Frank Speaking

Frank Tomelli always talked sweetly and with great patience to the elderly patrons of the store. If a customer became impatient, he matched their irritability with even more patience.

Other stock clerks in the grocery department confused this with kissing ass and teased Frank for it.

“She’ll be thinking about that ass-kissing later, I guarantee it,” said James suggestively.

“Why don’t you follow her home and make sure,” said Frank.

“He doesn’t have to. It made me hard,” said Wayne, a veteran employee.

Frank had to smile. If they didn’t like him, they wouldn’t tease. “I can act more concerned than any of you will ever really care!”

They laughed empathetically, each knowing the lengths one must go to keep irrational or confused shoppers from losing their grip. At Big Bird grocery, everyone aimed to please, even when every shopper in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area seemed to want to do the opposite.

Frank, the rest of the employees that survived into their fourth month of employ, muttered to himself as he worked. Despite the urge to tease, James did enjoy talking to Frank, who he found lucid and articulate.

“What are you saying?” he asked Frank.

“Some day, man.”

“Some day, what?”

“Just one day. One time in your life, wouldn’t you like to tell people exactly how you feel. No sheen of company image or customer service bullshit. Just the real spit, as it should be.”

“Thinking about quitting again?” asked James.

Frank twisted his face and puffed a breath of air at such an absurd question. “Don’t you? I think about that shit every day. That’s work. I’m talking about people.” He grimaced. James wondered why, but didn’t ask.

Instead, he sang the Bonnie Raitt tune from “Something to Talk About.” Frank chuckled and smiled strangely, half-grimacing.

“You alright?” James asked.

“Fucking Big Bird food,” said Frank, but James knew it was a lie. Every day Frank bought a bag of $0.34 pretzels for lunch and that day the kitchen made no food for the employees. Both worked in silence for a few moments, balancing steel cans in their palms as they wove paths through customers.

Frank lifted a large case of green beans, 48 cans. James stood next to him as he worked. “I know what you’re saying about the people, man. It’s like they have nothing to live for besides finding the perfect size tissue box or the exact box of granola. Not the same product with a different box, but the same picture in their minds that has no reality.”

“And it’s my fault if we don’t have it, if they’ll never see it ever again and there’s nothing anyone can do about it,” said Frank. James could not recall ever seeing this kind of intensity in Frank’s eyes, and they had had many heated discussions. This seemed more desperate, somewhere between revelation and self-destruction.

The two finished the flat of canned vegetables, fruits and boxed stuffing. Without looking at a wobbly stack of more than a dozen light boxes of dry stuffing cubes, Frank flung the last box at the display without looking, his gaze fixed at an uncertain point beneath the concrete floor. He heard the five or six boxes fall, but let James restore the display.

James couldn’t complain about picking up someone else’s mess. That kind of shit happened every day on a much bigger scale. Little spaz-attacks happen regularly in retail grocery for many reasons. This one seemed much more bitter than the petty things made most of the team members complain. It burned James like a lemon juice bath on a scabby ass. He hissed to himself as he reached to place the last box on the shelf.

Like all of the maladjusted, over-informed and underpaid people of his generation (born in the first Reagan administration) James also felt the vague dissatisfaction with the world. He suspected this as the reason for Frank’s erratic behavior. It surely contributed to it, but James could not have known about Frank’s appointment for a biopsy the next day.

The next day passed for James in almost the usual fashion. Team grocery shelved the order at a moderate pace as it was small enough to finish in time for the senior workers to begin ordering the evening’s shipment of merchandise. The last two flats always weigh the most and take the longest to complete. One worker will check bottled water, another bread and the remaining hands will assist in shelving the “lead” or remaining cans of salty fish, vegetables, beans, fruit and coffee. Though no one said so, they liked this part of the day the best.

At this point in the long life of the store, the team membership represented a wide, yet balanced, array of attitudes towards work. All agreed that ridiculous things happened, but each had their own way of coping and talking about it. James and Frank knew that their views aligned more than any pair of workers in the store.

Stanley came close, but could not share in their discontent, which brightened his sense of humor. Like Frank and James, he graduated from high school in 2001. Ronnie was what Frank (and James agreed) called a “lifer;” someone who will work retail grocery until their spine takes the shape of a cane and the company fires them. Everyone liked Ronnie, who complained about the idiocy of the customers and management more than the others, only he took it with a shrug and would say “We got it better than other stores, really.”

