Pretty Paper
Part Four
By Missy

SERIES: Pretty Paper
PART: 4 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.

****

The café hadn't changed since Shirley had appeared there as a budding beat poetess. The walls were still a bleached white, the lighting dim.

"Hey, it's Lady Cool!" Came a few acknowledging shouts, which caused her to blush and try to hide behind Eddie. They were seated by the stage and served tall cups of coffee.

"Lady Cool?" Eddie smiled. "I truly did underestimate your groovitude, Shirley."

"Groovitude? Is that English?"

"Not the Queen's."

Their server came by with two glasses. "Cool makeup, my friend." He said to Eddie, before leaving the table.

"L'chaim" he said, tilting his glass. "To lovely birds." He said.

"Birds?"

"Ladies, madam." His eyes twinkled as he sipped the coffee. Shirley's own gaze held a much more wary look.

He was flirting with her now, and she wasn't entirely sure that she was ready to be flirted with. Being with Eddie seemed one long, slow seduction, and she only knew that she wasn't willing to be seduced. Not yet.

A sudden clapping upon the stage drew their attention. The emcee introduced a new act to the "cats and kittens" in the audience; for the next hour, a man in a goatee and dark glasses read poems about forks and cypress trees. Shirley tried to grasp their deep sophistication, but could not feel the wisdom. Eddie just sat, smiling, not making fun but clearly amused by the entire scene.

"Quite good." Eddie declared, as the rest of the crowd snapped its approval.

"The act?"

"No, the coffee. The act wasn't horrible, though, I agree."

Shirley shrugged. "I used to do an act here."

His eyebrow forked in amazement. "Truly?"

"Yes. That's why they called me Lady Cool. About the wonders of the hand and the meaning of a leaf," She laughed nervously, trying to downplay the entire thing. "It was really very silly."

"Is that what they told you?"

"My friends didn't understand."

"That's a shame. Do you always suppress yourself that way?" He shook his head. "Never mind. The white wedding thing."

"Are you going to spend the entire night insulting me?" Shirley asked, her cheeks heating. "Is that why you wanted to have coffee with me, so I can humiliate myself?"

She picked up her purse, placing just enough money for the twin coffees she had consumed on the table. Her pennies rolled like cartwheels onto his lap as she stormed out of the café, with Eddie on her heels.

"Shirley..." She stared coldly into the street. "I tend to go into attack mode some times. It's not easy for me to trust anyone in their own pretensions."

"Don't take your problems out on me, then." Shirley said, her voice deliberately flat.

"I am sorry." He continued on as they walked in the direction of Knapp Street. "It's that I see so much potential inside of you, Shirley. You're clearly intelligent, and anyone with the guts to go on stage like you have has to be a creative person as well. My question is why."

"Why what?"

"Why do you feel the need to waste your life in a brewery? All of you! Leonard is a marvelous guitarist, and Laverne could be a terrific professional tap dancer!" Her quizzical look was met by his, "they had to do something to keep me awake the first night. I had a concussion."

"Do you think it's easy for us, Eddie? That we could just up and leave our jobs? Lenny and Squiggy barely graduated high school. They're lucky they're employed instead of rolling around in the gutter. Laverne and I have nothing to fall back on. We do try, but we keep failing."

"Such as?"

"We were offered contracts. We were almost the internationally famous singing duo 'The Rosebuds' before our manager decided that he wanted one rosebud. Singular. Laverne, of course." She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. "Laverne was a good enough friend to turn them down."

"But not good enough to not go out on a date with your boyfriend?" Shirley's cheeks colored. "As I said, they needed to keep me awake."

"Carmine was anyone's boyfriend." She turned to face him and very formally asked, "is there anything else my best friend told you about me that I could have easily told you myself."

"Stop being so bloody prickly." He kissed the back of her hand. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"But I have to work tomorrow."

"Have you never skipped work?"

"Yes! Today! And the last time I was almost arrested!"

Eddie blithely waved his hand, and Shirley fumed her way back home to her apartment.

***

While Shirley expended her anger by washing dishes, Laverne knocked upon the boy's apartment. The muffled sound of an argument drew louder as Squiggy yanked the door open.

"Come in." He said, mildly, and Laverne was surprised to meet a furious Lenny.

