The Weapon of Young Gods #41: Open-Heart Surgery

Have you ever crushed someone’s spirit? Ever demolished someone’s confidence? Destroyed their self-worth so completely that they’re reduced to a trembling puddle of shame? I hadn’t-not until the day I drove Frankie back home to her parents for the very last time, that is. It was protracted and hideous and awful and extremely overdue, not to mention completely deserved.

Or so I thought at the time-because if there’s one thing I absolutely cannot fucking stand, it’s being the butt of inside jokes, the victim of compound, orchestrated fabrications so malicious and venal that they simply demand to be answered tit for tat, lie for lie, nuke for nuke. Mutually assured destruction.

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The entire drive from Strands to Fullerton was one messy, botched piece of open-heart surgery-choked with gridlock and ineptitude and melodrama-and I guess it could have all been avoided at some point, but hell if I know when that would have been, and anyway, it didn’t matter once I opened my big fat mouth and let her have it. We were hopelessly snarled in traffic on the 5 just beyond the La Paz exit when everything went sideways, and once that happened-once I forced a verbal beatdown-there was no going back.

“So how much of it is a lie?” I’d been quiet since we’d left the beach parking lot, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“How much of what?” She couldn’t even look at me.

“You. Us. Everything you’ve ever said to me, about anything at all?”

Frankie shifted a bit in her seat and rolled the window down. “I think you know the answer to that.” Her words were nearly drowned out by the freeway noise as cars slowed down and honked at each other in frustration.

“Yeah, but I had to find out for myself, didn’t I?” A Porsche cut in front of me and I hit the brakes too slowly, jerking us both forward.

“Well then, I hope you’re pleased with yourself. I sure don’t feel good about it. It’s fucking embarrassing.”

“Really?” I threw Frankie a nasty glance, but she still wasn’t looking. “You don’t feel good about it? You realize there were plenty of chances to fix that, right?”

“Fix it?” That finally got her attention. “Fix it, so you could freak out sooner?”

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? How stupid do you think I am, Francine?”

“Don’t call me that.” She looked away again.

“Why the hell not? It’s your name, isn’t it?” Two more cars cut in front of me, and I blasted the horn in impotence.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why don’t you fucking try me? Come on, why would you do this? Why would you just make up a whole different life for yourself?”

She sighed out the window, like I was five years old. “I don’t know, Roy.”

“No. No, that’s not good enough. Try again, damn it.”

“Fine. Fine. I pretended to be somebody else because I needed to be somebody else.”

“What?” I shoved the Volvo into the next lane when an opening appeared. “What the hell does that even mean? Why would you not want to be yourself? Oh, I know-there’s the whole ‘serial liar’ thing, but otherwise, why be ashamed of who you are?”

“I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

“No no, you don’t get to do that ‘you can’t handle the truth’ bullshit-what are you trying to prove?” I swerved into the carpool lane, but it was just as slow.

“Calm down, Roy. Stop yelling at me, for crissakes, and watch the road.” An SUV was illegally nudging its way over the double lines, inches from my car. I blasted the horn again and called the driver a blind retard before turning back to Frankie. “We’re not moving much, babe-and don’t change the subject.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just wanted to get home alive, that’s all.”

“Fuck you, Francine. I should make you get out and fucking walk, right here on the freeway.”

“What, are you my dad now? What did I do to deserve this? You’ve lost it, Roy.”

“You’re goddamn right I’ve lost it. You tell me-what’s the proper response for a guy who’s been emotionally manipulated by a girl’s on-again, off-again relationship crap, and on top of that, she lies about who she is, who her parents are and what they do, who she’s slept with and if I know them or if I might possibly have any infinitesimal reason to fear them?”

“You’re crazy.” Her voice wavered and I could see her face begin to dissolve in tears, so I went in for the kill-“You mind-raped me with a dirty dildo, Francine-do you expect me to say ‘thank you?'”-and she exploded in sobs. In any other circumstance, I knew that would have been too far, but not this time. Even so, I let up and waited until she could talk again. We’d made it past Alicia and were crawling over the El Toro bridge before she got it together.

“You…you found that, too?”

“Huh? What? Come on, how long were you and Chris Addison together?”

“Fuck…you…you…bastard.”

“Well?”

