The Taming of Frankie Carrozza

A Soul Response

'What a miserable day,' Iggy commented, eyeing the grey skies safely from behind windows.
'Don't you think it has made everyone seem a bit morose?' Charlie replied, his jotter pinned against the wall as he scrawled the final paragraph of the essay due later that afternoon. As they waited outside the classroom for the previous group to leave it, he added, 'It's as though the sun has died, and Eton mourns the summery days gone by.'
'And your essay, Carrozza?' the History Master's voice droned from inside.
Oh, for goodness' sake, the boy is haunting me. Charlie allowed a sigh to slip from his mouth as he applied the final full stop to the page. Plagued by a pretty omen.
     Frankie's casual reply drifted out from inside the classroom: 'If I pretend to look in my satchel for a few minutes, what are the chances you'll overlook me?'
     'Misplacement or laziness?' asked the History Master.
     'A little bit of both on my part, perhaps. Forgive me for my frankness, as I'm frank by name, but you all give out such bountiful heaps of it that I've barely got time to clip toenails, never mind a moment to act my age.'
     'That's how you're supposed to feel, boy, if you want to make something of yourself. Have your senses taken leave of you? I'm sorry to say that you leave me with no other choice but to issue you with detention. Indeed, it's a dreadful day, which is exactly why you'll carry out your punishment this afternoon so that you're less likely to repeat.' The History Master sighed regretfully, sounding somewhat unwilling. 'You clever idiot, you could have knocked that one out in your sleep!'
     'Even so, Sir, I'm ever so sorry!' Carrozza cried, bowing continuously as he exited the room. 'I'd like to say that it won't ever happen again, but it was you, after all, who told us that anything could happen because anything happens all the time.'
     Charlie felt a gentle nudge against his back, lurching him forward and breaking his daze that had attached to the mechanical movements of each shoulder blade protruding through the white shirt cladding Frankie's back. He turned to see a first-year boy staring up at him, a sly grin smeared across his pasty cheeks. The little elfish fellow took a step to the side and raced down the corridor after Carrozza. When his class was summoned in, Charlie took his table at the very back and swung his bag from his shoulder to set it beside the chair, slumping into his seat shortly afterwards to learn the timeline of the Wars of the Roses.
     'And your essay on how the financial weakness of the crown led to conflict in 1455 amongst the War of the Roses, Chance?' the History Master demanded towards the end of the lesson, standing patiently beside his table like a train conductor collecting tickets from all those aboard.
     Charlie rummaged through his bag, delving through ink-blotched pages, tea-stained textbooks, and rumpled library books. Luckless, he continued to rifle through the books, folders, and files, until he dumped the contents of the satchel onto the table, scattering leaky pens, splattered paintbrushes, bent compasses, and worn bookmarks over the sides. His heart plummeted into his stomach like a downward punch to rest in his gut like an anchor sinking to the seabed. Cold dread glazed his insides like frost once he reached a conclusion: he must have forgotten to lift it from his desk that morning. His guilty gaze slowly rose to meet the History Master's disgruntled one, and he gulped thickly. Standing expectantly with his hands on his hips like a vintage Victorian grandfather clock, the ashen, lanky, austere, old-fashioned, and bearded man registered his expression and the situation.
     'I promise you, Sir, I did complete it. I have done it, I swear. I spent half the night writing it. I—' Charlie submerged his hands into the contents on his desk, carelessly scattering pens and pencils over the edges. 'I could have sworn I put it in my bag this morning! Let me go get it now, or I could bring it to you at the end of day, or—'
     'A buffalo digested my homework. Extraterrestrials abducted me the night before. I made a pack with Lucifer to do it for me in exchange for my soul, but he refuses to uphold his end of the bargain,' the History Master retorted, manoeuvring back to his desk. 'The excuses I hear every day, and yet you don't even have the decency to come up with a good one for me.'
