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“It’s the Muppet Show with our very special guest stars, Sam and Max!”
Somehow this theater smelled exactly like the snowstorm that struck New York about five years ago, in which clouds of birds late for the winter migration swarmed taxis and rotten hot dogs rolled into the Hudson River, making a frozen rotten meat bridge. It was a winter Sam remembered fondly as it was the third time that he and Max got married. However, that winter did not consist of the slightly broken vanity, overstuffed trunks full of costumes, and chairs that squeaked dangerously as was provided to them in this ramshackle dressing room.
As of this moment they were noshing on ketchup chips in their ramshackle dressing room that they had been eating while walking down the street after finishing up a case. Sam had almost made a set-up joke for Max to provide about the theater they were passing by when an extremely stressed-out frog burst out from the theater doors and in a whirlwind of enjoyable chaos shoved them towards the theater (an act which made Sam’s suit coat get slightly torn at the sleeve since it hit an exposed nail as he and Max were pushed up the stairs into the theater) told them that his selected celebrity for the show unexpectedly canceled so he’d have to make do with any random Joe, Stan or Flint that he could find off the street.
At the moment Sam couldn’t think of a good reason not to participate, as the anxious energy within the theater due to the celebrity canceling meant that it was a powder keg for pandemonium which meant that Max was on board as well. And here they were after being hurriedly introduced to the rest of the theater troupe. As they waited and continued to nosh on ketchup chips, Sam rolled over the names of those members in his head because they were funny names.
His ears perked as the dressing room door opened though Max was distracted by continuing to indulge in his snack. The gofer of the establishment, Scooter, poked his head in. He appeared slightly frazzled like his boss, as his green track jacket was two buttons off from being buttoned up. He looked at his clipboard and then back at the duo with a decisive nod.
“Sam and Max? Five minutes to curtain, Sam and Max!”
“All right, little buddy. What should we do for the show?” Sam asked which made Scooter pause in the doorway, staying as he seemed to process what Sam just said unapologetically and flippantly. Scooter looked slightly ill as the stress slightly increased when the words finally hit him.
“Leave it to me!” Max said. “I’ll get up on the stage and chew my chips for the whole world to see.”
Max did it then, showing off globs of chewed-up chips and an impressive amount of spit. Sam pulled at his cheeks to annoy him and got a hard head butt against his shoulder as a form of retaliation. Scooter looked about three degrees more ill since it was obvious that these impromptu guests were not taking anything seriously.
The whirlwind of chaos was already apparent throughout the theater and in this ramshackle dressing room. It upgraded to a maelstrom on land as Miss Piggy, dressed in a soft purple floral dress complete with an authentic string of pearls, barreled into the dressing room and started digging into the overstuffed trunk of clothes. The clothes started making an impressive fabric pile.
“Outta my way!” Miss Piggy shouted. “The set designers ruined my sequin dress and I need one for tonight! Ingrates! Uncultured! How can they do this to the star of the show?!”
Sam kicked back in his chair and chewed on some more ketchup chips. He’d been here with his husband for about seven minutes and it was already getting good. Max was busying himself by practically swimming in the mountain of clothes.
Scooter took a tentative step forward and foolishly said, “Um, Miss Piggy, you’re not on tonight.”
“I know that! I know that,” Miss Piggy shouted, whirling away from the trunk and grabbing Scooter by the front of his green track jacket. Sam was a little impressed when Max jumped up from the mountain of clothes like a scary dolphin to amble over to Sam and steal one of his chips. Miss Piggy pulled Scooter up close and shouted in his face, “If you must know, Kermit and I have plans tonight and I - oh my!”
Miss Piggy had caught sight of the guests for the night. She let Scooter drop to the floor to which he quietly cried out in pain. Miss Piggy adjusted the gossamer straps of her dress and threw her hair back.
She sauntered up to Sam and cooed, “Oh, Kermit didn’t tell me he got Humphrey Bogart on the show. Hello, tall, dark and handsome.”
Sam gave her a look of flat disinterest and a slightly aggressive pat to Max’s giant head to placate a potential jealous reaction. That sort of buttering up reminded Sam of before he and Max got together, in which gals and guys tried to come at him with alien flirting techniques that consisted of flowers and pretty cards. Sam grimaced. Those techniques did not have a lick of gasoline or a promise to knock down as many dumpsters together as this time on Earth could permit, as Max had promised him one summer night in their youth. Nobody really appreciated the sounds of skulls cracking open like Max did.
The bottom line was that Sam was already happily taken by a hyper-kinetic lagomorph that had a lawnmower for teeth.
While Sam had been lost in rumination and squeezing at Max’s adorably bulbous head, Miss Piggy got a closer look at him and grew haughty as she realized her mistake.
“Oh. Never mind, you’re not him. I’m not in the business of barking at dogs,” Miss Piggy said. “I bet you don’t even speak French.”
“Tu es mereveilleux,” Sam recited. He didn’t even know the meaning of those words or the language, he picked that phrase up from a creepy and kooky lady.