It was these two – Stanley and Ronnie – that assisted James on the last flat of cans. James wondered if Frank had gotten as drunk as himself the previous evening; he had tried to contact him through the internet but Frank had either left it on unintentionally or was ignoring him.

“That lady had a hair piece made of one of her two dozen cats,” said Stanley, laughing.

“Yeah, and it’s like ‘How do I know what Mr. Fuzzy likes to eat after a rain shower?’” Ronnie often paraphrased what he would like to say to customers instead of telling people what he actually said which was, in fact, just as truthful.

“Did it rain?” asked James, who could have noticed if he was not so preoccupied.

“She smelled like urine and mothballs. Isn’t it weird how so many old people smell like mothballs?” said Stanley.

“Breaking out the spring wardrobe, I guess,” said James. Stanley shrugged, smiling at something that he didn’t share with the others. A few moments passed before Ronnie spoke.

“Frank called off?”

“I guess so,” said James who had checked Frank’s schedule at the beginning of his shift.

“I think he had to go somewhere,” said Stanley. James dropped a case of Vienna sausages that landed with a loud, flat clap.

“He told you something?” said James.

Stanley’s vague silly-happy look appeared at first, only to melt into amused puzzlement that he used to ponder the sad and unpleasant. “I think I remember him saying something about his aunt, fucking hospitals, blah blah, fucking insurance, HMO, blah blah… you know how he mumbles sometimes,” said Stanley.

James didn’t know Frank to mumble at all, or disrespect merchandise as flippantly as he had seen th previous day. To James, Frank seemed moderately repressed, that is, expressive but not to the point of achieving a relieving catharsis. Under the steely face of his friend, a roaring monster had awoke and begun to breathe fire.

No use asking Stanley to elaborate, thought James. Best to wait and ask for himself.

Normally, this presented no problem. Each often asked the other bluntly about the nasty details of their most private moments. A nasty lie in response was considered more a polite than request to refrain from such questioning.

James saw Frank’s scowl round an end-cap, and suddenly he couldn’t understand himself, as if he were fifteen again. Even then James and his friends would meet before homeroom to read the newspaper and make fun of the people who died in freak accidents. Older folks died of cancer – except for the one girl in middle-school, but he didn’t know her – not his friends. Nothing he could do to stop the cancer, if it be cancer, from eating him. Fuck, he thought, Frank might not even make it to thirty. He wondered what 27 hard, unfulfilling years looked like to Frank, what he regretted, when Frank appeared again, this time with an evil grin, not saying anything.

“Feeling alright, man?” asked James. Frank stared, showing a few yellow teeth as if he were about to snag a fly with his tongue.

“Good day off?” James pressed. Frank shrugged his head to the side, still smiling.

“Better night,” said Frank. “Who’s here? Quinn?”

Quinn was their middle-aged robot of a boss that they both despised. “I think so,” said James. Frank’s smile became more real at this news, he nodded deeply like a monk.

“Coming to block over here?” asked James.

“Naw,” said Frank. “Is that sexy little thing Ronda here today?”

“Yeah,” said James. “I think she’s in the cash office.”

Frank clapped twice. “Even better.”

“You’re getting your check now?” asked James, who knew that Frank usually waited until the end of his shift to collect his pay. “What’s wrong, dude?”

Frank leaned his head backwards, let out two loud cackles, then looked at James sideways with a quizzically cocked eyebrow. “You tell me…buddy.” The corner of a heavy box struck James’ big toe; he winced in pain. Frank laughed perversely and walked towards the cash office at the front of the store.

“What the hell are you doing?” James asked.

“Gonna go visit my lil’ bookie! Ha!” said Frank, who knock a row of paper towels off an end-cap with glee. “You’ll know.”

At least he’s smiling, whatever it is, thought James.

The over-grown Umpa Lumpa named Quinn suddenly appeared and asked if he had seen Frank.

“I don’t think so,” replied James, instinctively providing cover for what he sensed was about to happen. Quinn didn’t ask for a straight answer, but this escaped James’ attention at first.

