Peter grabbed a shopping cart, easily yanking it free of the others, and Kerri admired his strength as she held Frankie's claw, staying right on Peter's heels. Peter sure came in handy. All of the guys did.
But she wasn't at all sure they should be doing this. "I don't know if this was such a good idea," Kerri was thinking out loud. She had a bad feeling.
"Why not? He's been bugging us almost non-stop about going to a gig. This oughta be fun for him!" was Peter's bright response.
Kerri wasn't convinced. She should have brought another Monkee-paired with Frankie, Peter was a bad choice. Peter and Frankie tended to be too much alike, and that could lead to trouble. But it was too late now.
Kerri had finally decided to try to make it up to Frankie for not letting him attend a gig by taking him to the grocery store. She had also given Frankie permission to quietly talk in the store-just not when anyone was close enough to hear.
Frankie was beside himself with excitement. He'd gotten to ride in the Monkeemobile, which had been pure adventure for him, and now he was in a place that astonished him the moment he stepped inside the store. All that food! All those displays! All those cash registers! Of course, he didn't eat, and would sit at the table and watch the others when they ate just to keep them company, but just the sight of all those brightly colored packages and cans had him transfixed.
"You must be joking!" he said quietly, eyes wide, head swiveling back and forth, trying to take it all in. Peter giggled.
Kerri had to keep reminding herself that Frankie had never seen anything like this before. Something that was so common and every-day, even boring, to her, was like a fantasy land to Frankie.
People stared at them, and of course they were used to that from when they took Frankie onto the beach. They had come up with a story to keep people away. That it was an experimental robot, and that the experiment would not be effective if other people were too near. So for starters, they were constantly having to tell people to stay back.
Right off the bat, Frankie knocked over a huge display of crackers, and it took Kerri and Peter forever to pick all the boxes up and erect the stand the way it had been.
The thing that caught Frankie's eye once they were in the first aisle was the bread. So much of it! So many kinds! He observed Kerri squeezing it gently to see how fresh it was. So, thinking that was the thing to do, he did the same-only he didn't do it gently.
"Oh my God! He's squishing all the bread!" Peter ran after Frankie. It had happened so fast. They had taken their eyes off Frankie for all of 30 seconds, and he had smushed about a dozen loaves of bread.
"What do we do?" Peter gave Kerri one of his helpless, pleading looks.
"I don't know! Just keep shopping for now... maybe no one noticed." Kerri carried on, something telling her things were not going to improve. She was more right that she could have imagined.
The cereal aisle was brutal. Frankie pulled an extra large box off the shelf before either of them could stop him, opened it and dumped the entire box on the floor. There was a pile of cereal about eight inches high.
"Frankie! Why did you do that?" Kerri's voice was becoming shrill.
"Looking for the prize!" said Frankie, glaring at her as if she had no brains at all. Oh... if only Peter had not taught Frankie about prizes in cereal boxes!
While Kerri and Peter desperately tried to scoop up as much of the cereal as they could, Frankie disappeared as silently as a ghost. He was back in no time, carrying a gallon of milk, which he took the cap off of, and dumped all over the top of the cereal.
Kerri and Peter gasped as the milk splashed onto them and made a huge puddle about 5 feet long in the aisle—and then kept going like a river.
"Frankie!" they both yelled in horror.
"Peter likes milk on his cereal!" Frankie was just trying to be helpful. Soon afterward they heard a voice over the loud speaker announcing, "Clean up, aisle two, cereal and milk."
"Let's just get the bare minimum of what we need and get the heck out of here," Kerri was getting seriously stressed out. They headed toward produce, Frankie picking up a box of Ding Dongs along the way, unwrapping the foil, then squashing them until they oozed through his claw fingers. "They're like mud patties!" he said excitedly. Kerri pried the box out of his hands and tried to get the melting chocolate off him with tissues she had in her purse, but really to no avail. Frankie was still extremely sticky.
