Frankie and I

  Hi, my name is Elaine, 24 this year. My father is Chinese but my mother is Brazilian. Well, that's what my dad told me. My mother died when I was a baby.

  My father left me when I was 8. He realized having another mouth to feed was too troublesome. I would never forget the rainy night when we slept by the roadside, cold and starving. I fell asleep listening to my father telling me the story of the boy who cried wolf. When I woke up I was alone. 

  

 I met Frankie when I was chased out of an eatery while begging for leftover food. He handed me a sausage roll which I wolfed down within seconds.

"Begging won't work. Just steal," he laughed as he wiped away the mustard at the corner of my mouth.

Bread and sausage are the best thing in the world. Second best thing. First would be Frankie.

Frankie taught me how to steal so I won't starve to death. He also taught me how to perform on streets so we could get more money for sausage rolls - for days when stealing was too difficult. 

If I remember correctly, it was a Friday. A bad Friday when we didn't manage to steal any food and no one paid for our performances. 

We were sitting on the roadside when two actors in fancy outfits passed by, arguing. The woman was shouting at the man, saying that he was responsible for her blisters because he won't carry her, and how he won't help her with the chores. 

"Why don't you hire someone to do the chores for you?"

"How am I supposed to find a person who's willing to work for free? We don't have much money, we can only afford to pay them bread and sausages."

Frankie and I volunteered ourselves and we spent a few years sweeping floors and washing clothes for Royce and Jennifer. Jennifer yelled at me all the time for the smallest mistake I did; so I was really happy when the audience shooed her in the middle of Romeo and Juliet, complaining that Royce and her were too old for the roles.

The next day Frankie and I took over the performance. After we successfully caused Royce and Jennifer to suffer from a mild case of food poisoning that was severe enough for them to stay away from the stage for a couple of hours, of course.

  Royce and Jennifer never had a say in anything since then; and as we performed more we found two more young servants, Wendy and Bobby, like how we were once found.

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Andrew came to us uninvited. He said he would make our performances better. More people would watch us. More money for us.

 That was interesting. 

  He said he would be our new leader. I had to pull Frankie hard to stop him from punching Andrew.

  Frankie chased him away but every now and then he would appear out of nowhere to interrupt our plays. I noticed that whenever he appeared we sold more tickets.

 Having performed solo for so many years, I suppose he had figure out a way to command audience's attention.

 I persuaded Frankie to let him stay.

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Frankie and Andrew disagree with each other all the time. From where to go to where to perform to how to adapt Odette into a comedy.

I shouted at Andrew while standing behind Frankie; though secretly agreeing with Andrew that Frankie's idea would never work. No one wanted to watch ballerinas doing something disgracefully ridiculous on stage.

Andrew was right. Audience wanted to see cleavage. Sexy women. Like the roles I had been doing all these while - breaking the fourth wall to do lap dance for the male audience.

  That was the only way to make money. Male performers were only needed to carry props.

  I wanted to laugh when I saw Frankie practicing hard. He missed the point completely.

  His heart was in the right place, I thought as we kissed. But he's losing it.

  Andrew, on the other hand...

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For what happened next come watch Seringgit @ DPAC:

http://www.dpac.com.my/page/ticket/bookTicket/view/271.html