by Gary K. Wolf
Roger handed Willy P his Toonie, a golden statuette depicting a word balloon containing the single word “Yuck!”
“Knowing how you like surrounding yourself with yes men,” quipped Roger, “maybe we can get the factory to replace that Y-U-C-K with Y-E-S.” The crowd maintained an embarrassed non-response for a moment before breaking into a mixture of laughter and applause.
“Good going,” said Cooper.
Willy Prosciutto glared at the rabbit.
Willy P muttered a curt “Thanks,” and stormed offstage.
“What the holy go-to-Hollywood does that rabbit think he’s doing?” said Sands. “Couldn’t he spout a few platitudes? Or at least keep his yap shut? We got enough troubles already. We can’t afford to add to our woes by antagonizing a guy as powerful and connected as Willy Prosciutto.”
I had to agree. I wanted to give the rabbit credit for being gutsy. More likely, he was just being his usual stupid.
Whichever, tonight Roger had made himself an enemy with a long memory and a short fuse.
Jessica was late joining us in the Rolls after the ceremony ended.
Roger sat in the front seat. He wasn’t hopping around like a Mexican jumping been, he wasn’t spouting his usual non-stop stream of gibberish. He was either coming down with Toon influenza, in which case he would shortly start spaying us with multi-colored sneezes, or he was contemplating the big mistake he’d made by openly antagonizing Willy Prosciutto.
There was also the possibility that Roger was wondering what was keeping his wife. When last spotted, Jessica had been sitting at a dark, secluded corner table cozying up to Clark Gable. Even Roger couldn’t have neglected the rumors that went around a few years ago insinuating that while Gable was going with the wind, he had also been going out with Jessica Rabbit.
Roger tossed his newly won Toonie idly from hand to hand like a cheap plaster kewpie doll he’d won knocking milk bottles off a shelf at a county fair.
When Jessica finally arrived, she was excited, slightly out of breath. Which meant that her chest heaved even more than normal.
A wondrous sight to behold.
“Sorry you had to wait, but believe me, the delay was worthwhile. Honey Graham snagged me on my way out. She’d been crying. She had a few new bruises. I suspect Willy P punched her around. Honey said she had something important to tell me. We went into the powder room where we could talk in private, without any chance her boyfriend or his lousey sidekick could overhear. Honey’s sick to death of the way Willy Prosciutto constantly bosses her around and uses her for a punching bag. Honey’s out to get even. She thinks she might have just the thing to make that happen.”
“What’s she got?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Honey wouldn’t tell me. She wants to make sure she can get her hands on the goods before she raises our hopes. She told me Willy P keeps this goodie under lock and key. Honey said she would have to figure out how to handle the snatch. She’ll have to get past Willy P’s safeguards, grab the merchandise, then sneak out without Willy P catching her.”
“That’s a big risk she’s running,” I said.
“She knows that,” said Jessica. “She fully realizes that once she does this, her relationship with Willy P will be over. She’s so fed up with the way he treats her that she’s willing—in fact eager—to take him down.”
“How did you leave things with her?” I asked.
“Honey promised to call me once she had the goods.”
Since we were already in the Toontown Theatre District, I figured I might as well pay a call on another of my reliable Toon snitches.
Jessica was sitting in the back seat of the Rolls, again between Cooper and Sands. I was in front with Reggie and Roger.
I’m a modest guy, especially when I’m about to get naked in front of a rabbit and his wife. I asked Jessica to turn around and avert her eyes while I shucked off my monkey suit.
Jessica turned around and faced out the back window.
I raised my bare hips above seat level in order to slip on my boxers.
At that exact moment, Jessica pulled out her compact and checked her makeup. When I glanced back at her, I could see her sultry eyes reflected in the compact’s mirror which was aimed at my manly region. I could swear I saw her smile and moisten her lips. Probably wishful thinking. Like every other thought I have about Jessica Rabbit.
After I was properly and less ridiculously attired, we stopped the car and got out to walk.
The Toontown Theater District occupied both sides of All Night Strut Street.
The Lyric Theater was presenting a musical, Olive! The Heartwarming Story of a Lady Named Oyl.
The King and I was playing at The Palace.
The Legitimate Theater was putting on Hamlet. Written by William Shakespeare with additional dialogue by Ogden Nash.
The Illegitimate Theater was staging Hamlet on Ice.
We walked by Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Grauman’s was where famous Toons left their footprints in cement. Since Toons often forgot to take their feet out before the cement dried, there were still plenty of them embedded in the sidewalk, wondering what to do next.
The Playhouse was featuring a Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman cartoon festival.
“Wow, they’re playing all of our biggest hits,” said Roger, finally breaking out of his funk.
“Give me a good anecdote about Baby Herman,” prodded Sands, who was filming our walk for his documentary.”
“I’ve got a beaut,” said Roger. “There was one scene we had to film over and over. A lady tourist who was watching us asked Baby Herman how come our scene had to be filmed so many times. Baby said, ‘Lady, you got any idea how many theaters there are in this country?’”
I had to admit, that was a funny story. Everybody in our group, me included, chuckled.
