Chapter 128: Taking Care of Business
“I still can’t believe it,” said Mabel. “A contract and a tour both! Oh, Honey, I am so proud of you I could just bust. Can I tell people?”
“We sign the paperwork this afternoon,” said Tricia. “He’s bringing the paperwork here and the girls from the band are coming over. I guess we should wait to tell,” she said, and her eyes slid over to Clifford. He smiled and spread his arms wide.
“Don’t look at me!” he said. “I’m the designated secret-keeper for the group. I’m not saying anything to anybody about anything—yet.”
“Pretty big yet,” muttered Tricia, and Clifford grinned.
“Yup,” he said. “It is, that. But when the word comes down, well, I’m tweeting the world.” His mouth twitched up at the corner. “If that’s okay with you, Miss Trish?” He looked meek and docile and completely unbelievable. Mabel and her daughter burst out laughing.
“You’re an idiot,” said Tricia fondly. “When the ink is dry, I would not begin to tell you who you can and cannot tweet, you twit.”
Mabel watched them surreptitiously. There was an easiness between them now that had not been there before. They had obviously reached some sort of agreement about…something, and had decided to be friends. She was glad. She had not planned this, worried a bit about how they might react to each other, but she was glad they had found a comfortable groove for their friendship. She did not say, “their relationship”, even to herself, but she was beginning to think it. But now the tour and the album would stop everything dead in its tracks—it was well-nigh impossible to have time and energy for a long-distance relationship when you were on the road. Mabel comforted herself with the hope that they had laid a good enough foundation that they might want to see each other again after the first blush of excitement over this career opportunity had cooled.
“Well, if we’ve got people coming over, I’ve got to see what’s in the cupboard,” said Mabel, getting to her feet and heading toward the kitchen. “Watcha think, Clifford? Lemon bars or brownies?”
“Brownies.”
“Lemon bars.”
“I like brownies,” said Tricia, looking at Clifford, “because they’re sweet.”
“Lemon bars are sweet—and tart.” He was looking at her fondly, and Mabel just about had a heart attack when her errant, opinionated daughter dropped her eyes and blushed.
“I’ll change my vote to lemon bars,” she murmured, then scurried after her mother into the kitchen as though afraid to be left alone in the living room with Clifford. “Here—let me grate the zest for you, Mom.”
Clifford just smiled, proud and happy about the way things had turned out. It was okay. It was good. Tricia and the band would be consumed with the new album, then the tour—a real, live, label-sponsored concert tour would begin. He would become a footnote—well, an album liner note, he supposed—in the long run, but the long run wouldn’t start for a couple of weeks, at least. Between then and now, they could have a few laughs, share a few more of those neck-popping, lip-smacking kisses and then, hey, howdy, it was fun, wasn’t it? Let's stay friends….
It was good. It was okay.
Clifford worked hard on making himself believe it.
“So, there’s this guy, see?” CB said, looking over his shoulder after making fleeting eye contact. He wasn’t sure which made him more nervous—what might be behind him, or what was in front of him. This guy was huge, and there was something…off about his eyes.
“Yup,” said his companion amiably.
“No. No—you don’t see, yet. I’m still explaining to you, okay?”
“Okay!” boomed the deep voice. CB felt like he was standing in a strong wind.
“Um, okay. Here’s the deal. This is an easy job, really. There’s this guy what’s gonna be walking by here sometime this afternoon. At least, we think he’s coming today. If he comes by, he’s gonna be wearing a green jacket, probably, and he’s got, um, red hair and he’ll be carrying a package. Got it?”
“A package. Red hair. Got it,” echoed CB’s companion.
“And when he walks by—“ He indicated the sidewalk just beyond the alleyway. “And when he comes by, I want you to…um…take care of him. You know what I’m saying?”
“Ah’m supposed to take care of him if he comes by with a package.”
“That’s right. And if you do, then you get paid.”
The big fellow’s eyes became shrewd. “How much? Who’s gonna pay me?”
“Um m-me,” said CB. “Here’s, um, half of the money up front, okay?” He counted bills into the huge hand. The hand closed over the money and stuffed it inside a grimy vest.
