Coffee Nips Anonymous

"Ack!" I acked, "I don't blame you. I accidentally saw him on TV once." Of all the things for me to remember, that's what sticks? "Was he home?"

"No."

"Pity."

Lucky gave me a sidelong glance as we started back towards the brickyard. "Well anyway, before I finish up my research and write the article, I plan to help you figure out who you are, and see if we can get some real help for our new-found friends. Who knows? Maybe they won't have to rob trains anym—"

"Lucky?" I asked concerned, as the White Bengal Tiger stopped in his tracks. "What's wrong?"

"Do you know who that was?"

"Do I know who what was?"

"That little guy you gave the fucking coffee nip to. That little fucking conductor!"

"No ... who?"

"Mr. Conductor!" he exclaimed, as if finally realizing the truth of it. "It was Mr. Conductor; the guy who runs Shining Time Station!"

****

The Shining Time Union Station Hotel, located on Broadway Avenue, downtown Nashville, was a marvel of 19th century architecture; a huge beauty of a building. It had all but fallen to collapse in the mid twentieth century, until the owners started renting it out to PBS as a backdrop to a new kids show featuring a tiny conductor and several freight and passenger trains, particularly one Thomas, a very friendly tank engine. As the show grew in popularity, the owners did some renovations and started renting out luxury suites to tourists who wanted to meet Thomas and his friends, or just to stay in a beautiful landmark train station turned luxury hotel.

But something was amiss. After we'd hopped a freight train and surfed it to the station, we found the hotel doing brisk trade. The valets were busily parking cars and bellhops were carting tons of luggage to and fro.

The set for the kids show, however, was closed. We poked around for a bit and found a very glum-looking tank engine in a dark corner of the station. He hadn't been polished in days, or even weeks, and there was graffiti on his side. I noticed the phrase 'Barney sucks!' painted over and over again in tiny script of various colors.

We found some Brasso™, climbed up onto his running boards and started polishing Thomas. His mood picked up a bit, but he was not a happy engine.

"This is fucking twisted," said Lucky as he rubbed and buffed. "First Big Bird, and now the folks from Shining Time Station. I wonder what's going on?"

"Could be just coincidence," I said.

"In my line of work, one tends not to believe in fucking coincidence. Besides, they aren't the only kids show stars that have had a run of bad luck recently."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I noticed a real estate ad a few months back in the Fricassean. It was for a two story, two bedroom, one and a half bath in Brentwood, and it was well below market value. The owner obviously wanted to sell quick."

"And?"

"The owner of the house was a Mr. Fred Rogers."

"Zounds!"

"Exactly. I'm going to have to look into this as soon as we find out who you are."

"FREEZE!" called an authoritative voice from below. "Now I've got you, you filthy Hippie!"

Turning slowly, I studied the steely-looking officer who was aiming his service revolver at me. The name on his tag, which I could just barely make out from my perch, was 'Danny Steele'. Now why did that name seem familiar?

"No jokes this time, Hippie. If you move, I'll blow yer head off!" I didn't move.

BLAM! BLAM! Two bullet holes appeared in Thomas' outer shell and he let out a plaintive whistle.

"Oops!" said Officer Steele. Then, "Those were warning shots! Yeah ... warning shots."

"You fucking moron!" growled Lucky as he leapt at the cop.

BLAM! Another shot fired from the gun and Lucky went down, clutching his bleeding thigh. "AARG!"

"Oops!" said Officer Steele again.

"You Fucking Moron!!!" I shouted and flew at the Fucking Moron.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Click! Click! He emptied his revolver at me, and I managed to avoid getting shot by flying tight loops around Nashville's Finest, while Lucky growled through clenched teeth, "Fucking kangaroo-spunk-sucking cop!"

I touched down with one foot on each of his shoulders, and as he pointed the empty revolver at me, frantically squeezing the trigger, I knocked it out of his hand with a sweeping kick and then gave his head the same treatment.

He went down like a sack of flour, or a really dumb unconscious cop.

"Goddam mother-raping, drug-planting, shit-fucking Metro cop!" Lucky shouted at the Officer's prone form.

I floated over to Lucky to see if he was okay.

"I've got the bleeding under control for now, Cuddly-Pooh," he said calmly, pressing his paws to his thigh. "See how Thomas is, and then call an ambulance."

Flying up to Thomas I inspected the bullet holes. They didn't go all the way through the hull plating, thankfully. Thomas would be okay.

"Cuddly-Pooh?" asked Lucky.

"Yeah?"

"When did you learn to fly?"

I just floated there dumbly, blinking at him. I didn't have an answer.

****

Hours later I was sitting in a Panda-built Hospital corridor outside Lucky's room. The staff was really great and took care of Lucky's wounds without hesitation. And he was given a private recovery room soon after I told them that the Fricassean would be shelling out.

A sexy nurse with wild red hair, and an impossibly short skirt which showed off a good three inches of thigh above her seamed gartered stockings, came out of his room. She was obviously the inspiration for every nurse-related scene in every porn flick or pictorial ever made.

"Cuddly-Pooh," she said in a sultry voice that made my cock instantly and painfully erect. "Lucky is asking for you. C'mon in." Leaning sexily against the doorframe, she crooked her finger at me and her massive tits nearly spilled out of her low-cut top.

"Moan," I moaned as I nearly creamed my overalls. I watched her lush round buttocks sway side to side as she walked away, and after she turned a corner I went into Lucky's room. "Whew! Oh, hi Lucky. You okay? I was starting to worry."

"Oh, I'm just fucking dandy," he said typing away on a Whackintosh laptop computer. "I'm a professional journalist: law enforcement officials shoot at us quite frequently. Besides, White Bengal Tigers have remarkable constitutions. I could have walked out of here right after they stitched me up. But the Fricassean is paying for a really comfy recovery room, that nurse was rather pleasant company and I wanted some time to do some research without distraction."