Once in produce, all hell broke loose. Frankie was delighted with all the fruits and vegetables. Kerri tried hard, she really did. She made sure he stayed right beside her, but he reached over as she was picking oranges, and squashed an orange, spraying juice into her and Peter's face. Now they were all sticky too.
"Frankie, you can't squeeze everything!" By now, even fun loving Peter was becoming distressed.
Next Frankie grabbed a few onions and began rolling them across the floor, laughing as they hit other shopping carts and people's feet. Peter retrieved the onions and grabbed Frankie to drag him back to follow Kerri.
Kerri tried to grab some lettuce quickly, getting out of the store as soon as possible the only thing on her mind when Frankie grabbed a head of lettuce and began peeling the leaves off, one by one, and spreading them all over the produce section floor.
Pretty soon the voice on the loud speaker announced a clean up was necessary in the produce section. This was really getting embarrassing.
Kerri rushed them on their way to checkout with a sigh of relief that they'd soon be out of there when she remembered she needed olive oil and left Frankie with Peter briefly until she could run and get it and get back in line. Peter was looking at the candy and gum, and momentarily forgot Frankie was with him. That was all it took. Frankie grabbed the opportunity and ran with it.
Next thing Kerri knew, while selecting the olive oil she needed, there was a loud crash directly behind her. She was afraid to look-fearing the worst. She turned around oh-so-slowly. Yep, it was Frankie, just as she had feared, and he'd dropped a large bottle of olive oil on the floor. A very thick layer of olive oil coated the floor for many feet. Frankie tried to come to her to tell her what had happened and ended up slipping in it and falling right into the middle of the oil. Kerri looked in dismay at the shiny oil that he was completely coated in.
Peter came running around the corner, realizing Frankie had gotten away from him. Of course, he didn't see the oil in time, and he, too, slipped and fell in it, sliding at least ten feet. If it hadn't been so disastrous Kerri would have been laughing her guts out.
"Clean up, aisle eight, olive oil. A lot of it," came the voice over the speaker again.
By the time they got through checkout, Kerri had a splitting headache, and Frankie and Peter, covered in oil were very quiet. Frankie because he knew he'd done something wrong, although he wasn't sure exactly what it was, and Peter because he was feeling very contrite about not watching Frankie more closely.
"Mike's gonna kill us," Kerri was practically sobbing by the time they got to the Monkeemobile. "All the oil that's going to be on the seats!"
"So will Davy if he gets any on his clothes!"
"Peter, that was unnecessary. Things are bad enough as it is."
"There's no way we're going to get away with any of it either. You and I have milk and orange juice all over us, you have olive oil on you, and Frankie has milk, chocolate, orange juice and oil all over him!" wailed Kerri, clearly at the end of her rope.
When they got back to the Pad, Micky was the only one home, and he even helped them carry in the bags of groceries and clean the seats in the Monkeemobile. They'd had a towel in the car, so Frankie had sat on it on the way home. As a result, hardly any residue came off on the seats.
Kerri would, however, never forget the look on Micky's face when they'd walked in. "Man, what happened to you guys? He said with a gaping mouth. "Looks almost like you were in a pie throwing contest! "And Frankie's all greasy-yuck!" he added.
"Whew, that was a close one," said Peter after they had showered and cleaned Frankie up.
"Yeah, and from now on, Frankie will have to stick to the beach!" Kerri was just glad Mike hadn't been home when they had walked in the door. As it turned out, Mike and Davy never found out about the grocery store incident. Some things are better left unsaid.
"What do you say, Shotgun" Frankie was trying to get Mike to take him out onto the beach. Mike took Frankie's hand and off they went. Kerri smiled to herself as she watched them out the window. Mike was so tall he had to bend a bit at the knees while leading Frankie out onto the sand. Not only that, but he had to take tiny steps so Frankie could keep up with him.