“And when I’m done?”
“You get the other half.”
“What if he don’t come by today? What about that?”
“If he doesn’t come by today, we’ll have to try again. But you’ll get paid if you, um, you know, make sure he gets the, um, message.”
“That we’ll take care of him if he tries to take a package by here.”
“Well, that you’ll take care of him if he takes a package by here,” said CB. “I, um, can’t work on this job, so it will have to be you. Can you handle it?”
"Hmmm." The guy apparently wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
“Ah can do it,” the fellow boomed. Subtlety was not a skill he had mastered.
“Um, good,” said CB, glad to be off the hook. “You make it happen, I make with the money—okay?”
“Okay!”
“And, um, look—can you keep it quiet-like? I’m not sure I want everybody here knowing my business, you know what I’m saying?”
“I guess,” said the big guy. “You don’t want me to tell anyone I’m doing this job.”
“Well, I don’t want you to tell people I’m doing this job. This one is allllll yours, buddy—okay?”
“Okay!” He nodded his huge head.
CB clapped him once on the shoulder and eased quietly away. He seemed good for the job, and the job seemed suited for him. Why, the redheaded kid probably wouldn’t even argue, just faint away at the sight of him towering over him. At least, he sort of hoped that’s what would happen. He was still spooked by the thought of someone taking out a contract on, geez, one of the nicest guys in showbiz. Or at least, on his assistant. But as long as the money was good and nobody knew…well. He was a working man, after all.
The proliferation of cable channels had, in Scribbler’s opinion, muddied the waters quite a bit, and the proliferation of people who got famous posting their dirty laundry online had polluted the already stagnant pond that was Hollywood. It was harder and harder, sometimes, to tell who was a star and who was simply, as they euphemistically put it, “a personality”. Scribbler thought that, after tomorrow night, he would have had his fill of personality and be quite ready to chuck the business for good. Except…except he had a new life now—a new life in New York. He had friends there—people, well, rats who cared about him and Missy was going to be there for a while. Scribbler grimaced. Actually, truth be told, he didn’t have a new life—he had part of his old life back. He had forgotten how sweet it had actually been.
A million years ago, Piggy had covered the back wall of his apartment with clippings of his articles, his byline nestled cozily up to the bombastic headlines. More than a few of the articles—okay, most of them—were about Piggy, but they hid the cracks in the plaster, and Piggy seemed to like seeing them up as much as he did. Other reporters had started to notice her now, but when she had something she wanted to tell the world, it was ol’ Fleet to the rescue. Scribbler mused idly that, if Piggy’s star had been rising today, she might have simply tweeted or posted her own news, making his stories and articles unnecessary. But he did have a knack for writing about her. Everyone said so. And Piggy knew so. That had kept little Missy Sunshine happy most of the time.
Most of it.
There were days—weeks, sometimes—when she could be impossible. Angry one minute, joyful the next. Scribbler suspected that she was in the throes of love, and while this information didn’t necessarily alarm him, he realized later that he had been too complacent. He had known—from the beginning—how she felt about Kermit. What he hadn’t known—what he couldn’t have known—was that Kermit actually returned those feelings. He had expected trouble from that quarter, but not disaster. He had expected rainy days, not monsoons that had washed his life right down the toilet. But underneath that smooth and sometimes snarky green exterior, Kermit had apparently been pining for her all along. And when he had decided to act, it had been the final act. Game over.
But now…now, the game had been reset. At least, some of it had reset.
And it was up to him to build on what he had. One good thing about all this tweeting was that people were not so hard to find. Once, his rolodex had been full of hard-to-get telephone numbers, gold cards in a tinsel town. The demands for information, privacy and attention had required a whole slew of people just to say that Starlet A and Star B had decided to share a martini, a movie offer or a divorce attorney. Despite its intricacies—or perhaps because of them—Scribbler had become adept at reading between the lines of other reporters’ work, and he had once commanded a considerable arsenal of information. He’d once had the power to set the town on its ear. Now, all his secrets would be met with “What?” and the occasional, “Who?”. No doubt about it—he was a little rusty—but he had been working before some of these stars had been born. And everybody—everybody—had to admit that he had once been good. Very good. A household name, almost. Stupid frog.
