Chapter 9
Their job opportunities weren’t turning out as well as they had initially thought, or even dared to hope. The first interview finished with the skinny red-haired hotshot interviewer flying into a wall at the end of Miss Piggy's cuff. The next had been fine, for as long as it lasted, which was approximately ten seconds, just long enough for the frighteningly fat fingered man to point his pasty-white digit at Gonzo and scream that, "No weirdoes are allowed in my store! I won't allow friggin' freak-loaders in my store. Get your freak-loading freak nose out of my store, freak."
Gonzo had taken his freak-loading freak nose out of the store, and pronto.
The third and fourth interviews went off without a hitch, but even though Piggy jealously guarded her psychic phone as if it were the last slither of lemon custard pie, there were no phone calls offering a five-hundred-dollars a year wage, or any wage, in fact. There were no phone calls.
At the apartment, Miss Piggy cooked their meals, and Gonzo scraped up months of mess. He washed pans, moved nick-nacks, straightened furniture. She tried to mend the leaking sink and succeeded in drenching herself with stale dishwater. She hadn't been impressed, but the sink had started working.
Gonzo was making about as much progress with the Christmas tree as they were with everything else on their plate, that is, none. Whenever he tried to shift the springy spine covered thing, its needles danced every which way, scattering like an explosion of sparks across the entire room. On about the twentieth attempt, Miss Piggy had yelled from the cooker that they were now having tree-spine soup and would he please just quit while he was ahead.
"But I am not ahead yet!" Gonzo had yelled back, half buried behind the tree. "I'm not even started!"
"Well start!" Miss Piggy shouted.
"I did! And you said to stop!"
"Then stop!"
"I will not!"
"Why not?!"
"Because, I have started, and I'm not finished!" Gonzo yelled.
It should have been the most obvious thing in the world, but it obviously wasn't because when Miss Piggy spun around from the cooker, she was furious. She slammed the soup pan into the sink, splashing old soap-stained water over the dry counters. "Alright! Fine! Vous can make the dinner from what vous can provide, since Moi's soup is being destroyed by you!"
"Great!" Gonzo said, snarkily. "Just great! Then V O Ooze can just get this tree out of our living room!"
"Oh, what, so suddenly it's
our living room, hm? Last I heard, this living room belonged to Moi and moi's kitties! Not and never you!"
"Oh really."
"Yes really."
"Oh really!"
"Yes! Really!"
"Then explain why I have been sleeping right there," he pointed. "On the floor for the last three weeks."
"Because…" She stopped midway into a perfectly rounded reason because she didn't actually have one. "Um..."
"Yeah, exactly. Because." Gonzo pushed past her to the sink and dragged the dripping pan out of the water. "Well, we can't eat this," he said.
Miss Piggy glared at him and strode in the opposite direction, clapping her tough rubber gloves around the thin trunk of the dead tree. She marched it over the carpet to the window, shredding needles that dropped onto the backs of her kitties. Yanking the window up hard, she shoved the pointy end of the tree through the open crack and shoved. The scraggily tree arms clung to the window panes and she pushed and it didn't move
"Aaaah-aaah-aarg!" She slapped her hands against her thighs and released the tree so that it dropped onto the floor. "Great. Just perfectimont. Merry Christmas, tree."
Gonzo set the pan down on the counter. "Did you want a-" He was going to say 'hand?', but one glare from the fierce blue porcine eyes indicated that, no thank vous, she did not need his help. Instead of finishing the question, Gonzo changed course, crossed the room and lifted the tree himself. "Can you…maybe, help me with this?" he asked.
Miss Piggy wiped her gloved hands on her apron as she considered. Finally, she let out a breath. "Alright, alright, alright." Leaning together on the bush they wrangled it further out the window then, with a final push, sent it free-wheeling down to the street below where it was greeted with angry shouts and unpleasant expletives.
Miss Piggy tugged on her apron, placed her fists on her hips and tried to remain angry while suppressing a sudden urge to giggle. Gonzo moved back to the cooker area and started digging through cupboards for tinned food, trying to remain grouchy and suppressing an urge to giggle.
Outside their door, a face leant against the broken panel and an eye watched the two moving together to find food and room to live. Carefully, the face lifted away from the door and the man clasped his hands together, suppressing an urge to scream.
*****
Sleeping arrangements hadn't caused any difficulty. Since Gonzo was the guest at the house Piggy had decided to simply force herself to ignore him when it came to sleep time and she had just settled herself on her sofa, fully-dressed, covered with a blanket. Her kitties crawled along the back of the purple sofa.