We came to the Lyceum. My source, the renowned old British silent cartoon star Dame Ima Witty, worked here in the ticket booth.
“Ima, how you doing?”
“As well as can be expected at my age,” she answered. The crisp, old fashioned lettering on her word balloon resembled a paragraph cribbed from the Magna Carta. The balloon itself smelled of liniment and moth balls. Her once flawless white complexion had darkened to the color of old leather. Patches of her skin had loosened and peeled away. She repaired the damage with touch ups of color, but nothing short of a trip through an auto body paint shop could completely hide the sad symptoms of her advancing age.
“These are my friends. Movie director, Barney Sands.”
Sands waved from behind his camera. Dame Ima automatically readjusted herself to show him what had once been her best side,
“Roger Rabbit, his wife Jessica, and Gary Cooper.”
Dame Ima’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. She leaned way forward in her booth, so far her forehead hit the glass. “Gary Cooper,” she said. “As I live and breathe. Standing right here outside my ticket booth. May I ask you a question?”
Cooper was getting a lot of that tonight.
“Sure.”
This question had nothing to do with acting.
“Would you like to go out on a date with me?”
“Huh?”
“I’ve got everything Jessica Rabbit has got. I’ve just had mine longer.”
I jumped in, sparing Cooper the discomfiture of turning her down.
“Glad you brought up your love life,” I said. “I got a question about that.”
“The answer is yes, always,” she said with the kind of coquettish balloon that floats around at a debutante’s cotillion.
Dame Ima had been the Jessica Rabbit of her day. Throw a dart in Toontown and you would hit a guy who currently was, had been, or one day would be romantically involved with the lady. “I hear that once upon a
time you had a pretty torrid fling with Clabber Clown.” Their romance had blossomed just about the time of Mayor Joe Viality’s scandal.
“Eddie, you know a proper lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“I ain’t asking you to do either.”
“Not that I wouldn’t kiss. If you or especially Mister Cooper were interested.”
“Do you know what Clabber Clown had on Willy Prosciutto?”
“That does take me back. I know Clabber had something. He was always going on about how Willy Prosciutto couldn’t touch him. Clabber never told me what kind of insurance he had. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“No problem.” I slipped fifty simoleons under the glass into her booth.
“You want tickets? You want to see the show?”
“Naw, “ I said. “That’s for you. For your help.”
“I didn’t give you anything.”
“Put that on account for next time.”
“Thanks, Eddie. Much appreciated.”
We were half a block away when one of Dame Ida’s word balloons caught up to us and tapped me on the shoulder.
Chapter Eighteen
Jessica had an early call, so we dropped her off on our way to visit the seer.
Gypsy Moth lived in a large, spooky Victorian mansion perched on Overlook Way in a section of Toontown known as Mesmeric Estate.
I expected Gypsy’s doorbell to play Frank Sinatra singing Witchcraft. What I got instead was a word balloon that read “Ding Dong.”
Toon doorbells always put up one balloon outside so you know for sure your summons went live. There’s a duplicate balloon inside so the occupant of the house knows there’s a visitor on the doorstep. Another perfect example of the ridiculous process of communicating via word balloons instead of good, old fashioned, tried and true sound waves. Toons can hear fine, but only when they want to.
Come on, Toons. Give us humans a break. Make our lives a teensy less farcical.
Gypsy Moth came to the door.
She wore a billowy red silk skirt, an orange silk blouse, and a crazy quilted vest. She had her head wrapped in a blue scarf of the same glowing neon hue Hollywood Strip hot rodders painted their chopped and channeled show buggies. The scarf completely covered her hair so I couldn’t tell hair color. Her antennae poked out from two slits she’d left when she wound the scarf into place.
“Welcome,” she said in a multi-hued balloon every bit as colorful as her outfit.
Her wings were as bright as her outfit, more monarch butterfly than moth. She wore no shoes. She had no need for footwear. Her wings kept up a constant flutter, elevating Gypsy slightly above the floor. However she moved, side to side, up and down, her feet never touched the ground.
With her spooky house, colorful, billowy outfit and spectral way of moving, Gypsy could have starred in Abbot and Costello Meet A Technicolor Ghost. All we needed to complete this fanciful screenplay were a couple of clanking chains and a bloodcurdling scream.
Maybe those would come later when she offered us our choice of herbal tea or a warm cup of bat’s blood.
“Mister Valiant,” she said nodding to me.
How did she know my name? I’ve got a good memory. We had never met.
She impressed me a second time. She bent her antennae toward Sands. Her antennae quivered. “Mister Barney Sands.”
“Roger Rabbit.” I wasn’t surprised Gypsy recognized the rabbit. He was a major star in Toontown. I would expect her to know him.
“You.” She pointed one of her crooked fingers at Cooper. Her nails were black—I hoped from polish and not putrefaction Gypsy made the word balloon containing her next pronouncement look like the biggest revelation since Moses came down that mountain toting two stone tablets. “You’re Gary Cooper.”
So she recognized Cooper. Big deal. Cooper had recently won an Oscar. His face had been on the cover of every fan magazine. Life ran a feature on his life. Look took a look at him, too. Who wouldn’t recognize him?
As she singled us out by name, Gypsy ushered us into her sitting room.
