Frank and Betty

Frank lived in a small, cluttered apartment on the outskirts of town with two cats and a muscular woman named Betty, who never let him use the bathroom after eight at night.  They weren’t lovers; they were simply two people that lived together exceptionally well.  That was the way they thought of it, and that was the way it was.

In truth, the apartment belonged to Betty, and Frank was just a boarder.  Betty left early every morning for the local gym at which she worked as a personal trainer.  She was rather good at her job, since most of her clients were terrified of her.  As a result, she made good money and happily took care of most of the living expenses, both hers and Frank’s.

Frank, on the other hand, left the house to work only when it suited him to do so.  Depending on the day, he made his money by selling handmade jewelry, paintings, bags, or garments, by playing music on street corners, or, most frequently, by playing poker.  Frank had an unnervingly solid poker face, but he hardly stayed after he had won a certain sum of money.  He didn’t need much; because Betty handled most of their expenses herself, he was content with earning just enough to finance his hobbies and to buy groceries.  Frank never bought poor-quality food.  He only spent his money on the finest organic, preferably local meat and produce, and he grew his own spices in pots.  Every afternoon, when Betty came home from work, the kitchen overflowed with rich aromas and Frank had a small but elegant meal prepared for her.  The three years since Frank moved into the apartment were the healthiest she had ever had.

They lived together peacefully for the most part.  Frank kept to himself, and Betty bothered him only when she felt like it.  She was usually quite quick to anger, but she had never had a roommate that she got along with as well as Frank.  There were even moments when she was almost gentle towards him, in a firm, evasive sort of way.  For instance, when she had come home one evening to find Frank with a black eye, a souvenir of a cruel mugging that had robbed him of a nice amount of money, she had become almost unbearably fussy, insisting that he sit down with a raw steak over the bruise.  It was a remedy that she had learned from her mother.  He complied, despite being religiously vegetarian.

She also allowed him a whole room for his artwork, which she avoided whenever possible.  She had grown up without any exposure to art.  It was hard for her to understand the hours of focused concentration Frank spent sewing or stringing beads onto necklaces, and she had a bad habit of greatly overestimating the value of anything he made.  She was afraid to touch anything in that room, and when she absolutely had to move something, she treated it like a precious piece of treasure.

Only once, five months after they had started living together, she had accidentally smeared an oil painting that Frank had recently finished.  It was of a nude, ambiguous figure pulling a train down an endless track.  It was rough and raw, purposely imperfect and sloppy, but the streak that pulled the black of the train into the gray sky was obviously out of place.  Frank corrected it easily with a few strokes of a brush.  A year passed before he found out exactly how much it had upset Betty.

Usually, Frank understood Betty far better than Betty understood him.  After three years, he had learned to recognize almost every emotion that passed across her face and how to adjust accordingly.  He just didn't always understand from where her emotions came or why they were the way they were.  There were occasions when her brusqueness would shock him, and he couldn’t understand how she could say such crude things.  It took him a long time to realize that she was actually doing it purposely to tease him.  He stopped taking anything she said personally after that.  She seemed to like him all the better for it.

Frank had never met anyone with as much energy as she had, nor had he ever particularly wanted to, but he learned to deal with it quickly.  She would often leave with friends to scale cliffs, bike down dangerous paths, or backpack through pure wilderness, and at first, she would happily leave Frank to watch the apartment and the cats by himself.  Then, one autumn day, she suddenly decided to take him with her.  He agreed grudgingly.  He couldn’t make it back to the car on his own two feet.

Frank used her love of outdoor activity to convince her to leave the country for the first time.  It was their second summer together.  Frank played poker in excess to help finance the trip.  They took a vacation to the Swiss Alps, where Betty spent most of her time hiking and skiing and Frank wasted hours painting and taking photographs.  They came back to their apartment with fond memories.  Frank put together a series of lovely picture collages that he hung in the hallway across from the bathroom.

Since Frank moved in three years ago, most of the bare walls in the house had been covered with various pictures and paintings, and the window in the kitchen sparkled with a collection of crystals whenever the sun shined.  The apartment was even more cluttered than it had been when Betty lived alone.  The cats had become friendlier, too.  Frank spoiled them.

Their friends often wondered how they were able to adjust to each other so quickly, despite their obvious differences.  Many of them wondered how they had met.  Anyone who knew was usually disappointed; the story was rather uneventful.  It happened one night in late May at an Irish-style pub.  Betty had come with a large group of friends, and Frank, who knew the owner well, had come alone, searching for someplace peaceful to get away from his brother.  Betty and her group were all ridiculously drunk before the night ended.  Frank was perhaps the only person in the establishment that was not.  Feeling sick, Betty had asked him to drive her home, and he had agreed.  He stayed up with her until she finally fell asleep in the bathtub at three in the morning.  Exhausted, he curled up on her couch and was there in the morning when she stumbled in the kitchen for some orange juice.

He made her breakfast and prepared her medicine for her hangover, and she invited him to stay for lunch.  After lunch, she asked him to stay for dinner.  He brought most of his things over the next day.

They developed a routine quickly.  Betty went to work early, and Frank woke up a little later, took a shower, and then left if he felt like leaving or stayed if he felt like staying.  In the evening, he prepared Betty a fine dinner, and after dinner, they watched television, usually some sports channel or a drama of Betty’s choosing, with blankets draped over their shoulders and cats curled up in their laps.  At eight, Betty took over the bathroom.  She always took a bath, even though she usually showered at the gym after work.  She would stare at the ugly ceiling with her ears under the water, deaf to the sounds of the television in the other room, and think about all the secret, private things that she reserved for that time of day.  Frank sat in the same place she had left him, watching the television with unfocused eyes and contemplating on the same things that preoccupied Betty.  Neither of them talked about the thoughts that passed through their minds in the evenings.  They never said goodnight before they went to bed.

Frank and Betty had shared an apartment on the outskirts of town for the past three years without incident.  They weren’t lovers.  They were just two people that lived together and cared for each other exceptionally well.  That was it.