Hastily, Scribbler stuffed his ire away. He had promised, hadn’t he, not to hurt Kermit with untruths? If that became known, his boss would be livid, would become furious. And, given the lengths to which they had gone to yesterday to horrify him, he was afraid of what might happen if his alliance—or his genuine loyalty—were shown. Even though he was alone in his apartment, he shivered, and felt his gorge rise. Angrily, Scribbler shook his head, dispelling the images, the smell that seemed to linger even after a long shower. He was a reporter. He was a pro. He could get the job done.
He took another swig of his coffee—the instant stuff had gone stale in the jar while he’d been gone, but it was caffeine all the same and he was grateful for it.
Resolutely, he turned his face toward the day. Get his jacket on, throw a tie around his neck, and go and make himself agreeable with people who were famous—or who wanted to be.
He had been surprised, really, at the people who had remembered him. Remembered him or wanted the publicity, his mind sneered in the voice of his boss, but Scribbler pushed it determinedly away. He wouldn’t think about his boss now—not until he had to. The folks who remembered him continued to link him with Piggy—it had been his best work—and it didn’t hurt that she was so much in the news now. Even here in Hollywood, Broadway had a way of looming imposingly. Today he’d plant a few seeds, throw out a few lines and see what he could turn up that might turn into something tomorrow. He hadn’t quite admitted it to himself, but he was interested in what Piggy and that dratted frog would get up to in their interview. He’d heard about it, of course, but not from Missy. He’d seen the news clips—the pieced together clips that seemed to imply that Kermit and Piggy were planning some sort of on-screen reunion—but he still thought it was a paltry showing by the frog, who ought to be getting his little green butt going to see her in person. Not that he was complaining…. He couldn’t hope to rival their broadcast, but perhaps he could—pardon the expression—piggyback onto their conversation, make a couple of snide asides about Kermit not going for opening night. He had promised not to hurt Kermit with lies—he had never promised not to wound him with the truth.
The truth…did the frog even know the truth? Did Kermit know how she’d betrayed him, Scribbler, and all her promises to him to run away and marry him on a second’s notice? He doubted it. Scribbler found he was gritting his teeth and stopped, beating back the anger that had threatened to swallow him whole the past several years. It wasn’t Missy’s fault, his mind insisted. If it hadn’t been for that stupid frog, everything would have been perfect, grand—the whole wide world in the palm of their hands. But it had not happened like that—yet. Scribbler felt the familiar thrill of fury and channeled it—channeled it and controlled it and focused it to firm up his resolve.
Things could change. Things had changed. Things could go back to the way they’d been. They could. He just had to get his game face on and get out there and fight for her like he should have done in the first place. If only she’d encouraged him—just a little—he’d have come banging on the studio door and pleaded his case, but she…hadn’t. She had, after all, been honest with him about the way she felt about Kermit. She just hadn’t been honest with him about anything else.
Okay, Scooter thought. He just had to drop the film off and then he was a free man for the rest of the day. And Sara would probably already be home—or getting there—after her trip to the office. Like him, most of her work wasn’t done in an office. It was done in the field. Scooter thought, not for the first time, that he really had the best of both worlds—a glorified office assistant without the routine of an office, and plenty of excitement to boot. He wasn’t planning on a lot of excitement on this trip to the editor’s.
There are disadvantages to working with monsters. You get sort of used to things that are larger than you creeping up behind you—usually they were just wondering where their paycheck was, or if they could get an advance on their paycheck. So Scooter didn’t immediately turn when something big and shaggy and hulking loomed behind him on the sidewalk, but then the short hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he turned, catching something enormous out of the corner of his eye. Too stunned to cry out, he was turning, he was running, he was falling—
And a huge four-fingered hand closed on his arm, pulling him not just on to his feet, but off them, and he found his voice and cried out.
“Sweetums! Oh my gosh! You scared me half to death!” His heart was pounding painfully in his chest.
