The Painting

#55 Mission Impossible Part 1 - Misean Dodheanta Cuid 1

Five days and five nights passed, all of which Frankie spent in the bathroom tub. Lyle and I would leave in the morning and return after closing with no change to the cabin. The bathroom door remained shut with only a soft beat permeating the wood to let us know Frankie was still working. Lyle didn't seem to register his introverted activity as worrying, claiming it was his way of working. I did my best to accept, but honestly, how was his butt not numb 24/7? The man needed more movement than gravity sliding his body deeper into the tub.

So while Lyle would go off to the store – no doubt to raid the junk food shelves – I paid Frankie a visit. Mostly because I was interested in what he was up to exactly. If he thought cordoning himself from the rest of the cabin would give him complete privacy he was wrong. He wasn't annoyed – or if he was he was good at hiding it – when I'd come in and pop a squat on the toilet seat or the floor beside the bath. Frankie was happy to answer questions for the first five minutes until his comments dwindled to simple grunts of 'hmm' and 'ya'. That was usually my cue to let him do his thing.

Frankie's presence seemed to relax Lyle, she was visibly less tense and although her nightmares continued to wake me up they became less violent than before. I think it was less of Frankie as a person and more of what he represented, hope of finding closure. Closure that she and I waited so long for. I tried not to think too much about it, not wanting to raise my hopes so high that even the slightest tremor could topple them turning me into a human pancake.

As time went on and my visits to Frankie racked up I gathered more information on their bond. They met in high school as Frankie said and became fast friends bonding over the fact that they were from the same neighborhood. Frankie's childhood home was four doors down from where we stayed with Beth and Ivy. Lyle marveled at how Frankie had always been good with computers, often getting called out of class to help teachers with technical glitches and then reprimanded by those same instructors when he hacked the school system to alter his grades. To my surprise his aim was not to raise his grades, but actually lower them. Pure Frankie, Lyle had explained, he was always experimenting with what he could get away with.

The present day level he got away with seemed to be much higher than changing a B to a F. Lyle wouldn't elaborate but from what I gathered Frankie was on contract with different organizations who specialized in cultural jamming within the media. You need a google search for a toxic corporation redirected to an environmental safety report, Frankie's your guy.

It was 9pm on a Wednesday night when I got home. Lyle left a half hour earlier anticipating I would be home just after I finished organizing the next months reservations, a task which would've taken ten minutes was it not for a family of four coming through three minutes to close.

Both the father and mother were small and skinny holding month old infants in their arms. They were twins the bright eyed woman explained as her husband struggled to pick his credit card from his wallet while balancing the sleeping baby. The mother who identified herself as Julie apologized profusely for being late telling me that on their way here the twins became fussy and they pulled into a town about an hour out. I recognized the name of the town- if you could call it that – it was more of a loose gathering of rural farm houses with a miniature city square much like ours.

"We just fell in love and couldn't leave, and before you know it the sun was setting!" She proclaimed as animatedly as she could while cuddling the swaddled baby.

I smiled and nodded while I focused on entering their information into our system before handing them the key to room #7.

"Well we are glad you got here," I smiled politely and turned to point them to their room after giving them the two cents tour.

Twenty minutes later they were settled and I was on my way back home. Undoing the Velcro from my sandals I slid them off, leaving the frayed material on the porch in hopes that a rain would give them a good wash. Much to Grace's dismay – and maybe the health departments – I wore sandals from the moment the temperature hit 45 until mid November. Not being the most tidy cook I would often acquire dollops of loose pancake batter on my shoes and sometimes my toes.

With great effort I opened the front door expecting to find dinner waiting for me courtesy of Lyle and a busy bee Frankie at work in his cave aka my matchbox of a bathroom.

The lights were on but there was no dinner.

In fact there was no Lyle either. Had Frankie run out of Cheetos and Twinkies again?

I brought my hands to my hair slowly undoing my braid as I advanced across the living room. The bathroom door was ajar just enough for muted voices to flow through.

"Are you sure we need it?" I recognized Lyle's pragmatic tone with just a hint of frustration.

"If we want to get a look at all the dirt we've got to bring out the excavator." I almost didn't recognize the voice of Frankie as he matched Lyle's serious tone rather than his usual animated self.

As I neared the door I paused. An odd feeling sat in my gut, like I was about to interrupt some sort of private party. Only this private party was occurring in my bathroom. Pushing the thought and the door aside I took two steps into the bathroom.

"What's going on?" I tried to make the words as casual as possible but as soon as I entered the white walled room I felt the air gain weight. A different atmosphere settled between the three of us who stood less than a foot from each other.

Frankie sat on the bath tub wall his usual hunched position traded for perfect posture as a tight expression met Lyle. She leaned against the wall across from the sink her arms dropped from their folded position across her chest as she motioned for me to sit across from her on the sink countertop.

"Did something happen? Is everything ok?" I turned from Lyle to Frankie trying to tap into whatever had been running through their minds before I came in. "Well?" I asked a little impatiently.

What was so serious that the two felt they needed to collect themselves before looping me in? Had something come up in Monroe's bank accounts? Or maybe nothing came up. What if he was completely clean? What was our next move? My lungs swelled as if they were saturated with air, unable to remember what came next.

Finally, Lyle turned to Frankie and nodded.

Frankie cracked a smile. "How many mission impossible movies have you seen?" 

- 

Let the plotting begin ...