Butterfly Weed

Nouglas, 2025

It was nine on a Thursday night, so Charles was out working and I was on the phone with Frankie. I had a headset on, blank canvas in front of me, paintbrush in hand, one of those driving videos on in the background. Eight-hour road trip across Japan. A study in green.

"Whatcha baking, babe?" I asked.

I could hear the faint clattering of kitchen apparatus on the other end of the line. "Lemon bars."

"Mmm. Save some for me?"

"I always do," Frankie laughed. "How about you? Painting?"

"You know it," I lied.

"Nice."

Our calls always started like this. Asinine small talk throughout which we pretended we were both fine. But after some pregnant pauses, maybe a telltale sigh, we'd get to the meat.

"You okay tonight, Frankie?"

"Yeah," she said, and she sounded more confident when she said it a second time. "Yeah."

"I know it's not easy on you."

"It's not!" She laughed a desperate laugh. "But I've got my tools. Baking, you."

"We make a great team, me and baking."

"Truly. But c'mon, we can't spend all of our calls on my husband's vocation!"

My grip tightened on the brush. A lake came into view on the TV. It should have been beautiful. It should have been inspiring.

"It's not like there's much to say about my husband's vocation," I retorted. "If you wanted to know how he's doing you could just catch his stream."

That got a snort. "I didn't ask about Dwayne. I asked about you."

"Mm. Yeah, I mean, things are good." I made an ugly blue streak across the canvas, just to have done something. "I've got a show coming up in December."

"That's so awesome, babe!" Frankie shrieked. I made a note not to tell her it was a group exhibit, and another to conveniently forget to invite her to the opening. "You're incredible, you know that? I told you you'd get somewhere if you chased your dream."

She had, though I still wasn't sure if that was out of sincere belief in my talent or a deep dissatisfaction in her own life. Working stiffs like her tend to want to live vicariously through us underemployed creatives.

"Think it's like that for Charles?" she asked, quietly, after a minute of companionable silence on the line.

I watched the lake disappear behind more trees. "Um, what?"

"Like, you. Vocation, right? Calling. Dream. Maybe he really needs to do this."

"I—" I pursed my lips. "It's possible, I suppose."

"And there's nothing wrong with it," Frankie said. Always convincing herself.

"That's true," I said, less than certain. "But I feel like pretty much any other line of work would have been easier on you."

"Cop?"

"Fair point. Still."

"I don't think he's doing it to me," Frankie said as her oven door creaked open in the background. "I just... he won't even—one sec—"

I waited, far longer than one sec. 

I put down my paintbrush, examined my headset, checked that the call hadn't dropped. 

Texted Frankie. "You good?"

No reply. One minute became fifteen and my brain, unable to conjure lakes to canvas, still seemed perfectly capable of conjuring tragedy: Frankie hitting her head on the kitchen counter, Frankie fleeing the house as wildfires broke out nearby, Frankie injured or worse by a burglar.

I hung up and tried calling back. When there was no answer, I got in the car.

I'd had the presence of mind to grab Dwayne's baseball bat before rushing over, and I squeezed it tight as I approached the open front door of Frankie's house.

In situations like these were you supposed to call out? Or would that alert the hypothetical burglar?

I opted for stealth, tiptoeing into the spacious foyer. Nothing looked out of place except the black duffel unceremoniously squashing a pair of Frankie's boots. I advanced slowly, and it wasn't long until I heard something from the living room: sobbing. And—Charles's voice. He was home?

"Please say something," he was saying, unevenly.

"What do you want me to say?" Frankie sounded despondent.

Had they both been crying? This wasn't my business. I turned to go and hit a squeaky floorboard.

"Shit, I think I left the front door open," said Charles. I heard couch springs, a deep sigh. "Hope it's not another raccoon."

"Who cares about the fucking raccoons?"

Footsteps approached from the living room. I might look sus standing with a baseball bat in my best friend's foyer, but I'd look way more sus fleeing the scene with a baseball bat.

"It's Nouglas," I said, announcing my presence before Charles came into view.

"OhmygodNouglas," came Frankie's horrified gasp. 

She came running from the living room, arriving in the foyer at the same time as a pretty blonde woman in a neat dress. They both had red eyes and wet faces.

"I'm so sorry," Frankie said. "I forgot our call, I—"

"It's okay, I'm just glad you're safe," I said. "Sorry I flipped out, haha, I always—"

"No, no." She closed our distance and embraced me. "I'm so glad you're here."

