Pretty Paper
Part Ten
By Missy

SERIES: Pretty Paper
PART: 10 of 10
RATING: R (Adult themes and materials, violent material)
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.

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 Ande, for your protection!

And it's the end! Can you believe that?

***

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


****

Four years later

Rhonda scrubbed the dirt from the apartment's window. She hated chores, still; the endless drudgery of keeping house. Soon, she smiled to herself, it would all be over.

"Whattya think? The tiger stripes or the black sequins?"

Rhonda stared at both options for a good moment from her position on the floor. "Squiggles, why don't we go to a men's shop before we fly out to LA?"

"Fly out to LA; Andrew Squiggman's moving up in the world!"

True; but they were moving up together. Six months before, she and Squiggy had bought a five-dollar manual typewriter from a second-hand store and, in their spare time after work, composed a screenplay based upon her life. A year later, and around a hundred pages after their first attempt hit the page, they sold it to MGM. All of this, and he was still an employee of Shotz. She still worked with the Pizza Bowl.

And he was still a member of the Bass.

Selling the script had lead to more problems than they had anticipated; first, the screenplay was sanitized for consumption by the masses, then it was shortened by half. Casting directors refused to see Rhonda, instead hiring Ann-Margaret to play Rhonda's role, and a young actor named Jack Nicholson playing Squiggy's part.

It soon became clear that the studio intended the piece to be a potboiler; Rhonda understood that it would be distributed mostly to drive-throughs. Yet she and Squiggy would be receiving royalties from the movie. While they were in LA, they would mingle with producers and casting directors during the movie's premiere. She understood that this would be her big chance. This would be twenty years of her life, left there for the entire world to see.

"What are ya waitin' fer? Let's go!"

Rhonda finished mopping the floor, turning to take Squiggy's hand. He was her lover; that had occurred the night before the trial. He had been darling, awkward, and unlike any other she had been with. Bless him for not asking her for more.

"Nothing at all." She smiled, grabbing her coat.

It was a starting point that he had given her. More than she had ever had before.

***

"Please be good for daddy, Angelie."

The little girl's face scrunched up, and she let out an uncomfortable whine. Lenny sighed patiently. "I know ya don't like havin' yer hair combed up..." He dropped the comb. "There ya go!"

Gradually, the pout lessened the infantile face relaxing. "Okay! And now we're goin' to the beach...LAVERNE!" He hollered.

"I'm shavin' my legs!" She whined.

"The voice of my beloved." He echoed himself, tucking the baby against his chest and strolling into the bedroom. "BOO!" He yelled, throwing open the bathroom door.

Laverne yelped; her shaving-cream-coated left leg waving beneath a layer of stubble. "Len, ya gave me a heart attack!"

"Yer still standin'." He pointed out, winking. "Come on, it's gettin' past ten."

She sighed. "I gotta get my other leg..." She balanced Angelie in her free arm and finished off her leg.

When she emerged from the bathroom in her cut-offs, Lenny stood there grinning at her.

"What?"

"You." He took the baby back. "I didn't think...you an' me was gonna happen."

She shrugged. "It was all about time, Len...Squiggy an' Rhonda are always together, and Shirley and Eddie're gone...it was just supposed ta go this way."

"Vernie...ya don't ever regret it? I mean, it ain't the neatest life in the world."

"Len, ya make me happy. In every way." She added, with deliberate meaning. She took his hand. "Everything in the car?"

"Yep."

On their way out of the apartment, Laverne noticed a pile of mail sitting on the kitchen counter. She pulled one particular letter free.

Later, on the open beach, while her husband played on the shore of the lake with her daughter, she ripped open the envelope.

And out tumbled a picture of Shirley and Eddie, accompanying an article.

"Lady Cool and The Great Eduardo confuse, amuse," tittered the headline.


***

"And now, the Amazing Eduardo will juggle twelve bowling pins, balanced on a unicycle, while I read the New Republic's report on the international deficit!"

Shirley kept a wise eye on the crowd, fully aware that most of the act was annoying to the assembled patrons. Some would be amused enough to toss a quid into their bowler hat; others stared at them as though they were a pink elephant that had decided to stroll through the Piccadilly Circus one day.

They had no way of knowing that the act wasn't perfectly serious; just a lot of tiny jabs at people of far higher standing than either of them. It all usually resulted in wondering stares and soft laughter.

She began to recite, keeping an eye on the wobbling wheel of his unicycle. When she reached the end of the article, he caught the very last pin.

The crowd spattered its applause, like fat hitting a hot pan. Shirley's smile was sheepish, but Eddie's was entirely enigmatic.

"Yes, yes...pay the pipers, mates, pay the pipers..." A rain of quid and pound notes filled the hat.

"We're eating well tonight, luv." He sent a hand through the collected money.

"Steaks then?"

"Steak? Chicken, darling, always chicken." He linked an arm through hers, kissing her neck. She picked up the unicycle with her free hand.

"Hmmm..." She said, by way of answer. Their flat lay a few miles from their usual corner in the Piccadilly, and their legs were practiced from all of the walking.

"Hmm? Oh yes; I've always wanted to try meditation, but I can never seem to find the quiet."

She laughed. "Have you heard from the BBC?"

"They said we'd know for sure today."

Never in her life had Shirley anticipated that she'd be living hand-to-mouth in England, praying that the biggest broadcasting company on the island would be calling when they got home. For that one call would put into production the serial Eddie had submitted to the network.

"If we land this, darling, we would have enough for a real home, outside of a flat. And you could call Laverne every single afternoon."

Shirley smiled. "That would be wonderful." But what did she and Laverne have in common anymore? Laverne had married Lenny, and that had been the last time the best friends had seen one another. She had a little girl now, Angelie. Shirley kept her baby photo in her purse.

Shirley had married Eddie the first time he had asked. On the night he had proposed, actually, for she had been somewhat afraid that he, like Carmine, would change his mind. The marriage had turned two in March, just as old as Lenny and Laverne's little girl.

Eddie kissed the side of her neck, and she felt a bowling pin bounce against the round of her behind. "We'll have them back, Shirley." They walked up the steps to the flat, side by side. "All things must change. All things must pass."

She remembered what she had told Lenny about crying, and hope growing where tears felt.

She knew that was no lie now.

When they entered the flat, they both froze at the unfamiliar burring of their phone.

As Eddie flung himself toward it, yanking up the receiver and trying to give that was on the other end his most cool, relaxed reaction. Shirley could only wait for the receiver to drop.

Whatever would happen, it would be just one more leap of faith she would take to be with Eddie. One more jump she was willing to make in the spirit of a relationship she had not expected.

And coming from a world so planned to one so haphazard, she knew what the answer would be by the subtle intake of his breath, the quirking of the lines around his mouth. She knew that the series had sold, that she and Eddie would be moving to a different section of London. That she would have to say goodbye to Lady Cool and the Great Eduardo, or they would have to be retooled into something different. Maybe better.

He hung up the phone and stretched his arms toward her. She fell into them, for him.

Definitely better.




The End

Chapter 9