Title: Bright Lights
Author:
Fandom: The Muppets
Characters: Sam, Wayne and Wanda
Rating: Muppet angst. (I KNOW! I’m bemused at myself!)
Summary: Life is very simple for Sam the Eagle.
Notes: Written for an icon drabble meme. For freedomfry.
Life is very simple for Sam the Eagle. Well, not simple: predictable. He will help Wayne and Wanda rehearse: choosing their songs and costumes, doing their choreography (Wanda is such a diva), and then he will go to the theater at showtime and . . . everything will go wrong.
And the pig will karate-chop the guest and the bear will tell terrible jokes and the dog will play piano and the weirdo will blow himself out of a cannon . . . and the frog will say everything’s fine. The frog always says everything’s fine.
Why did he chose a life of show business? A proud American like him, an upstanding citizen, someone who votes and pays attention to the issues and always obeys the speed limit?
He was seduced by the bright lights. That’s how his mother explains it. Usually in tears.
*** *** ***
The pig lounges in Sam’s doorway. “Oh, Sam, cheri,” she chirps. “Will you . . . do a favor . . . pour moi? I need your dignity.” He sits up a little straighter. “Your presence.” He smooths down his pate. “Your . . . je ne sai quois.”
“Of course I will, Miss Piggy. Do you need me to play George Washington in a sketch? Or perhaps Abraham Lincoln? Or some other exemplary American?”
“I just need you to play you,” she simpers, blinking her long eyelashes. “No lines, I’m afraid, is that all right?”
“I make a distinct impression even when I say nothing,” he says.
Which is how he ends up standing in the center of the stage while Fozzie sings “Make ’em Laugh” and pelts Sam with pies.
. . . sigh.
*** *** ***
He’d protest to the frog, but it’s pointless.
*** *** ***
Sam goes home after the show and sits in the living room with all the lights off. There are seven messages on the machine from Wanda, complaining about Wayne; and five from Wayne. Only one from him is complaining about Wanda. The other four? “What do you think about Cole Porter? I think we should do a scene from Noel Coward. I want to audition for Hollywood, Sam. We should go to Hollywood. Wanda, she’s holding us back, Sam. We belong in movies.”
He erases them all.
He writes in a letter to his mother, “Show business continues to be a challenge, but I am determined to bring back the values of a former era to the vaudville stage. The stylings of Wayne and Wanda will find their audience. I’m confident of this.”
He’ll go back. He’s hooked. Seduced by the bright lights.
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