Miss Piggy blinked owlishly like a kid that got caught sneaking a corner brownie piece. “Ah. Yes. I mean, oui.”
Max meanwhile shouted, “Sam, you spoke French!”
This spurred Max to grab onto Sam’s arm and bite his way up all the way to Sam’s cheek. Upon ranking whatever Max did to show his affection in terms of how annoying it was, this was solidly in the middle. It did make Sam’s sleeve get wet with drool since Max never did things by half and would encase his horrid mouth around Sam’s arm. On the other hand the methodical motion going up Sam’s arm to his cheek was familiar and therefore good in his book. Max was never the sort to be predictable so Sam wondered when his little buddy’s choice of sharp affection would change someday. In the moment however he felt content with this. The bite marks tingled like poison which was a fun sensation.
“That’s the third time this week you’ve done this, little buddy,” Sam noted.
Scooter had gotten back up from the floor at this point, seemed to realize that it was a losing battle with getting everything done on time, and looked like a gofer at a loss of what to do. “Um, would anyone like coffee?”
“I like my coffee green, like my men!” Max said, taking a break from biting his husband’s cheek to making obnoxious eyes at Sam.
“You’re an absolute expert at being subtle, Max.”
“I do hope that you’re not talking about my Kermie,” Miss Piggy sniffed.
“Relax, I’m not going after your frog,” Max said with some bite, waving his paw dismissively towards her. Sam felt Max’s arms go around his neck to indicate that he didn’t forget the case of mistaken Humphrey Bogart identity and as if to say, my Sam.
Sam rolled his eyes but conceded he wasn’t one to talk. They had and were tightly wound throughout their entire lives, in everything they did together. Being in the orbit of Max brought up a constant refrain of my Max, my Max, my Max.
Max pulled at his eyelid and stuck out his tongue while Miss Piggy flippantly tossed her hair. Though their first introductions to her were rocky, Sam had to admit that she acted with an unrefined poise and was clearly the sort that took up as much space as she wanted with a spitfire assurance. It was an admirable quality she possessed.
Max still took first place in admirable qualities, even if they were irritating. Like when he was able to aggressively throw paint balls at the ceiling with a star baseball player’s precision. Or right now when he swung himself off Sam’s neck and landed in front of Miss Piggy with a pose that screamed mischief. At least to those that knew him for decades and the only one in the room who fit that criteria was Sam.
He gave a look to Scooter that said to enjoy the coming fireworks.
“Aw, let’s not fight,” Max fibbed. As expected of two explosive personalities coming together, Max has a particular energy to his tone that indicated to Sam that he was eager to egg Miss Piggy on. “It’s not often ya find someone with heaps of charisma in a place like this!”
Miss Piggy took the bait. She tilted her head slightly back and twisted a curl of hair around her finger. “Well… it is true.”
“You’re too good for this dump!” Max said.
“Oh, stop. You’re just saying sweet words of no substance, absolutely mindless praise,” Miss Piggy tittered before she demanded, “Well? Go on!”
“Yeah, yeah! You’re much better suited to marketing,” Max said, putting an arm around her shoulders and he held his paw up as if beholding a billboard. “I can see it now. You, as the poster-gal for pork chops.”
“Pork chops?!” Miss Piggy recoiled away from him. “Why, you - hi-yah!”
Miss Piggy came out swinging with a karate chop and Max with a palm-strike that Sam remembered he learned from an old Hapkido training video they dug up from an abandoned lot about five months ago. The two struck each other at the same time and crumpled to the floor with respective groans of pain. It came to a stalemate.
“Play nice, Max,” Sam said laconically.
The dressing room door slammed open again as Kermit rushed into the room, looking about fifty percent more stressed.
“Scooter, our guests need to be out there in thirty seconds - Piggy? What are you doing on the floor?”
“Pretending to be a rug, what do you think I’m doing?” Miss Piggy groused as she got back up.
“This is our act!” Max piped up, facetious and pretty much sticking his tongue out at the theater’s time constraint problem because this issue was still not being taken seriously. Sam reached out to pull his husband into his lap as he’d probably want some affection.
“Ah - goodness, all right. Scooter!” Kermit called. “Move the schedule around for now, second act becomes our first act. We only got one singing act and that’ll come later - we’ll just have these fellows fill in for the acts we had planned, they can ad-lib. Tell set design to change some things around quick as they can.”
“Got it, boss,” Scooter said, running out of the ramshackle dressing room.
Kermit took a breath. He pulled back as Miss Piggy pushed herself closer to him and said, “Now, normally I interview our guests ‘round the start of the show and well, nobody knows a thing about you two.”
“Max, I’m afraid to tell ya that we’re on the Z-list for celebrity.”
“You, maybe. Everyone loves how cute and marketable I am.”
Temporarily rebuffed from affection, Miss Piggy went off to dig through the trunks again and Kermit continued, “Be that as it may, I should know something about you two when we do the interview.”
“Eh, just do it now,” Sam said. “This is as docile as Max is ever gonna be tonight.”
