53...

He could hear someone step right outside the back door. His fist tightened almost to the point of pain around the door handle. He breathed slowly and deeply through his nose. One, he counted silently to himself. Two, he judged the resistance of his feet against the floor with some soft bouncing. Three, he pulled at the door with all his force.
This probably would have been more impressive had the back door not been locked with the dead bolt. Before Frank could completely realize this, he had managed to yank the handle clear off the door. It came away with a squeeling of metal coming loose of wood which had tightened and loosened its vaginal grip with the change of the weather. Frank stood there with a hunk of wood in his hands.
Like a bad actor, Frank stared at the dismembered handle in his hand with theatric frustration. He then turned his blinding hatred on the door itself, most specifically the splintered holes in the door that were now a new addition.
There was a soft but steady knocking from the other side of the door. Frank lifted the handle behind his head and prepared what would come next.
"Franky? You in there?"
Frank stared again at the torn and ragged holes fresh to the door, an impossible question all over his face. He suddenly placed the voice as that of his neighbor from the room downstairs, the room that had once been a garage.
"Anthony?" he asked.
"Yeah man."
Frank undid the deadbolt on the door and waited for a moment. There was no response from the other side of the door, the two stood on opposite sides of this worthless wood.
"Go ahead and push the door open," Frank said with a tinge of annoyance in his voice.
The door swung slowly open and the stony grin on Anthony's face slowly evaporated into concern as he stood there staring at Frank. Well, Frank assumed he was staring at him, but the dark shades that he almost always wore covered his gaze. The two stood still on opposite sides of the threshold, the cold and eucalyptus scented air blowing in from the park. After a few silent moments, Frank began to worry that there was something wrong and took a quick inventory of himself. It was then that he realized he was still holding the door handle like a club. Frank laughed dumbly and tossed the wood onto the couch.
"What's going on man?" Anthony asked with an overly slow tempo.
"Sorry, handle came off when I tried to open the door. What do you need?”
"Did he find you?"
"Did who find me? Was Bryan looking for me?"
"No. Some guy, I assume he rang every bell, but he got to my door. He was looking for you."

52...

There was an ancient chest of drawers which Bryan used to store his clothes in against the wall. The thing had originally been picked up on a street corner, and where it had been before that was anyone's guess. Small things like guitar picks, fast food receipts and pocket change were always getting lost in the dark hole underneath it. From his floor vantage view, Frank could see something just inside the dark cave under the bureau.
He noticed those telltale, curled frays that meant a piece of paper that had been ripped free from a spiral notebook. They sat there, just covered by shadow beneath the furniture like party favors in hiding, like bad confetti. Frank reached his arm out and snagged the piece of paper.
It was indeed a piece of college ruled, spiral bound notebook paper which had been folded in half twice. Frank wondered who the note was for, or from. He wondered if there was some information that was meant to be distributed but somehow got lost on the way. He felt like an explorer of sorts as he began to unfold the paper.
Suddenly everything in him froze and his eyes opened wide. He held his breath and listened very carefully.
He was sure he had just heard something shuffle around on the back deck. The walls were so thin in the house that you could practically hear movement made anywhere, but the sound of someone on the back deck, on that thin and weather beaten wood, was a very specific sound.
It could easily have been a cat, so Frank continued to lie on the floor and listen. He was already keyed up from the insane events that had already transpired today and he felt ready to pounce.
After what felt like a couple of minutes of silence from out on the deck, Frank started to slowly roll over and get up. But there it was again, definite this time.
There was somebody, seemingly wearing boots, walking slowly across the small wooden deck.
Like a dancer, Frank leapt to his feet, shoved the folded piece of paper in his back pocket and moved quickly and quietly towards the back door. He stared down at the contraption that opened this door. It looked like it had once been the handle of one of those trowel things that construction workers used to smooth over concrete. It had been screwed into the old wood of a door that had not existed at the time when this once grand house had been singularly, a grand house.
Frank wrapped his right hand around the handle and steadied himself with feet planted as if ready to burst off of a race line.
‘Screw all you guys,’ he thought, ‘I’ve got the jump on you this time.’

51...

Frank's eyes would only focus on fog. It took him a moment to realize that he was leaning against his window, breathing clouds against the glass. He shook his head in frustration and furiously wiped the window with the bottom of his shirt.
He shifted his focus through the glass and scanned the small strip of park, but there was no longer any sign of Tommy or his friend. He blew out a forced breath through his nostrils and managed to cloud the window once again. He thought about wiping it off and taking another look, but he knew in his gut that no matter how much he craned his neck to look, they were not going to be there.
Pushing away from the worn wood of the window frame, Frank noticed a minimalist replica of his face stained to the cold window. He stared at it for a moment and began to feel a little embarrassed by his own desperate behavior. He closed his eyes, forced himself to lengthen out the shallow breaths he was taking and thought.
"Just a guy, a friendly guy by the way, playing Frisbee in the park."
He was about to ask himself why he invented this enormous shadow conspiracy when there was no need for it, but he shook his head soundly as if letting it go.
"Seriously dude!" he said, laughing at himself. That laughter fed part of his overwrought soul and caused harder laughter.
He turned away from the window, intending to get himself a snack from the fridge. In his revelry, he managed to miss the fact that the phone cord was stretched out across the hardwood floor. He caught the cord with his foot, and every part of his body managed to leave the ground.
Frank hit the wood with the sort of insanely loud crash that knocks your jaws together and shits the air out of your lungs in a fevered stream. Frank actually saw his breath leave as it pushed a cloud of dust, hair and sloughed off skin cells before it like a ski chalet moved down a hill by an avalanche.
He lay there for a moment, just sort of mentally checking if he had seriously hurt anything. Everything hurt slightly, and his heart was beating as if he had just run a mile at breakneck speed, but he was pretty sure he was okay.
Rubbing his forehead against the soft grain of the wood floor, he began laughing again. He felt lame, he felt like he was going to be amazingly sore tomorrow, but it felt good to just lay there and laugh for minute. He turned his face to lay his cheek on the floor and just wrapped himself up in this abandon at accepting how ridiculous he was.
He was about to push himself up from the floor when something caught his eye.