Her décor, heavy on black curtains, ossified bat and rat bodies, glass jars full of strange substances, and assorted bones—animal and human—had all the charm of a mausoleum.
She even had a small crystal decanter containing the rarest Toon artifact, a dozen Toon funny bones.
Toon funny bones were situated on the flat see-saw connecting the coccyx to that bone’s counterbalance, the xyccoc. Funny bones rolled back and forth between these two bones whenever a Toon gave off a good belly laugh or an inappropriate fart. Funny bones showed up on X-rays as tiny smiley-faces.
Toons didn’t give out a death rattle. Toons emitted a death laugh instead. That’s when their funny bone went away. Toon funny bones disintegrated and vanished within minutes after a Toon died. Meaning anybody who wanted one for a study specimen, a remembrance of the drearily departed, or in this case for the creation of magic potions, had to act extremely fast.
“I can understand how you’d recognize Cooper,” I said to Gypsy. “Who wouldn’t? Same for the rabbit. He’s pretty well known around Toontown. What about me and Sands? How do you know us?”
She fan-folded her wings behind her and took a seat at a table. The table bore a disquieting resemblance to the bloody blocks butchers used to dismember carcasses. There was only one other chair in the room, positioned directly across from Gypsy’s. Nobody wanted to sit in her hot seat, so we all remained standing.
Gypsy placed her hands atop the large crystal ball in the table’s center. “Gypsy Moth sees all, knows all.”
“Does she tell all, too?”
“That depends,” she said. She tapped her ball. “On what she sees.”
“What do you see about Clabber Clown and Willy Prosciutto?”
She tented her fingers and pressed them to her forehead. “Plenty.”
“Care to share?”
“In time, in time. First let me see what the future holds for your friends.”
She motioned to Cooper. “Have a seat. Let Gypsy Moth tell your fortune.”
Cooper shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”
He sat down.
Gypsy pulled out a black scarf and waved it over the crystal ball. She put down the scarf and rubbed her hands on the ball, the same comforting way I rubbed Mutt’s head when I wanted him to stop yapping. She was doing her rubbing thing for exactly the opposite reason I did mine. She wanted the ball to start yapping.
The ball came through.
The ball produced a string of word balloons full of odd writing. Could have been Cyrillic or Chinese. I couldn’t tell. The writing was all Greek to me.
Gypsy studied the ball’s balloons. “I see a very promising future.” Her crystal ball started to glow solid gold. An image appeared inside. “Look, see for yourself.”
Cooper leaned over and peered inside the glowing ball.
“Tell us what you see?” said Gypsy.
“Academy Award,” said Cooper.
“Congratulations,” said Gypsy.
“No secret,” said Cooper.
“He’s already got one,” said Sands. His words echoed out of the big tin can Miss Ethyl had plonked over his noodle. “He won for Sergeant York.”
“Look closer,” said Gypsy to Cooper. “Read the inscription. What movie do you win this one for?”
Cooper leaned in. His eyes widened. He read the inscription on the award’s base. “Hi, Toon!”
“Are you familiar with that movie?” asked Gypsy.
“I am,” said Cooper.
“That film is going to prove a very big success for you.”
She turned her attention to Sands, me and the rabbit. “Who wants to go next?”
“Skip me. I’m only here to record this on fil
m,” said Sands.
“Not me,” I said. “I got no interest in what the future holds. I’d rather be surprised.”
Mutt hopped up on Gypsy’s table. He peered into her crystal ball. Whatever he saw inside caused him to jump to the floor, grab my pants leg in his teeth, and try to pull me out of the room.
“You,” Gypsy said to Roger.
“You betcha. I’m a jumbo fan of mumbo jumbo. or maybe a mumbo fan of jumbo. Or maybe I like to mambo. I get confused.”
Gypsy pointed to the chair that Cooper had vacated. Roger took a seat. Gypsy repeated her scarf waving, hand rubbing routine. This time, her crystal ball turned the cloudy blue of a rabbit’s tears.
Two violinists appeared in her crystal ball.
One of the violinists, a handsome, long-haired classical musician, was playing beautifully. The musical notes coming off his instrument could have been cut into eight by ten pages and used as sheet music by the first violinist of a symphony orchestra.
The other violinist was Roger himself. The notes coming off his violin resembled the screechy, filling-rattling sound a cat gave off when the violin’s maker relieved the feline of the guts used to create the instrument’s strings.
“What’s that mean?” asked Roger.
Gypsy shook her head. “I’m always sorry when I have to deliver bad news. The crystal ball only reveals the truth. I cannot censor what appears within.”
“You still haven’t told me what that vision means.”
“The meaning is quite obvious,” she said. Her antennae drooped. “You’re doomed to spend the rest of your career playing second fiddle.”
Baby Herman appeared inside the balloon. He grabbed Roger’s violin and smashed it over the rabbit’s head.
“That Baby fellow, he gets the big laughs and the recognition,” said Gypsy. “You get the bonks on the noggin. The crystal ball says you never stand up for yourself. You never demand to be first banana. The crystal ball says, and here I’m quoting the ball directly, ‘you got no nubbins.’”