind his kit as John and George took their places and made a run at Paul’s piece at the new tempo.  After two false starts, they got a complete run, but just as the groove started to gel the song hit its untimely end.

At the end of his incomplete song, Paul gave a frustrated roar and banged the keys of the piano hard.  “Ah, CHRIST!” he cried.  “What a fucking drag!”

“So give it a little rest,” said John.  “That bit about the sisters on the couch; maybe you can compare them to the birds you were hiding out on me.”

“What birds?” asked Paul, his frustration creeping into his voice.

“The ones George was trying to hide on me, the swine.”

“What, them?” asked George.  “I wasn’t talking about women.”

“He meant the group in Studio 3,” said Ringo.  “We’d gone over there to see what

they’re up to.”

“Keeping an eye on the competition, eh?” asked John.  “Who’s the blokes?”

“The Pink Floyd,” said Paul, his frustration worked out of his system now as he replied in a more mellow voice.

“Cor, here?  Who’d thought?”

“You’re not thinking of making a run over, too, are you John?”  Martin asked over the intercom.

“He didn’t like us up and going,” said Ringo.

Paul added, sotto voce, “Norman’s producing their tracks.”

John looked around; sure enough, George Martin’s assistant Norman Smith was nowhere about.

“Something wrong John?”  Martin asked him.

“Wasn’t Brian supposed to be here?”  John asked quickly to cover himself.

“Said he was looking up a guitar player, last I heard,” said George.

“A new act?” asked John

“More as a friend,” said Paul with a conspiratorial understanding.  “Said he was from Cambridge.”

“Said he was, what was the name?”  Ringo added.  “Oh right, Dave.”

“What’s next, boys?” Martin asked from the booth.  “What should we set up for now?”

“Tea break,” said John as he made a hop away from his guitar to the door.

“It’s early, John,” said Martin.

“Loo, too,” John replied out the door.

***

Shaking his head, John gave a quick glance over to Studio 3.  He paused briefly, standing perfectly still in decision.

Decision was deferred by a dish of biscuits on the table in the hall.  A little peckish, John picked up one of them and had a few bites.  The strong lemon taste caught his fancy, and before he realized it he’d helped himself to a few more, before he felt nature pay a call.  So moved, John took a turn to the loo.

John took a long time to empty himself in the small water closet.  There was barely enough room for him to spread out his elbows as he got into position over the bowl, but he finished up and got himself presentable.

The first John noticed that he wasn’t alone was when he backed up and felt another person behind him.  John took a deep breath and slowly turned as he said,  “’Ere up, now, give a man some room.”

As he finished, he finally saw the other person sharing the water closet with him.  His long curly black hair exploded out from his face, its vibrant curls in stark contrast to the dead mask they surrounded.  His eyes were dull and barely moved the way a normal person’s would, although they had more motion than the edge of his mouth where a slight pooling of spittle was slowly gathering.  His Carnaby Street flowered shirt was untucked from his jeans, keeping John from telling if he was being sloppy or stylish.

It took a second for John to recognize him, not used to seeing him other than on stage at his happenings with all the lights behind him and his band.  “Syd, isn’t it?” he asked the other occupant.  “Syd Barrett, right?”

There was no noticeable expression passing over Syd’s face.

“Look, it’s a bit crowded here,” John continued.  “Maybe we should take this outside.  I feel better being introduced where me elbows can swing.”

“Haunted by the memory of a lost paradise,” Syd droned.

“Come again?”

“In his youth or his dream, he can’t be precise.”

“New bit you’re doing, eh?  Caught your last set at the UFO.”

Syd said nothing.

“Right,” John said with a sigh.  “Look, can I ask you to move back a bit?  It’s rather tight in here.”

“Would you like to say something before you leave,” Syd stated, not as a question.

“Not until you shove off first, mate.  You’re in front of the door, not me.”

“Perhaps you'd care to state exactly how you feel.”

“Right now, bloody cramped.  Now look-“

Only then did John notice the biscuit in Syd’s hand and the crumbs at the corner of Syd’s slightly drooling mouth.  John had a moment of panic when he realized just what it was in the biscuits that would have made the baker put in so much lemon to hide it…

Too late did John feel his tongue start to tingle the way it did as the hit started to melt.  He tried to spit it out, but the amount of acid these biscuits were laced with was so high he couldn’t get a drop off before they started to take effect.

“Now things are really what they seem,” Syd droned.

“Oh sweet mother of…” John started to say as the walls of the loo melted.

“No, this is no bad dream,” Syd said.

It was Syd actually saying that, not droning it like some far away megaphone across the Serpentine calling back in a boat, that startled John more than anything.  He looked again at Syd and found his lethargic mask was gone, replaced by a face that was as normal as his own.

And from what John could see as Abbey Road swirled into piles of wax draped in tie-dyed silks, it was the only piece of normal he had about him.

***

“Those biscuits are dangerous thingies,” John said as he pointed to the lemon cookies in Syd’s hands.

“It was these, eh?” said Syd as he casually examined them.  “I was wondering how they put me over the top today.”