"It's my bad," said Charles, and it took me a second to connect the voice with what I was seeing. I'd never seen him in drag, but damn. "Do you, uh, d'you wanna come in?"

"No," Frankie answered for me. "No, I think—I think we'll both be going."

"What?"

"Please?" She looked up at me and I saw lakes, clouds, a heron in her tears.

I didn't know what was going on, but Frankie was my ride or die, and that meant I was hers.

"Yeah," I said. "You good, Charles?"

He flinched away from that one, but before I could seek further understanding I was being led to my car by Frankie. I smelled oil paint as she took the bat from me and got in the passenger side.

"Frankie," I started, hand on the transmission.

"Just get me out of here?"

"Yeah."

I looked back at her house in my rearview mirror. Charles standing in the doorway, tragically beautiful, shoulders slumped. I'd get answers later.

We were on the 405 before I remembered the lemon bars.

In the morning, Dwayne was still working. Or maybe he was working again. His streaming schedule was inscrutable to me. Sometimes he did 24-hour charity marathons, cleaning and fixing old bikes for his viewers. Sometimes he tagged out with other antique bicycle enthusiasts. All I knew was that he spent almost all his time in the garage. Shared mealtimes were increasingly rare, and I could count on my fingers the number of times he'd taken me to bed this month.

So it was really nice to have Frankie at my kitchen island, even if she wasn't ready to talk.

I made us coffee, scrambled eggs, and toast. I was happy to see Frankie had an appetite, and she caught me being happy about that and got defensive.

"It's not like I'm, like, super depressed or anything."

"Right," I chuckled.

"Your couch sucks, by the way."

"I'll take it tonight, then. Have the bed—if you don't mind Dwayne getting in and out at random hours."

"Who says I'm staying another night?"

"You haven't said you're not..."

She sighed into her coffee. "I didn't even pack anything. I've never been so impulsive..."

It was true. She needed to consult her spreadsheets before doing pretty much anything. Pick an outfit, choose a restaurant, say yes to Charles's proposal all those years ago.

"Well, if you ever feel inconceivably rash, you could tell me what's going on." I finished my meal. "But if you need to consider your options more carefully, we've got tools."

I gestured to one of many drawing supply cabinets. I always kept a stock of graph paper for those occasions when Frankie was over and needed to draw up a possibility table.

She curled her lip. "I'm not sure I've used those tools well."

"What do you mean?"

"I just, I try to seem methodical. Scientific almost. But it's probably a charade. A... crutch." She had her hands around her empty mug like she was trying to get warmth from it. I wordlessly filled it with hot water. I wasn't good at many things, but I think I was good at being Frankie's friend. "I like to believe I'm thorough. I like to believe I've thought things through. I like to believe I haven't overlooked anything... crucial."

I put our plates in the dishwasher and leaned on the counter. I didn't think Frankie wanted leading questions, and she seemed done volunteering her thoughts, so I tried a different subject.

"Charles is cute in drag, huh? Is he gonna start doing shows, or—"

"She."

I blinked. "She?" Frankie looked at me like I was stupid. My brain produced a string of shocked interjections—huh? wait! what?—which I was mercifully able to suppress. "Gotcha."

"You do?"

I frowned. "Should I not?"

"I mean, I'm not sure I get it." Frankie scrunched up her nose and I smelled cedar. "Like, I get pronouns. I know... I'm not..."

"You do, and you're not," I said.

"I didn't finish my sentence!"

"Do you want to?"

Frankie dropped into an extreme slouch and pressed her forehead to the mug of hot water. "No."

"Okay."

She didn't want to talk. I didn't have a job to get to. We retired to the living room, where we spent a few hours playing Mario Kart. Frankie was annoyingly good at Mario Kart.

When I came back from using the bathroom, I thought it was about time for us to figure out lunch. But Frankie had the Lyft app open on her phone.

"Going somewhere?" I asked.

"I didn't pack anything," she said without looking up. Grassy shores and rusty railroad tracks retreated from my vision. "So..."

"Let me drive you."

"Noug, I'm fine—"

I rolled my eyes. "Don't bullshit me just 'cause I'm not prying."

"Fine." Her phone clattered to the little coffee table. "I'm—" She took a deep breath and sunflowers turned to greet me. "Not fine."

"Yeah."

