And yet again....
Chapter 79: What You Don’t Know--Yet
Piggy looked toward the hostess in time to see her dinner date arriving. A comfortable-looking woman in a leopard-print skirt and black sweater looked in the direction the hostess pointed, saw Piggy and waved. She slid into the little booth breathlessly, one hand attempting to smooth her unruly strawberry-blonde curls.
“Rain,” she muttered, then flashed a big grin. “I’m so glad you returned my call, Piggy,” she said earnestly. “I was worried I’d missed you, and I’m only in town until tomorrow.”
A waiter appeared as if by conjuring, took their drink order and promised to return to take their food order, but Piggy made an almost infinitesimal motion with her satin-gloved hand and he heeled obediently.
“Yes?”
Piggy ordered for them, thoroughly and without fuss. The waiter beamed at her choices, bobbed slightly and scurried away. Her companion watched in amusement.
“You’ve got them well-trained,” she commented dryly, and Piggy allowed a small smile of satisfaction to grace her lips.
“Practice,” she said smoothly. “When Moi lived in New York, we ate out almost every meal and you get in the habit of knowing what you want.”
Her companion leaned forward, her face cupped in her hands and a wicked smile on her face. “Speaking of knowing what you want….”
Piggy sighed and blushed a little. “Well….” she hedged.
“You promised!” her friend said. “C’mon, Piggy. It’s been ages. I haven’t seen you since our class. Remember how we promised to tell each other everything?” When Piggy looked alarmed and then away, her friend laughed and patted her hand reassuringly. “Okay—not everything. That would take too long. So tell me about this frog of yours.” Her face was serious, intent. “I’ve worried about you. I want to know you finally found true love.”
Piggy turned her electric blue eyes back to her friend, and there was no longer any doubt.
“Oh!” said her companion softly. “Oh, Piggy—I’m so glad. Tell me—people say he’s the nicest, um, frog in the business. I know what I read in the papers, but I don’t believe any of it. Was it love at first sight? Did he melt the first time he saw you?”
Piggy made an unladylike noise. “Not exactly,” she said. She smiled, her face luminous, but still she hesitated, looking unsure about what to say. “I don’t know,” she said, suddenly pensive. “With all the gossip flying, I don’t know if I should even be talking about…us.”
“Not to worry,” her friend said. She pulled a set of papers and a pen from her briefcase purse and laid them on the table. “I thought you might be nervous. I brought something along to reassure you.”
Food appeared as if by magic and was set enticingly on the table. The women smiled their thanks.
Quizzically, Piggy took the papers and looked at them, making an attractive little pucker between her eyes. “Is this…a contract?” She turned the papers over and looked at the back. “What kind of contract?”
“This paper says that I have the right to represent you in a real estate deal in our home state.”
“But—but I’m not buying property.”
“I know,” said her friend patiently. “I’m not expecting you to buy anything—or sell anything. But if you sign the paper, it gives me the legal right to represent you—and it gives you the right to insist that anything you tell me remain confidential.” Her old friend smiled at her. “There—if I repeat anything you tell me, I could lose my license. How’s that for reassurance?”
“Oh,” said Piggy, flustered. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” said her friend. “So just sign the stupid paper and spill your guts. Okay?”
That did it. Piggy giggled. She ignored the proffered ballpoint and pulled a lavender pen from her little clutch, then wrote, “Piggy the Frog” in great, loopy letters in purple ink.
“Feel better?” her friend teased.
“I—this is so silly.”
“Exactly. But I understand how important your privacy is to you, and I want you to understand that I get that. And you.” She grinned broadly. “So dig in, and tell me about Kermit. Not a pushover?”
“Are you kidding? Kermit had a shell as hard as a turtle--on the outside.”
Her friend looked at her expectantly. “And on the inside?”
“A complete softie,” Piggy said, “but not a pushover. In fact, sometimes it was fun to push all his buttons just to see where the elevator would land.”
“A little risky,” her companion said dryly. They appetizers were disappearing, the entrees steaming in readiness.
“True,” Piggy conceded, her expression dreamy. “Sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes it backfired, and he avoided me for weeks.” She turned and looked at her friend, sighing happily. “But when it worked--oh, when it worked....”
“You’ve been together for a long time.”