“I suppose that opens up time for our acts…” Kermit cleared his throat. “Do you two have any talents?”
“The ability to find crime and punch it in the nose and throw frying pans at it,” Max volunteered. He got Sam’s arm wrapped around him and was chewing on Sam’s cufflinks.
“Any talents that you can do on the stage?”
“I can play Max like a banjo,” Sam elected.
“No, that’s all right,” Kermit replied. He added under his breath, “Sticking to the plan then.”
“Hey, hey,” Max called to Miss Piggy, the fighting spirit temporarily abated. “We’re much better suited to working together. You, me, we’ll work to rule the world! Until I dispose of you of course.”
“I already do, dear rabbit,” Miss Piggy replied without missing a beat and not even looking at Max as she dug through the clothes. “I have Kermit. And a mountain of adoring fans.”
“Ah! Are they invisible?” Max asked.
He yelped as his shoulder was struck by an invisible fan. Sam chuckled as Max rubbed at his shoulder since he didn’t have any way to attack what he couldn’t see, and Sam knew that his husband weighed out the allure of fighting or staying warm in Sam’s arms and saccharine comfort miraculously won out that round. They’d have to throw peach cans at each other later to establish balance to the universe if they were being so affectionate right now.
“That was a real cute sound, Max.”
As Kermit tried to get a word in, as the interview was floundering and flopping like a fish on a deck in pure nautical nonsense, Miss Piggy triumphantly pulled out a sparkling blue dress. She hurried over to give Kermit a noisy kiss to which he spluttered.
“I shall go sit at our reservation. Don’t be late, my dear,” Miss Piggy cooed at Kermit. She flounced out of the room like a thunderstorm leaving a Midwestern field, “Good-bye, gentlemen!”
Only Kermit replied with a farewell: Max would already stop paying attention to his surroundings in favor of knitting his teeth into Sam’s tie, and since outside stimuli left Sam’s orbit all that was left was looking over Max and having a thousand and one ideas within him where they could go have fun together.
“Oh, I forgot,” Max said as he looked up at Sam with a grin. His forehead squished against Sam’s chin. “Sam, when I rule the world you can sit at my right paw as my darling trophy husband.”
“Thanks, little buddy,” Sam replied dryly. Outside the dressing room, the theater seemed to be alight with a cavalcade of eccentricity.
“It’s gonna be a long night,” Kermit sighed.
-
A cloud of scientific-like steam rose up to reveal the intricate and ever-diligent Muppet Labs the aesthetics and likes of which brought to mind the scientific excursions of the oldie movies in which unusual monster-men were brought to life and scientists made concoctions that glowed radioactive green and shot off plumes of battery-acid like scents. No such presentation was done tonight, for its display was of the inventive sort: within the darkened Muppet Labs was a spotlight that shone down on an invention that looked like a saxophone mixed with a curly straw with colorful buttons to match.
The esteemed Dr. Bunsen Honeydew stood expectantly next to the machine with the poise of a scientist about to win the Nobel Prize while Beaker nervously fiddled with any loose ends on the invention. As Beaker used a screwdriver to tighten any loose screws Dr. Honeydew began his speech.
“Hello and welcome to Muppet Labs! Tonight we intend to show you a very special invention that we are delighted to show you,” he said, gesturing to the invention. “This is the Transport-Meal-O-Rama, a nifty little device that takes all the tedium out of chewing food.”
With a clap of his hands, Dr. Honeydew caused the darkened background to be illuminated by light, showing a table that was laden heavy with a sumptuous feast. Various pitchers of drinks surrounded the food. Roast turkey sat smartly on a crystal platter and was surrounded by mashed potatoes with mouth-watering gravy and butter.
Eye-catching crab Rangoon sat neatly on a plate alongside freshly made tempura that was still steamy hot and flaked to perfection. Beaker eagerly looked over a plate of zapiekanki, which was toasted to perfection and topped with the perfect combination of cheese and ham. The crown jewel of the display was the crispy and flaky apple strudel which was topped off with a scoop of ice cream that melted perfectly.
“Now, Beaker shall demonstrate what the Transport-Meal-O-Rama is capable of,” Dr. Honeydew declared.
At that Beaker momentarily forgot about the zapiekanki. He shook his head and hands with an undercut of distressed meeps that grew as Dr. Honeydew powered up the machine. Dr. Honeydew aimed the device at a leg of turkey and in an eye’s blink it dissolved into the machine. Dr. Honeydew then set the Transport-Meal-O-Rama’s sights at Beaker.
“Meep, meep,” Beaker protested.
“Now, now, don’t worry, Beaker,” Dr. Honeydew said in a placating voice that just accentuated that something inevitably would go wrong. “It’s perfectly safe.”
With a whirring sound followed by an electrical zap the turkey leg reappeared. It impaled Beaker, as the back part of the turkey leg stuck out of his stomach and the front part of the turkey leg stuck out of his back.
“Meep! Meep, meep!” Beaker cried as he tried to pull out the turkey leg to no avail. “Meep, meep, meep!”