     Charlie slapped a hand over his forehead. 'Honestly, Sir, I swear I—'
     'Enough, Chance!' he bellowed as he sat down, fixing his glasses and eyeing him hawkishly from under a lamp. 'There is very little I can do with swears and promises. To no fault of my own, you've forced my hand. Do the detention, and bring that essay in to me tomorrow—completed. And don't you be getting any bright ideas from that increasingly wayward Carrozza boy, or I'll string you up by the toes from the lights. It's as if he wishes to be punished, and I honestly don't understand it, though it does subtly hints towards macho masochism. If you start taking leaves out of his book, I'll burn you both like a Nazi book burning, and that goes for any of you.' Ignoring the sniggers rippling from the other boys, his withering look like the final plummet of the guillotine, he added, 'You're lucky that it's only detention I'm giving you, Chance. There are some who would have you both flayed alive with a cane faster than an ancient Amazonian tribesman would with a skinning knife.'
     'They say lightning never strikes the same spot twice, but now it has thrice!' Iggy cried gleefully as he pranced alongside Charlie to escort him to the kitchens, which the latter was to help organise and tidy up. 'What a spell of serendipity.'
     'Piss off, Perkins. If you think my receiving detention is an act of fate, then you clearly have very little faith in my academic capabilities,' Charlie spat sourly, watching fat pellets of rainfall wobbling on the windowsills and sloshing through the spouts.
     Once the swing of his foot forced Iggy to skip off, Charlie slowly opened the groaning doors of the dinner hall and cautiously peeked his head inside. After he ensured the coast was clear, his leather shoes squeaked, skidded, and shrieked bloody murder as he manoeuvred passed the unusually quiet tables and headed towards the dungeon-like passageways that led down into the kitchens. When he pushed open the door, he was immediately greeted by Frankie Carrozza, who was sitting on the island counter and beating two wooden spoons off his thighs like a pair of drumsticks, his black school trousers lightly powdered with sugar and baking flour. Behind him, an array of ingredients, dishes, utensils, and appliances flowed over  the countertops until it looked like the premise of Frankie's cooking show.
     'You again!' he beamed happily, and then hopped off the counter. 'We need to stop meeting like this—under dire circumstances, that is. Two schooldays in a row. So, the truth now, do you have a bad streak within that you're determined to indulge in? I can help you with that, you know, as such curious exploration is where my expertise and passion lies. Just have a little faith in me.'
     Charlie's icy bitterness over the unjust punishment thawed once he was enveloped in that warm, welcoming, kind, and cheeky smile radiating from the other boy. He certainly must be aware of the affect he has on people, Charlie mused. How he races hearts so until they're as fast as an Olympian's.
     'I dunno.' Charlie smiled, briefly wondering how close he could get to him without it becoming uncomfortable for either of them. 'I suppose I've just had a streak of bad luck recently to get caught in such unfortunate situations.'
     'Bad luck?' Frankie gasped dramatically. 'Is that how you see detention with me? A course of misfortunate? And there was me thinking that you'd done it all on purpose, a marvellously enacted scheme concocted so as to bring us together again because you're terribly in love with me like I am with grave danger.' When a thunder-roll of a chuckle rumbled out of him afterwards to let it be known that he was jesting, Charlie, once he'd cleared his throat and coughed, laughed with him, too. 'You don't strike me as the sort.'
     'And what sort of sort would that be?' he asked, perhaps to see if it would make him uncomfortable.
     'The sort to do so through manipulation. It takes one to know one.'
     When it backfired, Charlie averted his eyes. 'So, we're supposed to put these away and bin the unusable, I assume?' he asked, quickly diverting the conversation to avoid an awkward silence.
     'Correctamundo!' Carrozza cried, strutting around the counter to lift a plastic bottle and set it on the bench beside the exit that he'd previously unlocked to expose a narrow alleyway. 'I have other plans in mind, but they'll only see to it that the task at hand is all the more enjoyable, and ensures we don't veer off course on whims. I know how much of a stickler you are when it comes to obedience and sticky situations like this.' He approached a trunk and kicked it open. 'These are to be binned, too: old costumes from Farrer Theatre that've served their purpose. However, I recommend changing into them if you don't want your uniform to get dirty. Here, these look about your size.'