“Oh, hey, Scooter! Ah didn’t know that was you!” boomed Sweetums. Scooter’s carefully combed hair flattened in the blast of the ogre’s breath and immediately began to curl from the humidity. Sweetums set Scooter back onto the sidewalk and patted him on the head. Normally, Scooter protested head-patting, but he said nothing, concentrating on keeping his teeth from rattling from the bone-jarring thumps to his skull.
“Well, it’s me all right,” said Scooter, straightening his jacket. He was pleased to note that he had a death-grip on the envelope with the film in it, glad to know he hadn’t dropped it. He smiled up at the big Muppet. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, you see, Ah’m working,” said the ogre. “Ah was supposed to wait here for a guy.”
“Who was it?”
“Some guy with a green jacket and red hair and a package….” He trailed off, looking Scooter up and down, and Scooter’s friendly smile threatened to slide right off his face. His heart, which had slowed with relief, began to thump loudly again. He hoped Sweetums couldn’t hear it.
“Um…me? You were waiting for me?” Scooter said, his voice squeaking slightly. His knees felt weak and he almost wished that Sweetums still had a grip on his arm. Almost.
“Uh, yeah,” said Sweetums, scratching his shaggy head. “Ah guess so. And Ah’m, uh, Ah’m supposed to take care of you when Ah see you.”
The wall of the building caught Scooter as he fell backward, supporting him. Sweetums was looking up and down the sidewalk furtively. Sara, Scooter thought dully. Kermit. Reflexively, he gripped the package.
“So, is somebody bothering you?” Sweetums asked.
Scooter blinked, then shook his head. “Is somebody…bothering me?”
“Yeah,” Sweetums said. “Ah reckon they thought you needed some help delivering your package, so somebody must be trying to stop you. Gosh! Who’s bothering you, Scooter?”
“Um, nobody—I mean, I don’t know, Sweetums,” Scooter said, thinking fast. “But I’m sure glad you showed up to help me.” He smiled up at the big monster hopefully, hoping his smile was not tremulous.
“Well, that’s what they paid me for,” said Sweetums. “To take care of you and your package.”
Scooter swallowed with effort. “I sure appreciate it, Sweetums. The editor is just around the corner there.” He tried to point but found his arm was shaking too much, but Sweetums didn’t notice. He was looking up and down the sidewalk carefully, his huge eyes rolling back and forth. He thrust one long arm behind him protectively.
“You stay behind me, Scooter. Ah’ll make sure you get there with your package.” He led the way out into the bright sidewalk, and Scooter found, to his complete surprise, that his legs would carry him, after all.
[ Lunch had been sublime, and there was only lingering over coffee. Piggy had excused herself to go to the ladies room and powder her nose, but what she really wanted to do was call Kermit and thank him for the presents. There had not—yet—been enough privacy to do this appropriately, but she was determined to find some. The little vestibule off the bathroom was too busy, talking while in the bathroom was too gauche, and Piggy finally found a slightly out-of-the-way corner and dialed. Kermit picked up on the first ring, and Piggy knew he’d been waiting for her to call.
Kermit didn’t know much beyond high school French, but he nevertheless managed to get the gist of what Piggy was saying before she descended into pure mush. That he understood perfectly, and responded in kind. Very few people who learn mush as late in life as Kermit did ever become proficient in it, but in this, as in other things, Kermit was the exception that proved the rule. He held up his end of the conversation admirably, glad that Scooter had gone to take the day’s work to the editor and that he had not gotten behind the wheel of his car yet. He stood inside the door of the studio and traded little affectionate nothings with Piggy for at least ten minutes. If she had been here, he would have interspersed his words with kisses, but beggars can’t be choosy, so he tried to appreciate what he was getting instead of what he wasn’t.
“I miss you, too,” Kermit said. They had begun repeating things, but noone was actually keeping track of the conversation.
“I miss you more, Kermie,” Piggy cooed. “Moi will be thinking of vous when I go to sleep tonight with your wonderful present—oh!”
“Piggy?” He heard a loud thunk, then shuffling noises, and his heart began to race. “Piggy! Piggy—are you—?”