"She..." Frankie worried her lip. Whatever was going on, it wasn't just hard to talk about it. It was hard to think about. "My—spouse?—ugh, I wish I could use her name."

"Isn't she still Charles till she chooses a new one?"

Frankie shook her head. The tears were back. "She has a new one. It's—" Face in hands, shoulders shaking, the glimmering play of waves in the summer. I knelt by her and put an arm around her. "She told me..." Frankie took another deep breath, steeling herself. "She told me it didn't feel right hearing me use it."

"Fucking ow," I said.

"Like, what do I do with that?" she asked. There was a heat in her voice now. Anger from frustration from confusion from being trapped. "She wants to be this other person, but not with me?"

I held her closer to me. "I don't get it either," I said. All my trans friends had come out in their teens or twenties, before I'd met them. This was new ground for me. "Was she, uh..."

"Breaking up with me?"

"Yeah."

"Not a clue."

"Not one?"

"She kept saying she didn't want anything to change."

"Weird wish for a trans girl."

"I think she's really going through it," Frankie said, and this is where she hit the despondent intonation she'd used with Charles the night before. Mist evaporating on the hillside. "But it sucks to be... outside that. We had vows."

"Had?"

"I don't know. I guess, we had unbroken vows."

I frowned, and failed to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. "Did she vow not to be trans?"

"She cheated." Frankie squirmed as my fingers dug into the flesh of her shoulder. "Yeowch, Noug." I let go quickly, surprised at my own reaction. "I—I argued with her. Told her sex work wasn't cheating. But she said that she got into it, to. Well."

"Cheat?"

Frankie didn't respond, but she didn't need to. I got up, handed her a box of tissues, and worked to formulate my thoughts. Monogamy wasn't my thing, but being poly didn't mean cheating was impossible. It wasn't about fucking other people, it was about breaking faith. And I'd experienced my share of broken faith.

"You don't deserve that," I said, kicking myself for finding nothing better than that platitude.

"I'm not sure." And there it was, the worst thing about cheating. "Like I said, all my planning and analysis—it was hubris. I missed every sign. I wasn't paying enough attention to her."

"Bullshit!" Oops. Didn't mean to yell. "Sorry. But you supported her for years. You filled your home with beauty and cheer together. And you always made sure she had a fresh brownie to come back to after—hm."

"It's not like I was fucking her," Frankie continued, as if I'd said nothing. "I guess I thought the other intimacies were enough. Sharing a sense of humor, TV shows, games..."

"You're describing your relationship with me."

"Well, yeah. You're my two best friends."

"But—" Fuck you, Nouglas. Don't ask her if she loved Charles.

"But if she doesn't want things to change, I guess they won't."

"Franklynne Bitters, does that sound remotely reasonable to you?"

"I don't know what's reasonable anymore," she said. "I think my reasonable radar got fucked." A dead laugh. "Heh. At least some part of me's seeing action."

Of course. If Frankie wasn't banging Charles, that meant Charles wasn't banging Frankie. Man the monogamists aren't okay.

"So she doesn't want to transition?"

"I don't know."

"And she doesn't want to open the relationship."

"I don't know."

"Is her plan to just... keep fucking her clients and ignoring you?"

"I don't fucking know!" Frankie looked up at me, exhaled, and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know, I gotta ask her these things. But like. I don't want to lose my husband." I opened my mouth, but she pressed on. "I know. I know! But I loved what we had. Even as she pulled away. And if she wants to keep it, too—"

"Stop."

It wasn't like me to moralize. I'd put up with my share of philanderers. Sometimes it had been worth it, sometimes not. It's not so black and white, even with the psychic damage, even with the resentment, even with the anger. But seeing Frankie this hurt did something to me. I heard cicadas, way too many cicadas.

"I can't deal with this," I said. There was an unfamiliar edge to my voice. Frankie stared at me. "I'd listen to you vent. I'd help troubleshoot the problem. I'd give you a distraction or a safe space. But I won't entertain this fantasy."

"Noug..."

"This has been killing you for months, Frankie. You never admitted it. I guess you never understood why it was hurting you? But now we know why! And if you and Charles want to sweep it under the rug—"

"Portia."

She said it with such tender curiosity, each syllable a forbidden prayer. There was no question of her love. And—Portia. Yeah. The name certainly fit last night's vision better than "Charles" did: fragile, pretty, sad.