“Oh dear. There are still issues we need to work out, though this wasn’t as awful as the – never mind!” Dr. Honeydew said. “Don’t worry, dear Beaker, we’ll fix it up in no time.”
He powered up the Transport-Meal-O-Rama again and the turkey leg disappeared. After a few heartbeats of shock, Beaker patted his stomach and sighed in relief. He gave a few quiet meeps to calm down any stress lingering in his mind.
“Obviously this invention is not ready for the general public,” Dr. Honeydew said as he placed the Transport-Meal-O-Rama on the table. “But for now, let’s eat this feast the old-fashioned way!”
Beaker shook his head vigorously. He grabbed a glass of orange juice and quietly walked to a corner of the Muppet Labs to drink his orange juice in peace.
“Oh my. It seems that Beaker is switching to a liquid diet.” Dr. Honeydew waved as he said, “Well, that’s all for Muppet Labs for today! Remember to chew your food!”
-
Sam was within paws reach of catching Crazy Harry while avoiding minor explosions that erupted as they ran in the direction of the stage. Max was within biting distance of Crazy Harry for about three seconds. Crazy Harry swerved away at the last moment which caused Sam and Max to trip over each other, get tangled up with each other not unlike when they happily fought over the phone, and they rolled out onto the stage for their act.
They took a few unsuccessful motions to get untangled from each other before Sam managed to pull Max off his legs, let him drop, and watched him flop happily onto the floor. With some pain in his joints Sam got himself back up to take in the scenery before him. The stage was blistering cold to go with the same aesthetic as being deep underwater. The seafloor consisted of old paper bags that were cut up and laid out in squares, cardboard coral, drifting papier-mâché kelp and wooden boulders were painted somewhat haphazardly yet glowed under the blue lit spotlight that flooded the stage and a huge painted boulder had a conspicuous hole lay at the other end of the stage.
Uncaring of the slight muttering from the audience that wondered why the duo wasn’t doing anything, Sam stuffed his paws into his pockets and was hit by a lightning strike of clarity that he and Max had rolled onto the stage without their costumes.
“Cripes, Max, how are we breathing underwater?” Sam asked.
Max unlatched his scary teeth from a papier-mâché kelp forest. Some bits of green paper stuck in his teeth and Sam had to grin at how adorably dumb his husband looked.
“I dunno! I think my next evolution process is to grow gills.”
“Your next evolution process is to grow a nose that’ll sniff out treasure,” Sam said, pointing at the conspicuous hole within the huge wooden boulder.
Max ran up to Sam and climbed his shoulders, pointing at the cave. “Sam! I want takoyaki.”
“Where will we get that?”
“From the octopus that’s obviously gonna pop out of that hole.”
Sam jumped back as a wild, snarling submarine burst through the hole, gurgling angrily and writhing about like a shark that was deeply unhappy with the results of its massage. Max jumped up and down on Sam’s shoulders which made his muscles shriek the same as his leg muscles screamed because he side-stepped as the snarling wild submarine snapped its jaws at the duo. It was fun for about thirty-nine seconds.
Then Sam grabbed Max off his shoulders, scrunched him down into a ball and lobbed his husband right at the wild submarine which promptly exploded upon impact. Max landed in a heap of broken wood and cardboard that was painted yellow.
“Aw, Sam! Now we gotta go find an octopus that’ll explode,” Max exclaimed.
“That’s what I call inking outside of the box, little buddy,” Sam replied.
For such an awful pun the next victim of Max’s awful teeth was Sam’s shoulder, but he was used to such things and nonchalantly strolled off the stage with a lagomorph attached to his bicep.
-
Fozzie Bear ran by Kermit’s desk in a haste to get on stage, eager to get out there as his head was held high and his mind was full of fresh jokes. He was determined to knock the audience’s socks off, figuratively yet hopefully literally.
In a contrast to when Fozzie would often bug Kermit while at his desk, Kermit called out to Fozzie right before his fuzzy feet hit the entrance of the east wing.
“Fozzie, I need to tell you that – “
“Kermit! Aw, you wonderful frog,” Fozzie said with rapturous joy. “I am so grateful for this opportunity, I promise I won’t let you down!
“Fozzie, I had to cut your act short for our guests. We’re running late,” Kermit interrupted right back.
“Cut my act short, why… I…”
Immediately Fozzie put his paw to his heart, a little wounded sound emitting from his mouth. He stumbled over to Kermit’s desk and gestured with unspeakable grief, placing his elbows on the desk and burying his face into the palms of his paws. All the while he was wasting precious time.
“Oh, the world felt so bright before my dream was crushed under a webbed foot,” Fozzie mourned, “What shall I tell the boys back in Coyoteville? Or Oatmeal? What a name for a town, eaten away just like how my ambition was eaten and crushed in favor of fresh faces…”
So on and so on it continued, coupled with Fozzie knocking over important papers as he shivered with sadness and cried out in pain that could befit an old starlet wrenching her heart out on the silver screen for all to see her grief-heavy heart in black and white silver screen glory.