“Yes,” Piggy said. “From the beginning.” She looked down shyly. “Oh, you know Moi was working before I met Kermit, but it wasn’t the kind of work I wanted to do. It was piecemeal, and some of it was stuff that I hope never surfaces on the late, late, late, late, late show.”
Her friend’s face must have registered some alarm, because Piggy leaned forward and put a hand on her arm.
“Nothing trashy,” Piggy said quickly. “Just stuff that wasn’t exactly great theater. B-movies with creatures from outer space, a couple of movies where I played some sort of Amazon in the jungle, a couple of waitress-with-a-heart-of-gold gigs. Those were easy, and probably the most emotionally believable things Moi did back then. I didn’t know much about my craft--I didn’t even realize it was a craft then. It seemed...it seemed like magic to me then, trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t.”
“But that changed with Kermit.”
Piggy’s face broke into a wonderful smile. “Yes, but first there was Marty.”
“Marty, your agent?”
“Yes,” Piggy said, dipping her biscotti into her vanilla coffee. She had largely ignored her entrée, but coffee and dessert had been pulled to center stage. “What a dear. Saw me in a commercial--he was there with one of his own clients--and came to talk to me afterwards. Said it seemed obvious that I didn’t have anyone looking out for me. Asked me if I needed someone to ‘handle” me.” Piggy looked up, and her eyes were frank. “Trust me, I’d had plenty of offers to get ‘handled,’ but I could tell he was different. He was--he was blunt. Told me he didn’t represent tramps and girls who were just hoping to get by on their looks. I wasn’t either of those things, but I was scared to death anyway. I just remember nodding and staring at him, this funny little man with the half-chewed cigar who looked and talked so tough. I guess I must have looked terrified, because he took me out for a cup of cocoa and a waffle afterward. It was the first decent thing that anyone had done for me since I’d started acting.”
Piggy looked down and played with the remaining half of her biscotti, finally snapping it in two and eating both halves hastily as though to be rid of the thing. She played with the ring on her finger instead, running it back and forth with the index finger of her other hand.
“Marty helped me find a decent apartment with another actress he knew. Nice girl--sortof deadly earnest--but very sweet. Was grateful for a room-mate, kept everything neat.” She smiled. “I wasn’t any tidier with my clothes then than I am now--but I had a lot less of them. It worked out real well until she went on the road with a musical, then I moved into a nicer place with a couple of other girls. That was--it was okay,” she said, obviously repressing something she’d been about to confide. “It wasn’t a particularly good match--too many fights about the bathroom and one of the girls professed to be a vegetarian, but....” Piggy shook herself, then favored her friend with a penetrating stare. “Moi is chasing rabbits again--what was I telling you?”
“Marty?” her friend said helpfully.
“Oh, yes. What a lovely man. He charged me ten percent, and insisted that Moi open a savings account and put another ten percent in it. That meant I was living on eighty percent of not much, but the work kept coming. Nice work, too. Always things that paid decent and gave me some exposure. Marty took me on meetings sometimes and let me show off my table manners. Taught me how to look interested but not eager, and introduced me to some very big players along the way. Most of them didn’t hire me, but they remembered me later. Some of them after I got my big start, but he was showing me how the game was played.”
“You played it pretty well, I’ll wager,” said her companion, giving a fair imitation of Piggy’s see-through-you look.”
“He said Moi was his star pupil,” said Piggy. Her cheeks colored slightly, but she smiled fondly at the memory. “No one had ever done anything nice for me before without expecting something costly in return. I had never been able to lean on anyone before, but there were times when Marty was there for me. One time, I got so sick I couldn’t leave the apartment. Marty and his wife came and got me--took me to their house and took care of me.”
Her companion registered surprise. “I didn’t know Marty was married.”
“Oh, sure,” said Piggy. “Frieda was a doll.”
“How’d they meet?”
“He saw her at an audition. Stopped her afterward, told her she was awful and ought to consider another line of work.”
“Oh my. I don’t imagine that went well.”
“I suppose not, at first anyway. She was pretty devastated, but I think she must have known he was right. He took her out for a cup of coffee and they talked most of the night. Next morning, she thanked him for the coffee and the advice and said was going to catch the next bus for home. He told her to stay, said he’d find her a job.”
“And did he?”