But I was on a roll. "Sure. Whatever. If you and Portia want to sweep it under the rug, that's your business. C'mon, I'll take you home by way of some drive thru."

Frankie didn't stir, just kept staring at me, mouth still in the shape of the back half of her spouse's new name.

"Or just sit there, I guess. I need lunch." I grabbed my keys and coat.

I ordered our usual without communicating with the lump in my passenger seat. Neither of us had said a thing the entire way to Taco Bell, and that didn't change as I set off toward her house.

To her credit, she ate.

By the time I pulled into her driveway, we'd still said nothing. The front door was closed. I had no idea if Portia was in, and Frankie hadn't brought a damn thing with her besides her phone, so I took their spare key off my keychain and pressed it into her hand.

"Maybe I'll let her have the house," Frankie said, holding the key up so that it reflected sunlight into her eye. Wallowing is ugly business. Why was Frankie so beautiful in this moment? "I'll be back on my feet in no time, and I want her to be okay."

I rested my forehead on the steering wheel. "That's a big jump from 'nothing changing,' babe."

"She'll be happier with a lesbian."

I groaned. "Let her decide that."

"Sorry, Nouglas. I'll... I'll figure it out. And I'll be okay. And... thank you."

"Anytime," I said, and I meant it, for all that Frankie was frustrating me today. She was one of the most important people in my life, and by far the most beautiful. Neon flecks of red and orange in the puddles after the rain.

She gathered our lunch trash, got out of the car, threw it away, and went to the door.

I waited as the sensations faded. Waves and insects and the rustling of leaves, all reduced to the dull scraping of a dry brush against unprimed canvas. A landscape receding into white and white. All I could smell was the queso on my own breath. Well, nothing to it but to go home and spend another afternoon willing anything to express itself on the blank page of my mind.

I put the car in reverse, checked my mirrors, and—Frankie rapped on the passenger window, face freshly wet. I rolled down the window.

"She's gone—she left a note—I—"

I engaged the parking brake, turned off the car, and got out. As I took Frankie in my arms, colors flared and I saw it whole: the lake, the mountain, the trees, down to every blade of grass and streak in the sky.

We went inside and Frankie ran the kitchen tap as she sobbed. I read Portia's note.

"F— Your lemon bars burned. I tried to clean that up at least. I probably don't deserve to say this after what I did to you but I love you. I don't know why it's all so hard but it's your house and you shouldn't have to feel like you can't be here, so I'm booking a hotel room. I'll try to figure out what I want. Please do the same—whatever it is you want, you deserve it, and I'm sorry. —C"

"This is... good, right?" I asked.

Frankie shut off the water and turned to face me. "What if we want different things?"

"That's not a 'what if,' hon."

"Not helping."

"Sorry. But like, you don't need to want the same things, as long as your wants are, you know, compatible."

Frankie narrowed her eyes. "How can different wants be compatible?"

"Sometimes Dwayne wants Thai and I want Mexican. So we go to a food court and order from two places."

"Jesus fuck, Nouglas, my marriage isn't dinner."

"No. It's not. But—I don't know, say, random hypothetical, Portia wants to fuck a lesbian, and you're not a lesbian."

"Such a random hypothetical."

"Right. So, you don't want to be a lesbian fucking Portia. But that doesn't really have very much to do with Portia fucking lesbians. What do you actually want that's incompatible with what she wants?"

"Great. Another poly lecture from Dr. Nouglas."

"Respectfully, if you're not ready to walk away from this, it's probably worth considering."

Her expression softened. "I know. I know. But can I actually consent to an open relationship if it's under threat of losing my marriage?"

"Hold up. Poly and open relationship aren't synonymous. But also, it doesn't sound like Portia has made any moves to renege on the marriage."

"Broken vows notwithstanding?"

That one stumped me. I'd been cheated on before, sure, but never by someone who'd vowed not to do that. Did it actually change anything? Would my marriage with Dwayne be over if he somehow managed to cheat on me?

Frankie and I stood there in what felt like a stalemate, and then her jaw set.

"What if I do want to be a lesbian fucking Portia?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, I guess not a lesbian, but like, bi? Or is it called pan now?"

I sighed. "Are you into girls?"

"I don't know. Broken heart aside, I think I'd probably want my wife to want to fuck me? That sounds pretty gay, right?"