     Although baffled, he snatched the clothes from mid-air and held them close to his chest, whilst Frankie rummaged through the trunk. Blinking wondrously, his eyes followed the boy as he carried his own armful around to the other side of the island counter. Unconcerned and blasé—as was his nature, it seemed—Carrozza bent forward and yanked his school shirt up over his head to reveal the ridged arch of his spine, and Charlie briefly pondered how it would feel to dance his fingertips up the bones like a ladder. Despite his nervousness, Chance undid his top button and belt, both now undressing in silence. Shirtless, with his hands on his hips, Frankie grinned across at him, his immodesty hidden behind the countertop, both occasionally stealing glances of one another when their eyes were elsewhere as though checking up on the other's progress.
     'It smells of fake blood,' Charlie commented, tugging the neck of the warm emerald wooly jumper up to his nose. He slipped his shoes back onto his feet, and poked at the holes blown out of the tatty white long johns covering his legs.
     'Just be glad that it isn't real blood. Silver lining and all that,' Frankie responded, setting a broom, a wok, a rolling pin, a mop, and several saucepans by the back door. Evaluating his surroundings, he put a hand to his chin thoughtfully, and then proceeded to rummage through the stock they were to discard of and stacked those he deemed suitable on the counter nearest the doorway to use in whatever ploy he had planned. Dark daylight streamed through behind him, silhouetting his form until he looked like a dancing shadow in a pantomime. One hand swiftly unbuckled the plastic belt and sheath strapped around his hips. Dressed in a blue medieval tunic, leaping light-footed around the kitchens like a mad inventor at work, his black jodhpurs, as tight as spandex, actuated every curve and muscle of his thighs. The rectangular patch of sunlight drenched the doorway and glowed murkily like a celestial pathway to Heaven, obscuring all else with foggy luminance and drizzle like static on a television screen, until Charlie's eyes adjusted to see the large rubbish bin pushed against the alleyway wall outside. The lid was propped open wide like the mouth of a great metallic beast, eagerly awaiting the sacrificial offerings—empty bottles, mouldy breads, soggy boxes, spoilt meat, decayed fruit.
     'What in God's name are you doing?' As he turned, he knocked Frankie's bag with his elbow and toppled it off the island countertop. 'Shit, sorry.'
     Charlie dropped to his knees and began to scoop together what he found to be alarmingly curious contents inside. Amongst the strange paraphernalia, he stumbled upon: dog-eared, disgruntled textbooks, tea- and coffee-stained pages folded into paper pirate hats and boats, well-worn dirty magazines, gun pellets, fireworks, phials of kerosene, a red toy Volkswagen van, flares, sparklers, glow sticks, matches, an origami dragon, hawthorn berries, a stuffed hedgehog, a crown of varnished branches, party balloons, water balloons, and other unmentionable balloons, a torchlight, a corkscrew, a bottle opener, a lock picking set, candles, a length of rope, sodium metal, strips of pure potassium, dice, a penknife, vinyls, two pocket watches, a compass, six screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, a snow globe, a toy soldier, spurs, a guitar pick, several strips from a photo booth depicting recognisable friends of his (including a series of photographs involving Seraphina Rose and an unfamiliar girl with auburn hair making silly faces together), old foreign coins, a bendable ruler, a stainless steel ruler, a snuff box, a hip flask, an A4 size watercolour painting of bleeding roses betwixt two rosy pink nipples on a white backdrop and framed in bronze, a pair of briefs stamped with the Union Jack, a laminated King of Hearts card, and a spliff. His daily trophies. With redness bleeding on his cheeks, Charlie swept the miscellaneous articles into a bundle, and then started to repack the most dangerous satchel he'd ever encountered.
     'Well, aren't you a bit eager to please? You're on your knees as soon as someone drops their bag and spills the contents.' Astonishingly nonchalant, Frankie loosened a raspy, throaty chuckle as he sprung over to him to help pick up his heterogeneous belongings and replace them inside the commodious bag. With a smile in his voice, he added, 'You're as shy as a fawn, aren't you, old fellow? An innocent joke, I promise—mind you, properly crude as can be if one has the right ear for it.'
     'Isn't ... isn't this your History essay?' Charlie questioned, his eyes darting across the subject title of the paper to see today's date scrawled neatly and florally into the corner of it.
     'Why, indeed, it seems to be, doesn't it?'
'But weren't you given this very detention for not handing in this very essay I hold in my hands?'
