Chapter 142: Damages
The meeting was already going when Piggy sidled up to Rory and burrowed playfully under his arm. She was positively beaming with happiness, her cheeks flushed becomingly, and Rory smiled at her. When he looked up, Kristen caught his eye and they exchanged satisfied looks. He had been concerned that the pleasure of seeing Kermit would be eclipsed by the pressure of seeing him on screen, and that instead of being buoyed by the visit, she would be unhappy at not being there in person. But Piggy’s radiant expression and sassy demeanor obliterated any lingering doubts that her time onscreen had gone well. Rory gave her a friendly squeeze and received a look from Mr. Lowry that was benevolent, but managed to be cautionary as well. He tried to put on his game face and pay attention, and he managed tolerably well, even when Piggy goosed him.
He shot her an aggrieved look, pinched her arm and flicked his eyes toward the front. Piggy felt like she was sitting in big church with her mother and fought the urge to giggle. She didn’t want to giggle—she wanted to laugh out loud for joy. She had seen her frog, and he had seen her, and—just as expected—he had gone all gushy the moment their eyes had truly met. There had been months and months—years even—when she had waited and wondered if Kermit would ever look at her like that, ever look at her with everything there in his eyes. But once the floodgates had opened, she had all but drowned in the deluge, overcome with the love he had finally gotten the courage to share.
She realized with a start that the meeting was breaking up, was over, and wondered what she might have missed. Oh well, Piggy thought philosophically. Moi will find out soon enough….
“Well, that was a lot better,” said Mabel. “Don’t know what the problem was earlier but that looked like the Mr. and Missus I know.”
Clifford nodded, his arm now around Tricia’s shoulders. He couldn’t quite remember how it had gotten there, but when Tricia turned and smiled up at him, he forgot that he’d forgotten.
“That was better,” Tricia said. “Before the break he seemed all distracted, but afterwards, when he was really looking at her, he got all mushy and sweet.”
“Imagine that,” said Clifford dryly, and Tricia blushed and smiled.
“And Miss Piggy was just looking at him like there was nothing else in the world. Are they always like that?” she asked. Her voice was wistful and she dared not look quite at Clifford.
“Yes,” said Mabel.
“No,” said Clifford.
They both laughed, then Clifford weighed in.
“Well, when they’re on, they’re really on. But when they butt heads—and egos—then things can get sort of…um…interesting.”
“Interesting, how? You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.” Tricia eyed him uncertainly. “Is it?”
“No,” Clifford agreed. “Most of the time it’s the good kind.”
“Most of the time? What about the other times?”
Here, Clifford and Mabel hesitated, then Mabel started. “Well,” she said, her voice tentative. “What’s been causing a lot of the trouble lately are all these reporters saying that Piggy’s been looking around.”
Tricia’s brow wrinkled attractively. “You mean looking at other jobs? Was Kermit mad that she took the job on Broadway?”
“No, man,” said Clifford. “He made her go.” He shook his head, sifting through the rumors he’d heard about how it had gone down. “I don’t know all the details, but apparently Kermit and Marty—“
“That’s Miss Piggy’s agent, right?”
“Yes. He’s Miss Piggy’s agent. Apparently he and Kermit called Miss Piggy in and bullied her into taking the job.”
Tricia’s expression was incredulous. “What do you mean, bullied? Didn’t she want to go? Oh my gosh—Broadway! It’s the chance of a lifetime. Who wouldn’t want to go?”
Clifford shrugged and looked at Mabel. “Well, Miss Piggy does love the limelight, but she’s been pretty protective of Kerm lately.”
Tricia looked confused. “Why? Who’s bothering him, other than those stupid reporters?”
Clifford shifted uncomfortably. “When I said "looking around", what I meant was that the reporters are implying that she’s, um, you know, scoping out other guys.”
Mabel snorted. “More like one stupid reporter who started everything, but now it’s been sort of epidemic. Monkey see, monkey do—you know.”
Tricia thought about the tabloid headlines she’d seen in the grocery store earlier that day, not to mention the wild rumor-mongering that had been going on all day on the internet. “Yeah,” she said. “But tabloid journalism is always stupid—big deal. Why does Kermit care what the tabloids say?”
“I was getting to that,” Clifford said. “It’s not really that he cares about the tabloids…it’s just that Kermit’s got a green streak a mile wide.”
Tricia looked more confused than ever. “I’ve never seen a streak on him—where is it?”
But Clifford laughed and Mabel joined in. “Not that kind of streak,” he said. “A jealous streak.”
