Chapter Five
Nikolas silently hovered outside of the door to the new nursery that Laura was so excited about preparing. He leaned against the dark wood with his head lightly resting on his supporting hand. He watched Laura bustling about the room, arranging pillows and tying bows to delicately flowered Laura Ashley curtains. She hummed lightly under her breath as she worked, and her pretty, manicured hands moved rapidly and lovingly over the various fabrics. Nikolas straightened up in the doorway.
"Mother," he said quietly, running a hand through his black hair.
Laura jumped and held a hand over her heart.
"Nikolas," she replied breathlessly. "You startled me. How long have you been standing there?"
"Only for a minute," he said. "I was watching you prepare the nursery. You seem so happy."
Laura’s face glowed as she walked over to Nikolas. She pulled him into a hug and patted him on the back, then kissed his cheek. "Happier than I ever thought possible," she said excitedly. "This baby is my miracle. I can’t wait until she arrives. I’ve waited for so long to have another child, and science finally caught up with me." Laura scrunched her face and waved her hand apologetically. "But you don’t want to hear all this," she said. "How was school today? What’s going on with you?"
Nikolas smiled briefly and looked pensive. "School’s fine. I have a test tomorrow, so I need to go and study in a minute." He hesitated and then looked hopeful. "Mother, I have something important to ask you," he stated seriously.
Laura raised her eyebrows and looked into Nikolas’ eyes. "What is it honey?" she asked.
Nikolas shifted his feet and looked to the floor. "Mother, I know you can’t go away uh…in your condition," he intoned. "But I want to visit the island for spring break next week. I need to go. Is it alright if I ask Alexis to take me?"
Laura frowned lightly. "Don’t you want to be here when the baby arrives?" she asked with an edge of disappointment to her voice. "The baby is due next week."
"I know, mother," Nikolas said softly. "But I have to leave here. I need to be on the island. I can’t explain it. That’s how I feel. I can see the baby when I return."
Laura pursed her lips and held a hand to her chin. "Perhaps Alexis has plans," she explained. "Nikolas, this is very last minute. Are you sure nothing’s bothering you? Come here, sit down." Laura motioned to the white wicker rocker that was placed next to the crib. Laura sat down awkwardly on the white fireplace hearth and distractedly drew her skirt around her ankles. "Now, talk to me, Nikolas."
Nikolas reluctantly sat down on the rocking chair and moved it back and forth with his foot movements. He sighed and ran a hand over his face, then darted his eyes to look at his mother. "I’m not happy," Nikolas admitted. "I feel more at home on the island. I have all of my cousins there, and the weather is warmer."
Laura looked worriedly at her son. "What about your friends here?" she asked. "You never bring anyone around the house to visit. Why? You know they’re welcome."
"Are they?" questioned Nikolas with an angry look crossing his face. He started rocking the chair at a more rapid rhythm. "All anyone cares about is my money. What are they going to think if they come to this place, this museum of antiques? I’m embarrassed to have anyone come by. No one lives like this in Port Charles. I’m a freak." Nikolas’ chin quivered with his strong emotions, and his eyes shone with unshed tears. "I want to go to the island, where people know me for who I really am."
Laura’s face tightened, and she looked down at her hands folded in her lap. "I’m sorry you feel like this, Nikolas. I’ve tried to make the best home that I possibly could for you, and now I find that I embarrass you." Laura rubbed her lips together and bit her lip. "What do you want from me?" she asked tearily. "I haven’t been a good mother? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?"
Alarm rose in Nikolas’ chest. He didn’t want to upset his pregnant mother. He rose from the rocking chair and sat beside her on the hearth. "No, mother. I love you. I know you’ve tried your best for me," he said, hugging her lightly. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just…I want to go. Okay?"
Laura nodded through her tears. "You can ask Alexis. If she says yes, and your father agrees, then you may go."
Nikolas’ face flooded with relief. "Thank you," he said happily.
~*~*~*~
The loud crash of breaking glass shattered the still night and set the neighborhood dogs into a raucous, barking chorus. A hand reached in the door through the broken glass and opened the lock. Frankie pulled his hand back swiftly and looked down at the cuts on his fingers. He drew a finger into his mouth and sucked off the blood. "Come on," he instructed Johnny as he brazenly walked through the doorway of Luke’s bar. He looked left and right and sniffed, "Sucker doesn’t even have an alarm."
