Business With Frankie
By Merz
A Stone Cold Woman Collects for Her Boss

She could kill me so easily, and I wish she would.  I wish she'd do it fast, 
but she's taking her time so I don't start enjoying it too much.  That's the 
point, that I shouldn't enjoy it.  But we both know I do.  From the first it 
wasn't just my body she'd break.  She works over my mind as well so 
after each time I start looking forward to the next, no matter how much it's 
going to hurt. 

When it was the big man we both knew the rules and it was just business.  
I owed, I couldn't pay, he'd take something of value and that was that.  I 
might make a show of fighting back, but we both knew that was just show.  
Unarmed there wasn't anything I could do that would hurt him, and the 
one time he caught me packing a gun to surprise him with he broke my 
fingers so I couldn't pull a trigger if I wanted to for three months.  I had 
the gun a couple other times even after that, but it isn't like they make 
appointments so I never got a chance to pull it.

Her, right away I couldn't keep it just business.  One night I closed down 
the bar and there she was.  Somehow she got into the backroom and 
stepped out of the shadows between me and the door.  I first thought it was 
some punk kid trying to stick the place up.  You know the type with the 
spiky hair and dark clothes.  Then I recognized the big man's jacket and 
started wondering what was up.  Could have been any Raiders jacket 
except for the name embroidered on it, and how much of the sleeves 
bunched up around her wrists so I could guess its size.  Tight across the 
shoulders but way long in the sleeves.  She had to talk before I knew it 
was a woman.  A woman with a Mohawk haircut, if you can believe it.

"Two grand now, Frankie.  Interest makes it twenty-two hundred."  No 
hello, no intros, no explaining why it's her and not the big man come for 
Marlowe's take.   Obviously I don't have that kind of money.  The place is 
hawked to the rafters, I owe everybody I know, my dishwasher works for 
promises and the hope I won't have him sent back to Tijuana, and I get 
fewer customers every week.  The ones who had been regulars could smell 
something dying around me, could taste the booze was getting more water 
and the menu didn't have anything worth eating on it anymore.  My booze 
is watered because the other folks I get to tend the bar take their pay partly 
out of my bottles, so they don't dare complain when their check is late.   
And I can't do it all myself so I need those thieves to keep the doors open.

"No point in even bringing it up.  I don't have the cash.  If you give me a 
week I can get the two hundred and start turning things around.  I run a 
business and I got no inventory anymore, and if I don't have anything to 
sell I can't earn what I owe.  Marlowe's a businessman.  Explain it to him 
and give me a week to get things together again."

She took a look around the storeroom, looking for anything that had some 
street value.  She looked at the half case of scotch, the mixed case of other 
booze, and the beer cases.  "Anything in the icebox?" she asked like I 
hadn't even spoken.

"Yeah, storage for the kitchen.  Look, I told you I don't have the dough 
and if you take my booze I can't keep the paying customers I got."

She walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door.  "Get your stuff 
out.  I'll take this.  I checked out front earlier.  Nothing here is fit to eat.  
Tell the customers the kitchen's closed because of a fire or something.  
Pass out chips and peanuts for a while.  The customers will be getting a 
better deal anyway, and they'll know it."  She stood aside and motioned to 
the jar of pickles and other condiments, the bread, the milk carton, the 
package of sausages.  "Clean it out."

"Like hell.  If Marlowe wants my fridge he can damn well come and clean 
it out himself.  And I'm sure as hell not helping you haul it out of here."  I 
was pissed because she could see how empty the thing was, and she was 
right that nowadays the kitchen was more for show than making decent 
food.  She could see I'd run my place into the dirt and I hated having 
someone see that.  I grabbed for her thinking I'd toss her out on her ass 
and wait for whoever Marlowe sent after her to finish me off.  That was 
my first big mistake.

I grabbed the shoulder of her jacket and jerked to get her away from the 
back room and out the door.  I might as well have tried jerking the whole 
building into the street.  She didn't budge an inch, just looked at me kind 
of bored and disappointed.

"Leroy liked the jacket treated with respect.  He'd be real unhappy at the 
way you're getting it wrinkled."  She looked at my hand tugging the 
shoulder of the jacket a moment, then reached up and clamped a vise on 
my wrist.  I couldn't believe anything could hurt like her just squeezing 
my wrist did.  I didn't know much about hurting at that point, just what the 
big man had taught me and it turned out he was an amateur next to her, not 
even in the same league.

If I was smart I'd still be running a real business, but I'm stupid so I threw 
a punch trying to knock her off me before she did permanent damage to 
my wrist.  She caught my fist in mid-air with her free hand and stopped it 
cold. It felt like I had hit a bucket of sand her hand was so rough, and there 
was no give to it at all.  She looked at me for a moment without changing 
her bored, disappointed expression, then shoved me so I flew back a 
couple feet and landed on my butt.

While I was getting up she pulled the jacket off and tossed it onto one of 
the booze cases.  "We can do it this way, but it doesn't make your 
payment.  The refrigerator still leaves with me."  

I was thinking about running right into her to flatten her, but I stopped 
before I took a step.  She didn't flex any muscles.  She didn't have to. I 
could see every one standing out on her body without her having to make 
a move or even tense up.  Just standing there breathing normally made her 
look like a volcano trembling with power, about to erupt all over me.  

