Pretty Paper
Part One
By Missy

SERIES: Pretty Paper
PART: 1 of ??
RATING: PG-13 (Adult themes and materials)
PAIRING(s): Rhonda/Squiggy; Lenny/Laverne; Eddie Izzard/Shirley (Hold the questions a bit, just hold onto them ;-)
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Drama
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: Post-Playing The Roxie. AU cannon after that.
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Squiggy's Lodge gives him a birthday gift that he'll never forget, while Laverne and Lenny meet a man whose unusual behavior makes an impression on Shirley.
NOTES: Started a week before Chesyre's birthday. Squiggy as a hero is so rarely done.

This is an alternate way of using Rhonda; I'm using Milwaukee cannon. Rhonda is still very much herself, but this is a different way for her to meet the gang.
The idea of strippers being raffled off to members of a lodge or fraternity is possibly an urban legend, but I got it from the painfully antiquated "Things You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask". Be happy I edited out the part about the donkey ;-)

Eddie Izzard is a cross-dressing British comedian. I am not transporting him to the '50's through some magical timewarp, nor is the overtly AU or Magicfic. Instead I've composited a lot of Eddie's RL behavior and attitudes and stuff from his routines and placed him within the '50's backdrop of repressive Milwaukee. So it's sort of RP AU fic. No snideness. Send me questions if you have them. In the words of Mister Izzard: "Good, I hope you're coming along with this".

This fic was beta-tested by Eva, for your protection!

***

For Cheshyre,
On the occasion of her birthday,
For forgiving me for starting that whole Matt/Jeff Hardy incest ball rolling.

****

"Minnow Squigman, you've done it again!"

Squiggy smiled, his pride clear. "Eh, it weren't nothing."

"No, this is quite a feast!" He gestured toward the full buffet table. The rest of the order swarmed over the pizzas the boys had brought, while Squiggy stood back, soaking in the praise.

He spun around, frustrated, at Lenny's repeated tugging.

"Whattya doing?!" He said, through clenched teeth.

"Squig, did you pay the girls back for all of this stuff?"

"Len, Len, I told ya; they owe us!"

"Squig!!" Lenny was almost vibrating with anxiety. He remembered very clearly that the girls had bailed them out with Mrs. Babbish last week. They were, as far as he was concerned, the only reason they still had an apartment.

But Squiggy saw through that; as far as he was concerned, it was about Laverne. Lately, it was ALWAYS about Laverne, when it came to Lenny. He was all set to complain to Lenny about that, but decided not to ruin the evening. Tonight was all about partying, was it not? What with it being his birthday and all...

"So, my good man!" He said brightly, "When does the entertainment come out?"

"Why, right now!" the order's leader took a few steps and climbed up onto the stage. "Fellow bass! Tonight's entertainment has been arranged in celebration of Minnow Squiggman's birthday!"

A hail of pizza crusts rained down on Lenny and Squiggy, sending them wincing for cover. They still, clearly remembered the Roxie LaToure incident, even as the boys strove to forget it.

The beer flowed as bump-and-grind music filled the air. A plaster cake was tugged onto the stage from the back while Squiggy stood, awkwardly, on the middle of the stage.

He stared with wide eyes as the blonde stepped out of the large white cake, her smile terrifyingly wide. She looked ready to eat him alive as she gracelessly stepped across the sticky floor to the hooting and catcalls of the other Bassmen, and he didn't know if he found her arousing or horrifying.

Long, tall, and wrapped in a glittering black dress, he did nothing but stare and move his mouth as it shimmied to the ground, followed rapidly by her bra and the screams of the crowd. Then the rest of the world faded in a dull roar, and her beautiful face, her sinuous motions, enraptured him.

Squiggy found himself being pushed backward, into a chair held by the head of the lodge. She smiled right at him, though in a blank way. Kneeling at his feet, she ripped his shirt open, yanking every button off. He would have been mad, very mad, were she not nuzzling his chest at the moment. In public! In front of everyone!

He turned to crow to Lenny, but his friend had disappeared. Squiggy felt momentarily smug; he hadn't even needed to get her drunk or nothing.

The only thing warm about the girl was the heat of her body, which seemed to envelop him in a sweaty package of black nylon. Her hands had a good grip on his belt when, suddenly, the roaring ceased and the heat left. It was replaced by booing.

"That's enough of a show." While Squiggy tried to hold his shirt closed, The girl bent and picked up her discarded bra. "And, as a treat for his service to the lodge, Minnow Squiggman will spend the night of his birthday with this goddess of the flesh!

Another rain of catcalls. Squiggy couldn't help but strut as the girl wrapped herself in a marabou robe. He was dissapointed to learn that this would be the end of his party; no movies, no cake, no nothing? He would be hurt. Were it not for the girl.

She got willingly into the truck, to his disbelief. She didn't even comment on the smell of beer permeating the front seat. But she stared stonily ahead as he drove through the night-lit streets of Milwaukee, not moving, not speaking.

He finally had the courage to turn and look at her when they hit a red light. And then he noticed the brown tracks running down her face; chocolate-coated tears. Her lips trembled as violently as the hand clutching the blue satin robe closed.

Awkwardness struck him. For some reason, he didn't feel so lucky any more. "Lady?" He stumbled out. She looked up, as though he'd struck her. "You want a glass of water or somethin'?"

She yanked his hand into her lap. The panties were thick, for some reason, and bone-dry. "Just get it over with, mac." She said, with the voice of a woman a thousand years older. "Just finish it."

He frowned. Her sadness overrode all of his impulses. Even he knew it was wrong to take a girl when she was "No thanks."

