Frank N. Tine

It was maddening, day after day, making the circuit from the tray to the table to the dishwasher and back again. Frank, made with discount tin, never expected to grace the banquet halls at Buckingham Palace, the fondue pots at Aspen, or the never-ending shrimp buffets of clothing-optional cruises, but was he not entitled to at least the inside of an incisor? Could he not meet a molar? Careen into a canine? At the Soft Palette Assisted Living Community, Frank was part of a pronged populace that proved pointless with every platter of pre-prepared puree.

Watching each dip and drip of the load-bearing spoons, hauling scoop after beige-colored scoop into the dribbling gums, Frank yearned for more than pinning down a Dixie serviette on the cold left side of a Styrofoam bowl. He was ferried back and forth from the dish room to the dining room without even a fingerprint marking his stem, the gloved table-setters putting him down until the gloved bussers picked him up again. Those heady, hopeful moments of human contact, the exhilarating rush of the wind in his tines, only left Frank feeling cold and rigid when he went back on the stack, without even the slip of a tongue to provide some purpose in life. He just wanted to be useful. He’d never even been used.

The dishwasher’s gloves were slick and slippery, iridescent bubbles clinging to the latex folds, and Frank saw his chance to break the cycle. When the dishwasher bent to hit the big, red button by the safety light, Frank slid from that yellow rubber grasp and tumbled, end over end, into the waiting jaws of the garbage disposal.

The rotating blades ground and gouged Frank’s surface, his ergonomic structure clattering on the wheel, and he was spat out, flying from the metal mouth. Wind whipping the water from his flats, Frank spun with dizzying recklessness, into a one-in-a-million trajectory that stabbed him squarely into a neglected electrical socket.

Blue lightening popped and fizzed, leaping from tine to tine, rippling up his conductive stem, arcing from the beveled end of his handle. A flurry of volts lit up Frank’s senses, brilliance surging through every particle of his molded form. “I’M ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!”

The dishwasher watched the factory fork flop to the tile coving. It flopped again, a stiff fish trying to swim through air. Then, with groaning effort, the electrocuted cutlery managed to pull itself up, balancing on its little prongs. It did a little hopping dance, ting-tinging across the ceramic surface. The dishwasher retreated to the walk-in, to tell his friendly thermos of Jim Beam about this.

Still sizzling with Ediswann energy, Frank ting-a-ting-tinged across the kitchen floor. He had never seen the world from this perspective, away from all the tabletops, down with the dust bunnies and orphaned M&Ms. Staring into the stainless-steel surface of the dish machine, Frank realized, with growing wonder, that the disposal-scarred sliver of silver in the mirror was him. “Oh my god, I’m gorgeous,” Frank marveled. “I’m gonna get me a mouth to feed!”

Tines tink-tinking out the loading dock door, Frank experienced concrete for the first time. He experienced pavement, he experienced grass. He experienced dog shit, and it did not bother him. He experienced a subway grate, and that bothered him very much. Soon, the pink seashell of the Soft Palette Assisted Living Community sign was fading into the distance, a pink Bay leaf in the hearty bolognaise of Frank’s new life.

Skittery-tinking down the sidewalk, Frank heard a shrill cry burst through the night. Rounding the corner, Frank saw a man with dark gloves wrapped around the purse of a screaming woman, clawing at his fingers while she gasped for air with—“A mouth!”

Frank leapt for the open orifice, but the woman stamped down hard on the instep of her attacker, who flailed as he started to tip over, to fall. Moving as they were, Frank could only watch his target disappear, eclipsed by the man’s round right buttock, which the flying fork had no choice but to spear.

The woman fled as the man yelped, reaching back with his dark gloves and yanking Frank free. “What the—”

“Put me down!” Frank demanded.

The man stopped, his fist slipping on the little metal marvel. “Wait, what?”

“Put me down!” Frank repeated, wriggling stiffly against the gloved grip. “Or, put me in your mouth!”

Immediately dropping the fork, the man took a few steps out of feeding range. “What’s happening?”

Frank picked himself up, bouncing on his weathered pins. “You hungry for a serving-size portion of whoop-ass? Come closer, I’ll make you microwave ready!”

The man took another step back, even as Frank slightly undermined his position by picking up a lengthening string of chewed gum. “What’s your deal, fork-face? I’ve never had beef with any skewer!”

“I’m alive!” Frank thrilled. “And I have might beyond shoveling grub! A world surpassing my wildest aspirations will be conquered piece by bite-sized piece!”

