Chapter 19 Frankie
FRANKIE
Owen Brodie has been busy. He’s been busy with his shows, which Sam and I have not been attending.
He’s been busy doing interviews and promos and courtesy meet and greets with the local radio stations and businesses that have been sponsoring his shows.
My uncle Martin did a good job of lining up sponsors for Owen and of unwittingly cockblocking us.
Sam has always been around ever since that night in Tampa, so it’s not like we would have had a chance for any more hanky-panky unless Owen snuck out of his hotel room while Sam was sleeping. And he didn’t. And that’s good because I didn’t want him to.
I mean, it would have been nice if he’d asked so I could tell him no, but he has done a remarkable and annoying job of adhering to the stupid ground rules that I set for us in Tampa.
Now that we’re heading to New York, I am composed of approximately ninety percent butterflies about this hypothetical date night that Owen proposed, and the rest is anxiety about Sam sneaking cheese into his mouth when I’m not looking.
We’re in the first-class lounge, and the buffet includes a troubling amount of cheese cubes.
His dad and I have both explained to him why it’s important for all of us to avoid consuming large amounts of cheese before we travel, but the little bugger is sneaky.
He asked if melted cheese counts. He said that we made him eat toast after he ate the pocket cheese in Tampa and he didn’t have any tummy troubles.
So why can’t he have grilled cheese sandwiches before a flight?
We didn’t have any other answer other than “because we say so.”
We both sound so much like his parents now, Owen and I. I could cry.
But I’m not going to think about that.
I’m just the nanny.
And only a temporary one at that.
My job as his temporary nanny mainly centers on watching dark cartoons and nature shows with him, setting up daily FaceTime calls with him and his mother, being on cheese patrol, and ensuring that he doesn’t do a faceplant into anyone or anything when he takes naps in public places.
Sam has quickly become one of my all-time favorite people, and I really want him to have the cheese if he wants the cheese.
But I also really don’t want to deal with cheese poops ever again in my life.
We’re hanging out in a secluded area with a cluster of armchairs and a little sofa.
Owen is sitting to the right of me, and Sam is to my left.
I’m watching Sam watch Batman on his iPad with his headphones on.
His red hair is really messy today, but I like it that way.
He keeps looking up longingly at the buffet across the room and then glancing over at me and frowning.
I’m the Cheese Nazi, and he’s not happy with me this morning.
“He wasn’t always obsessed with cheese,” Owen says in a hushed voice.
He’s been reading something on his laptop for the past twenty minutes, but I guess he caught Sam’s cheese yearning too.
“It used to be ice cream. Before that it was bacon bits. Not bacon strips—just the bits. Before that it was chocolate cake. Before that it was chocolate milk.” He sighs. “Does he seem unhappy to you?”
“No.” I don’t even have to think about it. “He doesn’t.”
“Really?”
“I think he’s just super chill.”
“Yeah? I mean, that’s what I’ve always thought too, but… It’s good to get a second opinion. I always worry that I’m doing something wrong. The way I am with him.”
I turn to face him. “Are you kidding? You’re great with him. You have a seven-year-old son who isn’t a people pleaser. He knows who he is, and he likes himself. And he grew up in Los Angeles. Do you not realize how big a deal that is?”
He smiles. “I guess.”
When I turn back to look at Sam, I feel Owen’s fingertips graze the back of my hand.
Just that.
The slightest touch, just for a second, and I catch my breath, my eyes snap shut, my heart starts racing, and all the energy of the world is centered in my belly.
“You’re coming to the party with me tonight, right?”
Owen doesn’t have a show tonight, and his brother Dylan is taking the night off from his Broadway play to look after Sam all afternoon and all night. Owen will be shooting a music video, and he asked me if I want to go watch, but I declined his offer.
I have to clear my throat. “I already told my girlfriends I’d go to dinner with them.”
“Good. Come by afterward.”
I want to. I really want to. But I also don’t.
“What have you been reading?”
“Trying to change the subject, huh? Pretty smooth. They sent me the new draft of the pilot.”
“Oh, how is it?”
He rubs his forehead and screws up his face and still looks handsome. “Better. It’s just not funny enough. I know these family channel-type sitcoms aren’t expected to be hilarious, but…”
“But why shouldn’t they be?”
“I just wish we could sneak a little harmless innuendo in there.”
“It’s about a single dad, right? You should be able to get away with some veiled dick jokes.”
“The dicks would have to be really veiled. And there’s a… We decided to add this nanny character…”
This is so supremely pleasing to me, it’s kind of embarrassing. “Oh did you, now?”
“She’s nothing like you, but she’s pretty sassy. She’s a good foil for my character.”
“A foil, huh? Not an antagonist?”
“Like I said, she’s nothing like you.”
“Well, maybe that’s what’s wrong with the script.”
“Maybe. The guy they got to write the pilot is really good at character and structure and nailing the tone that executives want. But I want to give him a bunch of suggestions for jokes and words he can use to level up the comedy a bit. Push the envelope without really pushing it, you know?”
“Yeah. Veiled dick jokes.”
“I guess. I’ll start a Word doc.”
I pull out my phone. “I have a Notes file with dick synonyms. I can help you with that.”