Gonzo had stood in the middle of the room on that second night and watched her shut her eyes. She had struggled to maintain their shut-ness and her eyelids fluttered, long lashes batting against her cheeks. But she had managed to elude his notion that she would be uncomfortable sleeping in a room with a guy she hardly knew, by tapering her breathing into something akin to slow sleepy in-and-outs.
Gonzo had eventually just sat down, cross-legged, on the floor with his back against a wall, and woke up lying flat with a rug draped carefully over him during the night.
After that, the arrangements had stayed that way, with him stuck on the floor and Miss Piggy on the couch. She had once, out of guilt or panic, offered him her bed in the bedroom since she chose to stay couch-side, but Gonzo had recognised from her eyes that she didn't want anybody else to go into her bedroom any more than she wanted to go in there herself.
So he refused to give up the comfort of the floor. It was harder than a bed, anyway, more like the luxury of the streets he used to lounge on.
*****
The handkerchief sized park was deserted. Fleshy new buds of sticky brown roundness emerged from twigs that rattled on trees in the cold chill wind which flurried across the rippling surface of a small inky-pond, whirling around the bench where Gonzo now sat with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hand watching the ripples.
Miss Piggy had managed to grab herself an interview at a small trinket store in Bitterman Plaza and Gonzo had let himself wonder over here as he waited for her. Everything about the park was familiar, and yet distant, like daja vu. The park was familiar, and yet distant, like daja vu.
He stood up from the bench and knelt beside the pond to dip his finger into the cold water, to feel the ripples flow past. They were like life, those ripples, and he was like his finger. Ripples of life and time just moved around him and he just stayed where he was without moving forward or backward.
Gonzo unlaced his trainers.
It was about time that changed. Why should he be the one staying still while the world moved. Why not the other way about? He un-buttoned his shirt and pulled the sleeves away from his arms, folding the material into a neat pile on his shoes. He dragged himself to his feet, brushed stray wispy hairs back on his head and dove into the pond, immediately hit by the icy cold of the freezing water.
It was a tiny pond and one stroke dragged him to the bottom where he opened his eyes to peer through the murky liquid that soaked into his fur. He patted the mud bed, accidentally swirling dirt into the mix and loosing what underwater vision he had. His lungs begged for air and he agreed with them, scooting back to the surface and opening his mouth to drag in a lungful.
He allowed himself only the smallest respite before sinking back under the freezing cold water to search the slimy surface of the mud bed by feel. His fingers closed around something solid, rectangular and bitty, wrapped in mossy-slime.
Gonzo tugged the brick free from the tentacle weeds that held it in place and resurfaced holding his prize as water streamed down his fur.
He was startled and surprised to see Miss Piggy standing beside the water's edge staring at him in shock or horror, or perhaps an unhealthy mix of the two.
Gonzo started shivering, but clung to the brick with both hands.
"Gonzo?" Miss Piggy gasped. "What are you doing?"
*****
Miss Piggy switched the electric cooker on high and banged the plastic oven door open, letting the heat escape in a blush of hot air that tumbled out into the apartment. Gonzo shivered uncontrollably, still clinging to his brick as his fur clung to his skin. He'd managed to get his shoes on and sling his shirt over his shoulders, but the buttons were not yet buttoned.
Miss Piggy closed the apartment door and returned to the kitchen area where Gonzo stood, dripping on the carpet. She hurried into the bathroom and dragged a pink towel free from the shelves. "Here. Stand on this."
"It'll get muddy."
"It's that or the floor, bucko."
"Yeah, but the floor's already mucky," Gonzo insisted.
"Fine." Piggy placed the towel in his hands. "But seriously, vous have got to get dry."
Gonzo's brain ached from shivering. "Alright." He buried his face in the towel and rubbed his nose. "But I've been in that pond before you know. I didn't freeze then, and it was colder outside."
Piggy's eyebrows tilted. "Why?" she demanded as she moved Mr Meowmeow aside with her foot and reached into a cupboard for a saucepan. "Why were you in the pond?"
"Because…" Gonzo interrupted himself with a shaking fit of shivers which he finally managed to control. "Because I threw Amy in there," he said.
Miss Piggy froze, ironic considering the circumstances. The saucepan scraped against the top hob of the cooker. "Who's Amy?" she asked.
*****
Fozzie and Rowlf were settled. Not completely settled, but rather they were settled like salt in an egg-timer, pilled against the edge and ready to tumble, yet still, settled and in place.