"You ain't puttin' my guitar nowhere, lady!"

He glared at a petite blonde emerging from the bathroom, lugging a pail of sudsy water. "Leonard, Rhonda isn't suggesting you throw away your guitar. She just wants you to move it so she can finish cleaning the beds."

"Would ya stop doin' that! Say "I"! Me!"

"Calm down, Len." Laverne urged. "Squig, take him to Vinny's."

"You gonna pay for the game?"

"Yes! I'll even play a set, just get him outta here."

"Come on, Len." Squiggy tugged his friend's arm, but Lenny's gaze locked on Rhonda.

"And if one hair on Jeffery's head's outta place, I'll...Oooh!" He smacked his open palm against the door frame before stalking outside.

Laverne watched Squiggy leave before shutting the door. "I'm sorry. Len ain't usually like that, I guess he ain't used to living with a girl."

Rhonda bobbed her head sagely. "He was very kind to me the first day. He seems awfully sensitive about the iguana and the guitar."

"Well, he had the guitar since he was seven, and the iguana since he moved in."

"Oh."

Laverne awkwardly smiled, sitting down on one of the boy's chairs. "Uh, I'm Laverne DeFazio, Lenny and Squiggy's..." She winced. "Friend." She offered Rhonda an open palm.

"Charmed." She accepted Laverne's hand and gave it a hearty shake. "Rhonda Lee, actress, singer, dancer, ukulele player." She turned and knelt on the floor, scrubbing in concentric circles in front of the bathroom.

"Lenny told me...why you're here."

Her shoulders stiffened, but she nodded. "Okay. I don't know what they told you, but I'm not sleeping with -"

"I know. Lenny's a gentleman. And Squiggy...he tries to be a gentleman."

Relief crossed Rhonda's face. "Rhonda should start at the beginning. The only other person I've ever told is Squiggy." She turned her back to Laverne once again, continuing to scrub. "I was born in Missouri, and my father was a banker. I was beautiful, my parent's pride and joy. Everyone always agreed that I was. I had a lot of boyfriends, and I was Homecoming Queen my senior year." The scrubbing circles became heavier, more pronounced. "My parents are very religious, and they wouldn't tolerate the idea of me becoming an actress, the only thing I've ever wanted to do. I ran away in the middle of the night, the day after my high school graduation, sure I would succeed. But I only had enough in my savings to get me to Milwaukee."

She slathered more soapy water on the floor. "I met my pimp when I went to an agency downtown. He said he would get me into a 'highly visible' campaign."

More water. Harsher scrubbing. "It started with the stag films. Masked men and stockings. I had my first abortion before I started stripping. The second before I started turning party tricks. In between, I was your dime-a-dance call girl."

"Party tricks?" Prickles raced up the back of Laverne's neck. She felt ill for Rhonda's agony.

"He would hire me out to parties. I did things I'm not proud of. Things I'll never be proud of. I've had another abortion since I started doing them." She closed her eyes. "Six years. I've been doing this for six years and I can't count how many men, Things. Animals!" She spat out the last word, crouching against the wet left knee of he jeans.

"I'm so sorry..." Laverne honestly didn't know what to say, so overwhelmed was she by ugliness of Rhonda's words.

"It's no one's fault but my own." She said.

"How can it be your fault? No one expects something like this to happen!"

Rhonda shook her head. "I thought all men were the same. All they wanted was this." She grabbed her breast and squeezed it viciously. "My skin. But Squiggy...he said he wanted to make me respectable." She wiped her tears away, turning to face Laverne and grabbing a rag from the table. "All I want is to be normal."

"Rhonda, I can help."

"I don't want your charity."

"I don't give charity. I'm pointing you to a job interview."

Suspicion clouded Rhonda's eyes. "Where?"

"A pizza place. It's in the phone book, you can look it up."

"What's it called?"

"The Pizza Bowl."

"I've heard of it." Rhonda shrugged. "I'm desperate. And the boys will be glad I'm gone; all I've done since I moved in is clean."

"P...Frank can see you in the afternoon, on Saturday. He'll be there."

"Good, it's a deal." Rhonda smiled. "Laverne, I think I should tell you something else."

"What?" Fear filled her.

""I've never waited tables before. Don't tell Squiggy."





TBC

Chapter 3
Chapter 5