The ninth Paul was a grade-A look-alike. It was a relief from the last two. The seventh had too much cheekbone to be convincing and the eighth was actually a woman, which was brought to light by John after they’d slept together and she’d run off with a lock of his pubic hair.
The problem with the ninth Paul was he still wasn’t Paul. John took a day-long cigarette break and George ducked out due to “bad halal food”, which left Ringo alone to make small talk to a look-alike with wounded self-esteem.
It always fell to Ringo to school the look-alikes on their slang and inside jokes. “You’re the one who knows a thing or two about being a replacement,” John had said when Ringo complained.
The ritual of it was getting Ringo pissed, what with how George and John were acting. Two days back George shaved his eyebrow and spent a whole day talking exclusively in koans. They had a shoot that day for Rolling Stone. The makeup people restored the unibrow hair by hair.
John didn’t even show up to the funeral. When they went looking they found him inside a PR nightmare: sleeping on a bridge, surrounded by pigeons. Nobody could convince him the pigeons weren’t doves.
When they got back to work, George and John brought a dirge into the studio. They’d written it without Ringo. The time signature was all over the place. Ringo had thrown his drumsticks at the studio glass, and wished he had the strength to throw the bass drum. “Can’t you ass holes just cry?” Ringo had said.
Ringo had: when the call came that he could barely understand—when Mrs. McCartney changed her mind, and tried to gather up the ashes—and when every time a new look-alike was introduced, and some dumb synapse misfired and made him think “he’s back!”
“The key to life,” Paul had told him one night backstage, reeling with tequila, “is fuck if I know.” He’d vomited into a wastebasket, shouldered his bass, and walked on stage waving.
