Nice Work If You Can Get It(Charles E.J. Moulton) Nice Work If You Can Get It

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton


"Holding hands at midnight 'neath a starry sky.
Nice work if you can get it and you can get it if you try."

Ever since high school, Frank had wanted to be a singer. He had even taken singing lessons. He'd been to dance class. He had attended acting training.
But the fear in his heart had been so big. So huge that it overshadowed most other things in his life.
There was no apparent reason for "A Damsel in Distress" to become Frank's favorite movie. Maybe back when he saw it for the first time, it came, just like Olivia Newton-John sang on his favorite album, at the right moment. He'd caught it on cable while his parents had been out holding lectures. That was all they seemed to be doing back then. Selling their self-help-books. Psychology self-help. Sexual self-help. Spiritual self-help. Eating less self-help. Getting less drunk self-help. Subliminally, Frank wondered why they could not help him if they helped others help themselves.
He joined them on some lecture trips. Read some texts, did some talking, shook some hands. Things a 13 year-old could do if he was bored enough. But it always seemed he lived their life. Not his own. Love was not the problem, though. Defending himself was. Telling at least himself that he felt badly treated.
The weekend when he discovered his favorite classic movie musical was uncanny. Three friends that were supposed to come over and have fun with him, they all called in sick and Frank was left alone with his pop-corn machine, his Pepsi and his Hershey bars. The old set of crooner CDs had been left on Dad‘s stereo and Frank listened to … Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Perry, Elvis and Vince over and over.
His favorite of the crooners, though, quickly became Fred Astaire. So 13 year-old Frank ended up listening to that old tune from that movie about the damsel in distress. Guess what? TNT showed it later that evening on cable and Frank was taken back years to a time when he had not even existed. Not in this life, anyway. And he fell in love.
He felt sad that his folks told him they loved him, but still left him alone to mind his own business. 13 years old, an only child and left alone to manage the house? Yeah, they would be back the next day, but still. What parents would leave their kid alone on a Friday night with a pop-corn machine? Frank even secretly drank a glass of Rioja red wine while his folks were away.
His friends not only thought he was a weirdo later on that Monday morning. They also told him so. He liked a film from 1937 with no explosions in it?
‘‘Get real. Frank,“ they told him.
Frank, the only child, had deep thoughts, deep feelings, deep love, deep melancholy and deep pain. So deep, in fact, that some friends looked upon him as if he were a UFO landing in an average shopping mall with aliens dancing the Macarena high on weed. Philosophy about the soul being eternal and how darned great it might be to know who he had been in an earlier life. That was his thing. At those times, his wanna-be-or-not-wanna-be-friends stood there, looking at him with empty eyes and open mouths, answering nothing but what they were serving in the cantine in school that day. No wonder Frank grew up thinking he was weird. According to them, he was. And the deep rage in his heart grew and he thought it had no legitimacy. He hid it.
But he was angry. The wounded inner child wanted to tell those kids to go stuff themselves, but the inner child didn’t tell them. And so, Frank became complicated.

Fifteen years later, Frank tried his best to heal that horrible wound that, again and again, got ripped open. The glass of Rioja, the pop-corn-machine and the Hershey bars, they were still there and Fred again sang that, boy, it would be nice work if he could get it.
The line that always stuck in his mind so fit the bill that day. ‘

