Free Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson

at the beach, stay in the car.” She thrust her cell phone at me. “Here. Take my phone, too, in case you lose the paper. All the numbers are in there.”
    â€œI don’t lose things,” I said. “What if you need to call somebody?”
    â€œWho would I call?” she asked. “Take it.”
    I was halfway down the hall to gather Frank when Mimi called after me, “Alice. Thank you.” Alice, not Penny.
    AFTER FRANK GOT the tape off his eyebrows, he’d refreshed himself with a pass through Wardrobe. Now he was wearing an outfit more suited to an afternoon’s motoring: white canvas duster over chinos and a white shirt, leather aviator’s cap and goggles, a silk scarf and old-school binoculars around his neck. He had his plastic machete stuck in his belt and his pith helmet under his arm. “Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with it?” I had on a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, andtennis shoes, my New York-via-Nebraska idea of standard Southern California daywear.
    â€œEverything,” Frank said. “I know just what you need. Tartan! Let me get you my plaid cravat.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” I said. “I’m not big on plaids.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” he asked. He launched into a brief-for-Frank disquisition on the importance of tartans as clan signifiers in Great Britain from ancient times forward, which segued into a history of the evolution of the striped necktie as a means of differentiating university rowing teams from afar. He paused to take a breath and I groaned, figuring this might go on a while. Instead, Frank used the air he’d taken in to bellow, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Then he whipped the machete from his belt and charged the station wagon, carrying the pith helmet in front of him like a shield in his left hand and brandishing the machete in his right.
    After I got over my surprise at his enthusiasm for our adventure I was pleased to see how eager he was to go. So of course the car wouldn’t start. “Why?” I asked the ozone.
    Frank, mouthpiece for the ozone, answered me. “The battery’s dead. If an automobile isn’t driven for weeks or months, the cables should be disconnected to prevent the charge leaking out. However, my mother refused to allow me to perform the necessary operation. She said disconnecting the battery was abject capitulation. And that I would get grease on my cuffs.”
    â€œAbject capitulation to what?”
    â€œTo her not driving.”
    â€œDoes she ever drive?”
    â€œSometimes not for weeks or months. As if the driving weren’t bad enough, once you reach your destination you have to find a place to park. God help you if you end up in a parking garage because chances are you’ll never find your car again. If you do find your car, then you’ve lost the stupid parking ticket. That’s it. You’re doomed. Why did you ever leave the house? Better to stay home. According to my mother.”
    â€œDon’t you ever go anywhere?” I asked.
    â€œWe do,” he said. “In taxis.”
    After an eternity—or maybe what just seemed an eternity to me, as Frank was lecturing, not briefly, on the ins and outs of internal combustion engines, which segued into an explanation of Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (A.C.) engine, which, I don’t know if you know this, revolutionized the delivery of electricity over long distances, much to the chagrin of Tesla’s archnemesis and purveyor of the direct current (D.C.) delivery system, Thomas Edison—a guy from roadside assistance showed up at the gate carrying a briefcase-sized battery to shock our engine back to life.
    â€œDrive your car at least half an hour before you turn the engine off again,” he said once he got it up and running.
    â€œIt’s not my car.” I signed the papers on his clipboard while