Lauren's Season Nine Continued!
Takin' Care of Someone Else's Business
By Missy

SERIES: Lauren's Season Nine, Continued!
CHAPTER TITLE: Takin' Care of Someone Else's Business
PART: 5 of 14, Episode 5, Pt.1 of 1
RATING: PG(Adult thematic material)
PAIRING(s): L/L; S/C; S/R (Possible)
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-Cali
CONTINUATION: Of Lauren's Season Nine
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: It's the Pizza Bowl's grand opening, but Shirley's exhausted from taking care of Davy, and Laverne and Edna come to a showdown over the place's true ownership.
NOTES: Thank you to Lauren for letting me continue her established continuity.

****

Laverne violently straightened her sweater while Lenny tied his tie. "Aww, I knew it," she cried out. "My heels're uneven!"

"Vernie, no one's gonna be lookin' at your shoes." His eyes were locked upon the scooped-neck white blouse she wore, which clashed with current fashion trends but looked perfect on her.

"Len! I'm tryin' to be a professional here...would ya..." She broke off on a giggle as he squeezed her around the waist, kissing the side of her neck playfully. "We gotta get to the restaurant by noon. Otherwise, we miss the lunch crowd."

"Yeah, I'm real lucky Fonzie gave me the day off. He said he'd bring the Cunninghams by at dinner time."

"That's nice of him..." His hands were busy appreciating her waist. "Len, we can't!"

"Why not?"

"Cause it's the middle of the day." From their bedroom, the baby cried. "There's reason number two."

Lenny released his bride, watching her leave appreciatively. She almost made living without hot water a nice experience. "You think Carmine and Shirley're gonna be able to make it down?"

"Sure, why not?" She picked Tommy up, bouncing him back down the hallway, only stopping to retrieve her purse.

"Vernie, you remember how we was when Tommy was born...they gotta be walking zombies, not bein' used to the baby yet."

"Len, I know Shirl; she's calm all the time. A baby ain't gonna change that. Besides, she said she was bringing us a big plate of blunders to give out for free."


***

"Davy! Where are you?"

Unseen, the toddler's laughter rang through the room. A phone began to ring, distracting Shirley from her task.

"Hello? Carmine, I'm on my way...yes, I know we have two morning classes, but I need to get Davy to the sitters'...yes, I'm sure the Piccolo girl is reputable. Joanie Cunningham recommended her, so I'm sure...she's seventeen. Would you please stop worrying and get off the phone? I need to find my son..."

As she finished that sentence, a horrible clatter sounded from the kitchen. Letting the phone drop, she raced into their half-kitchen, finding Davy sitting among a platter of freshly made blunders, nibbling to death two in his chubby fists with his minimal baby teeth.

"What am I going to do with you?" Shirley cried.

Davy smiled at her, waving the cream-covered cookies in the air. Shirley temporarily forgot why she was angry...but remembered again as she swept up the lost cookies on her way out of the house.

***

Laverne swept through the Pizza Bowl, making one last mad check of everything. Behind the counter, Hilde and Marthe stood and, in the kitchen, two chefs waited for orders. Squiggy sat in the bowling alley, convinced that handing rented shoes out would be just as important as passing out menus at the front of the restaurant.

She had given him a set of X-rated playing cards with which to amuse himself.

Lenny squinted up the cement stairway, Tommy chewing on the wide point of his collar and drifting in and out of sleep. "Ready?"

"Uh huh."

Lenny pulled open the door, admitting a flood of lunchtime patrons. It was all Laverne could do just to keep up with the flood of diners, passing out menus until she ran out.

They had filled the place. And she didn't even have a spot into which she could gracefully collapse.

Apparently, Milwaukee had missed the Pizza Bowl

She saw Lenny through the crowd of people, and he waved at her; that was the last she would see of her husband for hours, as she helped out Hilde and Marthe moving the patrons through the restaurant.

Past five, when the crowd thinned out, she finally found Shirley, who wore her crushed hat with dignity as she made her way through the crowd, Davy in her arms.

"Wher're the blunders?"

Shirley shook her head, blandly muttering something about tap recitals and the flamenco and what blunders do to a garbage disposal, and Carmine having to attend to private lessons, all with a dead and distracted expression on her face. Laverne seated her on a stool with a strong cup of tea.

"How long were you in the crowd?"

Shirley's gaze narrowed. "From two o'clock on, it was nothing but a sea of white..." she read dramatically.

For the moment, her little universe was satiated. The sound of balls rolling down the alley mixed pleasantly with the sound of a fork slicing along some spaghetti, and the light chatter of friends married delightfully with the happy giggle of her son.

She turned around, reaching over the bar to get herself a well-deserved glass of beer. A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she spun to face its owner.

"Edna," she managed to say with some dignity.

"Laverne."

"Would you like to see me somewhere quiet?"

"No, we can do this in public." Edna placed her purse on the counter's corner, withdrawing a set of crisply rolled papers. "If you sign these, the restaurant will be one-hundred per cent yours."

Laverne blinked at the paper, then stared at Edna. "What's the catch?"

"There isn't one?"

"Then why'd ya leave us in the dark for almost a month?"

"It was a stroke of pettiness that I've decided to get over. Besides," she said, sitting down upon the stool, "something important to me decided to show me exactly what misjudgment can do?"

"What?" Laverne had slipped behind the bar and wordlessly poured her a mug of beer.

"Amy's getting married."

Lenny's eyebrow rose in response, but he continued to listen from a distance, holding Tommy.

"To someone in the home?"

"Yes." Edna consumed the beer as quickly as Laverne could pour it. "His name is Justin."

"Amy's a nice girl; I hope she's real happy."

"She should be; you did teach her how to kiss."

Laverne coughed through her embarrassment, wanting to melt into the floor at the memory of her old exploits.

"I knew it!" Lenny muttered.

"Yeah, well, one day we're gonna be sittin' around talking about what Davy and Tommy did to some girls..."

"Not my son," Shirley said as she emerged from her coma abruptly.

"Come on, Shirl," Laverne teased her. "You're gonna keep him in a jar forever?"

"Well..."

"Gimmie him, Shirley." Lenny gestured for the baby with his free arm. Reluctantly, she gave him up.

"Where are you going?"

"Into the alley. Squiggy's gonna teach them how to pick their nose wit their pinkies!"

Laverne knew instantly that Lenny was kidding, but Shirley was already following him into the alley.

"Let him go, Shirl."

"But..." Shirley's face collapsed into a little frown. "What will I say if he picks something up and brings it home to Carmine?"

"Easy. Davy wants to be a sailor..."

"That's not funny, Laverne..."

"Girls..."

The three voices blended together, a jovial cacphony of teasing and grouchy rejoinder. The Pizza Bowl lived again, and Edna understood that she had chosen intelligently.

This was how she remembered life. And how she knew Frank would want it to be.


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