“Of course. She started out doing secretarial work--learned to type a little. When he decided it wouldn’t hurt her pride, he asked her to work for him. A little after that, he asked her to marry him. Told her it would save him money cause he wouldn’t have to pay her as much.”
Her friend laughed out loud. “You are making this up!”
“I swear I’m not. She took the secretarial job, but she put him off on the marriage proposal. Finally, after about a year of working with him, she marched into his office and said that she would marry him--but not if she had to take a pay cut.”
“Sounds like Marty had met his match.”
“Ohhh yeah,” said Piggy. “They were the perfect couple.” A shadow fell across her countenance, but she waved it away after a moment. “Frieda died about ten years ago--cancer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah--it was a rough time. I thought he might retire, but it turns out that work was the only thing that saved him. If he hadn’t had to go to work everyday, I don’t know what would have happened to him. It was a difficult first year.”
“Did Marty and Frieda have any kids?”
Piggy smiled, a little sadly. “Just us--his show kids.”
“Does Marty have any family?”
“He has a twin brother, Maury, who lives in Pasadena.”
“Oh, good. Are they close?
“They bicker a lot, so yes, I’d say they were very close.”
“Speaking of bickering....”
“Moi is getting to that,” Piggy said with a pretty little pout. She smiled and sighed, her expression dreamy again. “Kermit,” she said softly. “How I met Kermit.”
The other woman sat perfectly still, waiting to hear what Piggy would say.
“Kermit was going to host this variety show,” Piggy said, all briskness and practicality. “This was another project with Jim, and Marty knew it would be good. The only thing was, they were planning to film in England.”
“Oh! How exciting!”
“And scary,” Piggy said. “If Moi was in England, I probably wouldn’t be able to get the commercial work that I had been getting--you know, girl in a grocery store, girl in a restaurant, girl looking at a car. That sort of thing. Those were my bread-and-butter back then. So if I took the show, it would have to be a good job, a good-paying job.”
Piggy smiled, and some memory flared behind her eyes that she did not stop to share. “Marty set up a meeting with Jim and Kermit and some of the other folks that worked on the show. There was Jerry Juhl, who wrote most of the stuff that Jim didn’t write. And, um, Jerry Nelson, who did--Oh, and a man named Frank Oz. He was wonderfully funny, and he and Jim had the most marvelous chemistry. You never knew what was going to happen when those two got together.”
“So, how’d the meeting go?”
“It was interesting. Moi was sitting across the table from Kermit, and he kept sneaking looks at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.”
“How did you know that?”
“Cause Moi was sneaking looks at him when I thought he wasn’t looking at me.” Her expression softened. “He...he liked me. I could tell. And he was very sweet.”
“I--they wanted me to audition, see what I could do. I didn’t have a lot of experience on stage, but I could do a lot of different things. I could sing and dance and I wasn’t afraid to take a fall to get a laugh.”
“What did you do for them?”
“I sang, did a little tap-dancing, then I saw Kermit lean over and whisper something to Jim.”
“Do you know what he said?”
“I had a pretty good idea, because then they asked if I could follow someone--you know, Fred and Ginger stuff.”
“I’m guessing I don’t have to ask who volunteered to be your partner,” her friend said dryly.
“No,” Piggy said with a little smile. “So we did that for a while--a pretty good while. They they wanted me to sing again, so Kermit and I sang a duet.”
“Do you remember what you sang?”
Another unladylike snort. “Anything you can do I can do better, from Annie, Get Your Gun.”
“Who picked that?”
“Frank did.” She blushed a little. “He took an interest in me, right from the beginning. He was always thinking up things for me to do on the show.”
“Well, I know you got the part, but--”
“Wait. I got a part. There wasn’t actually a starring role--just a spot in the chorus.”
“The chorus? What did Marty say?”
“After the meeting, Marty sat me down and gave me one of those looks--the kind of look that you give someone when you’re telling them something they don’t want to know.”
“And that was--?”
“He said, as my agent, that he didn’t recommend me taking the part they offered. It wasn’t a big enough part, not enough money, not enough exposure, I’d have to leave Hollywood, blah, blah, blah.”
“And--?”
“And then he said, as my friend, that he thought I ought to take it. He said he knew Jim, and he knew that whatever Jim did would be good, would be okay. And then he gave me the other look.”