“You carry dick slang around in your pocket?”
I glance over at him, and he looks like he’s about to get down on one knee. Comedians are so weird.
“Come to the party with me.”
“Maybe. You think you could get away with using pecker?”
An elderly, uptight New England-type couple walk by, frowning at me.
Instead of apologizing for making them hear the word pecker, I look right at them while saying, “Or how about dingus? Would that work?”
“I think we could get away with dingus,” Owen says, typing it into his new document. He doesn’t even notice the stink eyes we’re getting. “Gonna have to pass on pecker though.”
“Fair enough. Anything stick-based should work. Joystick, love stick, dipstick, whoopie stick, disco stick, meat stick. Oooh—tube steak!”
“I can work with all of those. Keep ’em coming.”
“I always do. Philly cheesesteak. Baloney. Schnitzel. Beef whistle. Meat puppet. Meat sword. Wiener, obviously.”
“Obviously. I’m pretty sure Barry Weiner would approve of a hairy wiener joke. Hot dog, sausage, kielbasa.”
“Gravy maker might be pushing it, right?”
“As much as I enjoy pushing it, anything that involves tasty fluids or fluids being emitted from a sausage is probably off-limits. Meat popsicle would probably be fine, but not creamsicle.”
“So spunk torpedo is out, then. Can’t go wrong with dong, ding-dong, dongle, ding-a-ling. You are clearly familiar with the snake-related terms.”
“Indeed I am. Lizard also works.”
“Pud is cute. Like if an adolescent boy is pulling on his pud.”
“I’m pretty sure we can’t add a verb to it, but I will add pud to the list.”
“Don’t forget the nanny’s honeypot, twinkle, or love box.”
“Oh, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the nanny’s love box, trust me,” he says while typing and staring at the document. “I bet it tastes fucking delicious.”
“You’re breaking more than one ground rule right now, sir.”
“I’m talking about the character. We don’t have rules for characters, so I can tell you that the subtext for my character, when he’s talking to the nanny character, is always that he is wondering what her honeypot tastes like.”
“Are there any British characters? Because I love knob.”
“I bet you do. I will pitch knob and see if it flies.”
“Do that. You can also add the word joy to it.”
“Joy knob.” He types that into the document. “My character’s knob is definitely a giver of joy, and I bet the nanny character knows it.”
I shake my head, looking over at Sam to make sure he’s still sitting next to me and not lying facefirst in the platter of cheese cubes.
He still has his headphones on and appears to be having a very quiet conversation with the cartoon he’s watching.
He’s so cute, I want to muss up his already messy hair, but I also don’t want to disturb him.
His father, however, seems intent on disturbing me this morning. He leans in awfully close to look at my phone. “What else have you got in your Notes there?”
I lean away from him. “A lot. I mean I have notebooks for jokes, but I have files on my phone that are just thoughts about comedy in general. Like if I ever get a job on a writing staff, I’ll have all this stuff ready to reference.”
“Yeah? You’d want to do that? Write on a show?” He sounds surprised for some reason.
“Of course. Like a late-night show or something for Comedy Central. SNL, of course. I wouldn’t say no to that show, but preferably if I could time travel back to when it was still awesome.”
“Right. You want to work on a cool show.” He sounds disappointed for some reason. “Well, what kind of thoughts are we talking about?”
“Just random things.” I open up that file in my Notes app. “Like how the word sandwich is funny.”
“Yeah, that’s, like, Comedy 101.”
“I know, and how words with K sounds are funnier than words with S sounds or any word with a bunch of vowels.”
“Right. Like Frankie is funnier than Frances.”
“And infinitely funnier than Owen.”
“Except sandwich is an S word.”
“Hey, I didn’t make the rules. The word lady is much funnier than woman. If you add the word business or party to pretty much any funny noun it makes it funnier. Lady business. Cooter party.”
“Pud party. Boner business. Hey, what about schlong? That’s a funny S word.”
“Ah yes. As an amendment to the K versus S rule—all Yiddish words are funny, especially terms for male genitalia.”
“Schlong and schvantz.”
“Putz.” I can’t stop smiling at him. It’s terrible. “You’ve got a lot of chutzpah today, Mr. Brodie.”
“I’m just so verklempt about getting to New York. Aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Good. Meet me at the party tonight.”
“Okay. It better not be a sausage party.”
We smile at each other for about half a year before I finally manage to look away. I feel giddy, and it’s so meshuga. No good can come of this.
Unless you count orgasms as a good thing, then some good can come of it.
But then it will just be bad.
Really bad. It might be the good kind of bad, but it will be very, very bad.
Sam is sitting next to me, but his headphones are off, his iPad is in his lap, and he’s popping a cube of cheddar into his mouth.
He’s a cheese ninja, and Owen and I have been acting like a couple of schmucks.
“Sam,” Owen says in his Sexy Daddy Voice, “what did we say about the cheese?”
Sam slowly turns his head, a sly grin on his adorable face.
“You said I can’t eat a lot of it before the plane.
I only had five cheeses.” He stands up and pulls a slice of toast from the front pocket of his jeans.
“And I’m going to eat this next. So it’ll be like having a sandwich party in my tummy. ”
Yeah.
That’s pretty funny.