The after-class/work-rush had just arrived. James crossed the store and ascended the stairs next to the specialty cheeses – the corner opposite the cash office – to the freight room to retrieve a rack of bread. Rounding a rack of potato chips, Quinn shouldered James and continued down the flight of stairs. “Sorry, sir,” called James after him. Quinn’s distinctive loud mumbling filled the stairwell moments before the door crashed.

Guess he needs someone to do the chips. Not gonna be me, or him.

While Frank should have been shelving junk food, he instead detained Rhonda, the curvaceous Health and Beauty Care lead.

She gasped and rustled in her seat when Frank shut the door to the cash office. Frank laughed.

“Holy shit! What are you doing in here?” said Rhonda, giving him the defensive mean eye. Frank was non-plussed.

“C’mon, Ron, we know each other better than that, don’t we?” She wriggled her eyebrows at him. “Cute kid,” said Frank approaching a 4”x6” at the computer terminal. Rhonda didn’t move. She wore the same expression on her face, even when Frank placed a courteous hand on her wrist when he reached.

He sat on the long counter top and looked at the picture, smiling. “Looks like that was a nice day,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Rhonda, now thoroughly suspicious. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.

“Yeah,” said Frank. He replaced the picture and looked at Rhonda confidently. “Busy?”

“I’m at work, ain’t I? Ain’t you?”

“I asked you first. Don’t worry ’bout me. On the computer. How much work you got left in here?” Frank asked. He tapped sixteenth notes on the keyboard with a pen.

“Get off there,” said Rhonda snatching her pen. She chuckled softly, softening. “Quinn’ll be looking for you, don’t you think?”

“I don’t fucking care about Quinn or about work. What about you?” Frank leaned closer to her face and kept it as still as he could.

She let out a puff of air. “You getting weird now, boy.” She fidgeted and figured in her head before realizing. “What the hell you need in here anyway?”

“Thought you’d never ask! Two things: First, I want to speak on that thing [he pointed to the P.A.] with no one in the room. Second, I want to spend some time with you.” He smiled fully and bit his bottom lip, expecting her to oblige.

She didn’t, at first. “Then you need to hear a few things, baby. First, you ain’t even supposed to be in here now….”

“Gimme my check!” he interjected playfully.

“Come back later…Uh…Second, you work here. And third I don’t know…”

“Let me stop you there, Ron, because I have too much respect for you to let you spout rotten bullshit all over my good impression of you. You don’t know me very well, that’s true. So you can’t presume that I’m some yokel with an IQ twice the size of my shoe who only wants a piece of that ass.”

“You coming on that way!” said Rhonda with the shadow of a smile.

“Just let me speak, please. I haven’t much time, so I don’t give a fuck if Quinn or Bob or the fucking pope is looking for me.”

“You don’t have any time. You’re at work.”

“Please,” said Frank seriously, pleading with his eyes. “Thank you. Look: I’m not a fucking pervert. I like you. If we spent some time together, you’ll find out that I’m a pretty sharp guy, compared to most of the others. Plus…” Frank held the back of his head between his knees and took two heaving breaths. “I want to meet your daughter.”

“Whoa. You creeping me the fuck out now. You…”

“I’m gonna fucking die!” whispered Frank. For the first time, Rhonda saw Frank plainly, as one suffering, mortal being would another when confronted with imminent death.

“I got it right here,” said Frank, drawing an oval over his chest cavity. “Doc said I have nine months, maybe a year, maybe less. It’s already spread like Pow!” Frank open his fist at the sound.

They gazed at each other for a few moments before Rhonda began picking her fingernails.

“Why, though, with such a short time left? Why take a chance that…”

“Why do anything at all? I’ll never have a family of my own. No one will ever call me daddy, look up to me, expect my love and affection. I’m not saying I want to father you child or for you to love me, I just thought we could kick it, you know?” Frank peered at her over his rims coquettishly.

“You for real?” said Rhonda. Frank nodded gravely. “Then come see me after you’re done. And don’t touch the computer.” She waved good-bye.

Frank locked the door to the cash office, sat in front on the microphone and looked at the humming computer servers to his left. By this time, Quinn had learned from Stanley that Frank had arrived some time ago. In a second, he discerned his precise location.

On the public announcement system, the sound of a person clearing breaking mucus in sinuses startled the late afternoon shoppers. “Greetings, everyone and thank you for shopping at the Big Bird today.”

