by Gary K. Wolf
The zoo ought to put up a sign designating the snack bar as “Adults Only.” Any kid who got waited on by this creature-from-a-black-lagoon would have nightmares for life.
Her nametag read “P. Platypus.”
“What’s the P stand for,” I asked her. “Punky?”
“Priscilla, if it’s any of your business, which it ain’t,” she answered in a balloon snippy enough to cut me dead.
I knew right then I had better check my food for platypus spit.
“I’ll go a hamburger, medium rare,” I said without looking at the menu.
“We don’t serve nothing like that here,” said Priscilla.
She opened the menu so I could read the bill of fare. “Out of respect for the zoo’s inhabitants, we serve no meat.”
True. The menu contained only vegetarian dishes.
“If you wanted a burger,” said our waitress, “you should have gone to the Toontown Botanical Garden. Nothing but meat on their menu.”
“Good to know plants have feelings, too.”
The platypus stared at me like I was a visitor from outer space. “You do realize you’re in Toontown!”
Naturally, I knew plants had feelings in Toontown. Every object; animal, vegetable, and mineral, had feelings in Toontown.
I had been joking.
For all the emphasis Toons place on humor as the end-all and be-all of life, most Toons can’t take a joke. I ordered a cup of Joe and a chocolate-covered donut. Thank goodness we weren’t in Toontown’s Pastry Park or I might have starved.
“What were you doing out there, collecting those balloons?” Sands asked Wordhollow.
Wordhollow pulled out his collected balloons. He fanned them out on the table so we could read them. He weighted them down with a sugar dispenser to keep the still-bubbly things from floating away.
“Most of the zoo’s animals come from foreign countries. I’m compiling foreign language speech balloon dictionaries so I can translate what these foreign animals are saying. From French to English, for instance, or German to English.”
He had a tough job ahead of him. The balloons he had sacked said things like Grrrrr, Snaaaarl, and Roaaaar.
Five large bell-shaped balloons drifted across the sky, the sounds of a clock striking the five o’clock hour.
A large balloon drifted along behind the five clock strikes. The follow-up balloon contained the sibilant sound of a factory steam whistle.
“Quitting time,” said the Indonesian orangutan in the cage nearest to us. The orangutan spoke in a perfectly readable English language balloon.
“Who’s gonna join me at the bar for a couple of beers?” said the Siberian tiger in the next cage over.
“I’m in,” said the Madagascan lemur.
“Me, too,” said the Chinese panda.
I looked at Wordhollow. “You aware that these foreign animals all speak English?”
“Of course.” Wordhollow shrugged. “They’re all performers, playing their roles. Everything in Toontown is show business. I live here. I work here. I go along with the charade.”
The zoo animals’ English linguistic abilities weren’t the animals’ only surprise.
The animals all had secret compartments inside their cages. These compartments were hidden inside the fake trees and ersatz rocks that comprised the animals’ pseudo-outdoorsy habitats. Inside these compartments, the zoo animals stored the clothing a Toon animal wore out on the street.
I also glimpsed what else the animals kept in their compartments. Lunch boxes, newspapers, paperback novels, transistor radios, books of crossword puzzles, decks of cards, packs of smokes and books of matches, the typical things employees bring to work to get them through lunch times and breaks.
The animals donned their street clothes.
The animals also had one other startling object hidden in their compartments. Every animal had the key that unlocked that animal’s cage door.
Using these keys, the zoo animals set themselves free.
The animals walked through the zoo in friendly groups. Foxes and fowl side by side. Lions with antelopes. Polar bears and seals. In the wild, these animals would be stalking and eating one another. Here, they were cozy, chums, one big, happy family.
A few of the animals even strolled out with the Zoo guards. Up until a few minutes ago, these guards would have thrown a net over any animal caught outside a cage. That was what living in Toontown did to natural enemies. Made them as palsy-walsy as Boy Scouts toasting marshmallows around a campfire. The world could take a lesson.
The animals lined up at the time clock by the employee’s exit. One by one, the zoo’s residents punched out and left for home.
Enough inanities and insanities. Time to get down to serious business.
“You get a chance to examine that balloon we left you? The one wrapped around the brick?”
“I did,” Wordhollow said.
He had brought the balloon with him.
He pulled the balloon out of his briefcase and laid the thing on the table, covering up his day’s collection of animal vocalizations. The balloon was devoid of letters.
Wordhollow reached into his briefcase again. He pulled out an envelope.
He opened the envelope and spilled out the contents, a collection of alphabet letters. The letters landed on top of the balloon.
“I soaked the letters off the balloon.” He moved the letters around with his fingertip. I thought at first he might be trying to arrange them into their original order, but the Prof was only fiddling. “I analyzed them under a microscope.”
“What did you find?”
“Judging from the raggedy edges of the letters, you’re looking for somebody with a dull pair of scissors.” Wordhollow laughed. “Linguistic humor. I do like to tickle a rib from time to time.”
“Yeah, you’re a funny guy.”
“So they tell me at the Linguistic Society meetings. Actually, the individual letters weighed in extremely high on my pomposity scale. They’re the kinds of letters used to utter scholarly statements.”
