Chapter 11: The Sewer Community
It was a hard trek to Mr. Bassman's, especially when I had to always wait up for Kermit and Fozzie. Wearing dark sunglasses that Fozzie had just happened to have on him, Kermit had rustled up an old zoot suit from our meager closet, which Fozzie was wearing. Kermit had on a sleeveless, white t-shirt and shorts, and he had also managed to attach a fake hairy beard to his chin, a feat I deemed worthy of an Academy Award considering that he made it look natural. Foz had a wide, pinstriped, proper tie on, which clashed almost blindingly with his stripy suit coat. For his instrument, he had—wait for it—a kazoo. I had no idea how we were going to pass inspection at Mr. Bassman's with that, but it was better than him not having an instrument. As for me...every visible scrap of my skin had been covered up with some article of clothing. I had on heavy gardener's gloves, coupled with a gray Homburg hat, a collared-up blue suit coat, a sort of neckerchief covering my mouth and nose plus sunglasses with gigantic lenses that covered the upper half of my face. Aside from the overall "concealed" look, you would have a hard time telling whether I was a Muppet or not. I hoped. Kermit's banjo was slung across his back haphazardly, and my acoustic guitar was carried very carefully with the neck in one hand. I had no idea whether it would be tuned or not, or even whether the strings were still intact, but at least I still had it. That was an accomplishment in itself. I had been sure that it was in hock in some pawn shop somewhere in the human cities racking up a heck of a bill, but it was still there in the flat and preserved as well as possible from when I'd first received it—I was still getting an allowance in those years. I hoped I still remembered at least one of the chords, or else Kermit would probably never speak to me again. He was the resident music-lover, after all.
———
WALDORF: That was a LONG paragraph.
STATLER: Think that's long? Try looking at the rest of this STORY!
WALDORF: What? Why?
STATLER: There're still 14 chapters to go, PLUS an epilogue!
WALDORF: What've we gotten ourselves INTO?!
STATLER: Well, we can't get OUT of it.
WALDORF: We can't?
STATLER: Nope...these chains are REALLY tough,
WALDORF: So much for getting a rat to chew through them, huh?
RIZZO: Hey fellas, do you MIND? Cheez Louise!
———
After much journeying through muck and back alleys, we eventually got to the riverfront where the so-called "address" from the matches was located. It was a pretty enough place, but we weren't interested in looks right now. Besides, halfway down the river the property hit an outdated sewer system though thankfully that hadn't been running for several years. I glanced back down at the match packet, carefully lifting up my huge sunglasses to do so. My hopes sunk as I realized the match-up between the two locations. "Get on your rain gear, boys," I muttered through the neckerchief, "it's into the sewer."
"YUCK," Fozzie sputtered once we'd clambered in, and I was set to agree with him. Though the sludge was mostly dry, the moisture from the proximity of the river was more than enough persuasion to get some mold to move in for the real estate. Trying very hard not to touch the walls, we crawled slowly through the level tunnel and attempted without much success to not think about what we were actually crawling through, even if it was many years old.
"Are you sorry you came now?" I asked Kermit, which was a safe enough maneuver considering Fozzie was several feet ahead of us.
His obstinate stick-to-itiveness still held even though he found himself speaking through false whiskers. "You won't get us to turn around," he insisted before shifting sharply to stop his uncovered banjo from slipping off his back.
"Not with Fozzie thinking it's the greatest thing ever," I added to him under my breath, and we kept crawling.
It wasn't very long after that that I heard Foz call back, "Hey, the tunnel's wider up here! I can stand up now!" Hurrying on, Kermit and I caught up to him, and saw that Fozzie had told the truth—the passageway opened right up into an immense cavern, dimly lit and obviously man-made—or, well, Muppet-made. It looked like a chamber that had been part of the sewer system, but with small shafts of sunlight poking through at odd angles from the tall ceiling. I chanced a quick lifting of my sunglasses so I could have an unfiltered view, and I was taken aback by the multitude of dirty, cigarette-smoking, miserable-looking musician Muppets. Though there was no water running to speak of, the atmosphere was dampened by the absence of happiness. It wasn't sad, exactly, but just...look, they weren't really throwing any wild parties in there or anything.
