unwind - J.P.

from me to you - part two

My dearest, Charlotte,

Here is a motif of my longing for your presence beside me at the Boleskine, where I am missing our unhurried life together. Robert's just recently purchased a holiday home on the outskirts of Wales, and he makes mention of retreating there to write, myself included. He says the name Bron-yr-aur means hill of gold, and I am quite excited to see it if I must indulge.

Always sending you mindfulness in the form of loose-leaf tea. This one's from an old widower in Spain, to which she sends you her devoted compassion and an aura of rebirth. I know you think it's a bit mad, but your endeared lover gets awfully creative when he's left alone.

Always,

Ji-

"Oh for Christ's sake!" He mumbles under his breath, heaving up from the wicker chair at his desk to answer the ringing phone. His hand drops the pen onto the table, letting it clatter by a stationary set and similar packing material covered in an exotic paisley print. He clears his throat leisurely before grabbing the receiver in his fist.

"Yes?"

"Jimmy!" Peter seethes, yelling in a hurried whisper. "Do you think of me so very little to ignore the multiple copies of schedules I create with my cracked hands? I sent three! Do you even know what time it is?"

Jimmy's eyes widen and his eyebrows furrow harshly, he's taken aback, "I'm...sorry?"

"You're going to be late, Jimmy. For your fitting, that I spent time planning out for you carefully on a calendar based around you." He can hear the slap of the older man's hand over his forehead, cradling his stress.

"Oh. Oh!" He heaves the phone into the crook of his shoulder to balance on his ear, cord stretching as he shoves off the forgotten letter. His finger carefully trails from day to day, little x-marks over every day that went by. There were, in fact, three copies of schedules that each band member received. Shows, fittings, appearances, even if those did come few and far between, Peter Grant had spent enough time following the coattails of Don Arden back in the day to develop a sense of no bullshit, no tardy slips, and, above all, absolutely no lowballing prices.

"No," He starts, assertively, "It's tomorrow, G. See because I'm going into town to speak with-"

"That was last week, Jim." Jimmy can hear him sigh heavily as his chest deflated, "It's the 27th, love." Though usually his manager mode excludes sparing his rowdy bunch of man-children's feelings, Grant, who recently became a father himself, can't help but let his money-making and awfully forgetful guitarist son-he-never-had off easy with his Northern pet names.

Jimmy hangs up without another word, his finger quickly dropping one Wednesday later to the 27th. How he had lost count of the days, is beyond himself. The clank of the phone on the receiver rings out with a little ding, and he haphazardly takes a permanent pen to strike out all the days he had missed in one line, which horribly ruins the consistency of the x's, but there's simply no time. What would he do without dearest Peter anyway? He doesn't get paid for anything, much less pull Jimmy by his collar when he loses himself in fruitful rendevous.

When he drops the pen to slip on his oh, so stylistic Converse trainers and tie up the laces, it hits the thick cardstock laying under his lamp, dulling the noise. He picks it up with two fingers to check for spotting in ink. Reading it again once over, he sighs when he notes the letter again, realizing it awfully sounds quite similar to a certain Christmas card he sent to a certain returning groupie Miss Pamela for Christmas just last year. No matter, though, when there's a boxy brown car waiting outside his estate, side profile stoic.

--

Here he is, once again, naked and afraid. Well, not completely naked, but exposed. The swinging breeze doesn't help much as he wraps his lanky arms around his bare torso and hunches forward slightly. There's a reminiscent smile on his lips as he finishes a story about some broken television that somehow landed in the foyer of a hotel lobby, which, seemingly enough, also just fell out of the hands of a drunken John Bonham.