by Brea Brown
*****
Our coffees weren’t even cold before it was obvious we couldn’t continue our conversation in public. For one thing, I felt ridiculous talking about someone imaginary as if he’s a real person, much less as if I’m that person. And for another thing, it’s one of my biggest fears to have someone approach me and test our ruse, so talking about Frank in the open is too risky.
I have a story (lie) ready, of course; I’m just not in a hurry to use it. We’ve decided I’ll tell people I’m a nurse in real life (which some of them will already know) who wrote and self-published some books under a pen name. It’s an elegantly simply cover. The question is, can I pull it off? I’m obviously okay lying to myself and the people closest to me, but when it comes to lying to strangers and mere acquaintances, I seem to always locate my conscience and become a stuttering, fumbling ninny.
When I lament this to Betty at her house (her immaculate house, I note with relief), she dismisses my worries. “You just need to say the lie enough to start believing it.”
“Uh… I’m not sure I ever want to get to that point.”
“You’re going to have to, if this is going to work. When you’re in Frank’s clothes,” she nods to the bags in the middle of her loft office space, “you’ll be him.” Her eyes sparkle hopefully. And I like that. A little too much.
Whoa, Bingham… Do not go there.
With a cough, I insist, “I’m not an actor.”
“Have you ever tried?”
I think back to high school when a couple of buddies and I auditioned on a whim for Fiddler on the Roof. I couldn’t sing, but I somehow didn’t think that would be a problem… in a musical. And oddly enough, I was okay at the crazy Russian dancing we had to do. The drama teacher gave me a non-speaking/non-singing part (everyone was guaranteed a role) and told me I was part of the “ensemble.” “Just dance and lip sync,” she said.
Then one of the bit players got leveled on the football field and ended up in traction. He had one line. Surely, Nate can handle that, the drama teacher must have thought. Yeah. No. I was eventually able to do it in rehearsals without sounding like I was reading from a cue card, but on all three nights the show ran, I flubbed it.
I sip at the dregs of my coffee and set down the biodegradable paper cup that has started to make the drink taste like biodegradable ass. “Yeah, I have, actually. And I suck. There’s something about memorizing lines that makes me freeze up.”
She digs through the bags and pulls out a pair of black skinny jeans, a “vintage,” bought-an-hour-ago-in-a-chain-store t-shirt, a waistcoat, and a scarf. “You’re not going to be memorizing any lines here, so no problem. Go put these on.” She nods toward her bedroom through an open archway in the loft.
Rubbing my neck, I whine, “Really?” but rise from the sofa and take the clothes from her.
Mindful of the doorless room and positioning myself at an angle so she won’t be able to see me unless she stands in the doorway, I strip to my skivvies.
From the other room, she raises her voice to be heard when she says, “By the time we’re done today—and with some practice on your own during the week—being Frank will be second nature. There’ll be no flubbing, because there’ll be no thinking. Only instinct.”
“No thinking. Perfect,” I mutter at my ridiculous reflection while fumbling with the last piece of the outfit, the scarf.
How does this thing work, anyway? Something tells me I’m not supposed to wear it like I would one of my winter scarves. I’m not supposed to wind it around my neck and tuck it down into my vest, right?
Betty suddenly appears in the mirror behind me, making me jump.
“Hey! How did you know I wasn’t naked in here?” I squeak, outraged.
“I peeked,” she answers matter-of-factly, spinning me around by pulling on my shoulder and taking control of the scarf-winding. “Pay attention,” she bosses, doing a series of complicated over-under maneuvers that results in a sloppy, bunched-up, “I-don’t-give-a-damn” look. She produces the glasses from the neck of her sweater, where they’ve been hanging out with her girls for who knows how long. When she slides them onto my nose, they’re warm and smell like fabric softener.
I turn back to the mirror and want to cry. “I look—”
“Like Frank. That’s all that matters. Do you feel different?”
I think about it. “No. I generally feel ridiculous, and these clothes don’t change that.”
She laughs and pushes on my shoulder, holding on while she talks to my reflection. “Come on. Be serious.”
“I am! What’s the point in wearing such a pretentious t-shirt if I’m going to cover it up with this?” I finger the fringe (yes, fringe) on the scarf.
“Hipsters wear clothes for themselves, not for show.”
“Bullshit.”
Again, she laughs, but she releases my shoulder and moves away. “Yeah, I know. But that’s the answer they’d give.” She disappears into the en suite bathroom I wish I would have noticed earlier, considering it has a door.
“Well, this isn’t ‘hipster.’ This is, ‘I’m trying hard to look like a hipster,’ which is even worse!”
“Most people don’t know the difference.”
“Oh, that makes it okay, then. I feel like so much less of an idiot.”
She returns with a hand mirror. Leading the way back to the office area, she tosses back at me, “Enough whining. Now, let’s make Frank your bitch.”
“For you, anything,” I say, following her. Just how much I’m beginning to mean that is yet another pesky part of my current predicament, which I push to the back of my mind.
Chapter Twelve
Flying’s not my favorite thing. It ranks up there with snowmobiling. Logically and intellectually, I have faith in the physics that make air travel possible—it’s science, after all—but on a more primitive, base level, I don’t know how it’s possible. How is my body, plus the bodies of so many other people and thousands of pounds of luggage, encased in a 45-ton hunk of metal, suspended 35,000 feet in the air? Not even suspended. Moving. At more than 500 miles per hour. A sane person can’t believe that’s possible. It makes as much sense as believing in time travel.
I’m holding it together, though. I’ve been told all the statistics about flying being safer than driving so many times that I can recite them, too. I do, actually. In my head. Unfortunately, they’re not all that comforting, and they merely highlight the improbability of my ever living to see age forty, but they manage to distract me from my surroundings.
Plus, I’m downright chill compared to Betty. She’s done everything short of breathe into her barf bag during this flight. Frankie wanted the window seat, which was fine by Betty, who wanted the aisle seat so she could “climb the fuck out of here easier if shit starts to get real.” That left me with the middle seat. When I’m not repeating death statistics in my head, I’m wondering if Frankie’s parents will have alcohol and antibiotic ointment for me to treat the puncture wounds caused by Betty’s nails in my right hand.
“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.