“Oh, you got a little existential overwhelm after getting shocked to life by an electric socket?” Rubbing his recently acquired battle scar, the man with dark gloves said, “I hear that. Say, Tine-y, what do you know about TSA restrictions?”

Frank tilted his disposal-divoted body to the side. “Is that like dietary restrictions? Because no consulting nutritionist will assuage me!”

The man slowly dialed a number on his cell phone, keeping an eye on Frank like the alley was getting cleared for dessert service. “Hey, boss? I met this fork in the road...”

Before long, Frank was gingerly carried between two gloved fingers to a nearby car, receiving a briefing for his first real job. “Knives would never make it in a carry-on,” the gloved man explained. “They just can’t cut it, but you? You’ve got an edge that could rock this. Long as you don’t fork it up.”

Wedged through the fibers of his seatbelt, Frank drank in the delicious breeze from the gloved man’s passenger window, enthralled by the rushing lights of passing cars, enamored at the overlapping necklaces of beltway stop-and-go. “How many of these people do you think are hungry right now?”

The gloved man glanced at him over the glowing end of his cigar. “Look, Tine-y…I don’t think many people are gonna fork with you until you get clean.”

Smelling the cigar smoke off the nicotine stains on the gloved man’s teeth, Frank said, “I don't need any of your lip.”

Secure in the cozy darkness of the gloved man’s bag, Frank listened to a thousand muffled voices over two thousand echoing steps, the dings and beeps of mysterious machines, a voice that was both bored and furious hollering, “Next!” The zipper unzipped, and an unfamiliar pair of blue latex gloves pawed through the carry-on bag, brushing past Frank who used all his self-control to stay silent while discovering he was ticklish.

The bag zipped closed again, and Frank waited for a long time in the quiet dark. He knew his mission: to hijack (a verb he didn’t know) a plane (a thing he’d never seen) for the boss (a person he’d never met), but something still felt hollow inside of him. Although thrilled at his expanding skill set, each new use Frank discovered obscured what his purpose might be. He could no longer be content to dream of stabbing steak, spearing spinach, or spiraling spaghetti, bearing saucy parcels to a drooling drop box, a ravenous cavern collapsing around him, lips, teeth, and tongue sliding over his silver surface to the sound of a satisfied, “Mmmmmmmm…”

The bag unzipped, and the dark-gloved man fished Frank from the unkempt collection of objects without a spark. “Okay,” the man said. “Now, we—”

“WOW!”

Both dark gloves wrapped around Frank, muffling another spellbound, “wow! we're in the clouds!”

“Shut up!” The man smiled tightly at the elderly nun sat next to him. “I will lock you in a China hutch, I swear to god—” A sudden jolt of turbulence launched Frank from the gloved man’s hands.

Somersaulting into the aisle, Frank felt the whole world shake beneath him, no solid ground to support his improbably animated form, his electrified metal, his disposal scars, the scummy stains of his journey stuck to tines with no scientific explanation for staying upright on this bizarre, long, nonsensical day, in this strange, scentless, plastic place where he couldn’t see the sky anymore. A shadow fell over Frank, and a warm, bright voice chirruped, “Oh! You dropped your fork!”

The flight attendant scooped up Frank, gently supporting his neck, putting reassuring pressure on his handle with her soft, clean, bare hand. The warmth of her skin transferred to his metallic frame, and Frank felt sparks all over again, incredibly aware he was floating amongst the clouds. She smiled, with her full, deep lips and her sparkling white teeth, and Frank yearned to press against her elegant fingers, feeling her heartbeat through the sensitive tips, so enchanted he could hardly move.

"Let me sanitize this for you." In the flight attendant's cradling palm, Frank shivered deliciously at the initial chill of a cleansing cloth, silken folds of lemon-scented splendor rolling over his battered surfaces. With professional care, Frank's handle was lathered, the towelette twining between each tine, soothing the bruising he'd endured, wiping the grime from his dented tips. So many hands in so many gloves had pushed Frank around like an object, a tool, but this was the first time he felt treasured. So overwhelmed with surging emotion, Frank was unable to speak, did not know how to reach out, to thank her, to keep their connection. The encounter was so intimate, so unexpected, that Frank found himself completely and hopelessly forked up.

“I could really use one of these right now,” the flight attendant grinned, handing Frank back to his dark-gloved employer. “I’ve just got to get something in my mouth.”