In the grocery office, the two managers, Quinn and Todd, yelped in unison. “Frank!”

“Yes, it’s Frank speaking; I’d to share with you a few things I’ve learned about this fine establishment. You see, we’re able to bring you the lowest prices on fresh produce – canned produce too, for that matter – because if the people picking the shit ask for more pay, an overseer cuts off their hands.”

A knock at the door broke Frank’s concentration. He opened the door. “Kellner,” said a tired-looking person. “Oh,” said Frank, pointing a finger to the sky. “Here!” He retrieved the box of paychecks and placed it in the worker’s arms. “Yours is in there somewhere.” Frank locked the door and pushed a filing cabinet in front of it.

Frank continued. “Like I was saying, Big Bird and the companies it buys from wholesale pay its workers the least amount possible in order to bring you the shit you want at prices that still send you away complaining all the way home. I should know. I work here. Ha! Keep shopping, please, but keep in mind what brought you here today.

“Seem confused? That’s not an accident. This place is designed to make you do a bee-line to anything you want in order for you to look at as many pretty packages as possible in hopes that you touch some of those pretty packages and take them home and love them until they’re shit. Literally.”

Quinn pounded furiously at the door. Anastasia, the General Manager, the big cheese, stood next to the Terminator, Quinn. “Oh, that knock you might hear is my boss, who is so concerned about the productivity of his workers – a contributing factor to the low-low prices – that he has come to kick my ass. Well, I’m not done!

“People: look high, look low. That’s where the bargains are. Concentrate. Ignore the expensive graphic art. Think with your wallet, not your taste buds. It’s a sham.

“And finally, to all the team members working right now, I’m leaving forever in a few minutes. I’m gonna fucking die of stomach cancer, so I’m here to pick up my last pay check and get loaded at the Red Eagle. Anyone who wants to join me now, great. I’ll be closing the place.

“To the rest of you…”

The portly Pittsburgh police officer on duty appeared at the door, ready for battle.

“Treat each other well. Life is too fucking short. Jimmy!!”

Officer Bozar’s 270 pounds crashed through Frank’s makeshift barricade like a drunk billy goat.

“Alright, you little fucker!” said Quinn.

“Ooh, little fucker. Haven’t heard that since the last time you tried to seduce me,” said Frank.

“Shut up!” said Officer Bozar.

“Thought I told you that line wouldn’t work, so I guess you brought reinforcements. Okay…”

“Don’t even think about it, bub,” said the police office, tentatively patting Frank’s flank as a precautionary measure. Frank voluntarily exited the cash office, where a second grasped him by the elbow.

“Whoa there! Not before I get what’s mine,” said Frank.

The two officers looked at each other, then at Quinn, who begrudgingly said, “Let him get paid.”

Frank sang “The Mighty Quinn” loudly while the cashier counted his pay. Bozar jabbed his ribs.

“Please stop assaulting me, sir,” said Frank.

“Just leave without saying anything else,” said Quinn, barely audible. The officers scanned the perimeter like hungry, sleep-deprived pit-bulls. James pushed his way though a central check-out aisle. “Where you going?” he asked.

“The Red Eagle, bitch!” said Frank for the immediate vicinity. “Red Eagle!!” he said for the rest to hear.

“Get back to work!” said Quinn, trying not to scream.

“Follow me out, dude,” said Frank to James. Then to Quinn, “You know he’ll get it done, you’ll get your salary and nothing will change, so can the hard-ass act for 30 seconds.”

“I don’t think so, bub,” mumbled Quinn who tried to grab Frank by the elbow.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” said Frank. The violent jerk popped the ear-piece from Quinn’s head. Officer Bozar applied the full nelson to Frank as if he were a doll. “You see what they do, Jim!?” People began to gawk.

“Move your feet,” said Bozar.

“Come with me,” said Frank. “You know this is a dead end for you and this guy [he nodded his head in Quinn's direction] barely has a shred of humanity left. And he’s fucking stupid.”

“That’s enough,” said Quinn. “Sir, remove this person from the premises. James, report to my office.”

“Fuck that, Jim! Let’s go get drunk!” shouted Frank ten feet from the door.

“Hell yes, baby!” said a random shopper, laughing.

“Wait for me there! Don’t get too bad!” said James before walking his burning face and intestines to the grocery office.