"Depends." From my friends' stories, I knew that some relationships survived transition. Sometimes the partner was sexually fluid. Sometimes the partnership wasn't even about sexual attraction. But sometimes the partnership just limped along in denial. "If you're just—I don't know, adopting the form of the new while clinging to the expectations of the old..."

"Right. That makes sense. Maybe I still see her as my husband, and I'm just really good at pronouns and names, and I'm trying to hold onto my old attraction. That would be bad." She played with a lock of her hair, then: "Plus there's still the cheating. I know I've been weirdly calm about it, but it's really eating at me. How will I forgive her?"

I was going to start offering her advice from my experience with forgiveness, but I realized it was a rhetorical question when she crossed the kitchen and grabbed my collar.

"Two birds, one stone?" she breathed, and I smelled hydrangeas after the rain.

"Frankie—"

"Please?" she asked. 

I somehow couldn't turn away from the sparking of fireworks, multicolor beads suspended in  dark navy swirls. I could taste them, could feel the stiff peaks of paint at the ends of the brushstrokes. I let her pull herself against me. She was warm, and soft, and entirely unlike any of the hard dudes I'd previously been with.

Right. Dudes.

"Frankie, I'm kinda, you know, gay?"

"Well how am I supposed to know if I'm gay if I don't kiss one or two gays?" 

Crackling citrus candy broke on the tip of her tongue. It was almost irresistible—almost.

"I'm not sure that's how that works." I tried to say it just like any number of sarcastic retorts I'd fired off over the years, but my voice betrayed my enthusiasm. "And, anyway, two wrongs don't—"

She was fiddling with my collar, running her thumb along a seam, tugging ever so gently. "It's not about making it right," she cooed. A flock of pigeons, frozen over the railroad, feathers everywhere as they dodge the summer train. Gray, and white—and green, for distance. "Noug, I need to be able to forgive Portia. I need to make it even, so she hasn't unilaterally broken anything. So I'm not better than her. So there's no—" She balled up her fist and we somehow became closer. "—resentment."

"Frankie..."

"Unless it would be a problem for you and Dwayne." Dwayne and I each had other comets, and anyway he was still going out to Fortune once a week to get his dick sucked by the smoothie demons. "Or, you know." Frankie put her lips less than an inch from my jaw. "Unless you don't want to."

I might have pointed out that a dalliance could have ramifications on our friendship. I might have pointed out that there was no methodology here. But Frankie was intentionally moving away from methodology, and I'd had friendships survive a kiss or two. 

More to the point: I wanted to.

I had never wanted Frankie. She was firmly outside my homosexuality, and we were best friends in that forged family way, and she was monogamous and I was, well, me. 

But something had shifted, I realized, as she closed that last inch of distance and pressed her lips to my face, and it hadn't shifted in the last minute or even the last day. I tried to stabilize myself with a hand on the counter behind me, and I touched the Pyrex from the forsaken lemon bars.

Right. It was Frankie baking on those long late-night calls.

Being there, somehow, despite the miles between our homes.

Me, failing to paint, catching only the slightest hints of inspiration in Frankie's emotions as she worried about Portia.

Slowly. Week by week.

An attraction nonsexual in nature had developed.

I was drawn to my best friend, drawn to the Art in her, drawn to the potential of my own soul in her attention.

And I knew, even before our lips met, that this way lay the sundering of the oppressive blank canvas that dominated my days.

"Whoa," Frankie said, pulling back from our kiss. We were both breathing hard. "Shit. Um. Wow."

"Eloquent," I replied, just as thoroughly abandoned by words. Replacing any thoughts I might have had were swatches of color, patterns of lines, swirls of texture. These were no longer even representative of distinct elements. Gone were lakes, mountains, trees, clouds, birds, all of it. Just color, just brilliance.

"That was." She ran out of words quickly, kissed me again, as if to check. I put my hands on her sides, considered for the first time switching into sculpture. Her lips were soft; marble would be better than greasy canvas.

"Pretty gay," I conceded.

"Gay," she agreed. "Kissing my best friend."

I still didn't want Frankie, not in the way I wanted Dwayne or any of my other flames. I was instead consumed by a frantic alien arousal. She was pressed up against me, tits squishing into my chest, tummy to my hard-on. None of this pinged sexual to me. I didn't want to fuck her; I wanted to turn her inside out, get my grubby little hands all over the muse dust she must surely have been made of.

She must have sensed my hunger, because she drew back and hummed, blithely, "am I in danger?"

