“Asshole!” Matt barks.
Kris ignores that and offers Frankie a gentle fist pound, which she meets. “Hey, Frankie.”
“Frank the Taaaank,” Andy calls.
Frankie smiles as they both race for the same massage table, like the over-competitive dweebs that they are. Kris trips Andy, but Andy brings him down with him. They both flip over each other across the stretching mat and land on twin groans.
Lifting her phone, Frankie snaps a picture, then grins down at it and sighs. “You guys really do make my job easy.”
“Frankie.” The door into the trainers’ room bangs open again, revealing Millie, one of the admins who works part-time in the corporate office, part-time here at the front desk. She’s a spry seventy-five, a voracious reader, and she officially joined Shakespeare Club last year. “You gotta move your car, toots. They’re paving.”
“What?” Frankie groans. And that sound… It goes straight to my groin.
I clear my throat and have to recall a particularly traumatizing memory involving Viggo, Oliver, and a Costco-sized jar of mayonnaise to stop my body from further responding. “I’ll move it for you, Frankie.”
“Nah.” She’s halfway to the door, when she turns and points her cane at me in the air. “I’m not done with you, Bergman. I want answers.”
I give her an innocent smile. “Sure thing.”
Grumbling, she leaves, passing Millie, who holds open the door and crooks a finger at me. I follow in Frankie’s wake, stopping when Frankie turns the corner and I’m close enough for Millie to whisper, “Club meeting is still on for next week?”
“No, the following week. Two weeks from now.”
She smiles and adjusts her glasses. “Oh, okay. Good thing I asked. Now, I’ll admit, this is my first time reading As You Like it, and I’m a little confused. Everybody’s in love, but nobody’s together, and they’re all hiding something.”
“That’s Shakespeare’s version of romantic comedy. It will all be clear in the end.”
Her laugh is soft and wispy. “Fair enough. But—” She pulls out a few pages and unfolds them. “Can you help me break down this dialogue? I’m worried I’m going to read it wrong…”
I take a few minutes to help Millie find the subtext in her lines, but we’re interrupted when Tyler comes strolling our way. She pockets her script and is halfway out the door before she stops and spins to face me. “Say, maybe you should make sure Frankie’s not having trouble with her car.”
I frown. “Why would she have—” Suspicion dawns. “Mildred Sawyer. You did not tamper with Frankie’s car.”
“Who, me?” She grins and wiggles her eyebrows. “‘Love goes by haps; Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.’”
“You’re getting Second Yeoman next script,” I hiss as I breeze by her and jog toward the parking lot.
Mildred’s cackle echoes down the hallway. Maybe I’ll cast her as a witch instead.
I stumble outside, then freeze as I see Frankie sweating over her car. The hood is thrown open, her hair’s up in a haphazard bun, and she has car grease on her cheek. I stand there stupidly, committing the image to memory.
“What?” She straightens and wipes her hands with a rag that’s draped over the headlight. “Never seen a woman fix her car?”
I swallow. “Sorry. I was…That is…” Walking closer, I peer down at the crazy puzzle of wires and parts. “What’s wrong?”
“Loose spark plug. Easy fix. Just making sure nothing else is off. First my ‘check engine’ light, now this. Some punk is enjoying fucking with my car.”
I’m going to throttle a seventy-five-year-old. Mildred obviously doesn’t know Frankie very well. I could have told her tampering this trivially was a waste. Frankie’s the most fiercely independent person I know—of course she can troubleshoot her car’s basic issues.
A loud noise from nearby makes both of us glance up. The asphalt machine rattles, a slew of construction workers waiting at the edge of the parking lot.
“Well,” Frankie says as she drops the hood, “thanks for coming to the rescue, but I managed to save myself.”
“I never doubted it, Frankie.”
She squints up at me, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Here.” I grunt as her fist connects with my stomach, her blazer balled up in her grip. “Take this inside for me, will you? I’ve got to move the car already, and I’m sweating my ass off.”
Throwing open her car door, Frankie flicks off the pavers when they whistle at her and peels away toward the alternate parking lot.
Frankie
Playlist: “The Love Club,” Lorde
My whole life, I’ve either been a puzzle or predicament. As a girl, I was obsessed with routines, anxious, and prone to emotional outbursts. I screamed when clothes were put on me and slept terribly. I had one best friend, and I wanted her all to myself. I hated noisy spaces and cried every week at Mass when they used incense.
As a tween, I’d get so absorbed in reading stories that I forgot to eat all day, talked about books I loved incessantly, cried when they ended, and exhaustively read all fan fic there was. I flipped my shit when my older sister, Gabby, chewed too loudly, when my pants had static cling, when Ma deviated from the meal plan, and when something I left in one place wasn’t there when I went to find it.
Sometimes, I drove my family nuts. Confused Ma, irritated Nonna, and frustrated Gabby. But Daddy always got me. He’d hold me tight and rock me in his arms. He gave me warm baths and asked Nonna to sew me loose, swingy dresses to wear over the only kind of leggings I could tolerate. Under Nonna’s firm matriarchal power, I was drilled to sit still, focus, listen, be polite. Social clues and unspoken messages whispered around me, too slippery and evasive to catch, so I turned to my peers, watching and mimicking their movements, gestures, sayings, and facial expressions. I played sports, was a good student. I did my best to pass as one of them.
And for a while, I did. I seemed like a typical kid—whatever the fuck that is—until depression and anxiety after my dad’s death threw me into a tailspin, obliterating the emotional reserves it took to fake normality.
I was thirteen when I was diagnosed with autism. The psychologist said I’d have been diagnosed sooner if not for my fantastic ability to follow rules, copy behaviors, and pretend I was “normal.” Everyone hits a breaking point, the shrink said. It was only a matter of time before I’d have to stop pretending and get honest about my neurological difference.
In our traditional Italian Catholic household, dominated by Nonna’s skepticism for anything but prayer as a solution to all problems, it was a wonder I’d been brought for an evaluation at all. It’s a testament to how worn out my mother was that she defied Nonna’s insistence I was just a normal, albeit stubborn, handful. But my mom trusted her intuition, sneaking me to a number of appointments with the pediatric psychologist who eventually diagnosed me. I probably haven’t thanked her enough for that.
After diagnosis, I started therapy for managing my anxiety, dealing with deviations from my compulsions and obsession through emotional regulation, and coping with that sometimes depressing outside-looking-in feeling most autistics experience.