I heard someone screaming Frank’s name before I realized I was the one doing it. Without thinking, I lunged into the street to grab him before he lay down on the pavement. I got Frank back on the curb somehow without remembering the particulars. Once I had him safe there, I crouched to shove my face into his line of sight. “Frank, what were you thinking? You could’ve been killed. You could’ve caused an accident. Don’t ever do anything like that again. Do you hear me?”
Frank grabbed the light pole alongside us in both hands then and slammed his forehead against it, saying, “stupid, stupid, stupid,” in between blows.
“No, no, no, no, Frank,” I said. “Shhhhh. Stop.” I pried his hands free and put myself between him and the lamppost.
Xander, bless his deadbeat heart, had waded through the traffic and knelt, tux be damned, next to Frank. When he began singing quietly, Frank stopped. “Frank Loesser!” he shouted. “‘What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve.’ My grandparents danced to that at their wedding!”
It was like magic, the way that calmed Frank down. And how much it made me squirm. I realized that was the song Xander had played when he came back to the glass house post-Christmas. Yes, the very number I’d egotistically assumed he’d trotted out for me. Now I had to think it had been Xander’s way of telegraphing Frank that his itinerant male role model was back in residence. Mr. Vargas was so right about me. I really did give myself too much credit sometimes. I felt so embarrassed that pounding my head against a lamppost almost seemed like a good idea.
“Hey, pal,” Xander said. “Come here. Can I see your head?”
“Don’t tell my mother,” Frank pleaded.
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Xander brushed the kid’s hair back with two fingertips. His forehead looked surprisingly okay. Just a little red. “Now let me see your thumbs.” Frank held them out for Xander to inspect. They looked even redder. “Good thing your thumbs took the hit for your brain case,” Xander said. “You got off easy this time. Next time you might not be so lucky. What’s up with you, little man?”
“I needed to find you. I have had about enough of people disappearing on me.”
“I hear you,” Xander said. “But you know what’s the best thing about me? As long as there’s breath in my body I’ll come back sooner or later. I’m not so easy to shake.” Xander fingertipped Frank’s hair forward to cover the red spot. “There you go. Good as new. No one will be the wiser.”
Then Xander vanished into the crowd.
Before I had time to get into a lather about it, a cab pulled up and Xander bounded out of the backseat. “Sorry to duck out on you like that,” he said. “You can’t flag cabs in most of Los Angeles the way you do in New York. About the only upside of not driving is that you know where all the cabstands are. Alice. Frank, your chariot awaits. Get in.”
“But Frank only rides in taxis with his mother,” I protested.
“Until today,” Xander said. “Today our boy becomes a man. You first, Alice. Then Frank.”
“Since you’re coming back to live with us, Xander, Alice will give you your wallet back,” Frank said. “You’ll have to sleep on the living room couch though because your home away from home burned down in the fire.”
We got in with Frank sandwiched between us. Before the cab pulled from the curb, the kid started throwing himself around in the backseat and chanting, “Stop stop stop stop stop.”
“Everything’s okay, Frank,” Xander said. “Calm down. Alice and I are right here with you.”
“Everything is not okay. We’re leaving Our Good Friend Him behind.” Frank leaned across Xander and rolled down the window. He was the only one who’d noticed Mr. Vargas had materialized on the curb, holding his side and panting.
I caught Frank by his knees before he was able to fling his entire body out the taxi window. “Dr. Einstein, I presume!” he bellowed, semaphoring wildly. Mr. Vargas looked up, smiled and waved. Frank must have noticed the name I’d written out on his hand then because he tacked on, “Mr. Vargas! I say old man. Your chariot awaits!”
Mr. Vargas got in front with the driver and we set off for Bel Air. Frank hooked his fingers over the back of the front seat and replayed our adventure for the two of them, leaving no incident unturned. I locked the door on my side and collapsed against it, closed my eyes, and let myself be lulled by the drone for a while. When I opened my eyes again I looked across at Xander, who was staring out the window on his side, frowning.
It was late afternoon by the time we got home, although it felt like it should have been midnight. Frank insisted the cab drop us off at the gate and made us wait until it had rounded the corner before he entered in the code. Then he grabbed Mr. Vargas by the hand and started up the drive with him, swinging his arm so vigorously that I worried he’d dislocate Our Good Friend Him’s shoulder.
I started up the hill behind them but Xander stopped just inside the gate. “Are you coming, or aren’t you?” I asked.
Xander was taking in the pile that had once been the Dream House. The blackened skeleton of the Mercedes. The empty eye socket of Mimi’s office under its tarpaulin eye patch. I’d forgotten that he hadn’t seen the carnage in daylight yet.