Frankie pushed over tables and chairs, generally making a loud racket as he swaggered through the bar. He pulled a black sock out of his pocket. It was loaded with quarters and weighed over five pounds, a rather lethal weapon in the hands of a teenaged mobster. Frankie drew it up in the air and whisked it around his head for maximum velocity. He aimed it at the ornate mirror framing the wall behind Luke’s custom bar. Frankie jumped back and giggled as the mirror exploded into brilliant, light-reflecting shards. "Take care of the liquor," instructed Frankie, pointing to the gleaming rows of bottles of every shape and color, the lifeblood of Luke’s bar.
Frankie stood back and watched with his hands on his hips and a grin on his face as Johnny picked up bottle after bottle and poured the liquor out onto the smooth, polished wood floor. Liquor flowed throughout the bar, swirling madly around upended tables and broken chairs. Frankie held up his hand. "That’s enough," he ordered. "Start breaking the empties over the tables," he said.
"Well, well, where’s Mighty Mr. Luke Spencer hiding out tonight? Boy, won’t he be surprised when he comes back." Frankie cackled and aimed his sock full of quarters at the side of Luke’s bar, leaving an unsightly indentation in the carved wood.
Frankie walked over to a ruined table and retrieved one chair. He spun it around and stepped over it jauntily to take a seat. "Let’s wait for our businessman to return," he snickered to Johnny. "Bring me a bottle of Jack Daniels to keep me company while I wait." Frankie shook his head and chuckled again. "Man, I love this," he said with a wicked gleam in his eyes.
~*~*~*~
Two hours later…
"Boss, you need to give me back that bottle, you’ve had enough," Johnny stated firmly with an outstretched hand. "We still have business to take care of."
Frankie made a face and slid off of his chair as he leaned forward to hand the bottle back to Johnny. He’d been drinking from the Jack Daniels whiskey bottle continually for two hours, finishing off about half of it. After awhile, he kept drinking from the bottle out of habit, not sure anymore why he was doing it. He landed on his hip and let out a brief expulsion of drunken laughter. He rolled up on his knees and made the attempt to stand.
Johnny walked over to Frankie and frowned with concern as he grasped the kid’s upper arm and pulled him upright. "Spencer might not be returning tonight," he explained. "Maybe we should leave and come back in the morning. And look at that hand. What did you do to yourself?" Johnny asked as he pulled a crisp handkerchief out of his suit pocket and wrapped it around Frankie’s cut fingers. "You’re bleeding all over the place," complained Johnny. Frankie stumbled and growled, "S’what? Frank wants to showem whose da boss," he slurred, his accent thickening with his inebriation. "Thas da orders."
Johnny propped Frankie upright. "We can leave a calling card. He’ll know who’s after him," he said tensely. "You have school tomorrow. We need to get you home and in bed. Now."
Frankie peered intently at Johnny. "Frank wone like it." Johnny gripped him harder as the boy started sliding to the floor. He placed Frankie back onto the chair and reached into an inside suit pocket to pull out a pocket size organizer. Johnny scribbled a message onto a sheet of paper. It read: "Frank says hi." Johnny marched over to the bar and secured the note with a bottle of beer onto the keys of the cash register.
"Come on," he said to Frankie, picking the boy up by the arm and walking with him out the door of Luke’s bar. Johnny had trouble depositing Frankie into the passenger seat of the BMW and placing a seat belt on him because the kid kept squirming around and grabbing at the steering wheel. "Lemme drive!" Frankie growled. Johnny shook his head and slid into the driver’s seat, pushing Frankie’s fingers away from the keys.
~*~*~*~
Next morning…
Frankie shuffled his feet next door to Johnny’s apartment and rapped his knuckles on the wooden door. The door opened with Johnny barechested and rubbing a towel over his freshly shaved face. "How’s the boss this morning?" he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.
Frankie made a face and mumbled, "I hugged that fuckin’ toilet bowl all night long, Johnny. Why did you let me do that?"
Johnny smiled. "Cause you’re the boss," he replied. "I follow your orders."
Frankie shook his head. "Yeah, yeah. Tell me, Johnny. Should I go to school today? I feel like shit."
Johnny placed his fingers over Frankie’s chin and turned it left and right. "Hmmm…" he said. "You look like shit, too, boss." He chuckled. "I’ll be ready in twenty minutes to drive you to school." Johnny closed his door.
Frankie mumbled and grumbled down the hall to the bathroom.
~*~*~*~
Frankie and Sly had the same gym class and were on opposing basketball teams today. Frankie had never played basketball in his life, but he’d watched it plenty of times on television and in the arenas and in fact had won lots of bets over the years on various teams. So he just grabbed the ball and dribbled like crazy when it was passed to him and tried to hand it off as often as he could. He blended into the team inconspicuously, which was his intention.