“Fozzie, what are you doing?” Kermit finally asked with a pinched expression as he grew weary of the sad little bear sounds that Fozzie was currently polluting his area with.
“The un-bear-able agony! Oh!” Fozzie suddenly got back up with a reinvigorated chipper attitude and grinned at Kermit. “With acting chops like this I oughta get a raise, huh?”
“Will you get outta here?!” Kermit shouted while waving his arms at Fozzie.
“All right, all right, sheesh!” Fozzie muttered as he walked to the stage. “Never woulda taken a frog to be a Philistine.”
Fozzie cleared his throat and fixed himself up as he stood right under the spotlight of the stage, ready to unleash his comedy upon the world even if it begged and pleaded for him to stop talking. Fozzie decided to go with his top three material to really make a splash and stick out as an act of the night.
“I hear we have a dog and rabbit as our guests tonight! Maybe I’ll ask the rabbit for his foot for good luck,” Fozzie said, setting up a long (and in some distinguished theater-goers’ opinion, painful) joke.
On the dot Statler barked, “It’d be good luck if you never put on an act again!”
“Aw, geez. C’mon, that wasn’t even clever word-play,” Fozzie groused. “Give a fella a break.”
“A break?! Why? We never get a break from your terrible act!” Waldorf guffawed.
“All right, all right, moving right along,” Fozzie said. He coughed and took a pause to build up anticipation and suspense for what he was going to say next.
“Here’s a philosophical question for ya! If a bear falls dead in the woods, does anyone hear it?” Fozzie put a paw to his mouth. “Oh dear, how morbid…”
“If your act falls dead on stage everyone hears it!” Statler jeered.
Undeterred as ever by the jeers, Fozzie decided to bring out the big guns: “I was with my vegetable friends, including the cabbage with the big leaf. One day at the park I was overcome with the tenderness of a friendship well-maintained. So I told my vegetable friends: ‘Lettuce romaine friends forever.’”
“I think it’s time for us to leaf this theater!” Statler and Waldorf laughed uproariously.
At that the band played Fozzie out to make room for the next act. He remained undefeated as he left the stage, however. Already he was planning for his next act that would surely give him the accolades that a great comedian could achieve.
-
The one and only music act for the night was underway, to which Sam watched from the eaves of the stage because he had to see whether it’d be a train wreck or not. Max was busy pulling at the stage curtain to see if it would rip. On stage, Gonzo swung a polka-dotted umbrella on his wrist as he danced around a constructed cityscape as rain poured down: he looked like an oldie Hollywood star with a business formal outfit to match. His lapels had little chickens pins on them and as the artificial rain fell down he kept on crooning.
“What a glorious feeling,” Gonzo sang as he jumped into a giant puddle, “I’m happy again!”
The wind began to pick up until it was a howling storm, blowing away the tiles on the hastily constructed houses, picking up the street and eventually picking up Gonzo to toss him around in the air and blow him off stage to wetly smack against the floor. Some of the artificial rain smacked Sam in the nose and made him sneeze. The stage workers were swiftly on the stage, clearing the props away and mopping up the water.
“Hey, can one of you fellas wring me out?” Gonzo asked from the floor.
Max happily obliged, grabbing Gonzo and squeezing him out like a dish rag that offended him personally. The water left behind a sizeable puddle before Max reluctantly ceased his violence and Gonzo dropped back onto his feet with an appreciative nod.
“In a fit of money-savin’ did you repeat an act?” Sam asked, his mind curling over information he’d read in the newspaper about this theater attempting to do this sort of act and ending up flooding the whole block. It sounded like great fun.
“Sure!” Gonzo replied. “We’re cuttin’ it close on rent so we’re reusing whatever we can. That rain water came from our laundry water!”
“What else can you cut in half to save for rent?” Max asked with a gleam.
“I cut this table in half so we don’t need another one!” Gonzo said as he smacked the nearby table. It split in half with that gentle tap, though the duo didn’t flinch at the calamity of supplies crashing to the ground.
“You’re a fun whatever,” Max said. “We should tie you to the front of the Desoto and crash it into the wall!”
"I wouldn't go that far, little buddy, otherwise some kids with art and theater degrees might tear off our heads and put them on pikes as a warning to all who would put their grimy little paws on weirdo whatevers. We're not cut out to be avant-garde warnings. An’ I don't think we got enough of a cult following that'll step up to defend our furry behinds," Sam said.
“Geez, Sam, you gotta take a breath once in a while.”
“No, no, no, fellas, fellas! That sounds like so much fun,” Gonzo said happily. “C’mon, I wanna try it.”
“Our schedule’s pretty packed with throwing eggs at windows and running over billionaire televangelists,” Max said as he pulled out a schedule book and pen from who knew where to write down the time and date. “Can we put you down for Wednesday at five in the evening for something like that?”
“I’ll be there!” Gonzo promised.
“Gonzo! Hurry up! We gotta leave early for the pierogi sale,” Rizzo called out from the theater’s exit, holding a basket.