“Oh.” Tricia looked surprised. “Really? He doesn’t seem the type.”
Clifford’s eyebrows climbed, and he and Mabel exchanged amused expressions.
“Well, he does his best to keep it under wraps, but if another guy gets too friendly with Miss Piggy, well…he can get kind of out of control.”
Tricia’s own eyebrows climbed. “Kermit? Out of control? I mean…he used to put up with Grover, and he can be really annoying.”
“I know,” said Clifford. “And I agree with you about Grover, but it’s…well, it’s a different thing when somebody is messing with your woman.” He cleared his throat nervously, wondering if Tricia knew about his sudden impulse to knock the record label’s representative into next week before he’d known who he was.
“And Kermit gets all—what? Up in arms?”
Mabel smiled, remembering the lapses into arm-waving hysteria she’d witnessed while she worked with them. “You could say that,” she said. “He can get pretty hot if somebody tries to move in on the Missus.”
Tricia smiled, enjoying this new idea about her Mom’s former client. “So Kermit’s the jealous type. And all this tabloid stuff has him seeing, er, red.”
Mabel’s voice was thoughtful. “In his heart, I think he knows that Piggy would never look at another guy, but she does attract the male of the species.”
“The male of any species,” Clifford added. “And no wonder. Did you see that get-up she had on?”
Four eyes glared at him and two mouths dropped open in surprise.
“And just what was wrong with her outfit?” Tricia demanded. “It’s a costume, after all. It’s not like she wears that to the grocery store.”
“I don’t think Piggy does the grocery shopping,” said Mabel dryly. “But I don’t see what’s wrong with what she had on. She looked terrific—and you could tell by the way Kermit was looking at her that he thought so, too.”
Clifford held up his hands in surrender—or defense. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Not trying to start World War III. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t like it if my, um, woman….” He trailed off uncomfortably, but they were both staring at him, expecting him to go on. “Um, I wouldn’t like it too much if everybody was ogling my girl and trying to make a move on her.”
“It’s not her fault if men hit on her,” Tricia said, still amused but a little indignant. “And what she wears is part of the job. Didn’t she wear sexy clothes in the Christmas show?”
“And how!” Clifford said, then blushed and cleared his throat. “But it was cool, you know, because Kermit was there, too.”
“Oh—so she’s only allowed to dress sexy when Kermit’s around, is that it?” Tricia said. She sounded less amused than she had a moment ago.
“No. I mean, well, yes. Well, no—I mean, she can wear what she likes,” Clifford said, “but she ought to have mercy on him, you know? Not make it hard on him.”
“Hmmm,” said Tricia, her expression grumpy, and Clifford tried again.
“You know, like Kermit does for her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you think Kermit is jealous—“
“I don’t think he’s jealous—you said he’s jealous!”
“He is, but what I’m trying to say is, Kermit may be jealous but he’s nothing like Miss Piggy when she gets worked up. If Kermit so much as looks at another girl, she’s liable to go off.”
“It’s hard to believe Piggy would feel threatened by another woman,” Tricia said, looking surprised.
“Well, it wasn’t without cause. Before they got married—before they decided they couldn’t live without each other—ooh, man!—did he make her miserable. Kermit was always chatting up the female guest stars, or saying he was going to give Annie Sue Piggy’s song that week or something. Miss Piggy liked to breathe fire a couple of times, and she did swat him clear across times zones more than once.”
“Sounds volatile.”
“You have no idea. But Kermit’s smart, you know, and he wants her to be happy. He would never do anything that would make Piggy see any green but him, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re saying that Kermit goes out of his way not to make Piggy jealous, so you think Piggy should try harder not to make Kermit jealous.”
Clifford looked at Mabel, who shrugged. He shrugged too. “Yeah. That’s about it. I’m not saying Piggy shouldn’t be Piggy—I’m just saying she should do what Kermit does—stay out of harm’s way by staying away from temptation. Whoo-ee—if Piggy so much as thought he was flirting with another woman---um um ummm. It would be a hot time in the old town tonight.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Mabel scoffed. “Kermit’s no dummy. He would never do anything to make Piggy jealous now. Not while she’s in New York.”
Tricia was quiet, adding this new information to the pile. She had never met Kermit or Miss Piggy, but she felt like she was getting to know them. “That’s really sweet,” she said at last. “Making sure she never has to doubt him.”
Mabel’s face softened when her daughter spoke, and she almost said something, but she saw the way Clifford was looking at Tricia and decided to stay silent.
“Kerm’s a good guy,” said Clifford. “He knows how to stay out of harm’s way.”