“Which look was that?”
“The one that my Daddy used to give me. The one that said to watch myself.”
“Why--who was he worried about? Surely not Jim, and I can’t believe he’d be worried about Kermit.”
“He wasn’t worried about Jim. Or Kermit.”
“Then...oh. Oh.”
“Yes. He was worried about me. I guess he could tell that Moi was pretty smitten, and he knew how I could be when I wanted something.” Piggy looked up, and a telling blush crept up her cheeks. “Sometimes I think back, and I can’t believe I did some of the things I did, said some of the things I said. But I was young, and full of confidence and sass and, I don’t know, the whole atmosphere of the show just invited zaniness. It was hard not to get caught up in the spirit of things.” Piggy stopped and looked at her friend. “And then one day, we were doing this glee club scene. Moi was just supposed to be part of the chorus, but then Frank pulled me aside and whispered in my ear.” She smiled broadly. “And I did it. I stepped out of the chorus, just like Fanny Brice.”
“What did Kermit do?”
“Oh, he was mortified, but I think he liked it, too. After that, he looked at me different, treated me different.”
“Did he ask you out?”
“Not right away, but he was always, I don’t know, hovering. Sometimes we had male guest stars, and there were always fellas backstage. If anyone paid too much attention to me, he interfered.”
“You dated him, though.”
Piggy shrugged.
“But I thought...”
Piggy tried to explain. “Sortof. Dinner after the show, sometimes dancing.” She shrugged again and smiled. “He was careful never to make it seem too planned. Kermit was a master at capturing impromptu moments and taking advantage of them.”
“Did he declare himself?”
“No,” Piggy said sadly. “He--that wasn’t his way. But I knew, and he knew I knew, and that was, well, that was how we carried on for a long time.”
Her friend raised her eyebrows. “Any actual carrying on?”
Piggy looked scandalized. “Absolutely not! I never--that wasn’t the way Moi was brought up. And, well, Kermit was old-fashioned, too. He would never have, um, wanted....” Piggy looked up, her eyes full of mischief now. “Well, he might have wanted, but he wouldn’t have respected me. It’s one thing to get a man’s attention--that’s fairly easy. It’s quite another thing to keep it. I never wanted to just catch his eye--I wanted all of him.”
“And now you have him.”
“Yes. All of him,” Piggy said with satisfaction.
Her companion was smiling now, looking fondly at her friend and her huge diamond anniversary ring. “I love happily ever after.”
Piggy smiled and swished the coffee around in her cup. “Especially the after part.”
And the only sound after that was giggling.
“Have a nice time with your friend?” Kermit asked, taking her violet wool coat and smart little tam and hanging them on the coat tree. He had met her at the door, his tie loose, his collar unbuttoned, his flippers freed from footwear, but it was obvious he’d only been home a few moments.
“I did,” said Piggy. “We hadn’t seen each other in ages, and it was sooo nice to talk to someone who knew me when.”
Kermit leaned in and kissed her. “I like knowing you now,” he said, and Piggy reached out and grabbed his necktie, prolonging the contact until she felt she’d received a proper greeting.
“Hmm,” she sighed. She took in his tired face, his business clothes. “What about you, Sweetie. Did you just get off work?”
“Busy day,” Kermit said. “I’m glad you didn’t have to sit home and wait for me.”
Later, Piggy would remember that he hadn’t actually answered her question.
“I like knowing you now, too,” she said, and took his hand in hers. She started toward the kitchen.
“Did you eat? I think Francois left some veggie chilli—“
“I’m not hungry,” Kermit said. “We ordered sandwiches.”
“You and Scooter?” she asked. “You’re going to get on Sara’s list.”
Kermit looked so uncomfortable, Piggy hastened to reassure him. She assumed he was upset about being on Sara’s short list, and the idea amused her. Dear Kermit! He was worried about getting Scooter in hot water at home. She pulled him into a warm embrace, glad to be snuggling her frog.
Piggy was almost right. Kermit was worried, but—for the time being—he simply enjoyed being snuggled by his wife. After the news he’d had today, he’d take all the comfort he could get.
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. I really liked how you portrayed how her and Kermit met and the whole showbiz spin you put on everything, definitely seems like a very realisitic way that it could have happened.