Froggy Style (11 page)

T
he next morning, I woke up around ten to the scent of fresh coffee and Candi, as in the stripper from Old Mother Hubbard’s All Bare Cupboard. Not her exactly, just her scent, smothered all over my manservant like a cheap Dalmatian fur coat.

“Karl, what the hell? You smell like a stripper,” I said as I tossed on the pair of Dockers from last night and a freshly pressed oxford shirt.

My manservant stepped back. “I . . . ah . . . ,” he stuttered. “I most certainly do not.” He finished with as much dignity as a guy with lipstick stains on his trousers could muster.

I raised an eyebrow. When he turned a nice shade of crimson I decided to let him off the hook. For now. At least about his latest candy-coated conquest. “Talk to Elly lately?”

His skin turned from pink to chalk white. “Elly?”

“Yeah, you know.” I held up my hand chest high. “Fairy godmother. About yea high. Usually smells like gin.”

Karl gave an exaggerated laugh. “You’re very funny, sir. You should consider a career in comedy. Fans would come from all over—”

I cut him off with a shove. The back of his knees hit the bed, and he tumbled backward across a mound of pillows. “Don’t try and change the subject. You told Elly about my taking off with Lollie yesterday.”

He swallowed hard. “I did not.”

“Don’t lie to me.” I leaned over the bed, menacing my manservant. For a few seconds I enjoyed the power, but it quickly faded under Karl’s whimpering. I dropped down on the bed next to him. “Why, Karl? I thought I could trust you,” I said, laying it on thick.

“I’m so very sorry, sir.” He scrambled off the bed, his face wrinkled with guilt. “I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

“So why did you?”

He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “I fear that you are making a grave mistake in trusting Ms. Bliss. One that might cost you your very future, if not your life. Lady Beauty is your One.”

“I know that.” Better than anyone. Without Beauty I would return to being a frog, something I relished less and less as the days passed. But that wasn’t the point. “Don’t be such a drama servant,” I said, crossing my legs at the ankle, and leaned back to survey my manservant. “I can take care of myself. I’ve done so for thirty years without grave injury.” At least nothing a shot of penicillin didn’t cure.

“What about that time—”

“Okay then,” I said, leaping from the bed and crossing the room in two strides. “We really should get a move on. Places to go. Princesses to save.”

“But, sir,” Karl said. “I really am concerned—”

“As long as you wore a condom, everything will be fine.” I smirked, closing the door on Karl’s flaming face.

 

Twenty minutes later, my stomach full of casino buffet Humpty hearts and fried little piggy, I slumped against the backseat of the limo, once again on my way to encourage Lollie Bliss to reveal her dirty little secret . . . boyfriend. And if she revealed a bit more, like her naked body, well, who was I to argue?

The thought of a naked Lollie excited me much more than it should. After all, I’d be a married frog prince in less than seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight little hours between me and wedded bliss. Too bad I couldn’t get the thought of pre-un-wedded Bliss from my head.

I lowered the privacy screen between Karl and myself. “So how was it?” I asked to take my mind off my own fantasies. “Did you blow her mind? Make her beg for more? Cause her to laugh uncontrollably when she saw that your mommy stitched your name on your underwear?”

Karl’s hands tightened on the wheel, probably imagining my neck, but he didn’t say a word, a sure sign that I was getting under his pale pink skin. Good. He owed me for tattling to Elly. Because of him I now had a drunken wand-happy fairy watching my every move.

Karl turned the limo onto Fairily Way, stopping briefly at a red light. Silence filled the vehicle.

“Well?” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you going to tell me all about your evening of debauchery?”

Karl exhaled noisily. “For the last time, sir, I do not know what you’re talking about. I spent last night alone, asleep in my room.”

“Uh-huh,” I said as we pulled into a parking space a block from the Rose. Not waiting for Karl to open my door, I leapt from the limo and into the street. A blast of heated air sucked the moisture from my skin like a wicked witch invited to Hansel’s house for dinner. God, I hated the desert. What kind of idiot built a city in a forsaken pile of sand? And then decided to build a lush emerald golf course on top of it? I couldn’t wait to return to the rainy weather and rude citizens of New Never City. Home sweat-less home.

Deciding to share my increasingly lousy mood, I turned to tease Karl a bit more when the whirl of a car engine grabbed my attention. I glanced over my shoulder and spotted a black Ford Unicorn riding low to the ground, the sun reflecting off the tiny unicorn emblem on the hood.