“Who?” said John, amazed at how animated Syd appeared now.

“Found them when we got to the studio.  Take a couple if you wish, she said, they’re on the dish.  She didn’t realize I’d been got good with the tea already.”

“Cor, you sound like Rasputin contemplating all yer poisoners.”

“Might well be, mate, the way they all want me out there.”

“But who?”

Syd started walking through the melting wax, slowly rising above it, as a green sun burst over the horizon.  “Can’t give names, really.  Too many of them, all of them expecting me to go on and perform, thinking how I’d be just a little bit better with some help.  Don’t know if I can really explain that.”

“Ever tour ‘Merica?  Now that’s performance anxiety.”

“Not yet.  Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be doing Shea Stadium, though.”

John was amazed at how cool Syd appeared as he started to now float above the landscape.  To the far side, a Picassoesque bull started throwing up its innards.

“I suppose I do have wonder,” said John,  “about how you go ‘bout getting your songs together.”

“You?”  Syd asked with wide eyes.

“Yeah, me.  Why?”

“Somehow, I thought I’d be the one at your feet, asking you all about it.  Especially that cord sequence you did with ‘Rain,’ now that’s brilliant.”

John tried to find an answer but couldn’t concentrate with the miniature Tower Clocks flying in formation on dragonfly wings in front of his face.

 “One thing I don’t understand,” said John, as he swatted the clocks with wings away, noticing that Syd hadn’t even flinched,  “and I hope you don’t take it wrong, but…  Why are you in me acid trip?”

***

 “Am I in yours, or are you in mine?”

John had to stop and think about that.  Whose indeed?  And what did it matter at this point?

“So is this all normal for you?”  John asked, trying to relax and float down this stream.

Syd looked around.  “It’s a bit boring this morning.”

“What, this?  It’s like some fairy story, ‘ere.  I’d like to see what you’d consider interesting.”

The horizon flattened out, and trees grew feet in seconds.  A coating of snow bled out from the ground.  Just as it got cold, the bells of a sleigh preceded it coming around the bend.  The gnarled dwarf cracked the whip while his passenger, a woman in cold white and blue, fingered a box of Turkish delight…

John cast a long, challenging look at Syd.

“No,” said Syd,  “right, then,” and like sand in a windstorm the entire scene blew away.

“You can control it,” said John with some amazement.  “Must be yours, then.”

“Maybe,” said Syd, bored, as Oxford Street folded out of nothing but in hues of purple and green.

“You don’t seem impressed with yer own ability, there.  Most blokes get helpless in the face of it”

“Well, I can control it, but more often than non it controls me.  It’s not entirely me, here, at least not the superego.  More of the lizard brain than the human one.”

“It must be fantastic, though,”  John said as a hansom made out of the EVENING STANDARD rolled by.  Because the passenger’s skin was green, John couldn’t decide if that was Edward Heath in the back seat.

“It has its price,” said Syd.

“Still, it must be great to be in a place like this.”

***

But Oxford Street was re-folding itself as John said that and was replaced by a field near an ancient monolith under a white night sky with thousands of black stars.

“Tell me,” said Syd as he held out his hand and crisps rolled up his arm,  “have you ever found yourself on holiday some place you didn’t care for soon after you’d arrived?”

John thought about that as Syd gathered enough crisps and snacked on them.  John tried the same thing and said as the crisps slowly gathered,  “You mean like some shoddy Midlands hotel?  Something like that?”

“Sake of argument, I guess that’ll do.  Now, what happens when you realize that now that you’re there,” Syd had another mouthful of crisps and continued,  “you can’t find your way back?”

“If this is your vision, squire, we better damn well find our way!”

“You’re ducking the question.”

“Could be a bit sticky,” John finally said, taking a guess from the sadness in Syd’s face where this was going.

“Aye.  It’s like being able to go to this place, you see, and-“

Syd interrupted himself to shake his hand; the crisps had become maggots and he violently shook to fling them away.  Reflexively, John did the same, thankful he’d not tried to take a bite.

“Right, here,” said Syd recovering,  “but finding the more you’re here, the less you’re able to go home.”

“You mean like the six pomegranate seeds, eh?”

***

“More like the bed of Hades ‘imself.  I mentioned how the id’s more at home here-“

She melted out of the standing stone in front of them like water being splashed up from a passing bus.  John had seen plenty of naked women in his time, and plenty of them were as well proportioned and endowed as this one, but none of them had hypnotic eyes that kept changing color as she gave seductive smiles.

 “Oh she’s a good go,” said Syd nonchalantly.  “You let her have you, you never be wanting anyone else again.  Or anything.”

“Known her?”  John asked.

Like a bloke trying badly to be a gentleman, Syd just touched chin to shoulder.

John stared again into her eyes, those eyes turning across the whole color spectrum at random and back.  It took a lot of will to shake his head no.

When she gave an understanding sigh of accepting rejection, John wondered if the way her breasts rose wasn’t some sort of last chance tease, but she became translucent before he could tell and she floated away above them.