Wayne, a twelve-year veteran, had already heard details, but still asked, “They take him out?” James nodded. “You alright there, little brother?” James shook his head as the door to the grocery office slammed behind him. Waiting for Quinn, a thousand responses to the expected inquisition raced through his head. Anger at the senselessness of life mixed with indignation and fear in a boiling stew of emotion that made James feel sick. If that happens, I don’t have to excuse myself.

He wanted to be like Frank, but needed a job at time when jobs were drying up faster than watercolors in the desert. The moment got to him. I have to be more careful, but I can still tell the truth.

Quinn entered the office with both hands on his hips, trying to look larger than his 5′5” would allow. “What the situation here?”

James shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Sit down,” said Quinn. James declined, not knowing or caring if it were a request or an offer.

“Okay…” Quinn flipped a couple of loose pages to make himself look an active, fully engaged manager of people and capital. “So when did you know that he was going to pull that little stunt?”

“What? I can’t understand you,” said James, perhaps a little too loud.

Quinn cleared his throat. “You know, Frank locking himself in the cash office?”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, well, just a few moments prior you told me that you hadn’t seen him remember?”

“I don’t what you’re insinuating, sir, but even if I had seen him before he did what he did….”

“So you did see him?” asked Quinn, pen in hand.

James stared at him for a short moment that lasted a long while. “I don’t have to tell you anything. I will tell you that I didn’t know anything about that.”

Quinn scribbled a few notes on a 4”x6” pad. “We’ll see about that. Okay, uh, you can get back to what you were doing.” He lifted a few pages, then looked at his notes, then at the computer screen, seemingly oblivious to James’ presence.

“What does that mean ‘We’ll see’?” asked James standing fully erect. A former linebacker, he towered over his seated boss.

“That’s what it means. Now get lost,” mumbled Quinn, not looking.

“Oh, you’re gonna watch tape? If that’s the case, I did see him right before you asked me if I had seen him. I can tell you though, as sure as you’re sitting there, it wouldn’t have made any difference. So you better drop it and just forget that it happened,” said Frank. Quinn hadn’t made eye contact or even blinked; his eyes seemed fixed on the same point on the screen.

As opened the door, Quinn said, “Change of plan. Work the back-stock wall, make sure everything is coded and re-organized by the time you leave, okay, buddy?”

James chose not to tell him, “Just call me James,” and let the door slam.

The task being impossible, James simply loaded a flat and spent his last hour pulling to the vicinity of an employee where he would express his sympathy for Frank.

“Kids got some balls, seriously,” said Wayne with a laugh.

“I have to feel bad for him, I don’t know,” said Stanley.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean, to do something like that – even if it was funny as hell – you have to be a little sick, right?” said Stanley.

“What do you mean? What’s sick about telling the truth?” asked James, secretly wondering if Stanley had guessed the truth.

Stanley talked it out with sighs and hand motions before saying, “Why would you or I or anyone fell like they need to just act out like that? Sure, I feel dissatisfied in my job, but I do it cause I need money and a reference in the event that I try to get another another one.” Stanley sighed, barely smiling now. “I mean, who just burns a bridge like their running from a pack of blood-thirsty wolves or something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he had enough, I don’t know?”

James saw Quinn walk swiftly towards the exit. Rhonda approached the exit from another direction. He left his flat and ran a long route to avoid Quinn and whispered to Rhonda, “Talk to me for a second, please.”

“What?” she asked impatiently.

“Did you talk to Frank?” he asked.

“Little Italian dude?” James nodded. “Yeah, he talked to me. So what?”

“Well, what is it?”

Rhonda could see the concern in his face. “You his friend?”

“Yeah,” said James though he and Frank hadn’t followed through on their tacit plan to see each other outside of work.

“Then you better hear it from him,” she said, gazing through the glass of the automatic sliding doors like windows on a deep-sea submarine; that said all he needed to know.

It’s dark out tonight. Much more so than usual. Thick clouds, no moon.

James didn’t bother changing out of his work shirt before entering the Red Eagle. He nodded to the owner tending bar, who nodded back.

“Jimmy!” shouted Frank, slopping draft beer on a table top when he raised a mug.

James again looked at the bartender, who raised his eyebrows and glanced at Frank. He ordered a cheap bottle. The bartender said, “If that’s your friend, you might want to get him cooled off or something.”