“Sorry, Mon Capitan. I dropped my phone. Moi really should be getting back to Howard and Thoreau now. They will be wondering what has happened to Moi.”
“Yeah, don’t fret the boys, okay?” Kermit said dryly.
Piggy giggled. “Moi will try not to fret the boys. Are you being good for Scooter? Is he still working you hard?”
Kermit made a scrunchy face. “Um, yeah. He’s working me pretty hard. We got some more film in the can today. He just went to take it to the editor.”
“So you are closer to coming to see Moi?”
“Yeah. I’m coming, Honey. Soon. As soon as I can, okay?”
“Okay.” Piggy sighed. “Moi should go,” she said, showing no signs of hanging up. He knew she was twirling the ring on her finger, lazily, not agitated,
just thinking.
“There you are!” Kermit distinctly heard Thoreau’s voice in the distance, then the phone made a raspy staticky sound. “I’ve got her now, Kermit,” he said. “She’ll call you later.” The screen went dark.
Kermit stared at the phone for a long moment, then made a scrunchy face. “What the hey,” he muttered disgustedly, then grumbled audibly. The sound seemed suddenly loud in the quiet studio, and Kermit startled.
“All right there, Mr. The Frog?” said a voice, and Kermit turned and found himself looking at one of the security guards. The new security guard. Despite his teasing, Kermit was suddenly glad that Scooter had thought to check the man out. Well, he wasn’t a man, exactly—he was a beaver, but Kermit was glad he’d been vetted.
“Yeah, I’m, um, fine,” said Kermit, trying to sound hearty.
“Sorry if I spooked you,” said the beaver, and Kermit flushed sheepishly.
“I was just, er, on the phone,” he said, wondering all of a sudden if he’d been overheard. He felt his face grow warm.
“Zat right?” said the beaver. “I tell you what, I feel like Captain Kirk every time I talk on my phone. Amazing technology, id’n it?”
“It sure beats the heck out of the old telephones, you know?” Kermit said. He remembered the gags they had done with the old-style telephone on The Muppet Show and thought with fondness of how hard Fozzie had worked to bring that zaniness onto the stage.
“That it does. When you’re as long in the tooth as I am, you’ve seen a lot of changes. You heading out for the day?” asked the beaver. Kermit cheated a little, leaning forward and reading the man’s name tag under pretext of scratching the back of his neck.
“I am, um, Gerald,” he said. “I think we’ve done all the damage we can do today.”
“I hope so!” laughed the beaver. “And please—my friends call me Gerry.”
“Well, thanks for checking, Gerry. We appreciate the help keeping everything safe.”
“It’s my pleasure, Mr. The Frog. Um—look. I hope I don’t sound presumptuous or anything, but do you think your missus would sign a picture for my missus?”
“I’m sure she’d love to be asked,” said Kermit. “Want me to ask her?”
“Oh—gosh! Would you?” said Gerry. “My wife’s seen every movie Miss Piggy has ever made—we own all the DVD's, and we’re working on the bluerays as soon as, um, well…as soon as they become available,” he finished, seeming to realize it might be impolitic to whine to his new employer about the slowness of their merchandizing.
“Trust me—I’m waiting too, but they tell me they’re working on it. Supposed to be lots of extras and stuff.”
“You going to do a director’s cut?” asked Gerald, and Kermit made a half-shrug.
“I’m thinking about it,” he said. “If I feel like I have anything to say that we didn’t say in the movie, but I like to think our work speaks for itself.”
“You can say that again!” said Gerry. They were at the door. “Want me to walk you to your car?”
At this, Kermit drew the line. “I’m fine,” he said. “My car is just outside.”
“Thanks for the autograph,” said Gerry. “It’ll make me a prince at home.”
Kermit smiled, remembering something Piggy had said on the phone. He reached for the door handle….
Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Jim Henson Idea Man
Back to the Rock Season 2
Bear arrives on Disney+
Sam and Friends Book
What now?
Uh-oh!
I have a bad feeling about this.
*snaps on plastic glove*
Where is he?
3 wells!
I kinda had to read in a hurry.