‘Thanks to you, every woman who can read either rushes at me or away from me.“

That was certainly right for Anna, who had spent the last three months of their short two-year relationship bossing him around like crazy. Okay, the sex had really been spectacular. But what do you actually tell a woman who calls you weird every single day and still asks you in the middle of the night if you can go over to the all-night-store five minutes away and get her some Doritos.
Good old Frankie did what he was told, but in the back of his mind, his soul screamed at him to wake up and smell the coffee. At work, the colleagues did what people always had done, what the kids in school had always done, what his parents had done: create an interpretation of him that just had nothing to do with reality. Two airheaded chicks blabbering in front of the conference room in the morning crowd, one of them patronizing him like crazy, patting him on the arm.
‘‘Oh, I am sorry we are in your way, sweetheart,“ she had said. ‘‘Why so shy? You can tell us to leave.“ False interpretations can end up tearing someone apart, especially if the target thinks he has to live up or down to those false interpretations. No one knows you or can figure you out, so they interpret you as smart, stupid, retarded, weird, gay or shy and because no one is there to stand by your side and see you as you are, you end up thinking you have to pretend to be what they think you are. It only turns into a deep psychological problem if you are encountered by different sides that have contrary interpretations of you.
As always, Frank ended up being dumbfounded by something people had always done to him. He could not care less about the chit-chat of those pretty little babes. In retrospect, he wanted to smack that woman in the face and could bite his tongue for not telling her to go screw herself. He could not care less. What made her think he cared? His face? The fact that he was silent and did not defend himself?
To top it off, Anna had treated him like shit at work that day, as well, presenting him as the kind little fellah with no mind of his own. Now he sat here, looking at his favorite movie, feeling kind of like a sack of crap.
Frank knew he had taken too much shit in his life. That rage in his heart had become so prevalent that it hurt him. He sat there, looking at Fred Astaire and Grace Allen dancing and getting nice work if they could get it, Frank hating himself for being such a wuss. The Rioja tasted great, yes, the pop corn was nice and buttery and the Hershey bar was wonderful. But it all had a very weird aftertaste. The taste of being shoved down to the ground and treated like a thing.
Anna knew she had treated him like a dick. Or so he thought. The look in her eyes when he left that evening without giving her a kiss, not even asking if they should spend the evening together was not to be mistaken. So when his Samsung Galaxy started playing an Astaire tune, it was obvious that Frank had to make a choice. But was he that strong? Strong enough to end the relationship?

Hello, this was Anna. How was he? Did he want to spend the night? No, he had caught a cold. He did not want to give her the cold. Would she see him tomorrow? Maybe. Maybe not. Frank almost told her he wanted to end the relationship, but didn’t. Okay. That would definitely be a call to adventure in a new direction, but somehow the words did not come out.

Frank hung up, pressed play, Astaire smiling on the screen and foxtrotting with Grace. With his head in his hands, Frank sighed. He knew he had reached an impass in his life. One where he knew that his inner rage was not a superstitious anomaly of sorts that could hurt someone. It was a natural reaction to bad behavior.
Frank had not told Anna that she could go stuff herself if she did not stop belittling him in front of others, yawning when he told her stories or tell him how nice he was when he told her he loved her. Take him along to parties and not even once including him in a conversation, then asking him why he had been such a sour puss that night.