"Wocka wocka," Fozzie breathed, and though I couldn't really determine the emotion behind it, I had to heartily agree. It was like a musician underworld. I didn't think that in a Muppet town there was such a thing as underground poverty, or speakeasies, or anything this...low and scummy. I guess we all have to learn that the happy, pretty atmosphere that goes out on Kodak commercials isn't always the only viewpoint to a situation.
Unslinging his banjo from his shoulders, Kermit ventured further into the cavern. "I guess this is the place," he stated before a large figure stepped out from around the corner from the tunnel and blocked our way. I jumped, and both my companions followed suit.
"Can't come any farther," the Muppet grunted, and we all had to look upwards to see his face—even me. The newcomer was around seven feet tall, with purple fuzzy skin and a shock of orange hair. He had on a pair of brown painters' overalls and an innocent-looking newsboy cap, but the large, pointed teeth sticking out of his jaws didn't bode too well to me. He glared down at us. "Who're you?"
Kermit responded before I had a chance to. "We're tired, hungry and poor," he insisted, and I agreed with him to every extent. Digging through his pockets, he produced the matchbook that had given me the directions here. "A friend told us about this place, and we're chancin' it to the fullest." I was impressed that Kermit came off so well as an unemployed musician; I hadn't thought he had it in him.
The tall guy took the matches, which seemed microscopic in his hands, and looked it over. "So you've heard about our nightclub," he grunted. I blinked. Nightclub?
Fozzie voiced my thought. "Nightclub?" he asked, bewildered. Then with a flourish, he tried his hand at imitating jazz lingo. "I mean," he proclaimed, sounding like he was reading lines off a cue card, " 'What joint does ya mean, pelvis-cat?' "
"Mr. Bassman, of course," the big guy retorted, sounding like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I thanked whoever might be listening that he hadn't picked up on Fozzie's false musician-dialect. "I mean, that's just the 'talent show' part of this place, where everyone shows off their ability," he went on. "There's so much more; in fact, there's—"
Just as my hopes were growing, the stranger broke off. "Hey, wait a minute," he growled. "How do I know you're not cops? And what's with that guy"—he pointed right at me—"and the wacky get-up? Sounds fishy to me."
I hadn't been prepared for either of those questions, but I ad-libbed as best I could for the one I was sure I would be able to answer. "Fur condition," I lied, scratching one of my arms through the coat as a sort of alibi. "I have to keep it covered up at all times or it'll shrivel up and crack. The doctors called it 'Toast syndrome'." The ailment, at least, was a real one; I don't live with a frog who hears all the news for nothing. I left it up to Kermit to answer the other one, because I myself had no idea how we were going to convince the big guy that we weren't police officers.
After scratching his "beard", Kermit looked up at our inspector determinedly. "If you don't believe that we're out-of-work musicians," he proposed, "then we'll play something for you."
———
STATLER: Oh no, Muppet music!
WALDORF: AHHH! The scourge of the recording room!
STATLER AND WALDORF: SOMEBODY HELP US!
———
The answer Kermit gave was short and simple and might actually get us out of this jam, but his suggestion sent my lungs right down into my stomach. I had forgotten everything I ever knew about the guitar when I'd gotten sick of practicing. What was Kermit thinking? Or—the possibility made me freeze up—had I never told him that I didn't remember how to play?
Perhaps sensing my nervousness, Kermit turned around to look at me. "Just stay calm," he hissed, to Fozzie too, "and follow my lead."
Kermit started playing an even cadence on his banjo, playing the same set of notes over in even time. I picked up my guitar and imitated him, picking out a few random strings and strumming them to the same beat. Fozzie accompanied on kazoo while Kermit started singing the first lines, slowly and almost as if he was still just talking.
"It starts when we're kids—
A show-off in school.
Making faces at friends,
You're a clown and a fool..."
The tempo picked up immediately after that as Kermit's chords got more complicated, intertwining as more of a melody than the earlier simple cadence. I tried my best to keep up, wildly guessing at which strings I should pluck and, amazingly, getting a decent blend. Fozzie's kazoo unexpectedly seemed to have a wide range of notes, which he was playing to the fullest, looking more like he was playing a sophisticated instrument than a kid's toy. Kermit went on, his lyrics taking the same turns as the new tune.
