Chapter 1
Dirty pans were piled in a sink. A broken door, patched with two slats of dark, mismatched wood was bolted tight with a dozen iron locks. Memorabilia of past days draped over crowded counters. A Christmas tree had been pushed to the corner of the room at some point since New Year, and its dry pine needles sprinkled the faded green carpet.
The apartment was cramped with furniture haphazardly scattered, a sofa, a chair, a double-leaf table with rusted hinges stuck forever open in half size, and a throw-rug which had half shifted up the wall. One corner of the rug curled back on itself. Round, yet frog-like pillows were tossed to and fro here, there, and everywhere.
A photo frame tottered near the edge of a chest of drawers, snug next to a black phone. The photo was aged, and the frame was plastic. In the photo a pig stood proud in photo-poise. A velvet robe hung from her shoulders, and she smiled so gloriously. Miss Bogen County. Beauty queen. She had been a beauty queen, once.
A shock of black dreadlocks lay in a pile on the floor tied in a handkerchief. They were some kind of wig that a cat was clawing at. The cat was grey, flicking its nails in and out at the wig and hissing as though about to bite it.
Another cat lay stretched out on her back on the arm of the sofa, showing off a white belly.
A black stockinged foot reached up and rubbed against the cat's stomach, then pulled back. A hand dropped off the edge of the sofa, attached to pale plump arms, and a body that had once been that of a drama queen, but now was going to waste. Thick eyelashes pulled back from pale blue eyes then closed again, opened again, and focused on the world. Short-cropped hair was sleep tangled, and a thin blanket was caught around one delicate ankle.
She was the pig from the picture, but a damaged, second-hand copy. She lifted her arms in a stretch, and smacked her lips, thinking of shutting her eyes again. It was morning and she knew that because the sun was attempting to peak through a scanty window, half covered in tattered Venetian blinds and half covered in Frog-shaped anti-fly stickers.
"Good morning, Mr Meowmeow," Piggy murmured, tickling the cat with her toes. She worked her way to sitting and a card box slipped off her lap onto the floor. The box was a heart-shaped chocolate box, long empty. Piggy reached down, lifted it, and placed it among the frog pillows.
Another day. Another nightmere.
She untangled the blanket from her foot or her foot from the blanket and pulled it up around her shoulders again. Mmmm. She and sank back onto the froggy-colour, cushiony goodness and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again she panicked. One look at the cat-shaped clock on her wall, tail ticking the time away, told her she was already waiting to be fired. "Oh! Oh oh! Mummy's late!" She sat up so fast that she kicked Mr Meowmeow flying. She jumped off the couch, tripped over a pile of cat toys and sprawled her way towards the bathroom. "I'm alright!" she called as she leapt into the shower and slammed the door.
Twenty-seven minutes later she arrived at work.
*****
"I'm sorry, I'm late!" Piggy shouted, bursting through the revolving glass doors into the entrance of 'Voi Perfumes.' "Hello Darlings! Good morning! Morning Marie, hello Sara dear." Her voice was loud, overpowering and full. Her clothes were big and bright with big shoes and a bright half-sleeve shirt showing her pink elbows. She waved red gloves a regular customer, as she waltzed through the entrance, and out a door to the reception office behind the main desk. Glancing back, only her eyes showed the dark pain inside.
"Oh, ahahe, hi," Piggy stopped, flushed, and surprised by the man sitting on her desk.
The black man's fleshy face bit into a false smile. "Good morning, Ms Piggy. I think. I think it's a good morning, but is it? Is it good?"
"Umm…" She searched his face for the correct answer, but she couldn't read an answer in his pink eyes or the curl of his lip. "Yes?" she hazarded.
"No!" He stabbed, shooting his fist and fat finger toward her snout. "It is not a good day because you are late again! Late yesterday, late Monday, late Sunday!!! It's not good enough, Ms Piggy."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I can try, I can…" She faulted, her eyes dancing from the computer to the scanner and from the shredder to a black wastepaper basket. "I just don't always wake up, and I need…"
He stood up. "You need to get a life, pig. And, oh yeah, get a job."
She laughed, then blinked. "What? You're serious? What!"
"No questions, no answers."
"But-!"
"And defiantly, no buts."
"What if…maybe not a high-paid office job, but a minimum wage sales-person? Hmm?" She changed into a saleswoman voice and shouted, "Quelle Difference! Quelle Difference! It's feminine! It's French! It's…is it the slogan or the name?"
"It doesn't matter. You. Are. Fired. "
"Fired? Moi?"
"Read my lips," the man said.
"Yeah, well, fine, you know what, Moi just might not need your shoddy department store job anyway! So, you know what, I quit! What a difference! Quelle Difference! Not fired, quit! Vous can't even spell vous right!" She stormed into his face, grabbed his shoulders. "See? Fine! See any tears, Mr Macho Man?" No tears. Not on the outside anyways. "Not like you care, but I happen to have a life beyond here! A home, a family!" She shoved him back, thumping his chest. "So, ha! Moi am unconcerned about your perfume, your shop, and vous. Sorry, Voi." She poked his chest again, poked it rather hard, and he faltered backwards, into the desk.
"Oh, I just knew it would come to this," the man said. "Another Ms Piggy battle. Forget it, pig. Get out, or I get security to get your skinny butt out."
Piggy sniffed, turned on her delectably large high-heels and stalked away. "No butts," she snarled behind her.
*****
Black ink stamped on glossy paper stated February 24. A rusty nail held the calendar to the wall, surrounded by others in kind. Cat calendars, and frog ones, and leather backed organisers that were stashed all over the apartment for those "I'll-just-check-my-diary" type glitzy dates that never seemed to materialise.