     'Chance, my boy, nothing gets passed you, does it? Well, you see, you mightn't understand, but when you're me—someone with a reputation to uphold, one of low standards and high expectations—one needs to miss a day here or there so that he doesn't present himself as an absolute stew, but dithering somewhere between academic greatness and rascally behaviour.' Frankie smirked up at him as he tucked the last of his miscellany away. 'Aside from that, with this sort of punishment, I have reason to roam the realm of these empty halls as freely as I please.' His mouth widened into a large, cheesy grin that he quickly followed up with a meaningful wink as he buckled the leather bag. 'All these secrets of mine that you somehow now know. One day, I may need to invite you over, make you breakfast in bed, and introduce you to some pancakes made from flour and cyanide, topped with deadly nightshade-flavoured syrup.'
     In no rush to begin tidying up, they crossed to the darkness of the cloakroom corridor that adjoined the kitchen with the back door, and sat up on the counters opposite one another. The gloominess of the grey day spilled in like mist through the gap in the doorway, obscuring them both in the shadows until they saw little more of each other but outlines and the gleams of eyes, cheeks, teeth, and lips behind illumination as faint as moonlight.
     'Partake?' Frankie asked, holding up the joint he'd been rolling, the tip of his tongue licking along the edge of it.
     'I do,' Charlie lied.
     For a moment, Frankie's face lived in orange light behind the lit match in his hands. The cloakroom filled with the strong smell of popcorn, wood chippings, and fried sausages wafting from the spliff. He took a few drags, and then passed it across to Charlie. Under the silvery murkiness of the little hall, smoke entangled their hands like blue ribbons when the spliff exchanged fingers for their lips to meet on the damp end of the filter. Charlie breathed in the smoke and it scalded down his oesophagus to fill his lungs like a warm hug. Imitating Frankie, who coached him from the other side of the narrow hall, he held the smoke in for a moment. A wispy tail of it slipped from his lips, more crawling out to engulf the hallway, causing him to choke and splutter as the washroom vanished behind the cloud. As he inhaled again before handing it back, he remembered overhearing boys smoking behind a wall at the edge of a field in Eton Wick: "puff, puff, pass."
     'Good stuff.' Charlie coughed and covered his mouth with his sleeve, clueless as to whether it was or wasn't decent quality stuff that they were smoking; for all he knew, it could have been weeds ripped from the gardens.
     'Mmmh,' Frankie murmured, nodding his head and grinning as trails of smoke coiled from his nostrils like the temperamental snorts of a dragon. He held the amber end up to a squinted eye and blew smoke on it until it glowed. 'Amsterdam's finest.'
     I see it ever so clearly: he is a furnace, Charlie thought, levelling his blue eyes with Frankie's woodland-green ones that looked flecked with sunlight. An insatiable fire burns in his heart to shine that spark of brilliance in his eyes. This cosmic universe, full of constellations and planets beyond, in one mortal body. Looking between each eye, oblivious to the fact that this meant that the other boy was staring back, his feet tapped off the cupboards as he poked at a hole in the long johns and silently scrutinised him. A giggle bubbled in his chest and rose up his throat into a head that felt heavy, floaty, and spacey all at once. Rubbing his nose and sniggering at Charlie's starry gaze, eyes shining like treasures in the dark, Frankie fell back to rest against the coats hanging from hooks on the wall behind him, his senses remaining his due to familiarity with the sensations. Recalling hearing it being said that the eyes were the gateways to the soul, Charlie watched Carrozza's dilating pupils open like portals when they both leant forward to trade the spliff, his vanilla scent travelling through the cuffs of their wrists to wash over him like a surf.
     'Come,' Carrozza commanded, sliding off the bench. 'Let's begin.'
     With limbs of lead, Charlie helped him carry bottles, tins, tubs, and crates of vegetables and fruit to the back entrance. Cocking the door open fully with a foot, Carrozza lifted a half-rotted head of lettuce and a saucepan. After a quick shimmy of his hips, once he was satisfied with his stance and feet arrangement, he threw the lettuce up into the air and whacked it with the saucepan in a way that suggested he played tennis in the summer, sending it soaring out the door and into the greedy mouth of the rubbish bin.
     'The Carrozza method makes yet another appearance.' Charlie laughed.
