Freddie

The fingers of one hand drummed impatiently against the notebook on my knee, while the other hand reached over and grabbed the hot tea from its holder and lifted it to my lips.  It wasn't all that wonderful, I could make a much better cup myself- but it was warm, and the world was frigid, so I didn't complain.

I'd been sitting in this damn car for the last hour at least, while my self-appointed driver silently navigated through traffic that made London Bridge congestion seem reasonable, stopping only once to pick up coffee at this place called Starbucks, because Charles hadn't had "his morning dose of caffeine yet."  I tell you, from the line of cars we had to wait behind, I expected it to be much more marvelous, but the tea was tea, and the frozen coffee thing Charles ordered (and in winter, too- he had to have been utterly mad) looked like a frozen coffee thing, and the whipped cream on top really didn't do a lot to change that.  If any of you reading this chapter disagree, and happen to think Starbucks is the bee's knees, I apologize, but the place is overpriced, overdone, and overrated. 

But I digress.

I had no idea that Wes was based out of New York, otherwise I would have turned him down in the blink of an eye.  I was no DJ material.  Perhaps I sat at a console in a cramped little room like one, but I was actually making music, not playing it back ad nauseam, while occasionally chatting on about the weather and road conditions just to break up the boredom.  My God.

"It's just a half hour," Charles said suddenly, as though he could read my thoughts.  "Five hundred bucks for thirty minutes- man, I wish I had that kind of set-up."

I rolled my eyes.  I was in no mood for shallow optimism.  "Are we there yet?"

"Pretty close, maybe another twenty minutes away," he replied.  "How's the song coming along?"

"Which one?"

"Whoa.  Are you writing several at once?"

"Trying to," I said, a bit too coldly.

He swallowed.  "Sorry."  And fell silent again.

I sighed, shaking my head.  "No, dear, I'm sorry.  I've just- there's a lot weighing on my mind at the moment, and uh-"

"It's all right," Charles hummed. 

And there really were a lot of things swirling about inside.  The silence (Charles had turned off the music altogether when he saw I was trying to concentrate; he was so tuned in to me, which was nice- he really reminded me of my first official chauffeur/bodyguard, to be honest) allowed me to think clearly without distraction, but I still found my thoughts wandering to unhelpful places.  Home, for example- my cats, my big lovely house, Mary, Jim, Phoebe, Paul, Straker, and all the other people I called friends, that were wondering where the hell I had run off to.  It wasn't like me, to just leave right in the middle of a org- uh, party; surely the police were all over Germany looking for me at this point.

Just as much, though, I thought about the boys in Queen- Roger, Brian, John; I really did miss rowing with them.  I missed making our music, writing new songs, doing things that actually would have an effect, mean something- instead of having to sneak around using someone else's name, making sure no one recognized me and that nothing I did caused any ripples.  That wasn't me. 

And Julia knew that, too, or else she would have tried to convince me not to do this.  My voice would be broadcast all over the Northeastern states, heard by tens of thousands, if perhaps even hundreds of thousands or more- and she had all but encouraged me to go for it.

She really does understand me, I said to myself- then scoffed, Or, she just saw it as a way to get me out of her hair.  Again.

Charles spoke up, interrupting my thoughts.  "If it will help any, you don't have to just sit there the whole time.  A way to cheat, is- pick, like, a six or seven minute song, then set a timer on your watch-"

"I haven't got a watch."

"Then use the phone, those things have timers, too, I think."

"Yeah?" I shook my head.  "My God, what can't these things do?"

"They can't cook.  Yet."

"Damn," I smiled.  "Ah, well, Julia's a good cook anyway, doesn't matter."  And she was; not as professional as Joe, perhaps, but I had yet to eat anything she'd prepared that I didn't enjoy.

"Anyway, and then you can skip off, do something else while the time runs out.  People in radio do that stuff all the time.  Just put on 'Stairway to Heaven,' or 'Free Bird'- 'Bat Out of Hell,' even, and away they go."

