Let's Be Frank (18 page)

“Tell me, again, why we couldn’t drive?” I hiss toward Frankie.

She leans around me to look at Betty and rolls her eyes. “You two are ridiculous.”

“Us two? Why are you lumping me in with her? I’m perfectly calm.”

She nods to my forehead. “It’s freezing in here, but you’re sweating.”

With my free hand, I swab my forehead and wipe the moisture on my khakis. “I have a naturally low body temperature, so I’m hot-natured,” I explain.

“Whatever. You’re not in control of this thing, and it’s freaking you out.”

“That’s…”

Actually, that’s pretty astute. I’ve never thought of it that way before. But I’m not about to give her any credit for pinpointing part of my discomfort.

“That’s silly. I’d be sweating a lot more if I suddenly had to fly this thing.”

“What?! Why would you have to fly the plane? Is something wrong with the pilot?” Betty screeches. Several people turn to stare. A tense hum builds around us.

For the fourth time, I extract her nails from my hand and set her claws in her own lap. “Nothing’s wrong,” I say loudly enough for the closest passengers to hear before leaning closer to Betty’s ear and murmuring, “Get a grip. On something other than my hand.”

“I’m sorry,” she replies, uncharacteristically meek. “I’m scared shitless.”

“Yeah? I hadn’t noticed.” No longer as embarrassed by her outburst and the ensuing attention it garnered, I soften and say, “Hey, I’m not thrilled about this, either, but… it’s going to be okay. Really.” I take back her hand and ball it into a fist, which I tuck neatly into my palm. “There. If you had told me how freaked out you are by flying, I would have scored some Valium for you.”

“Did you take some?”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t like taking stuff like that.”

“Why not?”

“Control…” Frankie intones by the window.

“Do you have a problem with me?” I snap, my anxiety level too high for me to filter my irritation at her sudden interest in psychoanalysis.

Widening her eyes, she mildly replies, “I’m just stating the obvious. Sheesh.”

“Well, now’s not the time.”

“Knowing is half the battle,” she huffs, turning fully toward the window, showing me her narrow back. As if speaking to the clouds, she adds, “It’s surprising you even drink, because you like being in control so much.”

“I’m complex like that, I guess,” I grumble.

“I could use a drink,” Betty states. “Where’s that cranky flight attendant with her annoying, aisle-blocking cart when you need her?”

The fasten seatbelt light comes on with a ding, and a nearly inaudible man’s voice delivers a soliloquy that basically amounts to,
“The rest of this flight will be pure Hell. Hope you like those fingernail marks.”

On cue, the plane bounces, and Betty squeaks.

I look at my watch and sigh.

*****

The three of us arrive in Arizona cranky, argumentative, and—in Betty’s case—just shy of drunk. The hour-long drive from the airport in the rental vehicle (gas-guzzling tank, more like it) doesn’t help. Frankie didn’t want to drive, even though she was the only sober one of us who knew how to get to her parents’ house, but I suppose she thinks I know the way by osmosis, because she’s spaced out on her side of the SUV and won’t say a word unless I specifically ask, “Which way now?”

The fourth time I have to backtrack, I explode, “This thing has the turning radius of a rhinoceros, so if we could avoid any more three-point turns, that would be fabulous.”

“I assumed you’d be able to follow highway signs, since you know the name of the town we’re going to,” Frankie snaps back.

“The least you could have done was get a rental car with GPS if you didn’t want to navigate.”

“Anything else you’d like to bitch about?”

“Yeah! This vehicle is single-handedly killing rain forests in Borneo.”

“We needed the space for our luggage!”

“It’s a weekend! I still don’t understand why you guys needed two full suitcases each. I fit everything I needed in my carry-on. A change of underwear and a toothbrush.”

“Whatever. You have your own suitcase, so stop acting like you’re such a rugged minimalist.”

“Correction: Frank has a suitcase.”

A moan comes from the backseat, followed by, “Do I need to come up there and sit between you two?”