     'I can make anything entertaining. Even death—especially death. Your turn, old fellow.' Frankie handed him an apple and pan.
     Somewhat reluctant, Charlie slithered from the bench and stood in the dismal doorway to feel the embrace of the wind lingering on the threshold like a demonic entity that required an invitation. He glanced apprehensively from the much more athletically imbued specimen standing behind him to the vast steel hatch of the bin several metres beyond the doorway; pragmatic thinking suggested that the outcome would have him looking clumsily incompetent alongside his older peer. Not at all shockingly, it had taken three apples, a pear, and half a carton of sour milk to be littered across the stretch of cement between before Frankie stepped in to relieve him. He exchanged the saucepan for a floor brush, then suggested that he held it like a golf club. Like an encouraging caddie, he set a plastic bottle filled with liquidised fat on the door mat and gave him the thumbs up.
     'Turn around,' Frankie insisted.
     Charlie was grasping the brush like a club and preparing to take the shot, his tongue sticking out over the corner of his mouth, when his body stiffened as soon as he felt Frankie's frame press against his back to cocoon him. Hands slid down his forearms to rest fingers on his wrists. Swallowing thickly, his breathing grew shallow, the first breath catching in his throat like a bird trapped in a chimney until he coughed to clear it out. Whilst September winds licked their way inside hungrily, Frankie's entire body radiated impossible heat. He rested his chin on Charlie's shoulder so as to see over it, and the smallest fraction of his maddeningly hot cheek grazed Charlie's like the surplus of an electrical charge. A fortnight ago, the notion that one day their bodies would come together seemed as possible as two atoms colliding. Charlie flexed his fingers to break the spell of petrification.
     'Do you mind my doing this?' Frankie muttered, his lips a second from his earlobe and his breath warm on his neck. 'Am I making you uncomfortable?'
     Unable to speak just yet, Charlie shook his head.
     'You're shaking,' he purred.
     'It—it's f-freezing,' he whispered.
     'Is it?' Frankie asked. 'You shiver when your warm body is exposed to cold air because your heat flows into it. Heat always flows from a hot object to a cold one as a way of balancing out the differences in temperature. It's like when you pop a pot of water onto the stove to make some tea, and the fire warms the cold water.' Frankie writhed against him to stand more comfortably, brushing against the seat of his trousers, and Charlie's body temperature skyrocketed. Somewhat overwhelmed, his mouth grew drier than the Sahara from feeling what must be Carrozza's loins press against him subtly, slowly rubbing both fabrics together until Charlie's lashes fluttered as he counted the four—or, perhaps, three—sheets of material placed between them. A bead of sweat slid from his Adam's apple and down the neck of the green jumper. With considerable difficulty, he gulped. 'In this case, you're the fire, and the heat from your body is warming up the air around you. If the air is cool enough to steal your body heat, you feel cold. To make up for all the heat you're losing to the cold air, your body shudders to try to produce even more warmth. Your little body tries its damnedest hardest to warm up the whole wide, wild world around you, so just you remember that if you ever don't think you're very much.'
Once Frankie guided his arms by the elbows to drive the broom into the bottle and arc it into the rubbish bin, Charlie felt him smile against him. Although he felt the coldness when the two boys disengaged, he grinned victoriously from ear to ear at Frankie, who winked from behind the can of Coke that he was tilting towards his mouth. He passed the can to Charlie for him to take a sip, and the two boys slapped clammy palms together after he wiped the drink off his mouth on the back of his hand.
Long after their detention time had ended and shortly after they'd reorganised the cupboards, they raided them again when their bellies grumbled from hunger brought on by the cannabis, but found only a pot of strawberry jam at the back that they shared with a spoon. When Frankie launched a spoonful at him like a catapult, shocked as it dripped down his cheek, Charlie upended the jar into his lap. The two boys then chased one another around the kitchen, emptying bags of sugar and flour over the other until the glittery air was almost as foggy as the coast.
     'You've got the will of a wild animal.' Charlie paced back and forth alongside the island counter, reflecting and running his forefinger along the edge of it.
