Time Passages (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

3. Recipe for Disaster

Julia

I rummaged around in my purse for the house keys while Danny stood behind me with his hands in his coat pockets, his brooding lips pressed in a tight line.  Poor fella. He never did like the sound of the word "no." 

I opened the front door of our small but comfortable Jersey home, and we were instantly greeted with Farnsworth's raspy squawk from the corner of the living room.  "Good news, everyone!"

"Hi, Farnsie," I called.  Any time someone opened the front door, that's what that bird would say, rather like a security alarm with feathers. 

In the laundry room Fry started barking and whining to be let out, which Danny took care of.  Like a frankfurter-shaped rocket, the dog careened into the kitchen and jumped up onto my legs and then Danny's, making sure we knew he was already hungry for supper.  (Danny had named Fry; he thought it would be funny to have two animals named after characters in the same show.)

"I'm going to start a quick dinner for us, if you could please feed the dog while I'm doing that," I said.

"Yes, ma'am," he grumbled, letting Fry outside into the backyard.

I looked at him.  "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

But I knew better than to believe that.  "Danny, what's so bad about Cousin Roxie coming over to babysit you?  Only last week, you were beside yourself about how much fun you had when you were playing together on the Sega Genesis."

My Cousin Roxie was a character, a psychology major-turned- boutique owner. She had been married on at least five occasions, though currently she was enjoying her time as an unchained divorcee and part-time chauffeur for Danny.  She was forever lost in the 1980s- she still wore her gray-blonde hair in a Sheena Easton cut, and dressed in mom jeans and loose-fitting sweaters, even though she was turning sixty-six next April- she was a sucker for anything by Ronnie Milsap or Glen Campbell, and she rode a vintage 1984 Suzuki Katana motorcycle, which Danny absolutely adored.

Life is funny.  All throughout childhood, I'd never known anything much about my Brooklyn-born cousin, Roxie, save that as a young woman that she had disgraced the Brazzis, my mother's very old-school Italian family, with some wrong apparently so unspeakable it was enough to get her practically disowned. 

But as soon as word circulated that I had become pregnant and I wasn't married, I too became a bit of a black sheep.  Not, of course, to the point of Roxie's shame, as my parents and I had fully reconciled a long time back- but in me she spied a possible new friend, an actual blood relation who understood.  And so, three years ago, when Danny and I moved to New Jersey for my new job at Princeton, she reached out to us- and we had been tight ever since.

He sighed.  "I don't like how she talks to me."

"How does she talk to you?"

"Like I'm four."

I tried not to smile.  "Danny, you say the exact same thing about Stuart."

"Not really.  He treats me like I'm five.  And five is better than four, so..."

I sighed.  Ah, the logic of a nine-year-old.  "Danny, I won't be gone that long.  The talk should only last about an hour and a half, at most.  And it's probably going to be about boring stuff anyway.  I bet you'd fall asleep halfway through."

Danny folded his arms and planted his feet, eyes sparkling with defiance.  "I bet I wouldn't."

"I bet you would."

"Wouldn't." 

"Would!"  I broke into a grin.

"Wouldn't!"