I froze half way up to my feet, staring at those pure white arms bursting 
out of the sleeves of her cropped t-shirt, that broad chest, the pale strip of 
stomach muscle showing above her belt.  Like I said, she didn't do 
anything in particular to show off, but just standing still she looked 
stronger than anything I'd ever imagined.  

She took two steps over to me and put her hand on my shoulder.  It felt 
like a brick landing there and then she squeezed with her short, thick 
fingers.  My wrist still throbbed from her grabbing it, but this agony put 
the earlier one right out of my mind.  A lightning bolt of pain was arcing 
from my shoulder into my brain, blinding me and deafening me to 
anything else in the world.  I started pulling away from her grip, but that 
just made her tighten up even more, the individual fingers spearing into 
my joint and finding every nerve in there.  I wouldn't have believed her 
grip could get tighter, but it did and I leaned forward into the hand hoping 
that might get her to loosen it up even a little bit.  She started guiding me 
up to my feet, and did lighten it up enough that I had hope she wouldn't 
crumble the shoulder joint in her hand.  Below my shoulder the whole arm 
was numb and limp, that side of my body was trembling out of control.  
My stomach was getting queasy and it seemed like the lights weren't as 
bright.

With my free hand I reached up to her arm, thinking I might be able to 
shove it off me.  I couldn't have, I know, but I reached for it anyway.  The 
forearm felt like there were steel cables running along under the skin, one 
next to the other.  On up above the elbow the muscles bulged out firm and 
warm, pulsing with the blood and the power flowing down her arm.  
Instead of trying to shove it off, I just kept my hand on her arm and tried 
to draw some strength from the contact.

She had me standing up, even arching a little onto my toes in front of her.  
"New rules, Frankie.  Payday comes just like before, but now I'm a 
consulting partner in all your affairs.  I work for Marlowe to get what you 
owe him.  I work with you to make sure you start making your payments 
in cash instead of me having to act like a pawnbroker.  I don't want your 
worn out appliances, and I really got no use for this sort of dance with 
you.  Work with me and maybe we can get you up off the bottom and out 
of my life.  It's going to be strictly cash from now on, with as much of the 
muscle waltz each time as you want to put up with.  But every time we go 
through this it gets rougher for you.  You got it?"

"Oh.  Yes.  I got it.  Please God.  Just let me go.  I'll have the money.  I 
promise."  I couldn't keep back the tears anymore.  With one hand she had 
me on the edge of breaking down completely.  I would have promised 
anything to get away from feeling my bones about to turn to dust from her 
grip.  But I still couldn't take my hand off her warm, sculpted arm.  I 
couldn't stop watching as it started glowing soft pink.

Finally she turned me loose and I fell back against the wall, rubbing my 
shoulder with my good hand even though that made it hurt, too.  I had to 
get some circulation back, and this was a better sort of pain, like a cramp 
working itself out instead of feeling like I was about to lose a part of my 
body.  She didn't care.  She just turned back toward the refrigerator.

I tried to squeeze as hard as she had, to see if I could cause that much pain 
myself, but I couldn't of course.  She was unbelievable, handling me like I 
was nothing, no threat to her, nobody worth her really spending time and 
effort on.  She was using just one hand at a time to teach me who was boss 
around my own joint.  A damn woman coming into my place and making 
me look like a puny slob.  Furious and ashamed at the same time, I threw 
myself onto her wide back, thinking if I dragged her down to the floor I 
might get in some licks and even things up.  

She shrugged me off like I was a fly on her back, then grabbed my shirt 
front and slammed me flat against the wall.  "Frankie, get a clue", she said 
and put her thick index finger in the middle of my chest, starting to push 
my sternum inward.  Again she was putting me into intense pain and 
making it look like the simplest thing in the world for her.  Just one finger 
pushing against me, and I couldn't stop it.  I grabbed her forearm with one 
hand and pushed on her bicep with the other without slowing her steady 
increase in pressure against my chest.  She could have pushed her finger 
into the brick wall at my back if she wanted.  I guessed bare handed she 
could push a ten penny nail into a two by four.  Her forearm felt like a 
wooden beam shoving into me.  Her biceps was bigger than my leg and 
hard as stone.  Both my arms fighting back and I couldn't reduce the 
pressure one bit, and her finger was about to break through into my chest.  
But her whole arm felt so warm, so solid.  And she was about to kill me 
with one finger.

A little sob escaped me and she finally dropped her arm, still drilling her 
eyes into me.  I stood there like I was nailed to the wall, like she had 
pushed on through me the way she could have and pinned me there.  Then 
she turned away again.  Her eyes had been the last thing still holding me 
on my feet so I just melted down to the floor.

"See you next month, Frankie.  Don't bother showing me out.  It's just 
money.  Work with me and we'll settle your problem.  It isn't worth dying 
over."  She put her jacket back on without looking back and went over the 
refrigerator.  It looked like nothing for her to shove it out from the wall 
and jerk out the cord.  Then she opened the door and tipped the whole 
thing up so all the stuff spilled out onto the floor.  She tipped it so she 
could slide it out the door into the alley, then apparently picked it up and 
carried it away because I didn't hear any scraping on the asphalt out there.

I sat on the floor for a long time thinking about the whole thing.  I'm not 
Frankie.  Frankie owned the bar before I bought it, and I didn't rename the 
place.  The big man called me Frankie all the time when he came to 
collect, and I never bothered to correct him.  But her, I want her to know 
my name.  I want to hear her say it.  She's killing me a piece at a time and 
she doesn't even know my name.