“Is he starting shit?” shouted James over the loud music and Frank’s voice.

“You hear that?” The bartender laughed. “I mean, he’s a nice kid ‘n’at, but #1, he can’t fucking sing and two, the LCB has been up my ass lately and I just can’t let the drunks run amok.”

“I’ll get him to sit amok,” said James. He pulled up a chair across from Frank, who made comedic introductions. All he had just met, and were a couple noticeable years younger.

“Why’d you get that? Don’t you know we’re getting pitchers?!” said Frank, raising a toast to the person next to him. “I was just telling them that you have to take advantage of opportunity, grab the bull by the horns and shake that mother down, right, Ed? Ed here’s going nuts looking for the ‘right’ girl when he should just be having fun meeting lots of ‘em. Tony over there [he pointed to the person seated to the left of James] only comes out like one every other month or something, letting his life pass him by for what? Good grades? Approval of his father or some shit. Francis, right next to you – I call him Francis cause I’m the fucking Frank here – wants to spill his guts to an old friend and try to get with her but he’s afraid things will get weird or something.” He looked at James and shook his head, smiling.

“When will they ever get it?” asked Frank as if James shared his sentiment.

“I don’t know? Do you?” said James challengingly.

Frank shrugged, then looked James squarely in the face. “Probably when they realize how close they are to death,” he said with a tone of doom that James detected immediately. Frank stood up and climbed upon the patent leather bench with glass raised. Behind James, the bartender was shaking his head and making the neck-slicer signal to Frank, who said, “A toast to the things left undone and the short time to do them! And to you, barkeep!” He chugged the last of his beer and slammed the mug on the table just as the bartender put his hands on the table; he whispered in James’ ear, “Get this nut out of here before I have to remove him, please.”

James nodded in compliance and concern for Frank who was beginning to sway. “Time to go, Frank! Let’s go have a smoke outside!”

Frank’s legs turned into gelatin-filled tubes; he wobble across the bar with the aid of the ancient chairs. “Doctor told me… not to smoke. Or drink.” At the door, Frank’s face changed color and his knees completely buckled. With a tortured-demon heave Frank vomited a large puddle of beer and bar food. He collapsed to his side, half-choking.

James knelt above Frank’s head, clear of his mouth. “Don’t take any shit, okay? Take my new number…” James opened his cell phone and Frank drew a gurgling breath before losing consciousness..

“Which one are you going to?” James tried asking an EMT, who executed the movements required of him with a precision that suppressed the natural reaction to respond to human inquiry, especially that of the desperately pleading type.

The next two days, James had no time to inquire which of the many hospitals had Frank. On the third day, James spoke to a nurse’s supervisor – after an hour and a half of dialing – who recognized the name Frank Tomelli. James lied and told her that he was Frank’s cousin.

The sound of pages passing through fingers echoed in James’ ears loudly. “I’m sorry,” he heard meekly. “Would you like to speak to the doctor?” James ended the call.

Had James spoke to an attending, he would have learned that Frank may have hand at hastening the end, according to whose interpretation of the toxicology report one believed. Eventually, the coroner’s office wearied of the investigation before one began. Like so many cases they handled, the poor bastard died by misadventure.

That’s what Rhonda believed. “We had a date next week. I really had no interest in seeing him outside work,” she said shaking her head with a trace of a sad smile. “I guess it worked on me.”

Me too.

Frank’s parents buried him close to their home in Venango County. James didn’t try to go to any of the Catholic services out of respect for Frank, who was not of that faith.

The next Monday, James received a sizable tax return and rebate that totaled over a month’s pay. No excuses left. He stopped at the store in (business casual) attire to tell Quinn, respectfully, that he could not make that day’s as well as any future shifts. He would have made rounds to say goodbye to Rhonda, Stanley, Wayne, and Ronnie, but he wanted to arrive early for his appointment with a Pitt admissions office. On the drive there, a thesis statement floated into his brain like steam from a sewer vent.

The virtue of frank speaking must become the new vernacular for the dreams of youth to survive the perpetual onslaught from destructive forces.

Though he still felt the knife of loss in his side when he thought about Frank, a new lightness filled his torso and gave his legs an elastic bounce up the old stone steps. He resisted the urge to crack a toothy smile.

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