Chapter 25: The Story Of A Star
"Alright," Clarice began her tale, "you already know I was a singer at a jazz club in Manhattan called the Acorn Club. I got that engagement in 1983, I was nineteen then. But I knew how to entertain the guests, and I had my share of fun, too, especially when these two certain chipmunks came. In '85, on a day when Chip and Dale weren't there, someone came up to me and told me he was from Las Vegas, and I was what he had been looking for, and he asked me to sign up for a job in Vegas. I knew I'd miss the Acorn Club and Chip and Dale, but I believed that was my big chance. I could've gone to Broadway, too, but Broadway's just not my world, being part of a musical cast and all that. I told the guys about it, we said goodbye, and one week later, I was here in Vegas.
"But I quickly asked myself if it was worth it, if there was any improvement, compared with the Acorn Club. The place I had to perform at was in no way better. It was actually so shabby that I could as well have gone to, say, Atlantic City or so. Even the piano was badly out of tune. The show was nice only when the audience was nice, but even that was often not the case, so I smiled and sang before the audience and cried my heart out in the backstage area. No matter what I did, no matter what happened, the rats I worked for didn't want to let me go. Several attempts at catching a plane and flying back to New York City failed, and the one single time that I managed to get back, they found me before I could find Chip and Dale.
"A few days before Christmas '86, this armadillo entered the bar. He must've sensed I wasn't happy with what I did and where I did it. He introduced himself to me as Armando and said he'd rescue me. Armando's a nice guy, but when you're a rat, and an armadillo is towering above you, you don't believe that at first. Armando told these guys to let me go, and so they did, 'cause they knew better than to mess with someone several times their weight. I packed my things and went with Armadillo. I didn't know what he meant with 'rescuing me,' but it couldn't get any worse. He got me a singing job at some Tiki bar on the Strip. He also took me to a lot of human shows, and when I asked him why, he said that his dream was to do such a show with small animals. From then on, that was my dream, too.
"My own show grew and grew with the years passing. First, it was just me singing and Mandy playing the piano, he's a great piano player. Then, we did a lot with a few more musicians. For example, we toured from place to place for two years with a second piano player, we went as far as Reno with that show, but traveling wasn't easy for three small animals plus their gear. In 1990, we had a small combo, piano, drums, and a real upright bass, nothing made of a pencil. By and by, the combo grew, we got a couple of horns and such... Well, couple of horns, that's what I thought, it was still a nicely small combo, but when I sang Auld Lang Syne on New Year's Eve '93, the combo that accompanied me had grown into a big band with one and a half dozen horns! Mandy had it recorded, he played the recording to me, and it sounded incredible. Mandy said we got ourselves the best horns we could get, and the singer was easily on the same level.
"And then we heard about the plans to build a new, mind-bogglingly huge resort hotel here in Vegas. It was to take up the space of three existing hotels which had to make way. Sadly, one of my favorite places was in one of those hotels, but Mandy said this was our chance. He wanted me to have my very own show theater, the best small animal music hall ever built in Las Vegas, and the construction of the new hotel was our chance to get it done. He had lots of rodent construction specialists come and tell us what's possible and go just as far. We got to see the original plans and found out there were lots of space unused by the humans, even enough for full noise insulation so we could install a powerful public address system for tens of thousands of spectators. Plans were made, plans that didn't interfere with what the humans build and that allowed for keeping everything hidden from their eyes. In spring '99, the three hotels were demolished, working on the new place started two weeks later, and in summer '01, both the Versailles Palace and my theater opened.
"First, we played the same show we had always played with the same big band, but in winter '02, things quieted a bit down. This wasn't a show to perform at the same place over and over again, so Mandy and I worked out something new. We went through several styles and decided to keep most of them, and we also decided to inflate the big band to an orchestra with strings and everything. By May '02, both the orchestra and the new show were ready to go. But after playing it for a year, I felt that even though it was a very great show played by a very great orchestra which I had named the Destiny Unlimited Orchestra, and even though many referred to this thing as a sensation, just that it was not. It had been there before. I've never attended a single Broadway musical, neither human nor rodent, but I was sure that their orchestras were hardly different. I felt restless and longing for something that went even beyond most human performances.
