Even more shocking, Frankie agreed.
If I’d thought Frankie was a loaded gun before, well, it was nothing compared to the pistol she was at dinner with Mrs. Moskowitz. She could have charmed the mustache off Joe Stalin, the way she complimented Mrs. M’s stewed cabbage from her victory garden — which, let’s be frank, tasted about as appetizing as could be expected from something that came out of L.A. dirt. She didn’t quite lie to Mrs. M the way I’d heard her lie to the other girls at the plant, but she wasn’t the vulnerable, scrubbed-raw girl I’d heard in the bathroom that day either. No tall tales, but plenty of big dreams without the slightest hint of doubt weighing them down. For Frankie, fame was a one-way trip.
“It must be hard,” Mrs. M said, “to be a girl on your own in these troubled times. When Evelyn first asked about renting a room from me, I was worried she’d never leave! What if she never found a man to marry her? How would she pay her rent? But she’s a strong girl.” She patted my hand but continued speaking like I wasn’t in the room. “She’s got a good man and she’s always found work, even if it’s not the work she wants.”
“I think all women should be able to make it on their own,” Frankie said. “It’s not about needing a man or not — it just means she knows she can do whatever she sets out to do.”
I dropped my napkin to the floor as an excuse to duck my head under the table; my cheeks were burning hot red.
“C’mon,” Frankie said, after she helped me clean up Mrs. M’s kitchen and rinse out the tin cans to take to the war scrap collection. “You got a radio in your room? Let’s go listen to the news.”
And so we crammed into my rented bedroom, Frankie perched on the edge of my narrow bed and me at my writing desk, listening to the latest broadcast from the front. I expected Frankie to really ham it up, lots of dramatic gasps and gestures like an amateur theater class, but she curled in on herself like a seashell and barely moved through the whole broadcast. Our boys were moving on Berlin. Hitler’s defeat was imminent. More POWs liberated in western Germany, new horrors uncovered in the concentration camps . . . My stomach churned and churned. What use was I against the tragedies of the world? Men like James were out there taking the fight to the brutes, while I fretted over a make-believe story in my head.
Frankie, though, saw it differently. As soon as the news ended, she unfurled from her ball and smiled. “Just think, Evie. Those planes we built — they could’ve been the ones to drop the bombs on the Nazis. We helped set those prisoners free.”
Well, I did a heck of a lot more of the building than Frankie did — but I smiled anyway, let her optimism thaw away some of my unease. The radio switched over to a music hour, and the sweet strains of the Glenn Miller Orchestra wove through my room.
Frankie leaped off the mattress and held her hand out to me. “C’mon, we deserve to celebrate. Let’s dance.”
I took her hand without even thinking about it. Frankie made everything seem natural with her easy smile. As much as I didn’t trust Frankie, I wanted to feel that ease too; I wanted to go along with her for the ride. We stumbled around at first, both of us trying to take the follower’s steps, but Frankie quickly jumped into the leader’s role and adjusted to account for my limp, threading us deftly through the narrow space between my bed and desk and wall. We were both laughing, knowing what buffoons we must have seemed, but everything else just melted away. My irritation with Frankie at the factory; my stubbornly unfinished script; James, far across the sea; and the fear of what my life would become when he returned . . . No. There was nothing in the world right then but me and Frankie and the silky chords of “In the Mood.”
I hadn’t been wrong about Frankie, I thought, but I wasn’t wholly right about her either. She was a liar and a show-off and a terrible factory girl, but she was determined and confident and generous too. Of course her looks made it easy to like her, but it was more than just that — I liked the way her soft hands cupped mine and her soapy scent trailed through the air. I liked her gentle steps to Glenn Miller and the way she spun into a snappy dance the moment “Yankee Doodle Dandy” started up, belting in her best James Cagney impression. Frankie was born to be a star, the kind that burns herself into your mind and refuses to be forgotten, and she made me want to bask in her starlight.