Frankie

Frank flushed and exited the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He paced back and forth for a few seconds. Then he walked back to the refrigerator and got a beer.

He cracked it open, took a healthy swig, and sat on his modest couch.

After a moment, he emptied the rest of the can, crushed it in his right hand, and made like Gary Payton as he took a shot at the trash bin in the kitchenette.

It bounced off the wall and went in.

After another moment, he crushed one of the two other empty beer cans sitting on the coffee table and took another shot at the trash bin.

This one went off the rim and in.

He did the same thing with the other empty and hit nothing but the bottom of the bin.

“And the crowd goes wild!” he said, jumping up and down.

Then he laughed out loud.

He sat down again.

He looked at the clutter in his apartment - the modest couch with a coffee table cluttered with mail, books, and newspapers; the round table against the window with two old waiting-room chairs at either side; the dusty TV set on top of a chair next to the kitchenette; the computer monitor on top of the table with a word doc on the screen. The kitchenette with a stove, refrigerator, and open cupboards.

He clapped his hands.

“I did it,” he began. “I DID IT!”

He exhaled.

“I called just before 1:00, and I got through this time. It was my second try today. I tried twice yesterday, but got the answering machine both times.”

He stood up and started pacing again with his hands in his pockets.

“I’m glad I got through because I don’t want to call her more than twice a day,” he continued. “I’ve already been pulling my hair out waiting to reach her. This whole thing’s like…a hunger, gnawing at my guts. I gotta feed it...before it consumes me whole.”

He began gesticulating.

“No doubt Justin will roll his eyes, but he doesn’t get it. I love the guy, but he wasn’t there. He doesn’t know what it’s like to just stand there while the woman you swore you’d take a bullet for and who swore herself that she felt the same way is now denying she felt that way while sounding like she’s trying to convince herself of that at the same time and not be able to answer back. At all! He doesn’t understand how my brain froze and prevented me from telling her I knew she was lying to me and forced me to just stand there and take it and let her leave. Hell, NOBODY gets that because NOBODY ELSE SAW IT! It was just me. She’s my goddamn Mr. Snuffleupagus!”

Memories of Melanie’s taunting tirades invaded his psyche. He wilted. He stood silent for several minutes, watching an old woman pull a small cart full of groceries up Spring Street.

“I wanted the call to last 15 minutes. I figured if I can keep her on the line that long, I’ve won. It won’t matter what we talk about, just as long as the conversation lasts at least 15 minutes. With each passing minute, it should get easier since the chance she’ll abruptly end the call will drop. She wouldn’t talk to someone for 15 minutes if she hated his guts and wanted him out of her life, right? She’d just hang up if she did.” 

“The call ended up lasting 11 minutes and 54 seconds - that’s what the timer on my cell phone said. But even though it didn’t go 15, I think I chipped away some serious ice.”

He sat down on the couch, drumming his fingers on the armrest. He flashed back to Melanie screaming at him.

“I NEVER PROMISED YOU ANYTHING! WHY CAN’T YOU GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK HEAD??? MY GOD!!! YOU ARE A POWER VAMPIRE!!!” She wailed.

He stood there, confused and paralyzed.

He returned to the present.

“Mel’s in nursing school, works six days a week, and is in and out during the day. I caught her in one of those moments. She was getting ready to go to work, and as I anticipated, she was caught off guard - totally off guard. Just like I hoped. Like I needed.”

He leaned forward. He buried his face in his hands.

Then he brushed his hair back with his hands.

“She stammered some times. She was on the chatty side others. I was nervous, too. Of course.”

He laughed.

“But I held strong. I paced back and forth here across the front of the room, clutching that little black rock I found when we went to Lapush for good luck. When all was said and done, I kept my manner calm and even, and I think that disarmed her.”

“Whadda think now, Pop? Your boy’s not a pussy now, eh?"

He stopped, pulled the rock out of his pocket, and looked at it. He heard “These Old Bones” by Sky Cries Mary playing in his head. He remembered kissing Melanie on the beach at Lapush as the sun set and the wind blew through their hair. He remembered her warm sad blue eyes.

‘I love you, Frankie,’ he heard her saying.

He grinned at the memory.

Then he realized something.

"We used to pour out our emotions to each other on the regular," he remembered. "Now, here I am doing it by myself."

He resumed pacing.

"The conversation was about mundane topics, going where it wanted. I had the outline of replies to accusations she might make up on the computer in case I needed to counter any attacks she’d make, but Mel was pretty hurried and didn’t get a chance to put up her guard.”

He paused. 

Then he smiled.

“I made her giggle a couple of times, though not at things we used to laugh about. Nevertheless, she did giggle,” he said, pointing his finger.

“I told her about Justin and how the bar’s going, about going to New York for Christmas, and why it would be a better Christmas than the year before because Dad died," he said.

He paced at a slower rate now - pensive, arms folded.

He stopped.

“She said her dad passed away suddenly in August. Heart attack. He died in his sleep.”

He stopped again. He was quiet for several seconds. He picked up his keychain and twisted it around his index finger before it flew off and landed on the coffee table.

“The first thing she said after I ID’d myself was, ‘What a small world.’ At the end, when I said, ‘bye,’ she said, ‘goodbye Frankie.’”

He turned towards the kitchenette like Johnnie Cochrane, addressing the jury.

“‘Frankie’ was what she and Adam used to call me when we were all a dangerous trio. She called me ‘Frankie’ while she was still married to Adam.”

He laughed.

“Then, during The Days (which is what we called the time we were writing to each other like mad), and during the brief time she lived here, she also called me ‘Frankie.’” That became her pet name for me. She said it of her own volition. After all the ugliness, the name hangs in the air, a ghost of something lost.”

He walked into the bathroom and looked at his satisfied reflection in the dirty mirror in the rusty medicine cabinet.

“So even though the call didn’t last 15 minutes, I’d call it a success. A gi-fucking-NORMOUS success!”

He laughed and clapped his hands.

“The fact that she didn’t see it coming made this success possible. She eased up, which made her vulnerable enough to end the call — after 11 minutes and 54 seconds, no less — with the pet name she called me before things went all sideways. That was the goal, and I achieved it. And I thought I’d have trouble asking what her favorite color is. HAH! Mission accomplished, motherfucker!”

He sat down and paused for a moment.

“I know I snuck up on her, but she took so much from me. This was the only way I could get it back,” he said. “Get myself back. Get the truth back. Maybe now... maybe now I can finally... breathe.”

He stared out the window, getting lost in the street noise. The Key Bank Building kept watch.

"This is what love triangles can do to you," he added.

“Look at me…I’m racing here, coming down from the rush that was going on during the call.”

He drummed the armrest one more time.

“I’m gonna go get me some tacos.”