Past

Spoken secrets filled the air as Penny Lane walked by. No longer a mouse, no longer an image, no longer fooling around. She was on the other side of the crowd barrier at this concert, and the others viewed her as they would an apparition from their past. Was that the same smell of incense on her, the same fanciful attitude, the same curly golden mess on her head? More wrinkles on her face though, how could she have aged? She was the legendary Penny Lane.

Something in her had died though, they all agreed, was it good or bad? No-one could know.

She knew that the wildfire of her heart had been replaced, replaced by an ease of herself in the world. She no longer felt compelled to anything. The beautiful destruction of her heart, that would inspire the musicians no longer held sanctity. The songs she would sing, they heard, but they did not see her. She smiled a secret smile as she saw them whisper about her behind the stage, knowledge of an alien past, and contemplating their futures in an industry of broken hearts, which she knew too well.

The world had moved on, but she still heard the echoes from the seventies. She had a child now, named Annabelle. The little Lady who moved around the house, lighting candles and singing joyfully along with the radio, also laughed along with the wonderment of her daughter, a miracle who had come from someplace better, better than this. For this she was grateful, grateful to the tips of her toes, and it had changed her.

He never mattered anymore, none of the He's that had floated in and out of her life mattered anymore. She could put on her rugged threads, head down to the shops, and she was free to knock over a row of food for anyone cared. It was had been her choice to entrance musical men, and her choice to finally stop. She got out before they hated her, too, for she still had that impeccable sense of timing to leave when she was still wanted. Buskers on the street still gave her looks, which seemed to say, ‘I know where you've been, and I know where you're going…’, but she no longer cared. The open road was no longer paved with the souls she loved, or music that mattered to her; now it all came back to Annabelle. Annabelle was her anchor.

She learned to shake off feelings of resentment with the new girls, something she had trained herself to do when she saw the lithe-limbed newcomers back then. Being a muse was hard work, that’s what these girls did not understand. When you do view the opium of the spotlight, with others that seek it, it is hard to turn away. You are the proverbial wild animal in the headlights, faster and faster it comes, but no-one wants to slow down. Smarter people than her had died pursuing more than what she ever craved.

The deadly catch is that the wild animal is what the audience craves; the vulnerable crazed one that they can project fantasy onto. Up on stage is a different life, every movement an amplified gesture to the watchful ravished eyes. Penny Lane had understood that. The humbled woman visiting the concert today was tired, but thoughtful. She was a tourist in their world now, albeit one who had been the lead tour-guide for many years.

Annabelle would have loved this, the atmosphere; the rush of leather and feathers and hair and glittery made-up glamourous women, so different from the decade of hippies. Annabelle would tell her mother she was going to be an actress just like her when was when she was older, and Ms. Goodman would have to stroke her hair and gently remind her that she no longer did that kind of work. How could her mom not be an actress, with that dress-up box? Annabelle was enthralled by it, and Ms. Goodman knew she would discover the meaning of those clothes too soon.

She had thought of moving again, leaving this country. She didn’t want Annabelle to believe in the American Dream. William had encouraged her here tonight, a way to close off this era of her life, to see what she was leaving behind, the finality of a last hurrah. His purposeful words overrode her thoughts of Russell on a similar stage to this one, as the lights went down in the stadium.