"Doin' pratfalls and birdcalls and bad imitations
Ignoring your homework—
Is that dedication?
You work to the mirror:"
A brief, uplifting chord.
"You're getting standing ovations..."
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Fozzie added his two cents to the song.
"You're burning with hope..."
For lack of anything else constructive to do, I chorused with him on the next lines. By an unbelievable coincidence, we sang the same exact words, without any prior knowledge of what the other was going to sing.
"You're building up steam...
What was once juvenilish—"
Fozzie dropped out, leaving me to solo the next line.
"—Is grown-up and STYLISH!"
Kermit rejoined the chorus, and we all sang the next line, Kermit's banjo thankfully drowning out my confused guitar picking.
"You're close to your dream!"
We were in the home stretch now. I think at that moment we were all psychically connected, because we were all singing the same thing, word-for-word.
"Then somebody out there loves you,
Stands up and—"
Just when I'd started to get used to it, our inspector silenced us by clapping his hands over his ears and shouting, "OK! Enough!" Shaking his head and pulling out a clipboard, I'm pretty sure I heard him mutter "Definitely unemployed musicians" before raising his voice again to speak to us. "All right then, I believe you." He pulled a pen out of the chest pocket of his overalls. "State your names and business."
Names. I hadn't thought of that either. By now I was really glad that Kermit and Fozzie had come along, because Kermit immediately offered up, "I'm Rufus T. Firefly, and the bear over there is my assistant Emmanuel Ravelli. And that's our associate J. Cheever Loophole, the one with the fur condition."
The big guy started to write those down, then paused with the pen quivering over the paper. "Wait a second," he growled suspiciously. "Didn't you say before that you were Tired, Hungry and Poor?"
"As a description, yes," Kermit explained patiently. "But our names are Firefly, Ravelli and Loophole."
"Rufus T. Firefly, Emmanuel Ravelli, J. Cheever Loophole," the big guy muttered, getting set to jot them down again, but he paused once more. "Haven't I heard those names somewhere before?"
It was my turn to come up with an amazing save. "If you have, then that's proof of our status as musicians," I insisted. "We used to perform here and there, so we might've gotten in the papers at some point."
Hesitating a little, he nevertheless shrugged and jotted it all down. I had to suppress a sigh of relief. Thankfully, prejudiced Muppets wouldn't have any use remembering the Marx Brothers' various aliases from their movies. As for us, well, Kermit and I had always watched the marathons whenever one of our four basic channels ran them. Who ever thought that culture could change your life?
———
WALDORF: I didn't.
STATLER: But culture changed OUR lives.
WALDORF: ?
STATLER: Yeah. THE MUPPET SHOW is what roped us into heckling the Muppets every waking moment of our lives!
WALDORF: Well, what were the sort of things we used to do BEFORE we started heckling them?
STATLER: Heckling each other.
———
Fozzie started to proudly stride into the cavern, but was stopped once more by our interrogator. "What's your business here, then?" he asked.
On a sudden inspiration, I stuck my hand in my pants pocket and pulled out the mutilated sheet music I'd picked up outside Floyd's dressing room—when getting in disguise, I hadn't acquired another pair of pants. I showed the decrepit paper to the big guy. "We were looking for someone who might help us repair the destroyed measures," I explained.
He winced when he saw the condition the paper was in. Taking it gingerly by an unburnt end, he turned the sheet this way and that, reading the title aloud. " 'I'm Gonna Always Love You', by Jeff Moss for Miss Piggy?" I saw Kermit look up in surprise at the name. The big guy hummed some of the music aloud, then shook his head in distaste. "If I were you I wouldn't care about restoring this piece of trash, but that's your worry," he grumbled. Handing me the sheet music back, he instructed, "Look, unless you register at The Happiness Hotel, you're going to have to leave here at midnight. Policy, you know." Waving us through, he added, "Now get going before I hangs ya' upside-down!"
As we scurried to get out of his sight, Kermit looked up at me. "Miss Piggy?" he inquired almost breathlessly. "Do you have the music to Miss Piggy's number?"