“The kinds of letters produced by a loony Toon? A Toon who’s gone crazy and started saying scholarly things?”
“Precisely,” said Wordhollow. His chest puffed up a bit. “That’s not all. Regarding my conclusions concerning the aforementioned balloon, I’ve saved perhaps the best for possibly the last.”
Academics never use one word when ten will do.
“When I subjected the empty balloon to an acid bath, a hidden message emerged.”
He held the balloon up to the light.
I saw words on the balloon, faint as a watermark but clearly readable.
“Don’t go,” they said. “They killed the clown, and they mean to kill you.” The note was signed, “A friend.”
“Judging from the balloon’s delicate, doily-like edges,” said Wordhollow, “I am of the opinion this balloon was produced by an extremely intelligent and rational elderly woman.”
Annie Mation fit that bill to a tee.
“Tell me, Prof. Could somebody fabricate a word balloon that could fool experts into believing the balloon had been spoken by a specific Toon?”
“Impossible,” said Wordhollow without hesitation. “One thing I’ve proven conclusively through my years of study. A Toon’s word balloons are individualized to that particular Toon. Word balloons are as unique to Toons as fingerprints are to humans.”
If called as a witness, Wordhollow would swear that Clabber Clown produced the word balloon saying that Roger Rabbit had killed him.
Nobody would argue with Wordhollow’s expertise. Not in the area of Toon balloons.
A little birdie landed on my shoulder. He ruffled his tail.
I knew what that meant.
I fl
icked the birdie off with my finger before he could do his business on my sport coat. The birdie did his business on the ground instead.
The birdie’s business was delivering Tweet balloons. This one was for me from Roger. I picked the Tweet up off the ground.
“Chief Hanker released me from jail,” said the Tweet. “I have to go to rehearsal for new show. Meet me at the Toontown—”
That was all.
I counted the letters on the balloon.
Bird Tweets are limited to one hundred characters and spaces. That’s the maximum amount of information these little feathered flying Toonies can digest at one time. You need to say more, you gotta feed the birdy’s meter again.
“You got another one for me?” I asked the chirper.
The bird nodded.
The bird sucked in air, did a little birdy dance to loosen its innards, raised its tail feathers, and KERPLOP. Out came the rest of the Tweet.
“—Music Hall” said the Tweet in gooey letters.
The Toontown Music Hall was situated at the top of The Shuffle Steps.
The Music Hall had been built entirely out of papier mâché bricks fabricated from sheet music. Appropriate to the building’s function, I suppose, but the form didn’t follow. The head of construction had probably been one of the two little pigs who never got the hang of using proper building materials. A wolf wouldn’t be able to blow this musical house down, but a heavy rainstorm would wash the place straight out to high C.
According to the posters out front of the Music Hall, Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman were opening next month in a Toon revival of the bawdy British comedy I Feel a Toon Coming On.
Me, Sands, and Cooper went in through the backstage door. We found Roger in the dressing room he shared with Baby Herman.
“So the police let you out,” I said to Roger.
“Yessirree. The gendarmes gave me French liberty. The boys in blue told me to cheese it. The coppers kicked me to the gutter. The–”
“I understand. Enough with the wordplay jokes.”
“Okay. Chief Hanker let me out on bail.”
“He did? How much?”
“Four thousand seven hundred and sixty two pails.”
“Pails?”
“Bail pails. To get out of the hoosegow, I bailed the jail. While I was there, a water pipe broke in the basement. In return for bailing the water, Chief Hanker let me go.”
Like everything else, justice in Toontown worked in funny ways.
Roger’s co-star, baby Herman came a-toddling in.
Baby Herman waddled right past me, Cooper, and Sands without acknowledging our presence. The baby was justifiably renowned for being uncouth, but this time rudeness wasn’t the root of his incivility.
Like most movie stars, the baby was vain about his age and his looks. He didn’t want his fans to know that he was getting old and his eyes were failing. For years now, he hadn’t been able to see past the end of his cute little pug nose without his glasses. Preferring to maintain his illusion of eternal youth, he almost never wore his specs.
Maybe this was only a bad barroom joke, but I had heard that in one area related to the baby’s bippity-boppity-booing in the bedroom, the baby wasn’t unhappy about his failing peepers. The baby preferred being unable to see the women he took to the sack clearly. He said his bad eyesight saved him a fortune on the brown paper bags he used to put over the heads of his homelier conquests.
“Hey, Roger Dodger,” said the big Baby, “what day is this?”
“Wednesday.”
“That’s what I thought. I just ‘accidentally’ walked under the prop girl’s dress. Her frilly pink undies had Thursday embroidered on the tushie. She’s either a day early or a week late.”
Baby Herman picked up a black eyeliner off the dressing table. He handed the marker to Roger. “Write Wednesday on the bottom of my nappy. I’ll take Miss Labeled out for drinks tonight and suggest we synchronize our calendars.”
Roger did as the baby asked.
Baby Herman squinted at Mutt. “Oops, Sorry Rog. Didn’t realize you were entertaining a lady friend. Sorry, Miss.” He winked at Roger. “Nice beaver.”
