"Ugh, organic food," Bebe says, making a face as she examines the array of vegetables spread out before her.
"What's wrong with organic food?" Mole asks, laden down with groceries.
"If I have to eat non-meat products, i.e. fruits and vegetables, I like to know that at least insects were killed to provide me with them."
"Regular carnivore, eh?" Mole says dryly.
"I'd beat my chest and roar, but we're in public and it would attract attention."
"Never stopped you before," Mole mumbles.
"So!" Bebe says, clapping her hands together, "what've we got?"
"Everything but what you insisted you needed." Bebe had the sense of mind to realize that, should Mole bring his milk into the kitchen, he would have seen the surprise birthday invitations, and then all her and Kenny's planning would have been for not. She'd quickly grabbed hold of Mole and insisted that they return to the grocery store because they were out of tangerines.
"You hate tangerines," Mole protested.
"Oh, I do not," Bebe denied.
"You hate them so much you spent two weeks coming up with a song and dance routine about how much you hate them."
"Oh, that? Pfft," Bebe said with a casual wave of the hand. "That was nothing. Theater. Every thing's, you know, symbolic in theater."
"Tangerines aren't symbolic."
"They could be."
"Of what?"
"Oh, you know... wars and... stuff. And the futility of... things. So c'mon, all this talk of tangerines is making me especially hungry for them."
"I thought we were talking about tangerines symbolically."
"Well now we're talking about them literally and I'm famished." Bebe shoved Mole out the front door. "We're going, Kenny! Why don't you put away the milk while we're out? And when Mole and I come back, the milk will be completely out of sight, right, Kenny?"
"What?" Mole said.
"Yeah, what?" Kenny asked.
"Just get rid of the milk!" she hissed, slamming the door.
"But I still have it," Mole pointed out.
"Oh, that's fine!" Bebe said cheerfully, slipping her arm through his. "Off to the store!"
Once they got there, of course, Bebe pulled everything off the shelves that wasn't a fruit or vegetable and dumped it in the baskets Mole was carrying. Eventually the only part of the store she hadn't ransacked was the part with healthy food, and that is where they are now.
Mole's cellphone vibrates, and while Bebe makes immature faces at the tomatoes, he fumbles with the prepackaged foodstuffs to answer it. He flips it open, frowns at the screen, then flips it closed again.
"Who was it?" Bebe asks, turning away from the produce. It's a bit hard to understand her because her index fingers have hooked her mouth at the corners and drawn it down into a triangle.
"Kenny. Again." In the thirty minutes since he and Bebe left the house, Kenny has taken and sent twenty-seven pictures of himself doing a striptease with a spatula as a prop and sent them to Mole's phone. Why neither Kenny nor Bebe thought to call Mole's cell phone during the twenty minutes he was out buying milk will forever remain a mystery.
Bebe giggles and drops her hands. "Oh, I know what I came for now."
"Tangerines."
"Echk, Mole, don't you know me at all? I hate tangerines." Moles sighs. "No," Bebe goes on, "we're getting you off smoking."
"Excuse me?"
"Come on!" She grabs Mole by the hand and soon has him carrying nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, sprays, inhalers, hypnosis tapes, and Chinese herbs. Mole frowns at her in the checkout line.
"This isn't going to work, you know."
"Oh, that's what you think."
o o o
Mole and Bebe meet up with Kenny in front of Junk In Your Trunk, the plus-size jean store of South Park. Kenny is there every Sunday morning from eleven until whenever he feels like leaving, which is usually 11:03, giving sermons in which he supposedly reveals the great truths of the afterlife. Today's lesson: that Jesus said a bunch of great stuff about brotherhood and not stoning people, but that Jesus only knew man and was as lost when it came to the workings of God as anyone else.
The only one listening to Kenny at the moment is Clyde, so Kenny is more than happy to break off mid-sentence when Mole and Bebe show up to suck face. Clyde slinks off like a dog with its tail between its legs.
"You know he likes you," Bebe admonishes. "It's not nice to rub your exceptionally hot girlfriend and adequately hot boyfriend in his face."
"I'm not adequate," Mole grumbles.
"Oh, don't sell yourself short, Mole, of course you're adequate," Kenny says, clearly amused while he rips into the grocery bags. "Oreo, Bebe?"
"Don't mind if I do," Bebe says, helping herself to a handful. She and Kenny try to keep a straight face, fail, and Bebe plops down in Kenny's lap while they snigger.
"You're both mental," Mole says. This is a mantra of his. The majority of Bebe and Kenny's exaggerated performances are put on for his amusement, but once they get into a shtick he finds it nearly impossible to get them to stop play-acting and talk seriously again.
It is at this moment that Stan and Kyle stroll by, walking arm-in-arm. Kenny calls out to them and waves. "You guys out for a gay little walk around the park?"
"I'll have you know we're promenading," Kyle informs him. "You have to link arms when you promenade."
"Of course," Kenny snickers into Bebe's hair.
"There's way gayer stuff we could be doing!" Stan objects.
"Nice comeback, Stan."
"Like you're one to talk anyway," Kyle says, eyeing Mole.
"Hey, we're not gay, we're polyfidelitous!" Kenny protests.
Kyle and Stan promenade away. "Your friends are beetches," says Mole, whose bad French accent only surfaces when he says certain key words.
Kenny shrugs. "Well, yeah, but so is everyone else I know."