50...

The kitchen had so much chrome in it that it felt like a room-sized machine. It gave off the ambience of starting to life and thrashing all in the vicinity with jagged, shiny edges. Frank was sure that it cost a fortune, but it seemed corpse cold. Others must have had this same sort of feeling for, even though it was home to the keg and various liquor bottles, the room was nearly empty.
There were two guys sort of huddled up in the corner. They gave Bryan and Frank wary glances when they entered and then quickly went back to their intense conversation. From what Frank could gather, one was talking the other down from a bad trip; Frank could relate.
Bryan pumped the keg and poured himself a foamy cup of beer. Frank grabbed one of the red plastic cups and went for a bottle of sitting on the counter. He had to reach around the two guys in the corner and muttered a soft "’scuse me". Frank believed he heard one of them say something about 'all that greasepaint', but thought it better to let it go. He poured himself a good eight ounces of rum and drank it down like it was water. He pushed out a rush of air and saw Bryan watching him over the rim of his cup.
"Good?" Bryan asked.
Frank put a splash of beer in his cup, swirled it around and drank it down. He made another grab at the rum, with another hushed apology to the guys, and filled his cup halfway to full.
"I am now."
They headed out of the kitchen and towards the front door. They passed milling party goers in groups of twos and threes. To Frank they appeared almost as is they were those human statue figures. These people seemed posed in place and complete with party masks filled with glass eyes that merely reflected the colored light bulbs soft light back out into the room. He then had one of those moments where it feel like your flexes around a notion, like looking at an optical illusion and suddenly seeing the other picture that had been hidden there the whole time. He felt as if his determined walk through was actually a flash to everyone else, that he was walking through a lane separate from all others here and he saw there movements as a hummingbird must see ours.
Frank felt a little dizzy. He and Bryan made it to the front porch and took a seat on the steps, Frank immediately lit up a smoke.
“Why did you want to come here?” Bryan asked. “You can’t stand parties.”
Frank looked at him through smoke, giving him his best incredulous look.
“I thought you wanted to come here.”
“No man, you seemed like you were hoping to find someone here, so I entertained you. Were you looking for someone?”
Frank thought about this for a moment. He appreciated Bryan’s no bullshit approach. Frank noticed a cop car come around the corner at Broderick and quickly downed his rum. Bryan did the same with his beverage and the two turned their to-go cups upside down to indicate emptiness if the cop happened to look over their way.
“I don’t know,” Frank said slowly, trying to formulate his thoughts into words. “I think I was looking for a last chance some sort of connection with them.”
“With Evelyn and that group?” Bryan asked. “Or with everybody?”
Frank shrugged and pitched his cigarette over the side of the stairs.

49...

Bryan led the charge back towards the stairs, gracefully maneuvering his way through the rush. Frank saw the table loaded up with snack foods and gave Bryan a tug and the back of his shirt to have him hang up a minute. Bryan saw the fat laden bounty and nodded, eyes wide and smiling.
Diving his fist into a bowl of tortilla chips, Bryan said something apparently witty and not the least bit inappropriate to the polo shirt clad gentleman standing next to him. Frank was annoyed at the self conscious streak that flew through him at the thought of gathering a plate of food in front of others; one of the hundreds of friendly neurosis his mother had seen fit to pass on.
The babble of loud and varying conversations, mixed ungraciously with inane and vaguely hip-hop flavored popular music, was grating on Frank’s nerves. It made him think taking a couple of those satay skewers and pushing them through his ears. Seriously, he wondered to himself, why do you even come to these things?
He reached a cubed piece of sourdough into the spinach dip shoveled into a hollowed out loaf of said bread when a voice broke through the wall of distorted noise like a small, affirming rub on the back in the midst of flailing punches.
Frank turned towards the voice. This truly lovely young lady stood there smiling at him, a shine of sincere clarity in her eyes. She looked as if she belonged here with these people in that she appeared to be well bred, obviously took care of herself, but somehow yet stood out from this crowd. There was nothing in particular he could point to, but somehow the word honesty floated up to him.
“I’m sorry?” he said with a confused smile.
“I said, I’d advise against that spinach dip. It tastes like it was made with low fat yogurt or something.”
Frank laughed slightly, not as a social convention, but by the idea that she would decide to share this information with him. She began laughing as well, and man her eyes sparkled.
“Thanks. I’d be really bummed out by a mouthful of bad spinach dip.”
She suddenly threw her small hand to her mouth and a look of shock and embarrassment crept in to her features.
“You didn’t make it or anything did you?” she asked with a tentative smile.
“No,” Frank said, laughing again.
Suddenly this bulk of a man, this wavy-haired minstrel of the inane walked in front of Frank, his back giving off a definite posture of wanting nothing to do with Frank. In fact, he immediately acted as though Frank was never there.
“Hey, where do you work out?” he asked in exactly the sort of dumb ass voice you might expect.
Really, Frank wanted to ask him, you’re going to approach quite possibly the only interesting person in this whole place with, “where do you work out”? Fucking nimrod!
The woman smiled apologetically at Frank. Frank gave a little wave, trying to impart the knowledge that he was happy to have had that slight moment of connection with her with vague and clumsy movements of his fingers. Before he turned completely for the stairs, he noticed a placid look come to her face, a small death sheen in her compelling eyes as she began to address this pile of flesh disguised as a man.
Frank felt his heart break a little bit.