Telling Stories:Keep The Walls From Falling Down
By Missy SERIES: Telling Stories:
Title of fic: Keep The Walls From Falling Down
RATING: PG-13ish (For discussion of mature themes)
PAIRING: Squiggy/Rhonda (Not quite a first if you've read Goosebumps, but a first for a stand alone-type series)
DISTRIBUTION: To Squeaky, LW 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: Squiggy/Rhonda Romance; Songfic series
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SONG USED: "IT's OK" By Tracy Chapman
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Rhonda comes to terms with the fact that she's getting older, and Squiggy's shocked to find himself picking up her pieces.
NOTES: Yes, this is a songfic; and, bear with me, it's also a songfic series, featuring songs that aren't of the era the show is set into -___-. Bear with me, though; I do believe that the song fits very nicely into the setting of this particular series. The previous title in the series is "Speak The Word" (Lenny/Laverne), and following titles will be "Fiction In The Space Between" (Carmine), "Less Than Strangers" (Shirley), and "Dreams and Visions" (Concluding fic)

All lyrics from this series W/By Tracy Chapman; lyrics culled from: http://rzsunhome.rrze.uni-erlangen.de:81/~sichglei/tracy/songs/ltellsto.html#top

Thanks to Allie and FG for Beta

***

She was falling to the floor, having just returned from her latest cattle call. Without even removing her high heels, she crawled between her covers and pulled a bottle of 80 proof from beneath her pillow. Tears streaking her cheeks, painting her cheeks blue, she took a deep drag from the container and lay her head down.

Lonely; ever since Laverne had taken up with Lenny they both remained cooped up in that apartment of theirs for most of the day. Her only consistent companion throughout the months and days had been Squiggy.

She felt his presence in the room without having to open her eyes; the reek of his cologne informed her of who it was. Awkwardly, he paused at the foot of her bed and approached from the left to sit on one of her velvet chairs.

It's OK
Love is only meant for some
I'm the rock
The shoulder you can cry on
I keep the walls from falling down

"What do you want?" She asked, flatly, all of the cloying sexuality deflated from her being. But he sat perfectly still beside her, in that ridiculous yellow-and-black striped jacket of his. Squiggy's stillness set fear to her heart; he was rarely a portrait of firm, emotionless appearance.

Desperately, she tried to shut away the emotions that had surfaced for her on a prior weekend. She wasn't aware that he was going through his own emotional tumult.

You can be pretty and tragic
I'll try to keep the walls from falling down
You can be beautiful and fabulous
I'll try to keep the walls from falling down

He was remembering the weekend before. How he had escorted her inebriated self home from a party...how they'd fallen into bed together. She didn't seem to remember, and if she did, her revulsion overpowered all other emotions..

He didn't understand why he just settled down beside her. There had been many before her; convicts, beauticians, strange girls whose names he could not recall. Outside of this apartment, a billion or so likewise were just itching to become the latest Squignoski find. Day after day, they lounged on his casting couch, not caring what he looked like, who he was, as long as they could get off of the streets for a few hours.

If he were a deeper man, he would have already realized that this was his way of getting back at a domineering mother, who had divorced his freewheeling and shameless father and married a man who treated her son badly. But Squiggy's mind would not stretch that way.

Rhonda was different. Strangely, his lust for her, harbored and shared with Lenny over the advance of a year, had mutated into something stranger over the space of a month's time. Even now that it had been sated.

Could have been the fact that his best friend was now rolling around in the hay with Laverne on a regular basis and just didn't seem to have time for him anymore. He wasn't sure.

But he could've sworn that he felt something for her.

If you can hold on
Lose your fear
I'll try to keep the walls from falling down

"Yer phone's off tha hook," He pointed out.

Out of nowhere, into the silent room, she explained, "They're not calling Rhonda back. I don't need to have the phone on the hook to know that." She rolled over in the bed, looking Squiggy dead in the eye, "I walked into the wait room and there were fifty girls there who were younger and...different...from Rhonda."

Squiggy used the tiny percentage of his brain that wasn't constantly focused on the superfluous to Rhonda's words. Silently, he realized what she said was true; Hollywood had a new love affair going with the waif. Everyone was in search of the new Allie McGraw, Julie Christie or Mia Farrow; slim, young, longhaired girls, independent and wild. Women with whom Rhonda could simply no longer compete with, thanks to her voluptuous figure and age.

She was Marilyn Monroe, and the world was hot for Twiggy. And her pride refused to allow a change.

"It's happened," Rhonda said, turning to her pillow, "Rhonda's finally obsolete. I knew this day would come around." She turned onto her stomach, "When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Judy Garland. She's one of the reasons that for all my life, I wanted to be was an actress.."

"Juby Gar'lnd? Dorty!" His synapses fired, "Man, she was a looker..." Rhonda began to sob.

"She's been reduced down to touring around her stage show. On top of that, she looks like hell!" Rhonda shuddered, "From drinking too much.." She pitched the bottle across the room, watching with satisfaction as it shattered into a million pieces.

Where is your saint?
To let you know you're not alone
To bring you peace
Help me be your friend your confidante
And keep the walls from falling down

"Watchit, woman!" He cried out, wincing away from the bottle's impact.

"Don't you see, Squiggy? One wrong move, and...it could be Rhonda."

"It ain't gonna be Rhonda."

"It could be!"

"It ain't!"

"Because?"

"'Cuz I ain't gonna let it."

These words lay between them, stretched out sheer in the thin air that separated the chair from the bed. She couldn't deal with them just yet. Weeks, months could be devoted to them, for now she turned over a final time and stared blankly at the pinkness of her bedroom wall.

She heard a sigh behind her, a shifting, footsteps; he was leaving the room. Then they ceased.

"Rhonda, a lotta jerks prob'ly say this ta ya...but yer pretty."

Her lashes fluttered to her cheeks, splaying a final ounce of mascara down to her lips, "Thank you, Squiggy."

"Not just yer eyelashes an fingernails an junk...yer insides, too."

As the door closed and she drifted away to sleep, she couldn't help it; she began to believe him.

Move on to "Telling Stories: Fiction In The Space Between"