By his computer the next morning, his fingers glued to the keys, Frank felt nautious. He could not deny that the situation he had been experiencing all of his life was not okay. It was not okay to be taken for granted, called a kind little fellah and ignored.
Frank did his best to concentrate on his accounting, write his emails and do his phone calls. When Anna stood in the doorway, looking gorgeous, he knew that he had to make a decision. He would be in her arms soon, but then she would actually belittle him again and he would be left with shadow boxing his brain.
‘‘You okay?“ she husked. ‘‘Cold gone?“
He nodded. ‘‘Pretty much. I will catch you later, okay?“
Anna’s frame shifted. He could see her tucking a lock behind her ear, taking a step back, breathing in to say something, but then deciding not to say anything after all. Frank breathed in once, stopped, knew that he had to show himself that he was on his own side. Anna breathed out and leaned against the door frame. She shook her head.
‘‘I’m sorry, Frank,“ she said, very softly.
Frank looked up, now his keys not so important after all, his impending phone call maybe not a top priority.
‘‘What?“ he whispered.
She took one step into the office with the plaque reading ‘‘Frank Gallagher, Accounting‘‘ on it. Anna crossed her arms in front of her bosom, looking incredibly good but somehow missing the point. She looked down, knowing that the two years they had been together would come to a close if she did not at least show him that he was not just a meal ticket. Frank wondered what would happen if he would say ‘‘Yes, okay,“ at that moment. Would he be crying in front of ‘‘A Damsel in Distress“ within a week? Or even a day?
He leaned back in his chair, waiting for her reply.
‘‘For what are you sorry?“
The tables were turned now. Frank now with the strength in forcing her to take sides. Analyze her own behavior. She smiled, nervously. ‘‘Well,“ she began, ‘‘I …“
There was a very short pause after which she looked Frank straight in the eye. It was a petrified stare, one with wide-open eyes, as if she feared he would kill her.
‘‘I belittled you.“ She shrugged. ‘‘Again.“ It was a twitch, really. ‘‘I do it to feel better about myself. It’s insecurity when I don’t know how you feel or how I can reach you.“ Almost a tic. ‘‘I realize I do that. And it’s wrong.“
Frank sighed, a stone literally falling from his heart. Years of worry, years of swallowing a thousand sneers from classmates who openly called him the local weirdo. Parents who had left him to himself, never really asking him how he felt about something.
‘‘I can be a bitch,“ she sneered.
Frank sighed, realizing that he now, for the first time in his life, actually said what he truly felt. ‘‘I have never raised my voice to you. I have always said yes. I have gotten out at three in the morning to fetch you some darned Doritos. And you have spoken to your friends about me like I was your dog and I said nothing about that. You ignored me at your shallow girlfriend’s party – what’s her name again? Dora? - so much so that one of your friends asked me if I was the janitor. Do you know how that feels?“
‘‘Hold on, Frank,“ Anna chimed in, ‘‘I know I probably have behaved badly, but you deliberately put yourself in this victim position of everybody hating you. The shallow girlfriend you speak of is a regression therapist that leads people into trance states to find out who they were in earlier lives. But you only saw her bottles of Dom Perignon and her L’Oreal make-up. Not her soul.“
‘‘Am I wrong about Dora? Is she a deep person?“
‘‘Do you think someone is shallow just because she likes to spray on some perfume and wear cute dresses? You wear nice clothes, but that does not mean you are shallow, so why should we women be shallow because we want to look pretty? We are born with nice looks, but why can’t people grant us some depth along with those looks?“
Okay, Frank thought to himself, she had a point there.
‘‘You call yourself deep, Frank, yet you like pretty women, and I know you keep some magazines with nude women in your drawer and still you blame those women for being shallow. So who is shallow now? We were all born naked. Ever see a bear with a T-shirt?“
Holy shit, this was getting deep.
Frank had to admit that.
‘‘Yes,“ Anna said, ‘‘I called you mindless, but only because you don’t make the right connections. You are capable of so much more, but you are like the guy with a million possibilities who never ever climbs the frigging wall to see that you have an incredible landscape on the other side, but only because you think you don’t have the right climbing shoes to climb. If you never try to climb, how do you know you won’t make it? You take yourself so seriously that nobody knows how to relate to you. You are so scared. What are you scared of?“
‘‘Pain.“
‘‘And yet you spend your life living in pain. Do you love pain?“
‘‘No.“
‘‘And yet you hold on to it.“
‘‘You said I have no mind of my own. I am supposed to be a gentleman, but does a gentleman have to accept being publically insulted by his girlfriend? Is that the alternative to years of misogynism? Misandry?“
Anna winced. Frank could see that Anna’s face really turned awkward and confused. ‘‘I know misogeny is hatred of women, but what is misandry? Hatred of men?“ She laughed, her voice cackling. Hurt was in her now. ‘‘You can’t be serious. I love you.“
‘‘Then why belittle me?“
‘“I didn’t mean it. Gee wiz, man, take yourself just a little less seriously. You drive me crazy.“
‘‘Too stupid, but you keep him because he does everything for me?“
‘‘Jesus Christ, Frank, I know I treated you like shit, but I did not mean to hurt you. You sit there in the corner sometimes looking like a black cloud on a stick.“
‘‘Well, tell me just how you think the phrase ‘He doesn’t have a mind of his own‘ comes across? How would that come across if I said that to you? You would probably fetch a gynecologist and legally have my testicles removed.“
‘‘Come on,“ she chuckled. ‘‘I’m not that bad.“
‘‘You are the most gorgeous woman on the planet,“ he said, truthfully. ‘‘But I deserve respect. No mind of his own is not respect.“
„Grow up,“ Anna spat. ‘‘Life does not just revolve around you.“
‘‘Mine does.“
‘‘That’s your problem.“
Anna pointed out the window.
‘‘Life begins out there.“
Frank shook his head and pointed toward his heart.
‘‘Life begins in here.“
Anna was silent now, her sigh coming from deep within her soul. Something had hit her. A realization. A truth. Self perspective, maybe. She looked down, chewing on her lower lip very insecurely. Maybe, Frank was thinking, her being realized that things were not quite as simple as she had thought. Men were not just merely beer drinking assholes or weak wusses. Partnerships were about love and mutual cooperation. Was he being unfair?
‘‘I was always the weirdo,“ he began. ‘‘It didn’t matter if people ridiculed me in front of me, telling others what a creep I was even if I had never done anything wrong. I had no one that told me it was not okay to treat me like shit, so I accepted being treated like a fool. Maybe I was a fool. There was no one around to tell me otherwise. But when you know you are smart and you grow wiser with age, your soul is in pain and starts retalliating by developing conflicts like neurosis. So when I see those films about abused women, I wonder about the abused men I see around me and how their wives joke about what a putz he is and he is forced to smile about it. I go home to their houses and see how the girls are there and point their fingers at him what a dork he is. And the women don’t stop and the men never put their feet down and say: ‘Hey, I deserve some respect!‘ That sucks. Doesn’t it?“
She nodded. ‘‘Yeah. It does.“
Anna walked to the doorway, stood there with folded hands for about five minutes. ‘‘All I can say is that I never meant to hurt you.“
The silence after Anna left turned quite unbearable after about ten minutes. Frank had never ever spoken to anyone with such fervor. He had always been the quiet guy. Or so he thought. For a man plagued by incessant guilt, this was a first time and first times, as the story goes, are the most intense. Frank tried his best to get his work done, do his calls, write his letters, send his bills. He even looked to see if Anna was somewhere to be seen in the cantine in during lunch hour.
Anna would never leave work early. She was too much of a professional to do that, so where was she? He understood that she was sorry and actually never meant to hurt him. Although he really had been hurt, in retrospect it was enough for him to have found someone in his life that knew he was hurt and knew he had a deep wound.