Sly, however, had a worse deal. He was teamed with a couple of hot shots that had no intention of losing a game, and heaven help anyone that set them back or who didn’t score frequently. The basketball game turned aggressive, and elbows flew into faces and stomachs. Sly couldn’t quite get his coordination together, and his big feet just got in the way rather than helping him to run faster. At one point, he leaped up into the air to make a basket, but one of his feet caught onto the other, and he came crashing down onto the court. His teammates just glared at him as they ran by, trying to implement damage control, and they didn’t offer a hand to help him back up. Sly cursed and brushed the dirt off of his gym shorts and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. His eyes darted over to the opposing team who had stolen the ball and made a basket. They grinned at him.
Frankie’s other team members finally figured out that he couldn’t play either and started tormenting him by handing him the ball constantly. Frankie felt like he’d been running the marathon all day - back and forth he ran on the court. He grew winded and stumbled, landing solidly on his hands and knees as the ball bounced and rolled off toward the bleachers. To make matters worse, his gripped his stomach and promptly threw up all of his 10:30 lunch. The vomit rolled swiftly across the smooth floor, and basketball players yelped and jumped out of its way. Sly ran over to Frankie.
"Are you okay?" he asked worriedly as he placed a hand on Frankie’s back. The other basketball players sniggered and started making vomit noises and jokes.
"No," Frankie groaned while he staggered upright and placed a hand over his throbbing head. Damn this hangover, he thought.
By this time, the squat, beady-eyed gym teacher finally took an interest in what was going on, stopped flirting with the female gym teacher, and walked over to see why the players were standing around. He swaggered over to the boys, preparing to chew out somebody’s ass, but stopped and frowned when he looked from the floor to Frankie. "What’s going on here?" he asked gruffly.
"He’s not feeling well," explained Sly.
"Go with him to the locker room and help him out," instructed the gym teacher. "And you!" he yelled at the other boys, pointing a thick finger in their direction. "Forty laps around the gym. That’ll teach you to laugh at people." When the boys grumbled and shuffled their feet, the teacher blew fiercely on his whistle and glared. The boys quickly started loping around the gym with annoyed faces.
Sly walked with Lucky back to the locker room. "What’s the matter?" he asked quietly. "Do you need to go home?"
Frankie shook his head. "No," he said with a low, gravelly voice. Sly shrugged when Frankie failed to elaborate.
"I’m gonna clean up and get outta here," said Frankie with a sigh. He pulled off his teeshirt, and Sly gasped inwardly when he saw the marks on Frankie’s back and chest. He was too stunned to say anything, and Frankie brushed past him to hit the showers.
While Frankie was showering, Sly sat down slowly on a bench and tried to make sense of what he’d seen. Frankie had horrible scars on him. A couple of them on his back looked like bullet holes with round, angry red indentations. And there was a jagged, white slash mark on his chest that cut its path from Frankie’s collarbone to his solar plexus. What in the world had happened to him? And why did he not seem to notice those marks or try to hide them?
While Sly was thinking, the rest of the boys ambled into the locker room, cursing and jostling with one another. "There’s one of the little pricks," said one of the aggressive basketball players. "Made us do forty laps. What should we do to him?" Sly looked up in alarm as four boys with evil intentions surrounded him. He tried to stand up, but one boy knocked him back down onto the bench and grabbed the neck of his shirt, forcing Sly to look up at him. "Should I kick your ass, Bigfoot?" he snarled. Sly glanced around for help, but the other boys ignored the scene and minded their own business. One boy slapped Sly on the side of his head, making his hair fly away from his face.
"I wouldn’t do that again if I was you," said a voice in a slow, heavy accent. Frankie sauntered back to his locker with carefully combed wet hair and his face set into a stony mask with fierce eyes. He ignored the four bullies as he opened his locker and pulled out his shoes, placing them on his feet and leaning them against the bench to tie them. Confusion flickered amongst the other boys, and one by one they grew angry at Frankie’s nonchalant, yet forceful attitude. "We’re gonna kick your ass after we’re finished with him," sneered one boy as he shoved Sly.
"Think so?" replied Frankie casually as he turned around. By this time, all of the boys had seen Frankie’s scars and began to get spooked, but couldn’t let up their bravado and still save face. One boy threw his arm into a chokehold around Sly’s neck, and Sly’s eyes grew wide with fright as his hands tried to pry the arm away from his neck and his feet slid and scraped along the floor.
