Eddie sat down on the kerb and buried his furry face in his paws. How had it come to this? How had he reached the rockiest of rock bottoms, sunk to the very depths of the pool? How, how, how had it happened?
His woe-begotten thoughts returned to his time as mayor. He had tried so hard to make things better for the denizens of Toy City. He really, truly had tried. But no matter how hard he’d tried or what actions he’d taken, he’d always somehow managed to make things worse. Every by-law, edict and new rule he’d put in place had somehow got twisted about. It had been as if someone or something had been out to sabotage everything he’d done with kindness in his heart-regions and the good of all in the foremost of his thoughts.
Eddie groaned. And now it had come to this. He was a down-and-out, a vagrant, a vagabond. Ill-smelling and disenfranchised. An outcast. The garbage truck rumbled by, its tin-plate wheels ploughing through a puddle that splashed over Eddie Bear.
Eddie added sighs to his groaning, then rose and squeezed disconsolately at himself. He was a mess and whatever optimism he might have felt the previous evening, optimism that had probably been buoyed up by the prodigious quantities of Old Golly-Wobbler he had imbibed, was now all gone and only pain remained.
Eddie did doglike shakings of himself, spraying puddle water onto a crinoline doll who tut-tut-tutted and strutted away, her haughty nose in the air.
“I need a drink,” said Eddie. And his tummy growled. “I need breakfast,” said Eddie. And his tummy agreed.
As chance, or fate, or possibly both would have it, across the thoroughfare from Eddie stood a restaurant. It was a Nadine’s Diner, one of a chain of such diners owned by Nadine Spratt, widow of the now-legendary Jack Spratt, Pre-adolescent Poetic Personality. Jack, as those who recall the nursery rhyme will recall, was the fellow who “ate no fat”, whilst his wife “would eat no lean”, and so, in the manner of the happy marriage they had once enjoyed, between the two of them they had “licked the platter clean” and started two successful restaurant chains, his specialising in Lean Cuisine and hers in Big Fat Fry-Ups. Hers had been the more successful of the two businesses.
They had been going through a most colourful celebrity divorce at the time of Jack Spratt’s demise, when he was plunged into a deep-fat fryer.[4]
Eddie gazed upon Nadine’s Diner: a long, low building painted all in a hectic yellow, with a sign, wrought from neon, spelling out its name, as such signs are ever wont to do.
Eddie Bear sniffed, inhaling the smell of Big Fat Fry-Ups.
Eddie had no pockets to pat, so Eddie did not pat them. Because the thing, well, one of the things, about pockets is that sometimes they have small change in them. Small change that you have forgotten about, but small change that is just big enough to pay for a Big Fat Fry-Up. But Eddie didn’t pat.
Eddie Bear made instead a face.
A face that had about it a multiplicity of expressions.
The chief amongst them being that of determination.
Eddie was determined that he should have breakfast.
And now was the time he should have it.
Being a bear well versed in the perils of stepping out onto a busy road without first looking one way and then the other, Eddie Bear did these lookings and when the way was clear of traffic crossed the road and wandered to Nadine’s Diner.
Where he paused and pondered his lot.
It was not much of a lot to ponder. It was a rather rotten lot, as it happened. But it did require a degree of pondering. He could not, in his present soiled condition, simply swagger into the diner, order for himself the very biggest of Big Fat Fry-Ups, consume same with eagerness and, when done, run out without paying.
A subtler approach was required.
Slip around to the back, nip into the kitchen and steal? That was an option. Slip around to the back, knock on the door and then beg? That was another.
By the smiley sun called Sam! By the maker who’d made him! He’d once been the mayor of this city! Dined from plates of gold! Quaffed champagne with Old King Cole! Had his back massaged by a dolly with over-modified front parts! That he had sunk to this!
Eddie squared what shoulders he possessed. There had to be some other way.
Upon the door of Nadine’s Diner hung a sign: HEP WANTED, it said.
“‘Hep wanted’?” queried Eddie. “That would be ‘help’ wanted, I suppose. As in the offer of employment. Hmm.”
The dolly that leaned upon the countertop, a dolly with overmodified front parts similar to those of the masseuse who had once tended to Eddie, did not look up, or even down, at Eddie’s approach. She was doing a crossword. The dolly was a most glamorous dolly, golden-haired of hair, curvaceous of curve, long-legged of leg and all around glamour of glamorousness. She was, as they say – and folk did when they saw her – absolutely gorgeous.
Now the question as to whether the absolutely gorgeous have very much in the way of brains is a question that in all truth does not get asked very often. Folk have a tendency to take other folk at face value. Well, at first, anyway. That thing about first impressions and all that. And that other question, “If you are very beautiful, do you actually need to have very much in the way of brains?” is of course that other question. And in all truth, neither questions are questions that should be asked at all. To imply that because you are good-looking you are therefore stupid is an outrageous thing to imply. To think that you can gauge someone’s intelligence by how good-looking they are, and if they are very good-looking then therefore they are stupid!
Outrageous.
Because, come on now, let’s be honest here – if you are really good-looking, you don’t need to be really intelligent.
And if that sounds outrageous, then how about this: there will always be a great many more ugly stupid folk in this world (or possibly any other) than there will be beautiful stupid folk.
Which might mean that things balance themselves out somewhere along the line. Or possibly do not. It’s all a matter of opinion. Or intelligence. Or looks. Or …
“Four-letter word,” said the dolly in the prettiest of voices. “Cow jumped over it, first letter M, fourth letter N.”
“Moon,” said Eddie, smiling upwards.
“What did you say?” The dolly turned her eyes from her crossword and over the counter and down towards Eddie.[5]
“Moon,” said Eddie, smiling angelically.
“Why, you dirty little sawdust bag!” The dolly glared pointy little daggers.
“I only said ‘moon’,” said Eddie. “Go on. Moon.”
The dolly’s eyes narrowed. “Just because I’m beautiful,” she snarled, “just because I have blonde hair that you can make longer by turning a little thing-a-me-bob on my back – which makes me special, I’ll add – you think I’m some stupid slutty bimbo who’s prepared to moon for any scruffy …” she twitched her tiny nose “… smelly bear who comes in here and –”
“No,” said Eddie. “You have me all wrong.”
“I don’t think so, mister. I have you all right. Men are all the same – see a blonde head and a pair of big titties and they think they’re on to an easy one.”
“No,” said Eddie. Well, yes, he thought. “Well, no,” said Eddie, with emphasis. “I meant the word in your crossword – the cow jumped over the moon.”
“What cow?” asked the dolly.
“The one in your crossword clue.”
“And did you see this cow?”
“I know of it,” said Eddie. “It lives on Old MacDonald’s farm.”
“Oh,” said the dolly.
“EIEIO,” said Eddie. “As in ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’.”
4
See