At least he wasn’t afraid of his own rage now and his compulsive thoughts had dwindled away. Now he was afraid of fear. Okay, addicted to fear. How do you let go of fear?
Fred Astaire was put aside in favor of Star Trek:_Voyager. After all, Frank was a voyager. This time, every woman he saw reminded him of Anna. Frank looked up at his Samsung every five minutes, actually wondering who would make the first move to write. He or she? Did he want to be with her? She knew she had been wrong. She had shown him compassion. But had he been wrong, as well?
In the middle of an episode with Ensign Harry Kim travelling into a parallel reality, Frank dozed off, his first whiskey swimming down his bloodstream.

When he awoke, a few episodes of the series he loved had passed and the Vulcan Commander Tuvok was eagerly discussing with the young staff member Kes about her troublesome behavior.
What was this? His phone?
A WhatsApp? From … Dora, the dishy regression therapist? How the hell did she have his number?
‘‘Frank,“ she wrote with a suspicious smiley, ‘‘Anna is here. She needs to talk to you. Are you willing to talk to her or are you too boozed up? Greetings from Dora (and no, I am not shallow just because I am pretty).“

8:02 p.m.
Frank’s heart began beating faster.
The mixture of feelings inside his heart nearly blew him away. Was he in some way responsible for the way others had treated him? Had he opened himself up for ridicule by being morose and distant?
He had to find out.
At least if the girls had anything to say about it.
So, Frank Gallagher figured out that if the universe was willing to offer him a challenge, he should be willing to meet the mentor.

