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Frankie isn’t talking. He’s engaged, at the moment, with a jalapeño pepper, which he is bolting down in large bits.

Anthony isn’t talking, either. He’s knuckle-deep in a pizza dough, rolling and tossing it, layering it with tomato and mozzarella and toppings that can include the usual but also asparagus, scallops and arugula, sliding it on a wooden paddle into the oven behind him.

Pretty soon, customers expect, they’ll be talking plenty.

It’s a recent Friday night, and this is Café Frankie’s, on Ocean Drive just west of A1A in Boynton Beach, where many customers come often enough that the staff (Frankie excepted) call out their names as they enter. “Rob, hey, how are ya?” “How ya doin’, Lee?” “Linda, you made it in!”

Frankie sticks to more generic greetings such as “Hey, girlfriend!” and “Whaddaya doin’?“ and an Italian curse word that nobody else will repeat for publication.
They hope Frankie won’t, either.

Anthony Calicchio, variety Italian, sex male, is the hands-on owner and overseer, originally down from Brooklyn and a youth marinated in kitchen work and cooking
alongside chefs in places such as the Plaza Hotel and Le Cirque and Voulez-Vous.

“Originally” also describes the two elements of his work on display, the eclectic menu and his paintings on the west wall. Like the rest of his staff, Anthony sometimes wears T-shirts that declare “I’m not Frankie.”

Frankie, variety Amazon, sex uncertain, is a parrot, a green bird with a yellow cap. He is the product of an orange-winged mother and a double-yellow-headed father and ward of their owner, Donna Sayrs, who nurtured Frankie from the egg. A year ago, knowing Anthony’s interest in birds, she agreed to swap baby Frankie for one of his entrees.

So far, neither knows the bird’s sex; Anthony won’t pay $75 to find out. Only another bird needs to know.

Sayrs visits often, sometimes to groom Frankie, sometimes because she finds the place friendly and consoling. “I lost my husband last April, to cancer,” she says. “This is a comfortable place. If I haven’t been by, Anthony will call and say, ‘I haven’t seen you in awhile. Where are ya?’ ”

She is working, these days, to regain Frankie’s affection, after clipping his claws too close. On her arm, he issues small squawks of protest.

Inside, voices perk and blend. From the front station, Nicoletta Calicchio guides patrons to tables and conveys samples, such as the varying, rolled-up appetizer called “amazings.” She is also Anthony’s sister.

This night, she and Dena Balka, working from the bar and front counter, showcase the day’s specials (“homemade ravioli,” they intone that day, “stuffed with lobster, leeks and shallots, and the sauce is a potato custard cream sauce”), replenishing drinks, serving, clearing, resetting.

Along the counter, among the tables, other voices sound a range of worries: being out of work, fighting through traffic on the turnpike or I-95, the latest political gusts or flex of a tropical storm (“I don’t have friends,” one customer says. “I come here.”) and a range of happier, spicier fare.

“You know what I come for!” a newcomer calls, and Anthony smiles and calls back, “If it’s ribs, we got ’em. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

Anthony chose preparing food because, as he says, “it’s creative and from the heart.”

Anthony and his chef, Winston Telesford, and his prep man, Oxygen Jolly, and pizza man, Julio Muñoz, and their wait staff also endure the trade’s punishments. The floor can pound their feet and joints; the oven, at 600 degrees F., can scald and slow-roast them.

For customers and staff alike, Frankie provides a lift … and vice versa. Young children usually approach shyly with wide eyes, and the bolder ones discover that Frankie steps lightly on fingers and shoulders.

Both bird and owner have survived recent calamity. A month ago, Frankie was attacked out front by a small dog and rescued by waitress Heather Lateano, who helped Sayrs in the parrot’s recovery. Back in May, Anthony fell off the roof while wrangling an air conditioner, rescued by Balka, who helped shoulder a bigger workload while the owner’s broken pelvis mended.

Both man and bird seem back in fine fettle and feather.

As darkness falls, Frankie stands on his cage in the glow of the front window’s neon, still and slightly hunched, possibly peopled-out.

When the last customer leaves and the staff finishes cleanup, Frankie will go home with Anthony, who might work into the early morning at his easel, painting. “I stay up, he goes right to sleep,” Anthony says.

In this economy, neither of them gets a day off.