“Gimme a second! I need to get my pierogi basket,” Gonzo called back. He scurried away up the stairs to presumably go find the basket. Sam was pretty sure that he didn’t take it in a fit of thievery but if Gonzo couldn’t find it then he’d put the basket on the whatever’s head and in a rare display actually give something back to its owner.
In the meantime he told Max to praise him for finding new ways to make their life exciting, “You’re quite the social butterfly, pal. Always lookin’ for a new angle for us t’ have fun together, huh?”
“Yeah… and they said we wouldn’t last,” Max sighed wistfully.
“Who exactly is ‘they,’ little buddy?” Sam asked.
“I dunno. I forgot what we were talking about.”
-
As the stagehands were trying their hardest to sweep up the water that stormed in from the previous act, Kermit continued to worry himself into a green that was well-suited to horribly seasick sailors. The numbers were starting to swirl and make him feel sicker. It was up to personal interpretation as to whether a familiar loud voice added or abated his stress levels.
“Kermit! Kermit, my knight in froggy armor,” Miss Piggy said as she sauntered up to his desk. She tried to jump up onto it to sit and croon at Kermit but there were too many papers on the desk and it would be unbecoming for her to kick them away as she wanted.
“Miss Piggy? What are you doing here?”
“It turns out that our dinner reservation is much later than I anticipated, my sweet,” Miss Piggy said. “I knew you would be denied the sunshine that I bring to your life so I decided to come back and make you smile. So? Smile!”
“Gee. Um, maybe when I’m done with these bills…”
Miss Piggy looked them over. “It surely cannot be this difficult to budget. Finish it quickly, tell me what isn’t needed around here?”
“Sure. Your dinner with me tonight is a huge expense that we don’t need,” Kermit said.
“Watch it, frog,” Miss Piggy warned. Her tone indicated that getting such a reservation could be considered its own Herculean effort.
Kermit did not pick up on this, mired in anxiety much like a poor frog stuck in a marsh. “We all need a little of the green but this is going to be a tough month…”
Miss Piggy watched him for a few seconds, her palm going over her heart as she witnessed Kermit work himself to the bone – or lack thereof – in order to help keep this show going. She made a decision then, as she reached back to unlatch her splendid pearls.
“Kermit, I think this should suffice for the rest of the month,” she said, showing the pearls to him.
“Your pearls? But, Miss Piggy, you waited so long to get those from France!” Kermit exclaimed.
“Eight months, ten weeks and five days to be exact,” Miss Piggy said. “But I’d much rather save this theater. It is my habitat after all, as the residential show-stopping star.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it, Miss Piggy,” Kermit said. He took the pearls from her and latched them back around her neck. “But you know… we don’t have to sell them right away. It would be lovely to see you at dinner with them one last time.”
“Oh, Kermie… We all need a little bit of the green but all I need is lots and lots of green frog,” Miss Piggy said as she grabbed Kermit into a bone-crushing hug if he had any bones. “I simply cannot be separated from my gorgeous frog.”
“What a world that would be,” Kermit croaked as he hung limply in her grasp. By a miracle she let go and they began to discuss where the money could go first.
As the Freelance Police returned to the theater triumphant after going after joining Gonzo and Rizzo for that pierogi sale by taking as many free samples as Sam wanted and Max needed (the other weirdo duo was still at the sale, piling up their baskets with pierogi and intending to come back to the theater later) Sam kept the door open for Max for his little buddy to slip through and then clutched at his head with his free paw as a swooping vertigo feeling attacked his brain.
“Ah, geez, little buddy,” Sam muttered as he stumbled back in after Max. “Sheesh. Felt worse than that time you an’ I got stuck in that giant washing machine and you were coughin’ up lavender flavored bubbles for three weeks and I was stuck walkin’ around in circles for three days like a runaway merry-go-round ‘cause it got a churro stuck in its gears.”
“Huh? What was that, Sam?”
“Now that we’re back here, I got the third person perspective limited back ‘stead of everythin’ being omniscient,” Sam said, briefly aware of this knowledge.
“Oh, right. Hey, you always do!” Max protested. “How come you get to have it and your handsome little devil of a husband doesn’t get it at all?”
“I have it on good authority that I get the third person limited perspective whenever I’m around for a scene because I’m the favorite out of the whole bunch,” Sam said a little self-importantly as he fixed up his tie. Just so that he wouldn’t gain an overinflated ego, he sneezed loudly in the next beat of silence. He sniffed and dragged his suit coat sleeve across his nose.
“Aw, that’s not fair. It should be me! Sam, we’ve been in,” Max counted on his fingers, “At least forty-four of these! I’m gonna steal the third person limited perspective from you when you sleep.”
“Don’t think you could steal it or use it even if ya really wanted to, little buddy,” Sam said with an apologetic shrug, though it was at least twenty-five percent apologetic and seventy-five teasing. “Your mind cannot fully grasp the third person limited perspective.”
“You can’t grasp the fact that I smeared apple jam into your inventory,” Max snapped back gleefully.