Piggy pushed her apartment door open from outside softly. It closed behind her, and she let her ring of keys fall from her hand. A chorus of cat and kitten noises greeted her but she ignored their pleas for attention, slumping across the room and finding a place to sit.
A shrill ring burst from an old fashioned telephone, and Piggy stared at it, pleading the thing to just hang itself up. It rang again, twice, and she got up. Snatching the receiver into her gloved hand she started shouting her tag-line, "Hello dahlins! Miss Piggy knows your answers!" she said, loud and proud. "Miss Piggy is for entertainment purposes only, participants must be eighteen or older, calls cost two ninety-five a minute." That over she continued. "What can I tell you, my dear? Oh, really, mmhmm, that's too bad dahlin. Yeah, let me see what I get through for your future honey. Oh! Moi sees a brand new job, in acting, a small stage show maybe, or something bigger, yes, bigger. Oh, and the director, your love. He loves you! And you love him! I see it! But, he doesn't want to show it, you gotta chase it! And suddenly, you have a reason to live, because of your frog, and you won't have to come home alone every night, and feed your cats from stinking tins, and sit alone on a sofa as they play with your fake Jamaican psychic wig." As she spoke, the phone slipped out of her fingers, cord stretching, and she started crying. She bundled it back up and stuck her mouth to the receiver. "I'm sorry, look, I had a bad day, and…please, don't hang up. I need someone to talk to. Hello?"
She slumped onto the floor and pressed her back against a wooden cabinet.
*****
March is a bad time for finding jobs.
Piggy dabbed smudged make-up off her eyes in front of a mirror. Another interview finished with the same words, "We're sorry but…" She didn't fit their criteria. Wasn't what they were looking for. They didn't need someone with her many and varied talents. She didn't have references, and they needed references, please! We're sorry but she happened to be a pig, a pig whose ex-boss had bad-mouthed over town.
Piggy looked at her face once more, and walked out of the lady's toilets into drizzle.
She paused outside a jewellers, and pressed her face to the glass. Emerald rings, and sapphire necklaces sparkled. The bearded-owner glared at her fiercely, and she hurried on.
Thunder rattled off the buildings in the plaza. Big, fat drops of rain began falling and Miss Piggy ran towards a single telephone box at the edge of the plaza as the rain poured harder, then refurnished itself with hail. She ran faster, slammed into the door of the box, yanked it open and threw herself inside.
Hail pounded the plastic roof and glass walls of the box. Miss Piggy shivered, clutching her shopping bags to herself. She'd been out shoe shopping. She had a habit of buying shoes when she was depressed. Yes, they were a waste of money, but when you have nothing how can you waste it? Besides, these were strappy red high-heels and she had fallen in love with them the moment she saw them. Price, she informed the shop owner, was no problem. Oh, and did he have a job she could apply for?
He didn't.
Piggy pressed her shoulders against the glass and shut her eyes. She could feel the rain hitting the partition behind her. She lowered herself to the floor, and sat with one foot against the door, holding it firmly shut. Slowly her head drooped, the world swam, and she fell asleep.
A bang like a gun snapped her awake, but it wasn't a gun. The tapping was just a creature banging on the glass. It was dark now, and the hail had stopped and been replaced by trickles of water slipping down the sidewalk. The blue creature outside the telephone box was peering in, knocking with his fist. Piggy scrambled up, grabbing the handles of her plastic bags.
"Are you ok, ma'am?" the creature asked.
Piggy blinked sleep away, and saw him more clearly. His skin was blue, furred. He was shorter than herself, with a hooked nose that bent downwards. Several beautiful strands of hair blue in the light wind of the darkness. Pale light flickered from shop fronts. Miss Piggy nodded, slowly, eyes wide. The creature turned his head and she their eyes caught for the first time. Their eyes didn't just meet, they caught, latched on to one another with a desperate feeling that they had just found something they refused to let go of. The sensation hung between them. Miss piggy shivered.
"Hey, look, don't be scared of me." The creature moved backwards, lifting his hands to show no weapons on his body. "I am not going to hurt you."
Miss Piggy nodded slowly. The telephone box had leaked and the back of her dress was wet. She gently pushed the door of the telephone box open.
"I'm Gonzo. Are you alright?" the creature was saying. He spoke quite loudly and slowly, as though she were a foreigner and he wanted to be sure he got through to her. "I didn't want to wake you, but I figured you were maybe injured and…" He went on, but Piggy stopped hearing the words.
"Hello," she said.
Gonzo stopped speaking words. "Hi."
"Well, um, hello," she said, starting lamely again. "My name is Miss Piggy, moi am an actress slash model and…" she paused when she realised he was less than impressed with her excuses and attempts to deflect the reason she'd been asleep in a phone box in a rainstorm. "I fell asleep," she said.
"Are you alright? Do you have a home?"
"Pardon?"
His continued concern for her well being poured through their eye contact. "Do you have a…"
"Yeah, yeah, I heard what you said. Why did you ask?"
Gonzo rocked back on his heals and itched his nose. The nose fascinated her. "You were asleep in a telephone box," Gonzo said. "I used to do that sort of thing a lot. I figured maybe-"
"Oh, um, right, well, aha, that was not, eheh, usual for moi. In fact, I think I will just go home, to my comfortable apartment right away, thank you for, um, whatever…" Miss Piggy attempted to toss her hair, and stalk away, and then collapsed, slapping down on the paving stones. The bag broke, and her brand new strappy red sandals lay where they fell.
To be continued...
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