     Frankie snorted, and Chance watched him wondrously as he paused to think for a moment, looking somewhat wistfully towards him as though he was calculating the answer to an extremely difficult equation. Operating a confident stride, he marched around the corner of the counter until he bore down on Charlie like the sudden rise of the tide. Face smoked white with flour, sugar sparkling in his hair, a breath sighed from his nostrils that alluded towards decision-making. Charlie couldn't be certain of how long their stares fixated on one another for—a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, a millennium, for all eternity—but it thrived from an immense intensity that he'd never in his life felt before.
     'And you, you've the faith of a child still.' Frankie stroked a thumb across his cheekbone to scorch him with his touch, then slowly popped the jam-smeared digit into his mouth.
Frankie Carrozza's face was inches from his own, and his very essence smothered him like a blanket, his entire body and presence powerful enough to engulf him like a moth to a flame. Charlie's lungs filled, inflating with fire and exhaling desire that developed in his shoulders and legs, ashes of scorched words rising to choke his throat until embers burned his lips hot. Gripping the edge of the counter hard enough for it to hurt his hands, his lower body slowly bucked once, drawn to him like magnetism. It was all too overbearing, too intimidating, causing him to bow his head and look to his feet. With the patience of a spider, Frankie waited once he averted his gaze, refusing to meet those emerald irises—as they say, they were the gateway to the soul, and he feared the invasive power in Frankie's might leap across the cosmic distance of the centreline between to penetrate through Charlie's, cracking the core of him and spilling his secrets out into his hands like hidden jewels in a trove overspilled on a shipwrecked vessel. Like a stormy day, everything was much too silent and much too loud. He felt a thunderous jolt in his stomach and knees when Frankie put a forefinger and thumb to his chin and gently forced him to lift his head, smudging the flour there, as the rest of the powdery residue settled around them like freshly falling snow. He might have been romanticising half-stoppered eructation, but Charlie could have sworn that his heart had skipped a beat in the very second their eyes met, before giving an encouraging thump to make up for the loss. Fireworks matured into supernovas inside his chest from a heart that felt swollen and misshapen, butterflies, dragonflies, fireflies, fairies, and dragons warming his stomach and climbing his ribs until they tingled. Like a magical spell, the profound touch sparked his skin like a lightning strike to sprout gooseflesh up his arms and along his neck until the muscles in his back quivered and ached, the very air around them seemingly trembling with static from the charge. Like something gold and divine spilling from the heavens, Frankie slid his tongue out and licked his lips as he leaned forward, and Charlie felt his own mouth part in welcome. Long due out of hibernation, his slumbering soul had woke to respond.
     Frankie Carrozza is dangerous, they said.
     Like a deep red wine stain smudged into a beautifully decorated white room, the foreboding that Frankie Carrozza had a kiss that killed visited the very second those lovely lips of the live wire divided, swinging down between like a guillotine. Fearful of banishment, Charlie jerked his head away from Frankie's lowering mouth, letting the moment come to rest with the sugar and flour neglected underneath their feet. Eyes widening with confusion, Carrozza balked from moving forward once he comprehended, frozen in the position as though he'd been stabbed in the gut. When Charlie finally looked up, he thought he must have blacked out because Carrozza was suddenly standing by the doorway with his bag and uniform in his hands, babbling incoherently and almost nervously about something irrelevant in an attempt to defuse the uncomfortable tension brought on by his being rebuffed—one of few rejections, perhaps.
     'So!' Frankie bellowed, clapping his hands together to produce a white cloud. 'You're becoming fast friends with Seraphina Rose, or so I hear? I'd tell you that she's my cousin, but I'm sure you know that by now: I love her like a sister, but the girl could talk for England. Time's up, so must dash.' Halfway out the door and drumming fingers on the doorframe, he gestured vaguely around the kitchen. 'Never worry about this mess; I'll see to it that it's hovered up—a couple of gullible prostitutes should do the trick. Goodbye, Chance!'
     With one last squint-eyed look back, he swiftly disappeared, sucking all of the dazzling, electrical phantasmagoria out of the room with him.
     Hand raising out, Charlie's mouth opened to start a word that would call him back, but he touched his untouched lips instead. He closed his eyes and slumped against the counter for a moment, before he lifted a brush to sweep the floors.
     'Please,' he whispered to the sparkly fog, slipping the raggedy long johns down his thighs. Please, let me have made the right choice.