“I was wonderin’ why it smelled like the ol’ orchard you set on fire when we were li’l tykes,” Sam replied thoughtfully. Just like that, all discussion of third person limited perspective was forgotten as they chattered on about other topics.
On their way back further into the theater Sam overhead Kermit and Miss Piggy discussing their financial options, and it appeared that Miss Piggy was willing to give up her string of pearls just to save the theater. Sam stole a glance at Max, watched his husband stare intently at that conversation, and the roulette for their morality landed on doing something nice for once.
Sam reached into his inventory and pulled out a hefty gemstone, heavily letting it drop on Kermit’s desk with a loud noise that jolted Kermit and Miss Piggy from their conversation. They both looked at Sam with confusion in their eyes.
“Max an’ I picked that thing up on our last case and we were gonna use it as a bowling ball,” Sam said, “But Max already has a bowling ball with spikes, so you might as well take it off our hands.”
“Oh my word… it’s the Klopman Diamond,” Miss Piggy said with awe. “Kermit, this is more than enough to buy me another set of pearls!”
“And – and help pay off our bills,” Kermit added.
“Oh, right. Yes, I suppose that too.”
“Well… this is certainly a surprise,” Kermit said. “Why, it’s another beautiful display of generosity. Thank you both.”
“To make it even I’ll kick a hole in the dressing room door,” Max elected.
“As long as it doesn’t come close to mine,” Miss Piggy said primly.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to this theater,” Kermit replied.
“Max will find a way,” Sam said. It was time for their act, so he and Max rudely left the conversation to go out on stage.
-
As Sam walked out for the next act Max ran to stare at one of the objects that was placed on stage, a pair of dentures encased in resin. Sam looked about the stage that was transformed to look like a museum gift shop where people would be done looking at amazing pieces of history and feel the need to take a little piece of history home with them. Little statues of Venus de Milo were on the top shelf, Rubix cubes depicted Starry Night were neatly laid out in a toy box, and diorama kits of The Great Wave off Kanagawa stocked the shelves among other knick-knacks depicting art pieces. The drapes hanging above them were adorned with cheap sequins that looked like they came from a dress.
A particular musty smell was in the air which was probably due to the rainy previous act. Some parts of the stage floor were still wet. Max jumped into a puddle by one of the shelves holding puzzles, which brought up a small eruption of water. In way of stalling and somewhat because of anticipation for the audience, Sam took his time to look over some of the props and exaggeratedly hem and haw over them like he was really going to buy them. Max had no such skills in acting and broke one of the Rubix cubes into pieces.
In the center of the room was a piano constructed of sand, to which Rowlf was playing Clair de Lune. He was dressed in a sharp waistcoat that Sam noted was a smidge too big for him as the front part of it bunched up slightly. Nevertheless when Rowlf took note of the duo he pushed the piano lid shut (a terrific sound that immediately got Max’s attention) and sauntered over to the counter.
“Welcome, gentlemen, to the gift shop,” Rowlf said. “Peruse to your heart’s desire. Except for the piano, I’m still making down payments on that.”
“We’re lookin’ for priceless artifacts to use a target practice!” Max yelled joyfully.
“Do you have any from the Yayoi period?” Sam asked.
“All I can sell ya are these li’l knick-knacks,” Rowlf replied. “But we’ll be sure to find replicas of relics that’ll suit relics like you.”
“How rude. Guy gets a couple o’ grey hairs in his fur and everyone comments on it,” Sam muttered.
“I wanna count them! One, two, three, ten, twenty, fifty – “
“Shut your trap, Max,” Sam said as he flicked Max’s forehead. Max started giggling in that deranged way which was cute. In twenty years or so Sam might actually get that many grey hairs but it’d be inconsequential since he knew Max would be by his side no matter what. It was also inconsequential because everyone would be staring at Max’s crazy antics instead of Sam’s future grey hairs.
Meanwhile Rowlf had been ignorant to what they were saying to each other, and Sam leaned over the counter a little to watch Rowlf dig through the hand-crafted fake merchandise before he popped back up triumphantly with a piece to show off.
“Is this to your liking?” Rowlf asked, presenting a vase that depicted the ancient goddess Melinoë conducting an incantation. On the other side her brother Zagreus was locked in the horrific battle of organizing paperwork. “From dog to dog, I have on good authority that this is a vase well-sought after.”
“It’s all Greek to me, so I don’t care,” Max said with a shrug of his shoulders and Sam nodded along.
“Perhaps you’d prefer something from the Hellenistic period,” Rowlf replied as he placed a miniature of the Rosetta Stone on the counter.
“Max, I’d wager that was about the same size as you.”
“Shut up, Sam.”
“Wait a moment! I know just what would fit your tastes, gentlemen,” Rowlf said. He stuck his head back under the counter and pulled out a huge statue made out of foam that depicted a weirdly carved dog and rabbit: the dog looked as though it had not gotten sleep in a hundred years and the rabbit looked as though it was created by an artist that had an idea of a rabbit instead of a model. “Here is a recreation of a twelfth century stone carving that looks exactly like you, all the way from a church in Herefordshire, England.”