Dora raised one eyebrow, looking him up and down as if he was a bag of dirt.
‘‘Don’t give me that look, Dora,“ he spat back.
Dora turned her head toward the back room.
‘‘Mr. Fussy is here,“ Dora called out.
‘‘I don’t frigging need this,“ Frank spat, turning his back on Dora.
‘‘Beats me why Anna loves you to tears,“ Dora cackled.
Frank turned around and looked at her, confused.
‘‘She came here three hours in tears, her make-up all runny,“ Dora said, straightening out her dress, ‘‘and I’m wearing black to suit the occasion. Now, get your ass in here before the neighbors call the cops.“
Frank had never been spoken to in that way, but something in him felt it was necessary. Really? Necessary? Was he schizophrenic? God knows what kinky part of him liked this.
Once inside the apartment, Dora was as polite as a four star hotel maid. ‘‘Let me take your jacket and shoes, dear.“
Frank’s expression turned awry and bewildered, although he did what he was told. Once the elegant New Jersey African-American woman had taken his things, she gestured toward the living room. ‘‘I have no idea why that chick still wants you.“
It felt like entering the throne room of the pope. When he looked at Anna, he saw she had been crying. Three wet hankies were on the glass table and a whole box of candy had been opened. Anna clutched a glass of Jim Beam. The bottle stood half drunk on the table next to the wet hankies. There was another glass there, obviously Dora’s. There was soft music in the room. Enya. And the lights from a laser lamp blazed the white walls. One of those dorky Amazon astronauts throwing colored stars on the ceiling.
Anna looked up at him with a mixed look of sheer love and sheer hatred. She gestured with her head toward the leather couch next to her. He took that as a sign for him to sit down.
As he did, he noticed the third glass.
‘‘You here with the subway?“
Frank nodded.
‘‘Have some Jim Beam,“ Anna spat. ‘‘It’s Friday the 13th. Today might be your lucky day.“
Superstitious old Frank had not thought of that until now. ‘‘Sun of a gun.“
Anna sipped her Bourbon with an almost religious dedication. ‘‘Last week,“ she began, ‘‘I did a regression with Dora. We’d been chatting about doing it for quite a while. We even wanted to offer you to do with me one at that party you hated, but you were so morose that Dora was afraid ghouls would be coming out of your ass if we did.“
Dora came in, holding a glass of white wine. ‘‘Sorry about my French.“
Frank half-smiled.
Funny how things change. He didn’t care.
Dora smiled a geniune smile.
“Anyway,“ Anna continued, cuddling her drink, ‘‘I had to because of the wild dreams I’d been having.“
‘‘Wild dreams?“ Frank asked.
Anna shrugged, shaking her head. ‘‘You are so damn caught up in being insulted that you do not notice me dying here.“
Frank’s heart softened.
‘‘It’s always the same dream,“ she said. ‘‘I am wearing a 1940s dress, chique to the nines, I am this big star coming out of the theatre after a show. As I do, a man stand there and I recognize him as the love of my life. We haven’t met for years, but I am so happy to see him that we go out to dine right away. I never want to let him go. He has experienced bad luck since the last time we saw each other, becoming homeless and losing his parents in a car crash, losing his flat and all that. I offer to help him financially. It never comes to that, for as we exit the restaurant, we are mugged. My man is shot and killed instantly. The love of my life dies in my arms. As he does, this one sympathic cop comforts me. I die of a drug overdose three years later.“
Frank shrugged, very taken by this story. He gazed at Dora, back at Anna and then shrugged again. ‘‘Why have you never told me about this recurring dream?“
Anna looked over at Dora, who sat back in her armchair. Dora nodded. ‘‘Without my prior knowledge, Dora did a Tarot card reading about our relationship because I told her we were having problems …“
‘‘You were worried about us?“
Anna took Frank’s hand and kissed it. ‘‘Why haven’t you noticed?“
Frank could not describe the feeling. It was like a sunrise. And yet, Anna was in pain. ‘‘I’m sorry.“
‘‘I’m sorry that you’re sorry.“
Dora shook her head. ‘‘You just don’t see the forest for the trees, brother. You wake up and smell the Bourbon.“
‘‘What about the reading?“ Frank asked Anna, ignoring Dora. ‘‘Or should I ask you, Dora?“
Anna cocked her head. ‘‘I told no one of the dreams. I just knew I had to clear it up, so I decided to do a regression. I knew it had to be a prior life thing. On the evening of my session, you were busy watching your Fred Astaire movie, insulted about something I had said to you, so I took the time and went here to do a regression. Dora already told me she had news for me, telling me she had a written document with a date on it from the previous day. The reading had revealed something about our prior lives and she wanted to wait with telling me until I had done my regression.“
