Pretty Paper
Part Three
By Missy

SERIES: Pretty Paper
PART: 3 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.

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!

***

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

****

Shirley stared at the bottles of Shotz that spun before her eyes. The utter irrelevancy of her job was getting to her this morning, and the general oddness of the past few days was getting to her. When the lunch whistle blew, she fairly ran to the safety of the breakroom.

Laverne nibbled her tuna fish sandwich, and the second Shirley started in on her egg salad she began talking.

"Uh, Shirl, I got a favor to ask ya..."

Shirley sighed, "The last time you asked a favor of me, Laverne, I ended up spending an evening warding off the advances of a swarthy sailor who only spoke Greek."

"Whattya complaining about?! You had a good time! And you already like Eddie, so you won't mind showing him around Milwaukee instead of me!"

"Laverne! I don't know him!"

"Yeah, but ya liked him enough. I'm only asking ya to spend one afternoon with the guy. I already feel bad about canceling on him this morning...but I always could just have Len write 'Shirley Feeney stuffs her bra with socks' on the men's room wall..."

"You wouldn't dare."

Laverne just smiled while leaning back in her chair and taking a quaff from her Shotz.

Shirley's eyes narrowed. "Fine! I'm sure Edward will treat me like a lady, unlike most of the scummy trolls we know..."

"Hello!" The breakroom door slammed open, admitting Lenny and Squiggy to the room.

The girls greeted the boys, who strolled over to the table and seated themselves without asking beforehand.

"Please tell me Edward is waiting for me."

Laverne nodded. "Forth Flag Hotel, Grant Avenue."

"Grant Avenue? That's a flop house, Laverne!"

"You want I should come with ya, Shirl?" Squiggy asked. "I got a pair of brass knuckles and I..."

"No thank you, Andrew." Shirley wadded up her paper sack and tossed it into the garbage before standing. "Please tell the foreman that I'm sick."

"Sure thing." Laverne smiled. Shirley shot her a dirty look as she opened her locker and withdrew her coat.

"Whattya want, fellas?" Laverne asked.

"We wanted ta talk to you, Laverne." Lenny said.

"I wanted to talk to the both of ya, but Lenny said you know everything about indecency..."

"Whattya talkin' about, dummy! I didn't say..."

"Len, Len, shut up. This ain't about you."

Lenny's head landed on the table with a thud, and Laverne found herself rubbing his shoulders in an effort to calm him down. "Squig, spit it out."

"If ya want my roast pig snout sandwich, just say!"

Shirley intervened briefly, "Squiggy, tell Laverne what you want to talk about." Her smile held all the confidence of a woman escaping her worst nightmare, and Laverne was the one glaring as she left the room.

"Okay, it's a long story..." Squiggy wriggled against his seat. "Do you know what a sheetwalker is, Laverne?"

"The bass gave Squig a girl fer his birthday! A real live girl, and now we're hiding her from them!" Lenny blurted out, his face still hidden from her.

"Squiggy!" Laverne gasped.

"What! It weren't my idea, Laverne! I ain't done nothin' to her!"

"An' she's sleepin' on my bed, and this morning she tried to throw Jeffery away."

"He was blockin' her tanning light!"

"Stupid! He's real little, how much light can he block?"

"Boys, stop fighting!" Laverne snapped. Though they continued to shoot murderous glares at one another, they had, at least, stopped attracting the attention of their fellow break room attendees. "Squiggy, who is this girl?"

"Her name's Rhonda Lee. I don't know where she's from, or who she works for, but I know I ain't lettin' her go back to the gutter. It ain't fit fer decent people. I know, I grew up there, and I fit right in."

"Whatta want me to do about her?"

"Well, Miss So-and-so, We was hopin' you might know someone who'd be willing to give her a job at Shotz."

"Or maybe your Pop, Laverne! He could always use another waitress!" Lenny tossed in, hopefully.

Laverne bit her lip. "I gotta find out who she's hiding from before I get her mixed up with Pop. Between the Pizza Bowl's bathrooms blowin' up and him marrying Edna, things are already pretty tight."

"Yeah, I can let ya up to see her tonight." He stood up. "I gotta go. Important stuff." He muttered, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his coveralls and swaggering out of the room.

Laverne's hand hadn't left the back of Lenny's neck. He sniffled against his arm.

"I hate lying. I hate it. It makes me crazy." He muttered.

Laverne shivered sympathetically. Everything Lenny was and would ever do related back to his mother's four-word promise on his fifth birthday. I'll be right back. "You're lying to the bad guys, Len. That makes it okay."

He shook his head. "All lying's bad. Like Squig, lying to himself that Rhonda's gonna love him. I can see it already."

She was, once more, taken aback by Lenny's hidden intelligence. "Squiggy wants Rhonda to love him?"

"I've known him twenty-six years, Laverne. Whattya think, he's just keeping her at our place like Sir Garlichead? Every time he meets a girl, he says 'this time, for real.'"

"I never thought Squig was a romantic."

