Chapter 4

CRICKET: Well, it had been three weeks since Gloria signed her big modeling contract and moved across the river to Bigger City.

"Well, it's been three weeks since Gloria signed her big modeling contract and moved across the river to Bigger City," Bill said.

"What an oddly expositional thing to say," commented Tilly.

Alice sighed. "I gotta admit, I kinda miss that millennial whippersnapper. She was the only one who could match my sarcasm."

"And for a brief time, I too knew the joy of having an older sister." Tilly added.

"Hey, hey… we shouldn't feel bad that Gloria's gone," Bill pointed out. "We should be happy for her success."

"Yeah. And we should be happier that we get ten percent of whatever she makes!" Cricket noted. "Which I assume is a lot. I gotta find out what percents are."

"You know… it's Sunday, and we really don't have much to do around here. What say we take a little trip over to Bigger City and pay ol' Gloria a visit? I bet she misses us as much as we do her."

Alice shuddered. "Bigger City? That place makes Big City look like heaven… an' Big City's most definitely the other place."

"It's just a visit. I'm sure this won't be a big deal."

"Wow… this place is a big deal," Nancy commented with a whistle when the Greens arrived at L'hôtel des Riches Snobs, a towering, luxuriant edifice. "You sure this is where Gloria's stayin'? Dang, she's come up in the world."

"It's an eyesore is what it is," Alice complained. "Who needs a gold fountain in the middle of the lobby? In my day, fountains were fer washin'!"

"I gotta admit, I really do feel out of place here," Bill conceded. Even in his one good suit (which in all honesty wasn't that good), he could feel the disapproving stares of the upscale hotel's patrons. He tugged at his collar self-consciously. "Maybe we should just go to the front desk."

"If we can find it," Nancy remarked sardonically. The lobby was huge and crowded.

"You know what they say," Bill quoted, "Everything's bigger in Bigger City."

It took fifteen minutes to finally locate the front desk, though it seemed longer to the Greens. The front desk clerk, a tall snooty man with the requisite monocle and pencil mustache, eyed them as he would if someone had just dumped a truckload of manure in front of him. And not the good kind. "Eyessssss…" he said perfunctorily. "And how might I… assist you."

"Oh, uh," Bill said nervously, flustered by the clerk's judgemental glare. "Well, um… if it's not too much trouble, I was wondering if you could let Gloria Sato know that the Greens are here to see her?"

"Mmm, yes," the clerk responded. "Our records do indeed show that Miss Sato is staying here."

"Oh, good! Well, if you could buzz her and let her know that we'll be coming up to see her…"

"…if you would let me finish, sir," he said in a way that made it very clear he did not consider Bill a "sir" in any sense of the word, "those same records state very clearly that under no circumstances does she wish to receive any visitors."

"Well, that can't be right," Bill mused. "I'm sure that if you just let her know it's us, she'd be glad for you to send us up-"

"Oh, no, no no," the clerk said, his gaze intensifying. "It's all very clear: No. Visitors."

"Well, of all the ding-dang nerve," Alice grumbled. "Shoulda known. Oh sure, when she needs us we're family, but soon as she gets her shot at the brass ring, she forgets all about us!" She began to stomp her way out.

"Ma, I'm sure she doesn't mean anything by it, she's probably very busy with her new ca-"

"Oh, wake up, boy! She's an ungrateful snob, just like all o' them stuck up rich types! Face it… she was just usin' us the whole time, and now that we ain't useful no more, we might as well not exist."

Bill began to stammer a protest, but as he was trying to find the words, he realized that he was wasting his time. "You know what… you're flip-flappin' right. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, like I always do… but she really has forgotten us. C'mon, kids… we should go. If we hurry we can get back to Big City before it gets dark."

Dejected, the Greens departed the hotel, much to the relief of its snooty patrons. But while most seemed resigned to the reality that Gloria had moved on without so much as a by-your-leave to her erstwhile surrogate family, one wasn't particularly convinced.

"Brother, doesn't it seem odd that Gloria wouldn't want to see us? Given, our relationship didn't start off on the best of feet, but I have grown to think of her as an integral part of our lives."

"Yeah, it kinda does," admitted Cricket, "but then we kinda did ruin her computer, and she wound up with that crazy honker because we got her that job at Big Tech… and I did kinda try to exploit it for money without telling her… yeah, I'm kinda not surprised she don't wanna have anything to do with me."

"While your transgressions are indeed numerous, I simply can't see Gloria holding a grudge for this long."

"Yeah, but that's 'cause you always think the best of everyone. It's kinda your superpower."

"Oh, that ain't my superpower. But that will only be revealed when it's needed most. I simply believe something's not right here."

"Yeah, but there ain't no way to prove it. Not without some kinda crazy scheme, anyhow, and you know me, I don't have it in me to come up with those."

"But what about all th-"

"Yep, not one for crazy schemes am I. C'mon… let's go home, Tilly."

Meanwhile, far above, an exhausted Gloria slumped on the couch in her luxurious suite. Her schedule since signing the contract had been packed, giving her hardly any time to herself. Even when she wasn't at a shoot or a publicity event, she was too exhausted to do much more than eat something and pass out. The glamorous carefree life of a model was proving to be not all it was cracked up to be.

She wondered how the Greens were doing. Admittedly, once she viewed them as little more than the nuisance on the other side of the fence, but over time, Cricket, and by extension the rest of the family had grown to become almost a second family to her. The last few weeks, she had felt a void in her life without them.