Her eyes flickered, emotions darting. Her face finally settled on one: dull surprise. "What?"

"No, ya see...yer sorta dis-dressed, and..."

She gave in to her tears, collapsing against the seat as though someone had pulled a vital pinning.

"Geez! Whattya crying for?"

"You don't understand; you'll tell your friend I didn't lay you. Your friend tells my 'agency'..." Her voice took a mocking tone. "And I don't get paid. I don't eat, I don't get hot water, and I don't get new sequins for this THING!" She tugged scornfully at the robe.

"Will ya hold it?" Squiggy yelled. She stopped her tirade, turning her attention to him. "If yer so scared of this 'agency', why don't ya come an' hang around at my place?"

Her eyes narrowed. "So you can violate me off the clock or something?"

He sighed. "Lady, I ain't gonna touch ya. An' my best friend, who only just lives with me, has got it so bad for this girl that he ain't gonna wanna look at ya."

She wiped away the dark brown smears shamelessly. "And you won't touch Rhonda?"

"I don't even know her!"

"Rhonda IS me, you imbecile!"

"What cell? I ain't touchin' no one 're nothing, okay?"

"It's a gentleman's agreement, then." She held out her hand. "Rhonda Lee."

He stared at her open palm for a moment before remembering what do to. "Squiggy Squiggman."

"Your mother named you Squiggy?"

"No, she named me Andrew. Squiggy's what they call me."

"That's the most repulsive name I've ever heard." She wrinkled her nose and shivered beneath the marabou.

"Yeah, like Rhonda Lee ain't made up!"

A honking resonating from behind them broke their argument. Squiggy shifted into gear, driving toward Knapp Street.

***

Lenny staggered his way down a dark alleyway, aware of only two things; he couldn't hold two beers without getting tipsy and Squiggy had not parked the truck where he left it.

He climbed over the trash strewn on the street; wincing as he stepped into something slimy. Great; he was stuck in the middle of downtown with no ride, and now he had something all over his feet...

He pouted. It was bad enough that Laverne was going to hate him for what Squiggy did. Wasn't that a good enough punishment? His next step sent him sailing over a trashcan, and face-first into the chest of a fleeing figure. Great. Not only was he covered in trash and without the girl he adored, but now he was gonna get beaten up by a sailor.

"Len?" He instantly shrank at the tone of her voice. It wasn't an unlikely coincidence, to meet Laverne in a deserted throughway. Shirley had run off to her mother's for a week, devastated that Carmine had left her and Milwaukee for the lures of Broadway and, naturally, Laverne had had as much fun as she could in that time.

She was speaking, but everything was lost in an alcoholic blurr. "Whattya doing out here without Squig?" Alarm crossed her face as she pulled him to his feet. "He lost the truck in a card game, didn't he?"

"Vernie! No...He's just gone."

"Gone-disappeared."

"Uh-huh. With the girl the Head Bass got him."

She let out a groan. "Great; Tony rips the strap to my purse, I lose my pay-phone change, and now Squig's gone!" Lenny let out a blubbery sob. "Aww, Len..." His greasy blond head thudded down onto her shoulder. She cradled him there for a moment. "Look, I'll give ya a ride, okay? But just as a friend, right?"

He nodded, then pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket, blowing his nose into the cloth. She forcibly broke the embrace at that point.

"Wher're you parked?"

"Four streets down."

"Race ya!"

"Len!" But, as usual, her protests fell on deaf years, as he pulled her at an arm's length down the damp Milwaukee streets, giggling wildly. She was almost tripping in her spiked heels for the last block, and then, just as they reached the convertible, her right pump struck something in the gutter, broke off, and sent her tumbling onto the curb.

"Aww! You okay?" He pulled her to her feet and dusted off her red skirt, almost reeling off his feet. "You cut?"

"Nah," She tugged at her outfit. "Ya see what happened? My heels are..." She reached down to find the broken pump, and whatever she had bumped into.

Her mouth dropped open, her eyes widening. She wondered for a moment if what she was seeing was truly real; to be sure, she gently poked the figure that had wedged itself between the curb and her car. It let out a groan, and she recoiled.

"What the..." Lenny stared down at it. "Who would beat up a girl and toss her out on the street?" The figure uncurled itself, and he was all the more startled. "Vernie....why would a girl wear a suit?"

"She wouldn't, Len. It's a guy."

"But it's wearin' lipstick, an' eye gunk, an'..." He trailed off, feeling silly.

They were both frozen in place. Laverne's gaze diverted itself to her pumps, and the sight of a small puddle of red staining them sent her to action.

"We gotta get this guy some help, Len."

Fear flickered across his face. "What kinda hospital's gonna treat-" He bit back a 'that'.

"We ain't takin' him to a hospital. We're bringing him to my place."

Panic set itself in Lenny's features, "Laverne, this ain't like Shirley takin' in a horse or a bird 're somethin'! It ain't even like that German guy youse girls picked up..."

She glared. "You make it sound like I dated him." She tucked her hands beneath the pinstriped armpits of the stranger and heaved him upward. "Help me, Len. He's all heavy down near the bottom."

Lenny looked at the painted face of the stranger, then at the heavens. God, it seemed, had decided to test him. "You know we're gonna get in a lot a trouble."

Laverne held all of the strength he did not. "Yeah. I ain't afraid about it."

Lenny gulped. "Okay. But I ain't tellin' Shirl. Last time she screamed at me, I couldn't hear good outta my ear fer weeks!"

The two of them carefully hoisted the unusual man into Laverne's back seat, then headed toward home, and the relative safety of Knapp Street.




TBC

Chapter 2