Pretty Paper
Part Nine
By Missy

SERIES: Pretty Paper
PART: 9 of About 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!

***

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

****

"Stopit!"

The entire courtroom fell into a hushed silence at Squiggy's plaintive shout. He stormed down the open aisle leading to the judge's bench, only to be pushed back by two large bailiffs. He struggled against the hulking shoulders, shouting Rhonda's name.

"Order in the court!" The judge shouted above Squiggy and the crowd's confused murmuring. "Young man, this is highly irregular!"

"I ain't known for bein' regular, yer honor." Squiggy said. "I gotta talk to the defendant!"

Rhonda hunched over in her seat, refusing to meet his eyes.

"I'm not calling a recess on this case, sir, unless it's urgent."

"I got somethin' ta give to the defense, your honor!"

"Son, the defense just pled guilty."

"But she didn't do it! An' this book says why!"

"Objection! This young man is turning this courtroom into a three-ring circus! Request to have him barred from the room!" The prosecutor called.

"Denied. Let him speak to counsel. What harm can it do when the girl's already pled guilty? Five-minute recess." He slammed his gavel against the desk. The bailiffs then lead Squiggy to Rhonda.

"Squiggy," She hissed, "What are you doing?"

Squiggy ignored her, spreading out the pages upon her lawyer's table. "This book says that blood goes like this when someone's bein' attacked." He pointed to one picture. "And it says it goes like this." He pointed to the other page. "When there ain't no strugglin'."

"So?"

"So, you got pictures from the Pizza Bowl's wall, right?"

The prosecutor opened his briefcase, and pulled out a series of crime scene photos.

They matched the scene of a struggle perfectly.

"Rhonda, this all-but exonerates you!" The prosecutor trilled, bliss in his eyes. "The blood patterns clearly match. Precisely what I tried to tell you before I let you plead guilty!"

"Damn you, Squiggy..." She muttered beneath her breath.

"Rhonda, the most they'll be able to pin on you is obstruction of justice."

She glared at him, as he smiled so benignly for her. When the judge called for a re-convention, her attorney presented the blood-spatter evidence with pride. The prosecution called for a dismissal of charges, freeing Rhonda on self-defense.

He tried to hug her, and she coolly accepted his embrace. "That was lovely, Squiggles. Just like in a movie."

He shrugged. "Eh, it weren't a big deal.."

"Yes it was. You risked your personal safety and reputation to free me!" Her embrace heated with the drama of the moment. "The sort of story that launches careers! The sort that sells millions of copies when it's put on paper." She grinned.

"I don't know nothin' about writing."

"I don't either, but I can learn." She smiled. "All we're missing is a fade out...but I know what comes before that -"

Her words were cut off abruptly by his gentle, heartfelt kiss.

***

Shirley scampered across the docks, shouting Eddie's name. She could not pick out his blond head among his hundreds of peers in the navy yard. Her eyes finally located a prow with gold lettering sprawled across the stern reading The Queen Mary.

She rushed over to the boarding line and randomly excused herself to a sailor. "Do you know an Eddie Izzard?"

"Seaman Izzard? The bloke in the dress? What do you want with a poofter like him?"

She glared. "I happen to love that bloke!"

"When you could have a real man like me?" He leered.

Her slap answered him.

Weaving her way through the mass of sailors, she shouted Eddie's name until a blond-and-red-shaded head turned.

"Shirley?" His voice held disbelief.

Shirley scrambled up the gangway, wedging herself nimbly between two other soldiers. "I'm not letting you get away without saying goodbye to me, Eddie."

"Why not?"

"Why not? You changed my whole life in the span of a week, Eddie!"

"What'd ya do, Izzard? Get the bird in trouble?"

Eddie glared at his guffawing fellow sailors, as Shirley continued.

"I'm not going to let you walk out of my life."

"I have to. I'm bound for at least another year of service."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to spare you the anxiety. Isn't it bad enough that some bloke charmed you out of your drawers and turned the world upside down without any way to keep things together?"

Another shout from the soldiers. The leader of Eddie's unit barked for silence, but seemed to indulge Shirley and Eddie all the more. The old Shirley would've run for cover, but the new Shirley had a spine fortified with steel.

"You didn't seduce me, Eddie. We seduced each other. You met me with nothing but honorable intentions." She stepped up the gangway with each new word. "And I didn't mean to fall in love with you."

Nothing came between them and the breeze pooling up off the ocean.

"Are you in love with me, Eddie? Or is this just some kind of fling?"

He closed his eyes, sadness reflected in his eyes. "What if I do love you, Shirley? What difference would that make? I'd still be a foreign-born sailor. We're fighting the currant, and the currant loves to swallow ones such as us."

"If we're fighting the currant, we're fighting together. As ONE." She took his unwilling hands. For the first time, she noticed that his nails were opaque, clean of polish.

"But I'm a liar, Shirley. I didn't meat Lenny and Laverne at the Crowe's Nest. They found me. They found me in the gutter after a group of soldiers beat me into unconsciousness."

Tears pooled in her eyes, but still, they showed no disgust.

"They called me a fag. I thought they were asking for a cigarette." He shook his head. "Do you see the differences between us? Can we be that utilitarian?"

"They were evil, monstrous people. But Eddie, if we let them win, we let evil win. And I've come to far to let it happen now."

He groaned desperately.

"Can you look into my eyes and tell me that you don't want to be with me?"

He looked into her eyes, but was unable to look away.

"Why must you be so daunting?"

"I'm American. That's something for you to get used to."

"What are we going to do? Are you going to move to London with me?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm willing to quit my job and find myself with you. Yes, I'm willing to starve for awhile, to wear rags, because you'll be doing the same. I can't stay in that brewery for the rest of my life, knowing I can't touch you, knowing that you're across the ocean!"

"Just for me?"

"No. For us."

"I fancy you, Shirley Feeney."

"And I you, Edward Izzard."

Their kiss sent an approving roar through their audience.

***

Laverne and Lenny sat down on the steps of Milwaukee's Municipal Courthouse.

"Geez; I run downtown and get a bunion for nothing!" Laverne complained, rubbing her foot.

"Whattya complainin' about? My best friend's gonna move in with Miss Rhonda Lee: Actress."

"Ya know, Len..." She scooted closer to him. "You an' me both have a plight here. Squiggy's gonna move in with Rhonda, and if I got a good hunch here, Shirley's gonna go whever Eddie is."

The wheels in Lenny's brain turned with surprising speed. "Don't that leave you without a roommate?"

"Not if you're gonna move in with me."

He grinned. "Ya mean do somethin' I thought about since I was sixteen?"

She smirked. "Moving in...or what we're gonna do...after...ya move in?"

"Both." He said.

Neither of them felt the chill fall wind sweeping over the empty streets filled with newspapers being tossed like tumbleweeds blaring the headline 'Not Guilty'.




TBC

Chapter 8
Chapter 10