"I wonder what they'd be up to now," she mused to herself. "It's Sunday, so Bill'd probably be trying to fix something around the house and Alice'd be criticizing his efforts… Cricket and Tilly'd probably be up to some kind of wacky shenanigan or something…" She chuckled to herself. "I should really give them a call." She dialed the Greens' number, but as they were now in the process of driving back to Big City, the call went straight to voice mail (AKA Alice's circa 1985 answering machine). After sitting through the novelty AM greeting tape, she waited for the beep and began, "Hey, everyone, this is Gloria. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, but they are working me to the bone. So, anyway, it's been kinda lonely without you guys so I was wondering, maybe one of these days you guys could come up to Bigger City and visit? The restaurant in this hotel is amazing and of course everything would be on me, and then we could just, y'know, hang out like old times. Anyway, call me back, I'm at 555-555-5555-7. Hope to hear from you soon, bye!"

She hung up, sighing. She missed them, but they hadn't called in the last three weeks. She was beginning to wonder if they'd forgotten her already. Absently, Gloria bean scrolling through old photos. There was one from the time she and Cricket had tangled with Chip Whistler on a hunt for the last coffee beans in Big City. And here was a shot from that time Tilly and her weird paranoid friend had tagged along on her night out clubbing. Turned out – what was her name again? Amphibia? No, that wasn't a name – had some pretty sweet dance moves. And there was that time Cricket and Bill had gotten themselves stuck in the slide at Burger Clown and she'd had to grease them free (thankfully, there was no shortage of grease at Burger Clown). She'd been let go when the scandal shut the franchise down, but that job had sucked anyway, and that mascot of theirs was just plain unsettling, so it was no big loss.

Her reverie was interrupted by a ring from the suite's phone. Groaning, she picked it up. "'lo?" she mumbled.

"Gloria, darling!" Avant Garth's ebullient voice shouted. "I just called to remind you about tomorrow's shoot for my new line of arctic wear! It's going to be ten below in the studio, so be sure to drink plenty of warm liquids! We wouldn't want that precious nose of your getting frostbitten, would we?"

Gloria groaned. Another crazy shoot. This sounded even worse than the one she had to do with the python. "Do we have to? I'm burning out, Garth!"

"Avant Garth! You say the whole thing! Every time!" he snapped. Gloria was a bit surprised; there was a sort of edge in his voice that she'd never heard before. "And you know very well that if you're not in the public eye, you are out of the public eye! And the fashion world is very fickle… the second you're out of the spotlight, you are left behind. You don't want to be left behind, do you?"

"No!" she replied hastily, eager to seem a team player. This was a huge opportunity, right? She could pay back the Greens (and then some), support her parents in their approaching golden years, and secure a future for herself, and all it would take was putting up with some inconveniences. "I just… I just need a break, okay?"

"I'll look into it. You just keep doing what you're getting paid for."

"Yeah, speaking of… when am I getting paid?"

"Oh, don't worry about that, it's all done by direct deposit."

"Yeah, but what about my request that ten percent goes to Bill Green and his family? I'm not sure they have direct deposit… or an actual bank account… I'm pretty sure Gramma kept her money in her mattress, actually…"

"Yes, about that," Avant Garth remarked. "I… don't know how to tell you this, but a Mr. Bill Green did call today… he was demanding a rather large sum of money, far above what we agreed to, and well, he got rather abusive."

"Abusive? That… doesn't sound like the Bill Green I know at all. That man may be the single nicest human being on this planet."

"Well, you know what they say… money changes people. Moreso the envy of money. I'm… ashamed to say that when I explained that I simply could not agree to his demands without your consent, he began to get threatening. Not to mention a bit racist."

"Bill Green?" repeated Gloria uncomprehendingly. She simply could not believe that the Bill she knew would act like that.

"If you want, I can play the recording for you."

"Yes. Actually, I would like to hear it," Gloria replied skeptically. She was not going to accept this without any proof.

"Well. You must understand that I take no pleasure in this," Avant Garth said sadly. The next thing she heard was a recording of a voice that was unmistakably Bill Green's angrily demanding half of her modelling income, and when turned down, going on a violent, racist, misogynistic tirade. She listened, unbelievingly, her heart breaking. It seemed impossible, but she could not deny the evidence of her ears.

"I… I can't believe it," she finally said, tears welling up.

"It just goes to show you… some things are better left in the past."

"Y-yeah…" she said, "I… I guess you're right."

"Well, how'd I do?" voice actor Job Boles (of such beloved shows as Ken Conceivable, The Confident Clan, Small Town Blues, and Kingdom of Lore) asked. "What is this for, again? Because this script seems… questionable."

"Never mind that. Just take your big check and go."

"That I will! Yoink!" Job replied blithely, snatching the check away and exiting the suite.

Once he was gone, Avant Garth… or rather, the individual going by that name, started to giggle. The giggle slowly escalated into the type of deranged laughter you might hear out of some kind of cartoon supervillain.

"Ah… heh… heh… I really needed that, "Garth" remarked to himself before he slowly began to peel his face off.

"Man, that thing chafes," he continued, "but it's worth it. Phase two of my extremely convoluted revenge plan against the Greens is finally complete."

Chip Whistler grinned broadly at his own cleverness, his new experimental-polymer-resin teeth glowing brightly in the dark hotel suite. This should have probably been a red flag, and his dentist had warned him that there might be side effects, but it was worth it to look this good. "I wonder if my increasing tendency to go on bouts of deranged villainous laughter is a bad sign," he considered. "Ah, what the heck. One more. BWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

A.N.: Wow, that escalated quickly! Will Gloria discover Chip's treachery? Will the Greens find out they've been fooled? Tune in next chapter!

Jose: But did you see this coming?

See ya next time!