Frankie moved so quickly that the boy next to him didn’t see it coming. Frankie grabbed his own teeshirt, leaped onto the bench and wound it around the boy’s neck while placing his foot into the small of his back, smashing the kid’s face into a locker. Frankie’s teeth bared as he gritted out in a low, dangerous tone of voice, "One twist is all it takes for him to become a quad-RO-plegic. Wanna watch?" Frankie pulled the shirt tighter around the kid’s neck, and the boy started making desperate choking noises. Frankie grabbed his hair in a tight fist. "Let him go, or I’ll kill this one. It’s up to you." The other boys stared at Frankie with their mouths hanging open. Frankie looked so mean with his pale, scarred skin, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and a wild look on his face.
Sly’s tormentor released him and laughed lightly. "We were just kidding around. No harm. Right kid?" The boy patted Sly on the back as Sly turned and glared back at him angrily. Frankie released the other boy and kicked him to the floor. "Never again," he said in his mob voice with an index finger in the air and flashing eyes. The other boys quickly dispersed, and Frankie resumed dressing. He looked behind at Sly and said gently, "Get dressed, kid. We’re gonna blow this joint."
~*~*~*~
"We need to work off some of this aggression," advised Frankie as he and Sly stood in line at the movies. Frankie walked up to the ticket counter. "Two for Kung-Fu Death Rebels," he said. Frankie turned around and winked at Sly. "My treat this time." Frankie glared at the ticket seller. "I know it’s rated R. Give me the tickets." He looked again at the man and shook his head. "Here," he said, handing him a $100 bill. "This is our ID." The ticket seller promptly handed Frankie two tickets.
Sly looked around nervously. "I don’t know," he said. "I’ve never cut class before. What if my aunt or uncle finds out?"
"You worry too much," sniffed Frankie as he headed for the concessions. "I got it under control. The stupid teachers, they can report you, but if there’s no record of it, voila, they can’t prove nothin.’" Frankie extended his fingers into the air as if to say, "poof."
Frankie bought two large, refillable popcorns and two cokes. He handed one of each to Sly, who smiled and said, "Thanks." As the two boys walked toward the cinema, Frankie nodded and said, "I’m gonna have my uncle teach you how to fight and intimidate. He’s the best."
~*~*~*~
The two boys squinted in the bright sunlight after their excursion to the movies. Frankie paused at the curb and retrieved his cell phone out of his pocket. "Ay, Johnny," he said. "Come pick me up at the Edgewood Cinema." He placed his hand over the mouthpiece. "What street is this on?" he asked Sly. "It’s at the intersection of Elm and Harding," Sly replied. "Intersection of Elm and Harding," Frankie instructed, and then promptly turned off the phone.
"Do you want to come to my house for dinner tonight?" asked Sly shyly. "My aunt said it’s okay." Frankie looked surprised, but recovered. "Uh, sure," he said happily. "Johnny can wait for me out in the car." Sly looked confused. "Your uncle can come to dinner, too," he said. "He doesn’t have to sit in the car or anything. That wouldn’t be very nice." Frankie shrugged his shoulders. "He can come in if he wants, it doesn’t bother me."
~*~*~*~
The two boys sat in the back seats of the BMW while Johnny drove to Bobbie’s house. "So, Sly, do you got something goin’ with that Emily chick?" he questioned, making an obscene motion with his hands. Sly flushed and shook his head.
"Emily’s my friend," he explained. "We hang out together and sometimes go to the mall and stuff, but we’re not dating or anything."
"How do you be friends with a girl?" asked Frankie with a puzzled look on his face. "Why do you hang out with her if you’re not fuckin’?" Johnny’s shoulders started rising and falling gently with his silent laughter.
Sly looked shocked. "I don’t think you should talk about Emily like that. She’s a nice girl." He frowned again, never having considered doing the wild thing with his best friend. His fantasy life revolved around another teen goddess.
"Well, I mean, what do you say to this girl if you don’t talk about fuckin’?" asked Frankie. "I wanna know. So do all the girls want to, you know, go to the mall?"
"Not all the girls. Everybody’s different," Sly explained. "It depends on what your interests are. Emily and I like to play video games at the arcade, but maybe someone else might like to watch TV together or go rollerblading or something? You have to ask them what they like."
"Oh," replied Frankie, nodding sagely. "So do you fuck after you play those video games?" he asked.
"Man, what is it with you and the fuck?" whispered Sly, slightly annoyed and afraid that Frankie’s uncle would overhear their conversation.
Frankie shrugged. "That’s the best part," he replied, smiling broadly.