“You know,” said John,  “I think I see it better now, what you’re getting at.  All the things you carry through on stage, leaving the rational behind and all.  You’ve got a great understanding of the new frontier for the mind, the whole new consciousness thing.  You make for a good show, you and the Floyd.”

“There’s more than the music for you,” said Syd knowingly.

John felt Syd’s eyes peering through his layers.  Even the sea of gnomes trudging over his toes like passengers traipsing through King’s Cross on their way home from work couldn’t keep John from feeling it.

“Well, all right,” John finally admitted.  “I mostly go to your shows for the birds.”

Syd looked at him again with more intensity.

“Christ, you so sure of yourself now?”

Before Syd could answer, a sphinx started the gnomes to stampede, her claws filleting every hapless victim she could catch.

“Now I know this must be my trip, because you can’t tell me you see her through all the lights and props you use.  You keep the house lights so low when you’re on.”

“I don’t see her there,” Syd said.  “But here, I do.”

“She’s another shadow here?”

“More like an appointment, really.”

“What, you mean the future?”  John asked

“Time just comes around again and again, no order, simultaneously. It’s all present here.”

“Oh, aye?”  John said as he resigned himself to Syd playing seer of visions.  “What do you see?”

“She’s going to be good for you,” said Syd.  “She’s a fine woman with a lot of insight.”

“Well, she sure knows your work better than I do.  I think she gets what you do more than I.”

Syd’s next line was drowned out; the chess game between the Pict and the yeoman that was coming into focus behind him was dissolving into chaos when the Pict took his opponent’s rook and announced check.

***

The barrister who was watching the game unfold could only say over and over,  “What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party.”

Syd looked at John.  “That’s a good bit to remember,” he said.  “Could make something out of that one.”

“I’m starting to feel like Alice here,” John said as the board moved because the mock turtle upon whose back the game had been set shuffled.

“You should go back, then, John.  There’s a lot that’s to happen that you’re doing over the next few years.”

As Syd said that, John watched as the lights died in Syd’s eyes and the muscles on his face started to sag.  As the drool came back to Syd’s mouth, John felt the walls of the water closet close in again.

John heard a knock on the door.  “Oy,” said a voice from the other side,  “you fallen in?”

John groped around Syd, who was now heavy and still, and found the knob.

On first sight of the person on the other side of the door, John thought it was Ringo from his nose, but the hair and glasses said otherwise.  The other person shot glances at John before he said,  “Cor, Syd, not again,” and led Syd out backwards.

It took John a second as he wobbled out of the loo to place a name to the face.  “Roger, Roger Waters, right?”  John asked.

“Yes,” Roger replied, stunned for a second after John addressed him.  “I’m sorry our lead guitarist followed you into the WC.”

“Oh, he was no bother at all.  Pleasant enough, a bit strange perhaps.”

“He’s not quite himself, really. He’s-“

“I need you,” Syd said suddenly to Roger.

“Syd?”  Roger asked.

“I need you.”

“Yes?”

“I need you,” Syd droned, “to put through the shredder in front of my friends.”

John watched as Roger rolled his eyes, an action that looked as thought it’d been done far too often before.

“Is he all right?”  John asked Roger quietly.

Roger sighed and said,  “I think he’ll be fine.  We get back to the studio, it should be fine.”

“Are you sure, there?”

“Yeah,” said Roger sadly, not sounding convinced,  “yeah, it will work out,” and he led Syd back to Abbey Road 3.

***

John returned to Abbey Road 2.  “Time to kill the fatted calf,” said George when he saw him.

“Sorry I took so long,” said John.

“Right,” said Paul,  “if I run, I can catch the last train out tonight,” and he got up quickly.

“Oh Christ! I was that bad?”

“You git,” said Paul,  “it’s all of ten minutes.”

“And still no rescue for Rita,” said George.

“Right,” said Paul.  “Please tell me, John, that you’ve got an insight about her while you took a shit.”

John tried to hold onto all the things he went through during his meeting with Syd, even as most of the experience became like a fevered nightmare suddenly awoken from.  John even had doubts that applying a meaning to it all would be worth the effort.

“Well, Johnny?”  Paul asked.

“How does it go again?”  John asked.  “The last bits?”

“What, this?”  Paul said as he played a few notes up the scale.

John considered the recent warping of time he’d faced and asked,  “What if we extend it out a bit?  A few chords for every note, there.”

“But it’ll be a sodding mess.  It’s going to just fall apart on itself.”

“Oh, just give it a fucking try.”

Paul did a few bars per note as he played the scale, then did it a second time.  The third time through, George accompanied Paul with his guitar and Ringo kept time.

“How should we set the levels?”  Martin asked from the booth.  “What are you trying for in the sound you’re going after?”

James Ryan has been on the verge of actually being recognized as a writer in the past; who knows, someday it may happen.... His work has appeared in such places as Dragon magazine, Lacunae, the Urbanite, the New York Times, and some of the better men's room walls across the state of New York. Until he gets the chance to follow the program for disenfranchised neurotic writers, he's doing the regular job and grad school schtick. His wife Susan and son Jamie just nod and smile when he starts to rant, which, all said, makes things that much easier.