Frankie was getting more and more bold about the water. He loved watching the boys surfing with a board, and Kerri knew he secretly wished he could do it too. Frankie began getting just his feet in the water at first. He stayed well back from the white water at first, but over time he gained courage, and this worried Kerri. Frankie began wading deeper and deeper into the water. Kerri tried to make sure she was with him when he did this, but it wasn't easy to keep him by her side. Frankie might have been slow, but he was insidious about slipping away.
Before long, Davy was teaching Frankie to catch waves on a raft. Davy kept Frankie in fairly shallow water and never let him take the raft out by himself. Frankie knew he wasn't to venture out without someone with him, but the day came when he decided to catch a few small waves on his own, got a little too confident, and the current carried him out farther than he would have normally gone.
Kerri looked up from her book on the shore, expecting to see Frankie at the water's edge. When she couldn't locate him or his raft, she ran along the beach, searching for him. Then she saw him—way out there on the raft where the biggest waves were, trying to get back to shore, but his pointed claw hands didn't do a very good job of paddling. In fact, he was only going further out, and a huge wave was fast approaching.
Kerri knew there was no way she could get to him in time before that wave hit him. Time seemed to stand still as the wave came closer and closer. Davy was way out there too, but at least 50 yards away from Frankie. Micky was coming in on a wave on his surfboard and Peter and Mike were further down the beach, nowhere near close enough to hear Kerri's frantic calls.
Just then, the wave hit Frankie, who had been furiously paddling in the direction of the shore. His shiny plastic body looked so small and vulnerable on that raft, and Kerri was helpless to do anything but watch as the wave smacked him hard. The raft went flying into the air, and Frankie disappeared below the surface of the water.
Kerri hit the water running, then swimming as fast as she could. She was a good swimmer, but not as good as Davy, who had spotted Frankie's wayward raft, without a passenger, and was already swimming strongly in the general direction he thought Frankie might be.
"Davy!" yelled Kerri at the top of her lungs. "Davy! He fell off the raft over there!" she pointed to the area where she'd witnessed the most awful thing she'd seen in some time.
"Oh God, no!" she cried softly to herself as she continued to swim as fast as she could. There was no sign of Frankie. She kept looking for his shiny plastic head, or limbs, or anything. But there was nothing…
Davy got there quicker than Kerri thought possible. Still, it had been at least 3 minutes since the wave had hit Frankie. Kerri pointed frantically at the area, and Davy dove down several times, only to come up empty handed each time, his face a study in near despair.
Kerri finally made it out to where Davy was. Davy was not going to give up. He was seriously out of breath and clearly tiring, but he kept diving. Finally, on the seventh or eighth dive—Kerri had lost count—Davy came up, clutching a limp plastic arm. Kerri, who had grabbed the raft on the swim out, brought it over to Davy, and Davy lifted Frankie up onto it.
"Frankie! Frankie! Are you alright?" she cried in desperation. Frankie just laid there on the raft, looking much like he had when he'd fallen down the stairs all those months ago. Stunned. Then he shook his head, looked at Kerri and Davy and casually said,
"I'm alright. I don't breathe. I'm a robot, remember?"
Kerri was so relieved that she grabbed Frankie in a stranglehold. Of course! She thought of him as a human, and the thought that he couldn't possibly drown hadn't even entered her mind. Davy started laughing hysterically, his way of coping with the relief that was very plain on his features.
"Took David long enough to find me though," continued Frankie. "Wow, I went head over heels lots of times!"
"We could have lost you—you could have drifted out to sea! Even if you don't have to worry about drowning, we still might never have seen you again!" Kerri was in tears.
After that, they bought Frankie his very own life jacket and tube so he'd have double the security if that were to ever happen again. They all reflected on how life would have been had they lost Frankie that day. Not one of them could bear to dwell on it.
One night soon after the near-disaster, Frankie was sitting on the couch snuggled up with Kerri, Davy and Peter.
"Know what guys?" he said. "I love you."
Kerri's eyes overflowed with tears. Even the guys' eyes were sparkling a bit too bright.
Yep, Frankie was here to stay. Of course, had there ever been a doubt?