"One day in fall '03, I took a stroll about the city, trying to find some inspiration that might lead me where I desired to go but couldn't find the way. I came along a warehouse when I heard unusual sounds, electronic sounds, and they were coming out of a small hole in the ground, much like a rabbit hole. What was so incredible about this was that these sounds were most likely not played by a human or any recording played back. That was what I had been looking for. Synthesizers. No, a mixture of synthesizers, beat boxes and all that with a large orchestra. So I went down that hole and knocked on the door, and a white mouse opened. We all know him today as Todd. I asked him what he did and how he did it, and he gave me a demonstration. He played on a human handheld computer with a touch screen on which he ran some synthesizer program. He made it sound like a real orchestra, and a moment later, it sounded synthetic, electronic, almost spacey.
I didn't leave him much of a choice other than to join my orchestra. He celebrated Christmas with the orchestra, and we managed to arrange a semi-electronic version of Auld Lang Syne in time for the New Year celebrations, but it was a long way to go, and there were lots of music to rearrange or to write all new and even some modifications on the light and sound systems to do before my new show, the Chipmunk Divine, premiered on March 5, 2004, in front of a full house. I had heard the title song on the radio, by the way. The original version, that is. It was played by two guys from Switzerland and sung by a singer who had also done the theme songs from several spy thrillers, and I loved that song so much I rewrote the lyrics and practically based half the show on it."
"Talking about this song, Clarice," Chip threw a question in, "did you dedicate it to someone? It sounds like you did."
"To be honest," Clarice answered, "I dedicated it to you and Dale. I never told anybody about the two of you here in Vegas, not even Armando. But despite my success, I missed the times when we fooled around at the Acorn Club. I missed you. Sometimes, when I stood on that platform and sang out that song to the gasping crowd spread out below me, I wished I was back in New York City at that jazz club that was hardly any larger than my stage, but where they still had enough space to put up tables and for waiters to walk around. And deep in my heart, I had a dream of redoing what we did then, at the Acorn Club, at my own theater, wherever. Tonight, you guys made that dream of mine come true, and I have to thank you. I cannot thank you enough for what you did."
She got up and gave Chip a hug. "Thank you, Chip." Dale received a hug, too. "Thank you, too, Dale." She would have loved to give them both a peck on the cheeks, but she had already done that on stage. Also, she was just trying to make friends with their girls, and she didn't want to make them jealous again instead. "And of course thank you, Todd, for coming back to the orchestra and bringing Chip and Dale with you," she said and hugged the young white mouse.
"So it wasn't all really about love?" Gadget wondered. "The song made me believe it, and so did your actions at the end of the show."
"Oh, no, no, far less than you think. I must admit I did have a little crush on the two guys back then, but most of our little show was for fun, for playing with them. And as for the song, the lines about love, I took them over from the original and left them unchanged because they sounded good. Besides, how shall I be the one to blame? They're both cute, aren't they?"
Foxglove approved, "Oh yes, they are!"
"And they're more than this," Gadget added. "You've seen them a few evenings a week. I've been living with them for almost nineteen years now and solved many cases..."
"Uncountably many, huh?" Clarice asked.
"Wlachally, they are countable. Let's see, 1988 was only half a year as we started out in the middle, the Juice Lee case doesn't count as that was before I met the guys, so it's technically not a Rescue Rangers case, that makes the Klordane case number one, all in all we had..."
"Excuse me, Gadget," Foxglove interrupted her, "but I doubt that Clarice wants to know the details."
"Wait." Clarice looked at the two with her eyes wide open. "You mean she could tell me exactly how many cases the Rescue Rangers have solved?"
"Oh yes," Chip, Dale, Monty, Zipper, Foxglove, and Tammy answered in unison. Gadget blushed, and all she could say was, "Golly."
"Well, in that case," Clarice said and stepped over to Todd, "with a mastermind like her, we can't lose this case. Todd..."
Outside Clarice's place, a mouse with long black hair snuck through the corridor. She stopped in front of the door with the star from where she heard voices. 'Who's in there with Clarice?' she asked herself. Carefully not to make any noise, she laid an ear against the door and tried to listen to whoever was speaking. 'Armando has gone home, so he's not there.' She recognized Todd's voice with ease, maybe even easier than Clarice's, but the other voices were unfamiliar to her. 'No-one from the orchestra, that's for sure... Can they be the Rescue Rangers? If it's them, what are they doing in there this late at night? And what, above all, is Todd doing at Clarice's place that I don't know about?'