Frankie whirls to say into the backseat, “Oh, you’re already plenty in the middle.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Betty demands.

“You have an MBA. Figure it out.” With that, Frankie folds her arms under her breasts and faces front once more while I try not to react too vehemently to what she’s said.

“Maybe we should all just be quiet for a few seconds,” I suggest, “before someone says something truly stupid.”

“Someone already did,” Betty grouses.

When things have cooled considerably (as in, icicles are forming between the three of us), I say to Frankie as innocuously as possible, so as not to start another argument, “Please, summarize the directions for the rest of the trip. Simple stuff. ‘Turn left on Highway Blah-Blah, right on Wisteria Lane,’ etcetera.”

Staring straight through the windshield, she mumbles mulishly, “I don’t know the street names or highway numbers. I just know how to get there.”

I’d close my eyes, but that would be a conflict of interest with driving, so I breathe in deeply and hold it… and my tongue. Finally, I trust myself enough to say, “Okay. Then you’ll have to direct me.”

“Fine. That’s all you had to say.”

Oh, I see. So, it’s my fault now? I guess it is, if you trace this back to the night I drunkenly joked about posing as a male chick lit author. Or we could go even further back and blame me for accepting that blind date with Frankie in November. Hell knows I’m starting to rue that day. More than “starting to.”

While I fume about the unfairness of it all, Frankie grumbles monosyllables at me.

“Right.”

“Merge.”

“Left.”

By the time I jump down from Bigfoot in the Liptons’ hot driveway, diplomacy isn’t high on my social resumé. So when Her Highness walks toward the front door, leaving Betty and me to sort out the luggage, I yell toward her, “Hey! We left the porter back at the palace!”

I’ll be damned if I’m going to be her flunky all weekend. I figure I’ve done enough already as her chauffeur, with much more to come later as her stinking alter ego.

Still, I can’t say I blame her when my sarcasm results in her stomping away without a word.

Betty heaves her own bags from the cargo area and sets them on the blinding driveway. “She can come out later and get her stuff.”

“Yeah, right. Like I’m going to go in there, meet her parents, and say, ‘Oh, and your bags are waiting in the trunk.’” I extract said heavy, rolling suitcases and set them next to Betty’s while I climb into the back to retrieve my duffel bag and smaller case, which have slid all the way against the back seats, out of my reach.

“Then take them in with us,” she supplies mildly. When I step onto the driveway again and reach up to close the back hatch, she rests her hand on my arm. “Hey.”

I stop, looking into her face to receive what I know is going to be a lecture I probably deserve.

“Listen. I know you don’t want to be here.”

“That’s not—”

“And I don’t blame you! You’re an amazing guy to do this for her. I ask myself all the time why you agreed to it, and why you continue to do it, but… you did. You do. So as long as you’re in, let’s at least try to have fun.”

I stare at the tan and white pebbles that make up Frankie’s parents’ front “lawn.” “Why do
you
do it?” I finally ask her what I’ve also been wondering for weeks now.

When she doesn’t answer right away, I blink to focus my eyes and try to read her expression. It’s difficult to translate. Mostly, she looks perplexed by my question, so I clarify, “I mean, she treats you like an employee, not a friend.”

She laughs. “Oh, that. Well, that’s how it’s always been with us.”

“You don’t strike me as the type who would put up with that, though. It doesn’t gel with your personality.”

Her right eyebrow lifts. “And what would that be? Demanding? Bossy?”

“No!” I try to reconcile the Betty I met back in December—and the one who shows up when Frankie’s not around—with the one standing in front of me now. “Just… strong-willed. I always thought you didn’t take any crap from anyone.”

“Not just anyone. She’s different, though,” she says, nodding toward the front door.

I’m about to ask why when Frankie’s head pops out the door, as if we’ve summoned her by talking about her.

“What the heck, you two?”