Max made a dismissive noise as he poked at the stone rabbit’s eyes. “Eh, I don’t see the resemblance.”
“I have to agree, little buddy,” Sam said as he examine the stony dog. “This fellow is stark naked and I ain’t been that bold since we were in our twenties.”
“Or when we had some couple time at that hotel room in Shinjuku,” Max said mischievously.
“I don’t think you can say that kinda thing on the stage, Max.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with saying Shinjuku,” Max protested, “We painted that hotel room red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple – “
“Yes, and it all stained my fur for a week. You’re more well-suited to being the resident nudist. Anyway, none of this is to our tastes and this doesn’t even look like us,” Sam said, gesturing to the fake stone. “We’ll accept compensation in wrecking your store, though.”
Rowlf turned the stone to look at it more closely, placed a paw to his forehead and laughed. “Oh! Apologies, gentlemen. This is the wrong stone, give me a moment…”
He dove under the counter again and Sam briefly wondered if its contents were in the same place as wherever Max kept his stuff. Rowlf popped back out with a new, actually authentic stone carving in his arms and heavily plopped it onto the counter.
The stone carving depicted the duo to a tee, down to Max’s long white ears and Sam’s cufflinks. It even included the somewhat broken seam of his suit that was situated by his elbow due to tearing it when he and Max were shuffled into this very theater.
“How about that,” Sam said as he inspected the carving, “We are famous twelfth century relics, little buddy.”
“Can I say that I’ve aged marvelously, Sam?” Max asked, faux-coyly putting his paws to his face.
“Yeah. Like a jar of pickles.”
-
After the brief interlude that came with the end of their final act, the duo headed off the stage to swipe some leftover pierogi lying around for themselves. They were lying on the floor together in their ramshackle dressing room for some alone time, making jokes and bantering barbs at each other while they ate their free goods. The jam filling and flaky dough was enough to satiate their hunger. As much as it was fun to run around the stage and encounter those weird little theatre troupe members, Sam had to come to the conclusion that existing by Max was like taking an energetic and running start around cloud nine. Even when Max was really annoying.
Normally they wouldn’t honor a time-constraint, but since this place gave them pierogi they ought to be polite for once. Or at least that was Sam’s thought process and it could vanish just as quickly as it came up: same as his and Max’s moral compass. They hurried out of their dressing room with pierogi in paw, chewing them up and eating as they made their way to the stage.
As Max horked down a handful of pierogi Sam ate the last one they had and grabbed Max by the scruff of the neck so they’d make it to the stage faster. They made it just in time to hear Kermit declare, “That’s all that we’ve got for you tonight! Once again here are our guests, Sam and Max!”
Max chewed up the last of his handful of pierogi as Sam said, “Sure has been an interesting experience. I think Max is gonna put down a timeshare here so we can swing by more often.”
Kermit nodded along before he noticed Max with the remains of pierogi crumbs and blueberry jam on his face. Kermit made a confused and slightly disgruntled face as he asked, “Where’d you two get the pierogi?”
“I tried to raid the crafts table but there was nothin’ to eat!” Max said cheerfully, as instead he got to indulge in pierogi. He obnoxiously climbed Sam’s shoulders and held onto his husband’s head like a koala that smelled like blueberries.
At that Kermit looked apologetic. “Ah. Right, we did use the entire food budget for craft services for Dr. Honeydew’s sketch… an’ then Electric Mayhem fed it all to Animal, so…”
Sam shrugged good-naturedly, as he doubted that the sketch contained the favorite glazed food of dubious origin that he and Max loved. Max did not seem to care about the lack of food as he tugged at Sam’s cheek. Sam pinched his paw and his vision was full of manic lagomorph as Max leaned over to look at him.
“Sam, you gotta get me more, you ate the last one,” Max said, a cutely menacing look his eyes and his monstrous teeth stained with blue, “Or else I’ll bite your head when you sleep!”
“You already do that, Max, it’s relaxing,” Sam said as he planted his paw on Max’s face and pushed him back up, meeting Kermit’s gaze as he stared at them with a sort of expression that spoke to the fact that this was not the weirdest display he’d seen all week. “This is a lesson for the audience, if you take away a rabbit’s piergoi you’re gonna end up with bear trap-like teeth in your head.”
“Hmm. Huh. You learn something new every day,” Kermit said after thinking it over. He turned his attention to the audience, “We’ll see you all next time on the Muppet Show!”
With that, Sam and Max were surrounded by Muppets that tossed pierogi about as a show of camaraderie for fellow weirdoes. Following Max’s lead, Sam indulged in the pierogi as much as his husband, a prize for a job well done on what was admittedly a very tight schedule. It was as much a miracle that their office still stood proud on the streets of New York that this theater stuck around as long as it did, and as such the main inhabitants of both buildings were kindred spirits.
“What did you think of it?” Statler asked Waldorf.
“I think this show has gone to the dogs and rabbits!”