There’s an old saying that you should eat a worm first thing in the morning, because nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. Despite the fact that Kermit had dutifully eaten his worm—with cinnamon and sugar—the day had gone from bad to worse, and the evening had already had moments of absolute disaster. Kermit and his friends gained the doorway and made their way inside warily, glad to have diffused one disaster but on alert for another one.
Kermit tried to look confident and be his usual friendly and jovial self, but he was having to work harder at it than was entirely comfortable. They nodded and smiled and moved obediently into the atrium with the well-dressed crowd, exchanging mindless pleasantries with whomever they happened to be rubbing Elmos with. People were determined to at least appear friendly and carefree, himself included, and he tried to get into the swim of things. Several people spoke to him and asked after Piggy, then inquired about the movie in a desultory manner. Kermit asked about their projects in turn, ably prompted by Scooter’s voice near his aural organ, and made whatever rejoinder seemed appropriate. At some point, Kermit began to relax, aware of Fozzie and Scooter and Sara all creating a friendly buffer around him. He felt sheltered and grateful. He looked at Scooter out of the corner of his eye and saw that while his assistant seemed very much at ease himself, he was watching his boss with more than a trace of anxiety. Kermit caught his eye with a rueful smile, and Scooter smiled back—and backed off.
As usual, there were plenty of workers there to make sure everyone knew where to go, where to sit and to control the press of bodies. They got their seating directions and Scooter paused, waiting to see whether Kermit would come with them now or join them later. Any hopes he had that his hovering relapse was unnoticed were dashed when Kermit clapped him and Fozzie on their shoulders and made a grimace.
“Go, go,” he said, smiling to soften the grumpiness. “Trust me—I can find the green room on my own.”
“Just find us when you’re done,” Scooter said.
Kermit flashed his bulbous eyes at Scooter’s flaming crown of hair and Sara’s auburn curls. “I think I’ll be able to find you two in the crowd,” he teased. “Let me just get the lay of the land, and I’ll be right back to join you.”
It wasn’t Scooter’s fault that he believed him.
“Like, there must be a satellite exactly overhead,” Dr. Teeth said happily. “My picture is crystal clear.”
They had not had high expectations of watching the show live, but they had hoped to snag a video replay of Kermit and Piggy’s special moment before taking the stage themselves.
“I rully didn’t expect to get much on my Twitter feed,” said Janice, looking at her phone. “Too many people commenting on too many random things, but I was hoping to see Piggy’s cute little costume.”
Floyd grunted. “It’s not often that you get to use the word Piggy and little in the same sentence,” he said. In this home crowd, Floyd’s zinger had no traction—they knew too well that it was just talk—but Janice flashed her eyes at him and shook her head.
“I think I’m getting it,” said the good Doctor, refreshing his screen. “This here is supposed to be the pre-show interview with Kermit The Frog and Miss Piggy and—what the hey?”
They all crowded behind him, staring at the screen, but it was Animal who broke the heavy silence.
“Wo-Man! Wo-Man!” he panted.
“And how,” muttered Floyd. “But that sure ain’t Piggy.”
“…a long time,” said Rowlf. “We both cut our teeth on television variety shows. ‘Cept of course, frogs don’t have teeth…but anywho, there’s not much about Kermit that I couldn’t tell you, but there’s not a whole lot about Kermit that he wouldn’t tell you—except when it comes to Miss Piggy. She turned his world upside down, and how. I had known him for years and I have never seen anything—or anyone—set him off like that until Piggy came along. He went from cool and collected to hot under the collar and unraveled in about ten seconds flat.”
Jolalene was curled up in a corner of the couch, and Rowlf had scooted back until his arm was around her waist. Given that her crop top was just that, that meant that he could run his fingers through her silky coat absently while he thought, and Jo didn’t mind one little bit.
“She sounds like a barnstormer,” said Jolalene. “I think I’d like her.”
Rowlf was thoughtful. “Some women don’t like her very much—she does sort of suck all the attention out of a room without trying very hard.”
Jolalene grinned her toothy grin. “How hard does she try?”
Rowlf grinned. “Hard enough,” he admitted. “But most fellas don’t complain.”
“Kermit certainly wasn’t complaining. He was so different after the break,” said Jolalene. “It’s like he got out of a straitjacket or something. And the way he looked at her….” Her voice held just a trace of wistfulness, and she was glad when Rowlf jumped back in.
“Like a starving man looking at a steak?” he teased.