"Away they go," I repeated dryly, but wrote down the names of the songs.  "That's a good idea, though, what's some other long tracks?"

Furrowing his brow, he listed off a few more- and yes, he included "Bo Rhap."  In spite of myself, I chuckled.  Charles was so oblivious.

"Robert Palmer did a lot of long songs, too- but I don't know if he counts as classic rock," he went on.  

"Oh, yes," I hummed, scrawling his name down.  "That's the Power Station singer, right?"

Charles shrugged.  "Maybe.  I only like his solo stuff, so I don't know."

I sighed.  "Each to his own, I suppose."

Even without that sort of frame of reference, though, I remembered years ago, Julia telling me something about him- I want to say it was on the plane back to London, but it might have been later, I can't remember- that she thought he was attractive, or something like that- that he had a man's face, or a man's voice. Yes, that was it. Ah, now it's coming back to me:

She said, and I quote, "Robert Palmer - that is one sexy Englishman. I mean, the whole thing- the face, the voice, the body- ooh, he's such a man."

As well, I seem to remember getting fairly annoyed when Julia said that, rolling my eyes and shaking my head- much the way I was doing even as I thought about it now. Then again, I suppose "annoyed" isn't really the right word, to be honest; I got angry. For as anyone would agree, I look nothing like Robert Palmer, nor will I ever- and I took her innocent remarks to imply that in her eyes, I wasn't nearly as delicious a sight as he.

When she asked what my problem was, I replied something like, "It's only natural, a husband should be jealous when his wife looks at other men."

I really don't know where I was going with that, it's been too long and memories fade- but I do remember Julia snickering lightly, then softly whispering a song I had never heard before, and to this day still escapes me, but it went, "Jealous, jealous, jealous," several times in a row.

And when I asked who wrote that piece of rubbish (as I could quite easily deduce what the thing was called), she told me it was "the one and only blue-eyed and chiseled-faced Adonis, Bob Palmer"- which set me off all over again.  I folded my arms, turned away, and sulked. 

Now, I got past it, of course, but not before she informed me that it was nothing personal, that she thought me much more beautiful and talented than Robert Palmer, and that with that in mind she wanted me to please stop being such a bitch.

God love her.

Truth be told, I had missed that side, that fearless tease that had no qualms about calling me out on things, telling me "no," pushing me to the brink of madness, giving me challenges I loved to overcome.  And I could tell it still existed, that was too much a part of her to simply vanish; she just didn't show it as much, for whatever reason. 

I needed that. I need sparring, I need banter- I need something to work for, something to win. Not to the point of violence, of course, or constantly mean-spirited feelings- there's no fun in that. A game, not a war; competition, not hatred. And with Julia, it was always a game- but even when I won, the victory was just as sweet, dare I say even sweeter, than the pursuit itself-

Oh, get off, I told myself harshly.  Those days happened, I can't change that- but that was then, this is now.  I am too old for that shit, and I've got a lover waiting for me at home. Besides, it's not like I'd even pursue her again, because I wouldn't.  Why would I, when she would clearly rather spend time with her smug little scientist? 

Even I said this to myself, I couldn't help recalling the look in her eyes as she sent me on my way.  I'd never seen such an expression before- on her, that is.  There was something very off there- something not at all happy.  Strange, only since this morning had I noticed any trace of discontent.  Why now? 

"It's been an interesting ten years."  K's words came back to me.  And ten years- that was a long, long time.  Obviously there was a lot I didn't know about.  Anything could have happened.  The question was, who would know?  And who could- and would- tell me?

Her cousin Roxie, of course, I told myself.

My lips twitched over my teeth, and I whispered aloud, "Right.  Anyone else?"

Unexpectedly then, the flip phone buzzed. The mystery Uncle J had responded, but not with a name. Instead, he asked, rather redundantly I thought, "Richard Dubroc, you said?"

