Or rather Chi-Chi takes Frankie from there. "Aye-yi-yi! Frankie-Frankie! Let's samba!"

"Sure, why not?"

Now, the orchestra's hammering its drums and rattling its dried punkins. Its guitars and marimbas are hi-tailing along too. This South American music always did make Frankie's blood get up and go. Also, he's swinging out with this Chi-Chi. And this Chi-Chi dame's got everything Carmen Miranda has on top of everything good Vera Verina and Mimi has.

Now the samba as she is did down in Rio is, as Frankie's finding out, a combination of a speedboat ride through a tunnel of love, wrestling on a roller coaster and riding a runaway merry-go-round. Frankie's breathing hard but determined to stay the limit, though. He lopes around and spins Chi-Chi and she lopes around and whirls him. She kisses him as she flies in and she smooches him again as she yanks him back.

"Aye-yi-yi!" she says. "Frankie-Frankie! Forever with you I can samba like this!"

Forever, she says. Frankie-Frankie's feet are smoking. His ears are bonging like bells to the tune the whole place has picked up from Chi-Chi. "Aye-yi-yi! Frankie-Frankie! Aye-yi-yi!"

And still this samba of the sambas goes faster and faster and on and on and everybody else seems to become fresher and fresher as Frankie's legs become rubberier and rubberier and his breathing turns to something that sounds like air sizzing out of a tire going flat.

"Aye-yi-yi! Frankie-Frankie! Aye-yi-yi!"

Aye-yi-yi. Frankie just quietly finds the floor and lets the fog roll over him.

"Well, Frankie?"

Spread like a rug on the rock beside the old chair, Frankie just fans himself with the tail of the old man's robe. The old man sighs.

Frankie feels mighty low too. "Guess there just ain't no dame on earth for me, pop."

The old man rocks slowly to and fro. He sighs again and peers off in another direction, way off at a bright red star. "That garden over there, Frankie. Just a bit below Mars' north pole."

Frankie finds that looking to Mars ain't no harder than looking to earth. "Yeah, pop?"

"Sitting under that tree. Name's Nita."

 Prev. P 8/12 next