"Frankie." I was still struggling to find words for anything. "Frankie you are the." She smiled and I heard the chisel, felt the powdering of soft stone. "The best goddamn thing that's ever—"

"Wait right there," she said, stepping back, brushing my lips with her index finger as she retreated. "I need to—I need to take notes."

She fetched the little spiral-bound pad she used for her recipes, flipped to the back, and began furiously scribbling. I stood there, watching the afternoon light coming in the kitchen, how it landed on and around her, framed perfectly as she bent over whatever task had wrenched her from my hands. Photography?

"She asked me to figure out what I want," Frankie explained, as she put down her pencil.

I managed not to say Please let that be me. Please let that be subsuming yourself into my art forever and ever.

"Nouglas," she said, returning to me and running a hand down my front, stopping at my belt. "You in there?"

"Yeah."

"Whatever this is," she paused, sizing me up, "I want it." I felt warm. "Noug—babe—you want me." She pressed her whole body back against me, put her lips to my collarbone. "I want that." Kiss, inhale, bite. "Can I have it?"

I probably would have said yes to anything in that moment.

I nodded, and then, "do you have any paper for me?"

She fetched a big drawing pad from the garage.

We retreated to her room. 

Frankie sprawled on the bed, clothes mussed. 

I knelt above her, gesture drawing with one hand, the other hand checking the feel of everything: the fabric of her blouse, the denim of her jeans, the pliancy of her thighs, the tangle of her hair, the empty piercings in her earlobes. Buttons, zippers, waistbands, collars, cuffs—everything fell away until it was just Frankie, my oldest friend, my ride or die, writhing beneath me, soaking in reciprocal desire for me to understand her body and the secrets it contained.

"This is awesome," she breathed, and I nodded, and I kissed her, and she mewled, and I went right back to my exploration.

Page after page filled with sketches and scribbles. I ran my fingers beneath her breasts and drew the solidity of her ribs. I ran my fingers along her scalp and drew the sweet sounds so elicited. I ran my fingers between her legs and drew the scorching heat hidden there.

"Are you going to fuck me?" she asked, after I trailed her wetness back up to her mouth and drew the suction of her lips on my fingers.

"I'm never going to stop fucking you," I promised.

"Fuck yes." She stretched beneath me, luxuriating, revealing new angles and sheens. "Gonna put your money where your cock is?"

I thought about it. It would have been so easy. She'd gotten me out of my clothes at some point and I was hovering over her, inches from the deed. The absurdity of the situation surfaced. My first cis pussy! I almost laughed, then I think she almost laughed, and then I put a hand on her side and nudged. "Turn over."

She obeyed, and I started again from the top, filling the drawing pad with this other side. Spine, shoulder blade, the exquisite fullness of the skin around her arms, the dimples in her lower back, the parade of ass, thighs, calves, heels. For the last page, I recorded an impression of her orgasming with my thumb curled into her center.

"Mm," she sighed into the sheets. "It's like one of those horny massage pornos."

"Oh, no, with the skeezy dudes?"

"Who cares if they're skeezy." Frankie looked back at me. "I'm a simple girl. I like a nice full pussy."

I'd run out of pages in the pad. Her hips were still quivering. I was impossibly hard. 

And, as she pointed out, salaciously, "You should do something about that." 

"Bet you never had a life drawing class like that," she said, after a thorough shower. 

We were sitting in her living room. I'd made us tea, like I had on hundreds of visits to her house prior. 

She was right, of course. Life drawing classes tend to be far tamer. And I'd painted lovers before, but even that didn't compare.

The most incredible part was that even when we pulled away from each other, sweaty and spent, and even when she left to shower, and even when I was on another floor of the house rifling through her tea drawer, the colors remained. Greens. Blues. Lakes. Mountains. Sunlight arcing through our atmosphere to illuminate an insignificant but stunning corner of the planet.

I wasn't worried that the sensations might fade before I could get home and commit them to canvas. Communing with Frankie had allowed something more permanent to crawl into this world. My long artist's block was finally over.

"So," Frankie said, after a moment of us both just grinning and sipping, "I think that was pretty educational."

"Yeah?"

"If I can get a gay dude to want me that badly, I figure Portia can manage to turn my wheels."

I nodded, thoughtfully. It seemed possible.

"And if not—" Frankie's tone was upbeat, but she looked away a little too slowly to hide the hesitation still remaining. "Well, maybe we can hit the food court."