I squinted at the car, unable to make out the driver through the tinted windshield.

Tires squealed.

The vehicle headed straight at me.

Time slowed.

My heart leapt into my throat, cutting off my screams as my life flashed before my eyes. Sunny afternoons by the pond playing games of live-action leapfrog all by myself. Nights spent on a lily pad. Alone.

Always alone.

Until the day she came into my life—a golden-haired girl with grape-lollipop eyes and a sloppy wet kiss.

My eyes locked on the car less than ten feet away.

A sloppy wet kiss wouldn’t save me now.

D
rool-coated lips hovered an inch from mine. Hot, fetid breath assaulted my senses. My stomach rolled, but not from the putrid breath of my unwashed whore of a manservant who leaned over me. Nope, the bile rising into my throat had much more to do with the fact that I was nearly kabobbed by a unicorn horn a few seconds ago.

“Sir,” Karl dropped to his knees, “are you all right?”

“That idiot almost killed me.” I sat up, brushing bits of shattered glass and dirt from my shirt. At this rate I’d need a new wardrobe by my wedding day.

“Yes, but are you hurt?”

“You saved my life,” I whispered to my concerned servant. He blushed, but didn’t comment. I staggered to my feet, my knee nearly giving way. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Karl caught me before I fell to the ground. “Um . . . sir,” he said, trying to hold me upright while I hopped around. “People are staring.”

I stopped my acrobatic tricks long enough to glance around. Other than a pied piper and a pack of brainwashed rats, the street appeared deserted. “I don’t see anyone.”

Karl exhaled loudly. “Very well. But still, this just isn’t dignified. For frog sakes, you’re a prince, and I’m . . .”

“Bald?” I suggested.

Karl scowled. “Well yes, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh.” I stopped jumping around and gazed at my longtime friend and servant. I owed him my life. He’d swooped in to save me from certain death like some sort of pudgy, pink-headed superhero. “How can I ever repay you for saving me?” I grabbed his face in my hands, squishing his pudgy cheeks until his lips disappeared beneath. “I’ll give you anything. Name it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Well, I wouldn’t mind having a couple of days off next week. . . .”

I released his puffy cheeks with genuine regret. “Next week’s not good. You know, with the honeymoon and all. Bags to pack, unpack . . . carry.” I tapped my bottom lip, thinking. “How about the first week of July? You can watch the fireworks from a beach somewhere.”

“July?” His voice increased an octave. Not an attractive sound, sort of like squawks coming from Peter Piper’s bathroom after a peck of jalapeño peppers. “I’m already on vacation that week,” he whined.

I scratched my chin. “Oh . . . July’s not good for me. I was thinking about going to West Wickedginia for Maple Fest. Maybe we should reschedule your vacation for November.”

Karl’s face turned a shade of pink not found outside the imagination of a crayon company. “You pompous, selfish as—”

I wagged my finger in his face. “You can thank me later.”

 

A block later, Karl yanked the front door of the Rose open with a growl. What a baby. It wasn’t like I asked him to break up with my ninth-grade girlfriend . . . again. What an ordeal that was. I spent four long hours at the hospital while a gaggle of doctors removed a #2 pencil from Karl’s testicle.

As I entered the shop, bells overhead jangled in greeting, but no one came to welcome us. The buzz of a tattoo gun echoed through the room. I limped farther inside, nodding to the back room where Lollie usually worked. “She must be with a client.” The accompanying scream clinched it.

“Lovely,” Karl said, picking up a dog-eared magazine titled
Tramp Stamps: The Art of Tattooing Hobos
from the waiting room table.

I sat down in the red office chair behind the tiny reception desk that Red normally manned. A stuffed mouse dressed in a small pair of Dockers and a white button-down shirt sat on the desktop, tiny tire tracks across its chest.

My eyes narrowed on the stuffed mouse and the letter “B” burned into its small chest. A frown puckered over my brow. I hefted the rodent up and held it to the light. Karl glanced up, his eyes widening as he pondered the mouse. “Oh my God. Sir, that’s—”

“Sure, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. . . .” My thought trailed off as the buzz of Lollie’s tattoo gun stopped, as did the agonized screams of Lollie’s client.

A minute later Lollie stepped out of the back room, a pair of thick rubber gloves, the kind worn by electricians and firefighters, covering her slender hands.