Frank sat back, pouring himself some Jim Beam and giving it big gulp.
Dora laughed. ‘‘You gonna need another one of those.“
‘‘Well, I went back into subliminal memory and our previous lives together was revealed. We were a Broadway couple back in the 1940s, performing shows. We were quite successful, worked with people like Sinatra in his early days at the Copacabana with the Hoboken Four. But then, our luck changed. One of us was lucky. One of us had success. The other one didn’t get any jobs at all, got thrown out of apartments, lost work. We even lost touch, which was really, really sad, because we loved each other very dearly. When we met again, we vowed to marry and have kids.“
Frank tried to read the vibes in the room. There was hope, magic, high frequency vibration, like a secret that was becoming revealed. That had to mean something.
Dora guzzled down her wine, drying off her Revlon with the back of her hand. No elegance there anymore. Just soul.
‘‘Now, here comes the fun part.“
Anna laughed, parts of her in agony and parts of her in love. It was an uncanny laugh, like God having revealed herself to her and told her the joke about St. Peter meeting Pius XII at the Pearly Gates.
‘‘The show the lucky one of us was playing as the star,“ she began, ‘‘do I have to tell you this?“
Frank’s inner wheels began turning. Then the lightbulb turned on. Okay, it wasn’t just a lightbulb. It was a whole frigging stadium of lights. The memories of sitting alone watching the Astaire movie, knowing practically every line from the 1937 movie by heart. That was no coincidence.
Frank looked at Dora with a wider gaze that he had ever presented in their relationship, let alone in his life. His jaw drapped an inch, so much so that Dora leaned forward to see his larynx. ‘‘Damn, boy, I can see your ass from in there.“
Frank laughed.
Anna and Dora nodded.
‘‘You have got to be kidding me,“ Frank sing-songed. God, it all made sense now. Why he had been so angry at Anna all the time. His soul had been scared she would leave him again. She? Wait a minute! ‘‘I was the homeless bum, right?“
Dora half-smiled, looking down, switching to the big leathe arm chair. ‘‘I need some Jim Beam for this.“
Anna laughed. ‘‘God will forgive us our intoxication tonight.“
‘‘Hey,“ Dora joked, ‘‘Jesus even turned water into wine when the cellar vault was emptied.“
There was a silence in the room. Frank paused now, years of pain subsiding. He searched his soul, knew it to be true, had wanted to ask the question, but never got around to it. Anna took Frank’s hand and Frank took Dora’s. Suddenly, Frank had the vision and it was crystal clear like a lake in Vermont. He saw himself in front of the Broadway show, headlining as ‘‘A Damsel in Distress‘‘, holding the man his soul loved, Anna’s previous body, and the cop. The sympathetic cop? He looked at Dora.
‘‘You were there, too. You were the cop. I was the damsel. Anna was the bum. Anna became me in the dream to express her love for me. She loved me so much, she wanted to be me as we are in heaven. I am ashamed of thinking I was being used. I was just afraid.“
Dora smiled and nodded, leaning over to kiss Frank on the cheek. ‘‘We take turns in the gender game,“ she whispered. ‘‘Anna and I were guys last time. Now you deh guy. But it’s all the same. We’re all the same guy, anyway.“
Dora pointed upward.
Anna leaned over and kissed Frank on the lips. It was a deep kiss, a tongue kiss, but more than that. It was heaven. One heaven where her soul knew she was him and wanted to be with him forever. Become him. Be him. Like she was in eternity. Frank cried as he kissed her. „Anna, I’m never ever letting you go again, sweetheart.
Caresses seemed like sunbeams. Kisses seemed like stars. Hugs seemed like galaxies. Embraces seemed as bright as the universe.
‘‘Do you want to be my wife?“
Anna giggled, tears streaming down her face. ‘‘Yes.“
A few more things were noteworthy. Needless to say, Dora, Anna and Frank got really drunk that night.
Anna and Frank Gallagher got married six months later with Dora by Anna’s side. It was a pretty spring wedding held in the mountain regions of Vermont where the couple also had their honeymoon.
Anna and Frank also sang at their own wedding, which turned into a dream come true. Frank had always dreamt of singing with an orchestra again like he had done in his previous life. It had been Anna’s dream, as well. It is not necessary to mention what they sang.
A year later, their twins were born. They called their children Fred Astaire Gallagher and Grace Allen Gallagher.
Sometimes, the good guys finish first.
Everything in every life is meant to be.

"Holding hands at midnight 'neath a starry sky.
Nice work if you can get it and you can get it if you try."

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