“Stop. Just…stop. You’re s…scaring the shit out of me, Roy. Take me home and…leave me…the fuck…alone.”

“Tell me what I want to know, then.” Traffic began to pick up speed a little as we passed Lake Forest. It looked thinner up ahead at the 405.

Frankie snorted and wiped her nose with her hand. “We started dating when…when I was in high school.” She leaned back in her seat and looked out the window, so I had to strain to hear her tiny voice over the burgeoning roar again. “Chris was at UCSB, but he dropped out to work for his dad’s company. Our families knew each other from…from way back, through some government job-my dad’s agency contracted his dad’s company for some work…overseas…”

“How did it end?”

“I ended it when I went to school. He was becoming all possessive and jealous and…and abusive. Verbally.”

“Okay then.” I gunned it and we began to fly through Irvine. “That wasn’t good enough for me, though, was it? No, why tell the truth to the boy you’re screwing when you could fabricate something else?”

“Because the fucking abuse wasn’t just verbal after a while, okay? Pardon me if I don’t want to tell everyone exactly how I was assaulted. Trauma does some messed-up shit to people, all right?”

“Oh. Right. Oh.” A nasty acidic hole began drilling its way through my intestines and I ease up on the gas through Tustin.

“Gee thanks, Roy, I sure appreciate your sensitivity in all this.”

That was too flip for me. “What, I’m supposed to excuse what you did because your ex-boyfriend is an asshole? I’m not blaming any victims here, Francine.” I step on the gas again and pass three cars before moving out of the carpool lane.

“Oh, of course not,” she spat, loud and angry now. “No, your radius of righteousness doesn’t extend too far from your own skin, does it? You’re such an innocent, such a poor wronged baby boy, aren’t you? Such an uptight, humorless, egomaniacal child? Such a self-destructive waste of brains and talent?” She sneered with contempt. “Your pretty face won’t cover that up forever, Roy.”

I said nothing for a good five minutes as we careened through Santa Ana, past the 55. I had to blink back a few drops of my own. “Look who knows so much.”

“Look who knows so much yourself. How did you work yourself into this fit of insanity, Roy? If you were so fucking offended, why didn’t you just let me go when you figured it all out? When did you figure it out anyway? How did you know?”

“Well,” I sniffed, “it takes one to know one, Francine. I have friends in the wrong families too, you know.” No traffic in the Orange Crush today, sports fans. Jump right on the 57, dude.

“Friends who know you too. Friends who reminded me that I knew how to keep secrets too. That I knew how to lie, too.” I cut across two lanes and zoomed right down the pipe toward Fullerton.

“What? Who?” Frankie was confused, but I ignored her and bore down on the ramp I knew was coming soon.

“One last thing,” I said. “Why would Chris be afraid of me? Me? With all his family’s power and pull and supposed omnipotence, why would your asshole ex be afraid of me?”

“What? When?” She continued to blunder around in mental anguish, and I could tell she really didn’t know the answer to this one.

“Nothing. A party at New Year’s.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him since…since that night. It was sometime in…in October.” She squirmed as I got off the 57 at Chapman and took a fast curve through the stale green light. I let her stew some more as I drove over the surface streets to her parents’ house.

We turned onto her street and Frankie couldn’t keep her curiosity in check any longer. “So? Will i ever get to know how gullible I was? I told you what you wanted to know. Now who told you all that stuff? Who was talking shit, Roy?”

I pulled up in front of her house. “No. Get out. We’re done.”

“Roy.” She was looking at me now, but I kept the engine running and stared straight ahead. “Go.”

“Roy!” Frankie shoved the door open in frustration and got out, but I reached over to close and lock it before she turned around again. “What did you lie about, then?”

I gave her my worst stink-eye and spoke through the open window. “For starters, my dad was never in the Marines.” She looked confused again, but I flipped a U-turn right there and took off back toward Chapman. I yanked the stereo volume knob up way loud, and Morphine’s murk filled the car. I sang along with Sandman at the top of my lungs: “Free love/don’t bank on it, baby/because love, love/love is expensive!!”

I couldn’t resist a look in the rearview mirror. I tried to see if Francesca Rossettini was back there, but of course she wasn’t. Francine Ross was hunched over on the curb with her head in her hands, the only spark of life on a dull and dying street.