Rowlf spent most of his time writing. He was working on a book, something he called 'The History of Life.' It was very epic, apparently, and he wrote it page after page in a notebook, then typed it up on a typewriter and stacked the pages together in a drawer, which he locked.
Fozzie spent his time recovering from his history, eating a lot and sleeping a lot. He told Rowlf that he needed to find a job to pay him back for his hospitality, but Rowlf replied that employment was scarce at the moment. Besides, he then reminded the bear, he already had a job he should be working on, namely his future.
Rowlf had then climbed into a small attic and carried down a cob-web drawn typewriter. He'd placed the machine down on a small desk and stacked a pile of yellowing paper on one side. "When this is all there," he said, indicating the other side of the typewriter. "You are ready."
"What am I doing?" Fozzie had asked.
"You tell me."
"Writing…jokes?"
"Nope. Not exactly," Rowlf said, sitting down on the edge of the desk. "The keyboard is an extension of your fingers," he said. "You'll be telling jokes, but you'll be writing from your heart. Make a portfolio. Try doing a script. Unless I'm much mistaken, you need to put something together that will impress Miss Bitterman."
Fozzie began timidly at first, and in his head the tap of every keystroke was an angry retort from a murmuring crowd, but that changed as he typed faster and the clattering of the keys became smatterings of applause, then a standing ovation as his imaginary audience of long-stemmed keys rose to their feet, throwing hands and hats into the air, whistling and cheering, shouting for more. He smiled, and typed.
They were settled, but Rowlf couldn't quite shake the feeling that their egg-timer was about to tip over.
*****
"Who is Amy?" Miss Piggy asked and her snout trembled with contained anger.
Gonzo's eyelids receded, widening his eyes. "Didn't I tell you about her?"
"No." Her answer was a growl, but she managed to flick her head at the same time, tossing her short hair as if she were honestly little concerned with the answer. "So who is she?" she asked again.
Gonzo stepped up to the sink and placed the brick down inside. He ran water from the cold tap, rubbing green slime off the rough edges of the brick with his fingers. Pond-scum swirled around the sink and plunged into the plughole.
For a moment, Miss Piggy found herself distracted from her angry surprise by the faint smell of the pond-scum. She caught the corner of the scent on the air and inhaled. "Oh," she exclaimed, surprised by a sudden recognition of the odour, but then again, no, she didn't recognise it, it was just...What was it?
She cleared her head by shaking it. "Who is Amy?" she asked a third time.
Gonzo lifted his brick out of the sink and dabbed it dry with the towel. He lifted his eyes to meet Piggy's. "Miss Piggy," he said. "Meet Amy the Dancing Brick. She's, er, she's a brick and she can…dance."
Whatever answer she had been expecting, dancing bricks didn't quite cut it. Miss Piggy blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Gonzo failed to see any evidence of belief in Miss Piggy's eyes. "Amy is…" He adjusted his hold on the rock. "…she was…ah…" Be was beginning to realise how odd this sounded. "I found her." He shrugged. "I called her Amy. She-"
"-dances, yeah, I know, I get it." Miss Piggy folded her arms and eyed the brick suspiciously. "How?"
"With much...difficulty, and…er…panache." Gonzo stared at Amy and realised that she was a brick, lying lifeless on the edge of the sink. He was sure she used to be… more than that.
Miss Piggy poked the brick with one rubber-gloved finger. "I don't understand," she said.
Neither did he. There was a time when Amy had seemed as real to him as anything that lived and breathed, but now, she was a brick. Amy never had danced, had she? Gonzo opened his mouth, then closed it. When he had needed a friend, Amy had been there as a constant companion, now though he had a friend, Miss Piggy, so, "I don't think I need her any more." His voice was unexpectedly loud. "Do I?"
Miss Piggy made an effort to find an answer. She settled on, "Maybe not," and left it at that.
Gonzo carried the brick out of their apartment..
Miss Piggy scooped the pink towel up from off the damp floor and was hit once again by the hint of a smell of pond-scum. She pushed her face against the towel and breathed, tasting the tangy scent in her mouth. "Kerwin?" she murmured, questioning herself, her memory, and the world.
"Piggy?" Gonzo had arrived back in the doorway and was watching her with curiosity.
Miss Piggy dropped the towel and it fluttered to the floor. "Oh! Gonzo. Um…we um…we need to get some dinner," she said, flustered. "Hungry, hungry! Gotta put first things first." She pulled the fridge open with a plop. "Need to feed the kitties."
Gonzo approached the towel with care, balled it up and threw it like a cannon-ball into a waiting washing-basket.
To be continued
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