“That’s not a beaver, that’s a dog,” said Roger.
“I know that! How’s about we run some dialogue together?” said Baby Herman as Roger wrote. Wednesday on the baby’s diaper. “All I got through this whole damn play is goo-goo, ga-ga, but I’m having trouble keeping ’em straight. Like in scene two, act one. Do I goo-goo then ga-ga or the other way around?”
“How you doing, Baby?” I said to him.
Baby Herman had no idea anybody else was in the room. He started at the sound of my voice, as though I had leaped out from behind the open door and shouted “Boo!”
The baby’s balloon popped out of him fast and hard, bopping me in the jaw. If he’d been fully grown, the impact might have stung. Instead, his balloon hit me with the fuzzy force of a bratty baby’s thrown teddy bear. “Holy cow, don’t you know better than to go sneaking up on a guy? I almost peed my didee.”
Baby Herman squinted at me.
Recognition dawned.
His mouth opened into a smile. I glimpsed the tip of his first tooth peeking through his lower gums. That nubbin had been breaking through for as long as I had known him. No wonder the baby drank so much. His teething pain must be killing him. At least Baby Herman had an excuse. When we went out carousing together I matched the baby drink for drink, and my teeth were fine.
“Eddie Valiant,” said Baby Herman. “Good to see you again. How they hanging?”
Baby Herman didn’t give me a chance to answer. He never gave anybody a chance to answer. “I’m high and tight. Course wearing a diaper helps a lot. Keeps the jewels from clanking if you get my meaning.”
Baby Herman squinted at my movie star companion. “Hey, I know you. You’re Gary Cooper, ain’t cha?”
“Yup,” said Cooper.
Baby Herman climbed up into Cooper’s lap. Given Cooper’s long limbs and Baby Herman’s diminutive stature, the effort on the baby’s part equaled that of a mountaineer summiting a peak in the Himalayas.
The baby settled himself into the cleft between Cooper’s legs. “You were my idol when I was growing up. I mean, when I was getting older. I still ain’t growed up. Not all the way. Though I ain’t given up hope. Someday my public parts is gonna catch up to my privates.”
For what I took to be purposes of demonstration, Baby Herman grabbed his crotch and gave his wallys a fondle. His hand stuck around down there a bit longer than I considered necessary.
“Then the ladies are gonna have to really watch out.”
Baby Herman shinnied off Cooper’s lap and down to the floor.
He waddled over to the dressing room’s bookcase. He located and pulled out a hard-backed book. The tome was almost as big as he was.
He handed the book to Cooper. “You ever read this?” he asked Cooper. “My autobiography.”
The title read Lust for Life.
“A kiss and tell book,” said Baby. “This is volume one. I’m figuring on a twenty-volume set. I got a lot of kisses to tell about.”
Baby Herman picked up a pen off the dressing table.
“I never give away free books. People oughta buy them. I mean how many simoleons am I gonna make giving away free books? I’ll tell you. None! You being a big star and all, and kind of my idol, I’ll toss a freebie your way. Roger bought this one. Paid full retail, he did. Rog won’t mind if I pass his copy along to you. You won’t mind, will you, buddy?”
Baby Herman didn’t wait for Roger to answer.
“My buddy Roger will go out and buy another copy. So everybody’s happy. You got one, Roger’s got one, I make two sales.” Baby Herman opened the book. “ Lemme put my John Henry on h
ere for you.”
Baby Herman ripped out the page bearing his previous inscription to Roger Rabbit. “To my best friend Roger Rabbit. From your best friend Baby Herman,” that one read.
On the following page he wrote, “To my newest best friend Gary Cooper. From your newest best friend Baby Herman.”
Baby handed the book to Cooper.
“How’d you get discovered, Coop? You’re one lanky string bean. I bet you was doing physical labor. A blue-collar job. Maybe working in a gas station in a backwater junction. Am I right? Huh? Am I right?”
By now, Cooper had figured out the drill. He didn’t bother trying to answer the Baby’s question.
“Wanna know how I got discovered? Lemme give you a hint. Start reading Chapter One. That’s where I talk about how I got discovered.”
I was pretty sure Cooper could have figured out where to start reading a book without the Baby’s verbal instructions.
“Wanna hear how I get discovered? Straight from the Baby’s mouth.”
“Not particularly,” I said.
Maybe the baby’s wee little ears were failing too. Baby Herman told us his discovery story anyway.
“Buffoon Cartoons needed a baby for a short entitled Baby’s Buggy Bumpers. They auditioned lots of actors. All of ’em was babies, natch. No pitoonitaries. I wound up being the only one able to talk. I was twenty-eight years old at the time so of course I was able to talk.
“What really won me the role was when Raoul, the director, gave me my cue, and I spit up just like the script called for.”
Baby giggled. “Can you beat that? I had been out carousing until all hours the night before. My first success in acting came about because of a bad oyster and a worse bottle of gin.”
“Thanks,” said Cooper. He tucked Baby Herman’s book under his arm.
“I gotta ask you, Cooper,” said Baby. “I’m curious. You’re one big deal movie star. You got a lot of female fans. Am I right?”