“Hold your horses!” Betty bellows. “We’re trying to figure out how to carry three people’s luggage with only four hands.”

Chastened, Frankie emerges fully from the house and walks toward us.

“See? I’m not a total pushover,” Betty murmurs with a sly smile.

Frankie grabs her suitcases but says, “My parents are waiting inside, and you two are out here, whispering on the driveway.”

I slam the hatch. “Nobody’s whispering.”

“Whatever. I know you’re talking about me.”

“Self-important much?” Betty mutters.

Before I can answer Frankie’s accusation more seriously than Betty has, we arrive inside the house, which I now register to be one of the biggest private homes I’ve ever set foot in. The sun streams through the uncovered east-facing windows, but it’s still cold in here. That’s when I realize the air conditioning is on. In April. That’s incredible, considering they had to de-ice the plane in Green Bay when we took off this morning.

As I gaze up three stories into a stained-glass skylight, the owners of the house enter the foyer. I turn my attention to them. And do a double-take when I recognize the male half of the couple.

The only picture Frankie has of them on display in her apartment was taken at a Halloween party several years ago. Her mom, Lucy, was wearing a leopard-print mask, a tight, matching bodysuit, drawn-on whiskers, and a tail. Her hair today matches the red hair showing in that picture. Frankie’s dad, Sam, was fully kitted out as Batman in what I now realize may have been the actual costume from the Dark Knight movies. Frankie’s never offered to show me a more conventional picture or a family portrait.

She’s always assured me her parents are “boring” and doesn’t talk much about them. The few things she has said have led me to believe they were wrapped up in their careers when she was a kid. This house, their retirement
mansion
in the desert, supports those claims. Still, I imagined them to be like the parents of every other person our age—mid-sixties, be-spectacled, wearing bland clothes from J.C. Penney’s retirement line, and sporting blinding white sneakers from sunup until sundown (for arch support) and sun hats for pottering around in the garden.

I took her at her word they were ordinary, uninteresting folks. I guess I’m starting to understand taking Frankie at her word—about anything—isn’t a bright thing to do… ever.

While she makes today’s stunning introductions, nobody seems to notice me staring at Sam Lipton, the man
I
know better as Samuel Pembroke. Or as Frankie so eloquently called him when I had no idea we were talking about
her father
, “Samuel Fucking Pembroke.”

Maybe they don’t notice my staring because they’ve been more focused on Lucy’s reaction to
me.
Upon seeing me for the first time, she gasps and covers her nose and mouth with both hands. She then clasps her hands to her chest and seems to be overcome with emotion when she gushes, “Sam, isn’t it remarkable how much he looks like Henry?” For my benefit, she explains, “Henry is the love interest in the first book I ever wrote and published,” as if it’s the most normal thing to say to someone you’ve just met.

“
I
look like Henry,” I try to clarify, while my brain screams at me about the man standing in front of me, one of the best-known pop culture icons of his generation.

Betty tilts her head and studies me. “Hmmm… that’s not how I pictured him. Why did I always think Henry was blond?”

“No, no, no! He’s tall, dark, and handsome! Nate, you have a bit more of a baby face than Henry, but otherwise… it’s uncanny!”

Swept up in the insanity of the surreal situation, I supply, “He must look like my older brother, then. Nick’s always been described as the manly one.”

“I’d like to meet this Nick character,” Lucy says with a growl and wink.

“Mom! He’s a person, not a character.”

Lucy waves away Frankie’s irritation. “Yeah, yeah. Fine. It’s nice to meet you, Nate.”

I stutter something socially acceptable while continuing to sneak glances at Frankie’s dad and willing myself not to say or do anything embarrassing.

Lucy motions for us to follow her. “Everyone, drop your bags there. We’ll deal with them later. I’m sure you’re worn out from traveling. Isn’t flying the worst nowadays? When we went to Russia last month for Sam’s book research, I swore I’d never get on a plane again. We’re going to cruise to destinations from now on. Make travel part of the trip.”