Hearing Kermit talk about the porcine diva with that faraway look he usually reserved for his banjo, I instantly remembered exactly why I'd hated Miss Piggy so thoroughly. Trying to control my sudden burst of jealousy, I explained, "I found it outside Floyd's dressing room, torched up and wrecked."
"May I see it?"
Fozzie was looking at me anxiously as I tried to think up an excuse to not give it to Kermit, but I eventually had to give in and handed him the sheet. Foz looked over Kermit's shoulder, then had a double-take as he saw the title of the piece.
"Whoa, that really is Miss Piggy's music!" he blurted, forcibly tearing it away from Kermit and scanning it with his eyes. "It's the one from last night!" Fozzie looked up at me suddenly. "Why'd you keep it?"
I fought for an answer. So I could torch and burn it some more, I thought internally, but no way I was going to let that reaction show. "...I guess I thought it might be evidence," I replied lamely.
"PHEW!" Fozzie sounded extremely relieved. "For a second I thought you were going to say that you liked her act!"
A surge of bitter gratitude went out from me to Foz for that one instant. So I wasn't alone in my loathing of the pig. Kermit, however, just made his usual frown and stuck the music in his pocket instead. "I happened to enjoy it," he answered stiffly, and I got the sinking feeling that he was going to be in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
In an attempt to change the subject, I brought up our mission. "OK," I muttered in a low voice so we wouldn't be overheard, "Remember, we've got to investigate and keep our eyes open for clues to the mur—" A passing trumpet player, a yellow Muppet with perpetually-closed eyes and a wild head of bright canary-colored hair, was looking at us. "—to the you-know-what."
Fozzie, looking around through his big sunglasses, hissed back, "How're we going to do that, Phyllis?"
I motioned for them to start walking, as three musicians standing whispering in the middle of a cavern in a disused sewer system would look suspicious. ...But seeing as everyone here was in a cavern in a disused sewer system, I guess I'll revise that and say that we'd better keep moving or we'd seem conspicuous. While we walked and waved to various other down-on-their-luck musicians (none of whom waved back, I might add), I whispered, "That starts with Floyd. If he had a match packet from Mr. Bassman's, then that means he definitely has some connection there. Now, if we could just find somewhere he stayed..."
"The big guy over there mentioned a 'Happiness Hotel'," Kermit offered up. "That could be a start. If we could get a look at the names of the tenants, we could find out a lot."
"Good thinking." The gears in my brain were whirling, clicking all the information we had into place. "We'll have to check there too. Does anyone know what time it is?"
"Five-thirty," Fozzie answered suddenly, and we looked at him a little funny.
"And how would you happen to know that?" Kermit demanded .
"Well," the bear began, as if he'd had this whole bit memorized and only now had a chance to use it, "There was this one time, see, where I was trapped in this pit in the middle of my living room—this was when I was still living with Mom—and then out of nowhere—"
"We get it, Fozzie," Kermit and I insisted forcefully at the same time, and it took all I had to stifle a series of laughs. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.
And that seemed to involve looking for evidence that could hang a murder on my cousin.
———
WALDORF: You know, that "toast" thing the detective lady was talking about is a true occurrence.
STATLER: That's right. When a Muppet gets old and crusty enough that no one uses it anymore, its skin DOES turn into what the Muppet engineer people call "toast".
WALDORF: Then how come it hasn't happened to YOU yet? Heh heh heh!
WHUMPHF.
STATLER: Well, that was the educational part of the book.
WALDORF: Yeah, there you go, right there!
STATLER: Put this story down and get a job!
WALDORF: Yeah, you don't want to end up heckling Muppets all your life like us!
STATLER: Or reading pointless stories about copyrighted characters! Get a life! Go do something intelligent!
WALDORF: Take us with you!
STATLER: Just get us away from this awful story!
. . . . . . . . .
WALDORF: Looks like we're stuck here. No one wants to give us a lift.
STATLER: Sixteen-year-old roadhogs!
WALDORF: Can't be trusted with a license anyways!
STATLER: I hope gas goes up to twenty bucks a gallon! Cheapskates!
WALDORF: Boo!
———
A/N: The song "The Magic Store", featured in this chapter, was written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher and initially appeared in The Muppet Movie. The lyrics were obtained from "The Muppets 25th Anniversary CD: Music, Mayhem and More".