So I pressed the microphone and said carelessly, "That's me, dear- unless of course you'd rather call me Freddie."

Charles looked at me.  "I thought you said your name was Rick."  How calmly he said that- no surprise whatever, just a gentle nudge- more like a reminder than a correction.

"Ah, right!  Yeah, let me fix that- ugh, this ridiculous thing.  So I push this button here to make it erase- there it goes!  Perfect."  When I had cleared the message of my real name, I decided to manually type in the name Rick- and it took me longer than I'd like to admit.  But I did it, however much time I wasted, and I sent it back.

"Thanks, darling," I sighed.  "That was close."

He nodded silently, and kept his eyes on the road.  As for me, I flipped back to my new work-in-progress song, to the lyrics and the chord notations I jotted down to keep things in place.  Only two lines made any sense thus far- "I'm so sorry" and "I'm not the only one"- and the latter was arranged in such a way that it would have made a lovely chorus beginner, so I had that much in my favor.

"I'm not the on-ly one," I sang aloud- twice, actually, because the line was meant to be repeated.  It sounded nice, but the words still didn't seem- I'm not sure how to describe this in print and still sound intelligent, but they didn't fit as well as I would have hoped.  But lyrics are indeed the most difficult part of writing any song, at least for me.

"That's pretty nice," Charles hummed. 

"It's a start," I replied, absently sketching in the blank space on the paper- and then my head jerked up.  I had an idea.

Carefully I asked Charles, "You don't suppose they allow, um, blokes like me to just sort of- can you record music at a radio station?"

"I don't know why not.  Everything they say in the mike is archived automatically anyhow- sometimes it's even filmed.  So definitely I'd say there's places you can record."

"Hmm."  I looked down at my notes.  A plan was forming.  I had almost a whole song put together already, in terms of structure and melody.  "But that means I'd have to keep coming back up to Manhattan just to work on it."

"Not necessarily; you can email the track to yourself, or upload it to the Cloud and access it from the comfort of your own place, if your computer's got the software for it."

I blinked.  "What cloud?"

"The Cloud!  The Internet, basically."

"The what?"

"You know.  Google?  YouTube?  The Information Age?  Computers?  Any of this ringing a bell?"

I sighed through my nose.  "Darling, do I look like I know what you're talking about?"

Charles shook his head.  "Never been to Starbucks, never heard of the Internet.  Man, what rock have you been living under the last thirty years?"

"A nice big piece of marble, most likely," I murmured. 

"Huh?"

"Nothing."  With another sigh, I started to close the notebook, flipping backwards through the pages which were riddled with my handwriting- all but one, where Danny also had doodled a bit in the margins when he was teaching me slang words.  "I'm a noob, I admit it- but I'm still learning, I intend very much to keep becoming- um, becoming, uh, less of a noob, as it were."

Charles began to laugh.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing," he chuckled, "I just - that's the last thing I expected to hear come out of you."

"Noob" again.  I rolled my eyes, setting the notebook aside.  "Weren't you going to turn the music back on or something?"

"Yeah, absolutely, sorry," Charles nodded. 

"I'll let you do it," I murmured.  The last time I touched anything on the console screen, I accidentally pushed some taboo button that made the whole thing turn red with big angry letters popping up that read "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL: ACCESS DENIED"-and Charles freaked out.  Let's just say I had learned my lesson.

And what do you think was the first thing that played on the music when he started it up again?

No.  Wrong.  It wasn't "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head."  Don't be ridiculous.  No, it was the last verse of another Bread song- which also happened to be the most depressing one.

And Aubrey was her name,
I never knew her, but I loved her just the same,
I loved her name
Wish that I had found the way
And the reasons that would make her stay
I have learned to lead a life apart from all the rest
If I can't have the one I want, I'll do without the best

But how I miss the girl-

"Good Lord, Charles, haven't you got anything on here with any sort of kick?" I snapped.

