In the Year of the Cat (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

54. Hello Again, Boys

I don't get it.

In the one split second of lull, I thought this to myself, remembering the phone call I'd hung up on about half an hour ago.  Not the Relic call, but the one with which I left you hanging at the end of last chapter.  (I mention so many different phones in this tale, it's easy to get them all mixed up.  At least, it is for me.)

I reclined in the back of a minicab, my hands folded, my brows fixed in a confused little furrow.  Here I had been sitting ever since I traipsed out of Freddie's flat.  I would have liked to use this trip to sort my head out a bit, for my heart was still in a whirl, my love and emotions fighting valiantly against cold logic and facts.  However, I had made the mistake of engaging the cabbie, a sweet, older Indian man named Siraj, in conversation.

After I told him my destination, he had nodded and said, "How lucky, I took someone to that area yesterday.  No need for maps!"

Then as we drove away from Freddie's flat, I asked him a single question: "Oh?  Have you worked as a cab driver long?"

Five minutes later, I knew the names of his wife and his children, along with their respective ages; that they had immigrated to London from Bombay three months ago, and that he had been working as a cabbie for the last month, adding to his regular job, in order to make enough money to open up his own curry restaurant in Soho.  The man talked my ear off all the way there, barely pausing to take a breath.  And since I do try to be a good listener (to be one is essentially a prerequisite for a therapist, anyway), I focused on his words as closely as possible, trying to make out everything he said in his fairly thick Indian accent, and wound up fully distracted from my life story and forcibly enthralled by his.

But I still had the voice of another ringing in my head, aside of Siraj and Dr. C.  Of all the people I expected to hear on the other end of the telephone, I never thought Brian May might be one of them.

Yet when I answered the phone that morning, I was met with a low, unimposing "Uh, hello.  Please tell me who's on the line?"

"C'est moi," I said.

I could almost see him bite his tongue in the brief pause before he spoke again, "Freddie, are you coming in today?"

"Wrong Freddie, Mr. Clogs," I murmured in my normal accent.

"Oh, it's you.  Uh... Eva, yes?"

"Close.  Eve."  That's right.  To everyone except Rudy, John, Veronica, and of course, Freddie, I'm still Eve Dubroc.  So many names.

"Right, ahem.  Eve, do you happen to know whether or not Freddie is en route to meet us here at Wessex?"

"He just left a few minutes ago, he's on his way, I think," I replied. 

"Fantastic."

"Were you going to leave a message or something?"

"No, no, I just wanted to know if he would be here."

"Don't you worry.  Freddie's in the zone today.  He's ready to work, work, work."

"Mmm.  We'll see."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I know he's going to be distracted again.  It's inevitable."

"Awww.  What's distracting him?"

"No one but you."

"What?  But I'm not even there!"

"Not yet."

Brian then went on to ask me if I wouldn't mind dropping by Wessex in about an hour at the latest, as my services were required. 

"Services, huh?" I repeated.  "That doesn't sound very kosher."