"Oh, he is, Laverne." Lenny sniffled again. "I think this girl is bad news, but I feel so bad for her, havin' to sell her body on the streets."

"It's okay, Len." She would make it okay, somehow, with enough clear thinking. That was Shirley's job, but the girl had undergone enough suffering in the past few weeks.

"I believe if you say so." He said, lifting his head.

"I just sent Shirley out with a guy we found in the gutter. I think I have a little faith."

"You sent Shirley out with Eddie?" Lenny's lips started to quiver into a smile.

"Yeah. She needs to get out of the house, Len. Two weeks crying over Carmine is enough."

"Two weeks crying over anyone is enough." He agreed.

But he knew that he would never stop crying over Laverne.

***

"On the fifth day, God created Jam."

Shirley looked up from her vanilla shake in order to pay closer attention to Eddie. "Jam?"

"Jam and arguments. But that was before the flood or course." Eddie returned to his chocolate shake, unaware of Shirley's unbroken gaze until they reached the curb. "I'm just talking bollocks, Shirley."

"Bollocks?"

"I'm just gibbering. Talking the piss." Her cheeks reddened. "I'm sorry, I'm used to hanging around with sailors."

"Yes, I know. My entire family's somewhere in the middle of the Pacific."

"So you come from sea-hearty stock?"

"Yes. I told you my father's a sailor; so are my other brothers. My mother and father divorced when I was twenty."

"Oh my. They were incompatible?"

"Very much so. What about your family, Eddie?"

"Well, my father works in sales, in Gloucester. My mother passed when I was a child."

"I'm sorry."

"She effected every aspect of my life. She wanted me to be a soldier, and so I became one." He shrugged. "I always wanted to be in the army, you know? But another part of me wants to be on the stage. Unfortunately, this is the age of Frankie Avalon and Fabian and Camelot, so I don't think I'd quite fit in, you know?"

His free arm swung casually as they passed the grocery store. In two hours, they had walked the most interesting parts of the city, including a rather amusing tour of Squiggy's uncle's wax museum.

"Don't let me keep going on, Shirley."

She watched him instead of responding, somewhat dumbstruck. He had a way of talking and talking that took her completely outside of herself, made her a watcher instead of a participant in the conversation. "You're a fascinating conversationalist." She said.

"Thank you, but a conversation needs two people."

"My life is very boring, next to yours." She said, "You were born overseas, raised all over Europe, naval career; I was raised two streets away from here, and I live two blocks more. My life is as dull as a piece of tarnished brass."

"Tosh. Any girl who journeys through the navel of Milwaukee to find a guy she barely knows has something special to her."

"My word's very important to me. Even if Laverne's the one making the vow for me."

He smiled. "Laverne's a fun young lady. Poor Lenny, he's mad for her."

"I know. Isn't it a shame that she doesn't love him?"

Eddie shrugged. "I wouldn't strictly say that."

Shirley scoffed. "Lenny's not very smart, and he's not very clean, and he tries to stick his tongue in my best friend's mouth far too often."

"That's how a boy acts when he's in love, you know. For the first time."

"Lenny's twenty-eight."

"As I said; he's in love for the first time."

Shirley shrugged. "He should get over her. When two people come from opposite sides of the world, it never works out." There was an undercurrent of bitterness hidden in her tone, but Eddie picked up on it.

"This last boyfriend you had wrecked you, didn't he?"

"I don't even know if it was a relationship at all." As they came upon the Knapp Street building, she climbed the stairs. "Why are we even talking about love? You're going to ship out after Fleet Week ends."

"Because love is a primary emotion. We're obsessed with how it feels, what it looks like, how it'll be when we finally get there. Love is a part of sex, and without shagging there would be no human race." Eddie shrugged. "I don't know what you're looking for in a love relationship, Shirley. But you haven't ever experienced the pleasure of an affair, have you?"

She shook her head. "I'm wearing white on my wedding day, Eddie."

"Good God, woman, what are you saving yourself for?"

She sneered, "you would say that I should throw myself away on a two-week affair. Well, you don't have to worry about being looked down on by your community for being a dirty girl! You don't have to worry about getting pregnant and having a baby!"

"I do believe I know what being marked as different feels like."

The tone of his voice made her stop. At that point she realized that she was preaching the pain of being ostracized to a man wearing bright red lipstick and gray eyes shadow.

"I'm not proposing we have sex. An affair is a beautiful thing without 'vode-o-do-ing', as you would say." He smiled. "No, I propose we have an affair of the minds, of the tongue and stomach. Perhaps also the heart, should we be fortunate. Now, would you like a cup of coffee?"

She tilted her head. "Eddie, how old are you?"

"Forty-two."

"You're a little less than twice my age, you know."

"Truly. But you don't act like a girl of twenty any more than I do a man of forty. Age is irrelevant...no, perhaps to you it's an enticement."

She sighed. "The coffee; is your offer still valid?"

"Yes."

She descended the stoop. "I know a place you'd probably like. They made me feel welcome, for at least a little while..."




TBC

Chapter 2
Chapter 4