"Put it wherever you like," he said generously. 

"Is it going to yell at me again?"

"No, just keep your fingers off the screen, you should be fine; just press the skip button there."

So I did, moving quickly to get the sharp, stabbing sensation out of my heart. I pushed the button several times, searching for anything that wasn't 1970s American soft rock. 

At last, I succeeded- and as luck would have it, the track was some kind of island-funk type song by Robert Palmer, no less.  I'd never heard it before- but I couldn't help a little smile.  Even Charles began singing along, "Hey, hey, Julia/ You're actin' so peculiar/ I know I'd never fool you in a million years..."

Didn't that just figure, her "blue-eyed Adonis" wrote a song with her name in it, I noted to myself.  That's probably why she likes him so much.  Maybe he met her, too.  Maybe she met him before she met me and that's who the song is about.  That's not impossible; nothing is.  Maybe that's who Danny belongs t-

I had to physically pull myself back from the cliff my head was sprinting toward. I had to stop being so absurd. After all, Julia was a virgin when I met her, and Danny didn't look anything like Robert Palmer, any more than he looked like Stuart, thank God.  Mr. Palmer probably only loved her name, and the way it rolled off the tongue.  I couldn't blame him; I did, too.

"It's a shame, really," I sighed aloud. "I know this will be more sort of productive, but I was actually looking forward to the lesson today."

Charles stopped singing.  "Yeah?"

"Mm. I don't get much time with her as it is what with, you know, her job, and that wanker breathing down her neck-"

"Wanker?"

"Sorry, I mean Dr. Preus," I clarified. "Julia- the woman who's teaching me, that's, um, Ms. Samuels.  They're sort of together-"

"Oh, yeah, that's right, his girlfriend."

I sighed through my nose.  "Could say that, I suppose." 

"Wait- so, that was his girlfriend in the car with you yesterday?  The one who was doing doughnuts?"

"Right."  Funny, but I took no pleasure in hearing people call her that.  "She the one who's trying to teach me to drive.  Hadn't you met her before?"

"I never met Ms. Samuels in the formal sense, as in, shook hands, stuff like that; I've only seen them together from behind- and even then, I'd really rather not do that again."  He sighed.

"Why not?"

Charles looked quite uncomfortable then.  "I, uh- let's just say the circumstances weren't the best."

I frowned.  "Go on."

"I don't think I should tell you- it might not have even been them, it was dark in the parking garage that day.  But if the rumors are to be believed-"

"Rumors?  About Julia?"

"Yeah.  She and Preus, and how they..." Then he shook his head.  "Never mind."

"Oh, darling, it's not like it even matters, rumors are rumors," I said.  "Go on."

I watched him work his mouth uncomfortably, as though he were literally biting his tongue.  Obviously Charles didn't want to tell me; that made me feel a little better, assuring me he was not easily persuaded to gossip- and at the same time, a little worse.  Come on, darling.  How bad could this be? 

Charles sighed.  "There's a rumor that she's his, um..." Finally he made himself spit it out.  "She blows him.  People around the campus- they say she pleasures him once a week."

On reflex I heard myself joke, "My God.  Remind me never to kiss her on the mouth again, then."  I snickered to myself for a few seconds in empty mirth, but Charles stayed silent.  Before long whatever artificial, stupid lightness I could make of the news disappeared- and was replaced with dread.

"I mean," I went on quietly, "it's only a rumor, isn't it? She doesn't really, you know- actually go down on him, does she?"

Charles pursed his lips.  "Why?  You jealous?"

"Jealous?  Me?  Certainly not," I crooned haughtily.  "Idle curiosity, is all- and anyway I just find that a bit hard to swallow- no pun intended," I added quickly when I saw him cringe. 

"I wish it was just a rumor," Charles whispered. 

I blinked.  "So, it- isn't?"

Charles spoke softly.  "I saw them once."

