Weeds Between Graves
Part Ten
By Missy
SERIES: Weeds Between Graves
PART: 10 of 10
RATING: PG (Adult themes)
PAIRING(s): Lenny/Laverne; Squiggy/Shirley
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: Milwaukee cannon, late-season five.
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Lenny and Laverne find themselves tools of the Big Good, though they're not entirely comfortable with their mission...
NOTES: In which I steal myth arch from "Joan of Arcadia" and "One Life To Live". Don't worry, I only sort of joke ;-).
The end!
***
In a very jovial mood, Laverne and Lenny all but danced down the sidewalk.
"Carmine's gonna be fine now! Ya know how good that feels, Len?"
He smiled. "It feels good. Right, ya know?"
Laverne nodded emphatically. "I ain't never done somethin' that important fer someone before."
"I guess you were wrong about that girl bein' a devil!"
Laverne frowned, and they both came to a halt when the angel appeared before them.
"Good job. Carmine's out of danger now. You have served us well, and there remains one more task for you to perform today."
"What?" Lenny wondered.
"You both know the Hiiawatha room at the Pfister Hotel..."
***
Two Weeks Later
Shirley smiled to herself as she adjusted her party dress. She winced as her finger caught against the soft fabric. Though they had healed somewhat, they would never be the slim, nimble digits she had prided herself on before the explosion.
Her clipboard, filled with checks and balances, told her that the First Memorial Shotz Family Ball was ready to begin. From within, she heard the sound of a band playing Elvis. Tears came to her eyes, spectral memories of Laverne sweeping past. She bravely pushed the door open.
Inside, a hundred or more Shotz employees mingled, distinguishable by their injuries or lack thereof. So many faces in repair; Shirley did not wince, smiling and greeting her old acquaintances. They did not notice her injured hands.
Marlene, whom she had asked to do most of the arrangements, hovered by the punch bowl.
"Thank you!"
"I should thank you."
"But I asked you to arrange that..."
"...I thought you were..."
Shirley blinked, trying to test her own credulity. The streamers, balloons, and refreshments didn't disappear.
"That's impossible. Who would waste a miracle like that on me?"
"Hello."
Strange emotions flooded her heart when she turned to speak to Squiggy. He hadn't changed himself one little bit, but her feelings had transformed into something indescribable. Nothing like what she had felt for Carmine, but something softer. He treated her with love, and dignity.
"You wanna make out?"
She frowned at him. Some times.
"I haven't even told anyone we're dating."
"Mister DeFazio knows!" He pointed out.
"He came into the apartment while you were kissing me. We had to tell him!" She watched his shoulders slump, and decided to throw him a lifeline. "Would you like to dance?"
His eyes sparkled to life. The band struck up 'Love Me Tender', and they drifted to the center of the dance floor.
After a while, it seemed as though there weren't anyone else in the room. As though the band were playing just for them. And the warmth and presence of Squiggy in her arms felt as though it was just meant to be.
Outside of the window, Laverne and Lenny pressed their noses against the ballroom's glass windows.
"They look good." She smiled.
"Hey Laverne...wanna dance?"
Well...no one could see them. "Okay."
They danced in the open space of the sky. For Lenny, this was a dream come true.
A little cough, coming from their side, disrupted the dance. "You're on your own from now on."
Laverne frowned, resting against Lenny's shoulder. "Why?"
"I told you. My name's Jospehine. I'm Squiggy and Shirley's daughter, and nine months from tonight, I'll be born."
The two angels were clearly astonished, and their counterpart giggled as she vanished.
"You think that'll really happen, Len?"
"It'd take a miracle."
***
Two Years Later
"Come on, Josie!"
The infant burbled, testing her wobbly legs. The journey between her mother and father seemed quite a distance. She took three tentative steps before collapsing in Squiggy's arms, giggling, as Shirley took dozens of Polaroids.
"You're such a big girl!" he declared, holding her with an affection that surprised Shirley. Nothing in her experience of having known Squiggy told her that he'd be a good father, but Josephine had wrapped him around her finger.
Two years had passed since the Shotz Memorial Ball, that first night she had kissed Squiggy, the first night she had given him what she had never given Carmine. Their daughter, a year and a half old, had been conceived that night, but Squiggy had proposed two weeks later, before she even had a clue of her daughter's existence. It had been enough to fool her mother, who still believed that Josie was a honeymoon baby.
Her beautiful daughter, with dark snapping eyes and ebony hair, had her fair skin and delicate features, and, to her mother's consternation, her father's determination. Frank DeFazio, her grandfather in all but blood, had declared so on the day of her birth.
It would have been too easy to name the baby after Laverne or Lenny, somehow, and it served well to name her instead after her best friend's mother, to please Frank. Joyce came easily; they did rejoice when she was born. Since then they had referred to her as JJ or Josie. Her mother had been clearly displeased that they hadn't chosen Lilian or Barb.
Squiggy's features darkened as Josie sat down between his knees, babbling happily and pulling off the lace-trimmed socks her mother had hemmed. "You heard from the hospital?"
Shirley had been trying to forget that the vibrant man who had held Josie at her birth was now a frail victim of a drunken driver. Poor Mrs. Babbish had devoted her life to sitting at his bedside, watching the heart-lung machine work, praying, as she never had before, that a miracle would take place. She had even postponed their move out of her husband's old apartment. "They said any day now."
Squiggy coughed, to hide emotions he wasn't entirely comfortable showing in front of his daughter. "He's gonna be with Laverne and Lenny. It'll be okay."
Shirley reached out, finding the hand that rested on their daughter's arm. She smiled, bravely but without joy, squeezing gently.
Over her shoulder, the phone began to ring.
***
"Kosnoski!"
Lenny instinctively clung to Laverne more tightly. Bad move. Something smacked him soundly in the ear, and he rolled right off of his own gravestone.
He blinked up into the wavering sunlight, only to meet the very angry gaze of Frank DeFazio. "Whattya doin', ya greasy bum?"
Laverne, instinctively sensing that Lenny wasn't behind her, awoke. "Pop?"
"Laverne, whattya doin' with him? You ain't married..."
"Pop, you gotta understand. We been -" She came fully awake. "Pop! You can see me!"
"So what I can see ya..." His eyes widened. "I can see ya!" He embraced her.
"But Pop, that means..." She couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Yeah." He shrugged. "I guess you and me and that...got a lotta time."
She nodded. "We're still waitin' for assignment. It's been two years."
"Fine, fine. First, ya tell me about him, and what yer doin' lyin' around with him."
"Well..." Laverne began as Frank wrapped his arm around her neck. Her other hand rested snugly in Lenny's grip as they walked together back into the fog.
End
To Chapter 9