Jo laughed her gravelly laugh, and reached out and patted Rowlf’s tummy. “Always thinking with your stomach,” she scolded. “No….” She stopped, looking thoughtful, and since she kept up the light, rhythmic stroking of the tufty fur on his belly, Rowlf did not rush her. “No—not like that, exactly. More like…somebody seeing land after a long time at sea, or coming home after being gone a long time. Like that.”
Rowlf was quiet, enjoying Jolalene and the moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Like that.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Kermit was the, um, friend I was telling you about before. You know, the one who things ended sort of badly for?”
“I figured,” said Jolalene, smiling lazily. “Maybe not so bad.” She pushed on Rowlf’s shoulders and he fell back onto his back, drawing her down with him.
“No,” said Rowlf, just before her mouth was on his. “Maybe not.”
The magic of Broadway is that it can take those in the audience out of their everyday life and make them believe they are in another place, in another world, in another time. But as realistic it may seem that a helicopter lands, or a lion is crowned king or a chandelier falls to the stage floor, the real real world is still there—waiting to claim those emerging from the limelight. While Piggy sang and danced her way through the bebop days of the 50's, the modern world was going on without her, and though she was not aware of what was happening outside the theater, she was very much a part of it.
Where Kermit had been dragged kicking and screaming into the technological arena, Piggy had eased into it fluidly, and she could text, tweet and trend with the best of them. But while proficient in the ways of tech talk, Piggy was not a slave to them. Although she would have been roundly accused of heresy, Piggy considered technology a means to an end—not an end unto itself. Her phone was somewhere in her dufflebag, which was somewhere in the girls dressing room, and she hadn’t given it a second thought since she put it there earlier in the day.
Her castmates—at least some of them—had been rocked in the cradle of technology, and there was more than one desultory phone-feed check between scenes, which sort of explained what happened. Trudy was looking for Academy Awards news, trying to find out what the buzz was on the opening number, when she got more information on the preshow—and Miss Piggy—than she had bargained for.
Seeing her with her mouth hanging open and her eyes almost popping with surprise, Darcy went over to look.
“What’s up, Buttercup?” Darcy teased, looking over her friend’s shoulder. “Did you see your friend on stage?” One of the backup dancers was someone Trudy knew, and she’d been talking about hoping to catch a glimpse of him onstage, but all thoughts of the friend were forgotten when she saw what was on the phone’s palm-sized screen.
“Well, I never,” said Darcy. “That—what—that can’t be right! Isn’t that Piggy’s frog? What on earth is he doing with his arm around—oh! Oh! That picture is even worse!” In the picture that was on the screen now, Kermit was standing with his arm around a well-known torso and he was looking up at her with a hard-to-decipher expression. First glance, it looked a little like the comically exasperated look that anyone who had seen Piggy and Kermit on stage together would see. A little.
There was a hasty knock on the door, and then Harrison barged right in without waiting for permission or even acknowledgment. More than once, Darcy had charged that it was a calculated move to catch them halfway dressed , and Harrison had simply grinned cheekily and offered no denial.
“Hey!” he said urgently. “Do any of you ladies have any—what? What’s wrong?” He moved up next to Trudy, looking over her shoulder, and his own jaw almost hit the floor. “What! Are you kidding me?” He took the phone from her hands and turned it horizontal, but the image stayed the same. In the picture, Kermit the frog stood with his arm around a very-well-known figure, his little green hand presumably resting on her very-well-known backside. He started to read the accompanying story, but only made it about twelve words into it before sputtering in consternation and disbelief.
“The little creep!” he spat. “Why, somebody ought to take him outside and--"
The doorway was suddenly full of muscles and testosterone. “I don’t want to interrupt your tweeting,” Rory practically roared, “but if you can tear yourselves away we are in the middle of a show! Get off the phone and get your rumps out on—“
There was a strangled sound and then Rory stopped cold. Harrison loosened his hold on the back of Rory’s head because it was no longer necessary to direct his attention to the picture on the phone—the picture now in his hand. He stared, his mouth gaping dumbly, and then shook himself like a fighter shaking off a punch.
“We can’t do this now,” said Rory. “I—it’s bad, but we can’t—she mustn’t see this until—“
“See what?” said Piggy from the doorway, and everything fell apart.
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Cute, cute joke.
Annoying? I? Surely you jest. I am nothing if not loveable, and eager to help whenever I can.
Hey, I'll have you know that's the quickest way to get inta a guy's heart.
Did someone say something about '"fish"?
Aren't they supposed to present something together? 
Oh, that's not gonna be good....
*smugly* Told you.