The tea burned my tongue mid-sip. "W-What?" I spluttered.

"Down in the parking garage, I was on patrol when I saw them come out of the elevator, walk towards a Mercedes Benz.  He had his arm around her shoulders, and I remember him saying something about her hair- something about how 'this' would be easier for her anyway, if she cut it short- pixie cuts were making a comeback at the time, if I remember correctly.  But anyway, and he climbed into the back seat, shut the door..." He trailed off, looked at me.

When I could stand it no more, I blurted, "Well?  Then what?"  I didn't want to hear this story, it made me sick inside- but at the same time I had to hear how it ended.  It was like driving past a car crash: I couldn't look away.

"She kind of held back a moment," he continued at last.  "I was too far away to see her expression, but her head was down, and I saw her reach into her collar, pull something out- I guess it was around her neck, but she pulled it out, and kissed it, then looked up and mouthed something at the ceiling."

"What was it?"

He shrugged.  "Again, I was too far away.  And then, she- opened the back seat door, closed it... and they, uh, didn't come out for a while."

The words dug into my spine, ignited a burning sensation in the back of my eyes.  Against my will, my mind actually tried to picture the scene.  You know, how when a terrible thought slips into your mind, one you immediately hate yourself for having- but no matter how hard you try to sweep it into the corner (it's impossible to just pluck it out), it comes back, more vivid, more horrible than before, and always at the worst times?

"Why didn't you go in there and break it up?" I demanded.

He sighed. "Because I couldn't."

I was dumbfounded. "The hell you couldn't! You're a fucking security guard, isn't that what you're supposed to do? My God!"

"Well, that's what happened," he said, ignoring my question. "That's what I saw."  Then he looked at the picture of Robert Palmer on the screen (the song had changed to, I suppose, his cover of "It Could Happen to You"); the thing tended to show the album covers whence the playing tracks came.  A handsome man, it was true; Julia (with the eternal exception of Richard Dreyfuss) had superior taste in men.  But I wasn't thinking about that at the moment. I saw something new, something different, and it curdled my blood.

I saw the arched brow.  I saw the thin overconfident lips.  The picture was basically color-saturated, sepia-toned, but I knew the eyes were blue.  Even the fucking hairstyle was the same.

My fists clenched.

Charles looked at the picture as well.  "You know, he kinda looks like Stuart, doesn't he?"

I hissed, "That motherfucking asshole wishes he looked that good."

"Rick, I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to Robert Palmer," I snarled, more viciously than I had intended.  "Stuart is a beady-eyed, ugly motherfucker, I hate him, and I wouldn't spit on him if he was on fire."

Charles swallowed, then after a moment reached up his finger to quietly skip the song. It was replaced by a song by the fellow I'd heard quite a lot of the night before- a pleasant, happy song that did not in any way resemble the previous. "Nobody But Me," I think, I've forgotten how it goes personally, it's not one of my favorites.  I don't really care for its rap segment.

"My dad actually met him once," Charles mused aloud. "Michael Buble, I mean.  Nice guy."

"That's nice," I mumbled, half-listening. All of a sudden, I wanted to concentrate again, get my mind back on songwriting. Music was my escape- and now more than before, I needed an escape, for I didn't want to think about what I'd just heard. I wished I could unhear it altogether- but I couldn't. 

Julia, darling, what would Danny's father think? I asked silently.  What's happened to you?  What the hell is going on? I thought you were better than that. No, there's a better way to put it.

I thought you were better than me.

By this point we had crossed the bridge and were now driving straight into Downtown New York.  Up rose the mask. The phone vibrated again, but I paid no attention this time.   At last, I put my jumbled thoughts and feelings to the side, saved them for later.  Somehow I focused much better when I wasn't happy; like I said before, it gave me something to fight back against, forced me to focus completely on the job at hand, for if I felt like I was accomplishing something, I could weather the storm. 

And after hearing that news, I was ready to work my fucking ass off.