I dropped the mouse and beamed at the beautiful ink-covered woman in front of me. She stood, as regal as a princess in black leather pants, looking at me as if I was a bug about to be squashed. Lollie Bliss appeared as fickle as lady luck. One minute she was sucking on my tonsils, and the next she was staring at me like I was toe jam left in the bottom of a glass slipper.

“What’s with the gloves?” I asked, for lack of anything better to say.

“What’s with your face?” she returned.

“Ha. Ha.”

Her skin went white. “I’m not joking. You look a little . . . green. And there’s blood on your pants. What the hell happened to you?”

Oh, right. The accident. I’d almost forgotten about that in my haste to see Lollie. A bad sign. I didn’t want to like her, and I wasn’t exactly sure I did, but we had some sort of connection, other than the obvious one about her lover wanting my bride dead and all.

Karl spoke up. “My lordship was nearly run down outside your establishment.” The censure in his tone was clear. He blamed Ms. Bliss, if not for the accident, for the fact we were on our way to see her when it occurred.

Her gloved hands hovered over her abundant chest. “Are you all right? Did you get a look at the driver? The license plate?”

“I’m fine.” I gave her a wilted smile, designed for optimum pity. “Karl exaggerates. It’s nothing more than a scratch.”

“Let me see.” She rushed over and knelt down in front of me, the swell of her breasts peeking through the scoop of her tank top. I tried not to look. I really did. But, alas, my libido overrode my good intentions. My mouth went dry at the thought of my fingers against her flesh.

Snap out of it,
I told myself. I was to be married in less than a week. Now was not the time to covet thy ink-covered neighborly chick. Lollie’s fingers on my thigh drew me back to the present. She pulled off her thick rubber gloves and carefully rolled up my pants to expose the wound on my knee. Pain rocketed through my body, but I refused to cry out. Not in front of Lollie. I’d die first.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Stop!” I whimpered when she prodded my mangled flesh. “Oh, the agony . . .”

“Suck it up, you big baby.” She pressed a Band-Aid to the tiny red mark and rolled my pant leg back in place. “It’s only a scratch. I’ve gotten worse cuts shaving my legs.”

Her words brought up a wealth of soapy, wet images to my head. I shook them away, trying to focus on what Lollie was saying. “So tell me again how this near-fatal injury happened?” she asked with a grin.

Again Karl answered for me, his voice harsh as if reliving a painful memory. “The prince had just left the limo. I’ve warned him time and again not to exit street side, but my lord likes to live on the edge.”

Lollie heaved her eyebrow upward. “Apparently.”

“Anyway,” I said. “Long fairytale short, a car sped up the street toward me. I, having the ninja-like reflexes, leapt over the fast-moving vehicle, landing surefooted on the sidewalk where my prone-to-panic manservant,” I smirked at Karl, “tackled me in his terrified concern. Hence my injured knee.”

“How awful for you.” Lollie patted my arm, her voice insistent. “Did you get the license plate number?”

I glanced at Karl. He shook his head. “I believe the license plate was absent from the vehicle, sir.” Karl glared at me. “But in my overly melodramatic state I could be wrong.”

“If there’s some crazed drunk driver out there running people over, shouldn’t we call the police?” Lollie asked.

She had a point. If only Handsome wasn’t on the Cin City PD. I imagined that if I called to report the incident, I’d find myself in handcuffs instead of the intoxicated driver.

But the driver hadn’t appeared drunk. The Unicorn wasn’t swerving all over the place. In fact, it maintained a clear, straight line as it sped toward me, almost as if the vehicle was aiming at me.

“Oh, Kermit,” Lollie said, her hand over her mouth.

A shiver ran up my spine. Was someone out to get me? Plotting to kill me at this very moment? I rubbed the back of my neck as paranoia like ants at a picnic went marching through my mind. “Let’s not jump the gun just yet. It was an accident. Nothing more.” I nodded to myself. “The sun was probably in the driver’s eyes, and he panicked and hit the gas.”

Lollie blew a dark curl from her eyes. “You’re probably right.”

“Of course, sir,” Karl agreed.

“Frog it!” I jumped to my feet, the intense pain in my knee all but forgotten. “Someone tried to kill me.”

“Now, sir,” Karl began. “We don’t know that.”

“He’s right, Kermit. Besides, who would want you dead?” Lollie grinned, her teeth gleaming in the sunlight. “Except for the poor girl forced to marry you, that is.”

“There will be no wedding,” a deep voice said from the doorway.