'Without distraction?' I thought. Well, I suppose Lucky appreciated the nurse's charms in ways different than I did. "What research?" I asked him.

"I won't reveal all of it just yet, but I'll tell you what I found out about you."

"Me?"

"Yeah. You've given me some clues in the time I've known you, and I did some cross-referencing. No need to go into all the details, but keywords such as Hippie, Woodstock, Time Travel and Flying lead me to one fucking conclusion. You are none other than ..."

"Animal?!" shouted a nurse from the doorway. It wasn't the porn-queen redhead that I'd met earlier, but she seemed really glad to see me. She threw her arms around me and cried happy tears into my shoulder. "Where have you been?"

"Aw, nuts!" exclaimed Lucky, closing his laptop, "I wanted to tell."

****

The nurse, it turned out, was Nikki, my oldest sister Patty's love of over eight years. Or so they told me. I still didn't remember any of the people gathered around me at Lucky's bedside. Nikki had called Patty to let her know I was found, and soon all of my friends and a good portion of my family arrived to ask me where I'd been. I'd never been hugged by so many people at once in my whole life.

A really cute girl, no older than 17 but no younger than 18, appeared in a puff of orange smoke (with a little more orange mixed in), and teary-eyed, threw her arms around me. "We've been searching everywhere for you!"

I held her tight and kissed the top of her head. I had no idea who she was, but she obviously cared very deeply for me.

Everyone introduced him/herself to me and tried to help me remember by telling me how we met, or some good time we'd had together. They were great stories, but nothing really penetrated the fog cover over my memory.

"Maybe this'll help," said a scruffy bearded man with very shiny sneakers as he produced a hat from behind his back. It was a black top hat about eight inches tall with a blue bandana hatband and a red feather stuck in it. But, it seemed to me, this was no ordinary top hat.

As soon as the man made to pass it to me, the hat leapt from his hand and flew swift and straight to mine.

I looked at the hat. Then at the people in the room. Then at the hat, and back at the people. They looked back at me rather expectantly, as if I would do a magic trick for them or something.

'Why not?' I thought. 'I'll pull a rabbit out of the hat.'

So I reached into the hat. Where the inside of the crown should have been, my hand found no resistance and my arm disappeared to the shoulder into the hat. There was a tingle and I felt something fuzzy touch my fingertips. Grasping whatever it was, I pulled my hand out of the hat. And Holy Poop, there in my clenched fist was a pair of long floppy rabbit ears! I pulled again, and out popped a little white bunny.

It grinned at me and revealed a large wooden mallet that it held behind it's back.

"You wouldn't!" I warned.

The bunny's grin grew wider as if to say 'Oh yes I would'!

And WHACK! the mallet smashed into my skull, and everything went black.

****

"And that's how you got your memory back?" asked Repo Man with a chuckle.

I was sitting in Dragon Park patting Fannie Mae's head, and in turn getting a sensual shoulder rub from Dawn and her sister Spring (a pair of Nymphs who lived nearby in a tree and a stream respectively) and recounting the events of two months past.

"Not only that, Repo," I said as my antennae, which sprouted from my forehead when I put on my hat that morning, swayed in the cool October breeze, "but that bunny hit me so hard that I got other people's memories, too."

"No way," said Dawn, the tall (almost my height) lovely red-haired Dryad. Spring, the lovely blonde Naiad looked at me incredulously. She didn't speak much.

"It's true," I insisted. "It was probably a magical effect from the hat, but when I awoke I remembered how my friends and family felt when I went missing, and what they did about it. And how they didn't give up, no matter how many dead-ends they hit."

"Which is how," said Repo Man, "you were able to tell me parts of your story from their points of view. Interesting."

"Exactly." It was also how I remembered certain things about Squasha's past that, for her own reasons, she hasn't shared with the rest of us. I chose to leave that to her.

I started thinking about Squasha and the weirdness that had existed between us for several months prior to my homelessness. That weirdness vanished when I regained my memories (and everyone else's), because for the first time I realized that it was all one-sided, and because I realized just how much she cared. Even so, I hadn't talked to her about it, and I decided to rectify that next time I saw her.

My thoughts were interrupted as Dawn and Spring began nibbling my ears and stroking my very sensitive antennae. They smiled at me and I kissed them each softly on the lips. "Sorry, my mind wandered. What were you saying, Repo?"

"I was just saying that there's still some loose ends that haven't been tied up."

"Aren't there always," noted Dawn as she worked my lower back under my t-shirt. Spring quietly massaged my neck.

"Mmmm," I mmmmed, "you two better stop that within the next three hours, or I'll be forced to get violent."

"So...?" prompted Repo Man.

"Well, Lucky finished his article for the Fricassean and used the money to buy the brickyard. It's been abandoned for years, not to mention being used as a sanctuary for the homeless, so it was dirt-cheap. He's building a huge homeless shelter from the leftover bricks, as well as a giant Lego set that I got from my hat. In the meantime, many of the Elliston crowd are taking in some of the area homeless and giving them jobs. For instance, Talisman and Cat have new roommates."

"Cool. Who are they?"

"Bo and Sheena. They're a couple of punk-rock kitties who'd had disagreements with their parents. And I've given a room and a marshmallow-stacking job at PBU to a Rastafarian poodle named Don."

"PBU? I thought it collapsed."

"Yeah, but Cat and Talisman tracked down the work order that caused it. It was just a clerical error, and they got the city to rebuild. Lucky put Reverend John in touch with a lawyer friend of his, who wrote a threatening letter on my behalf. It's still not finished, but I'll be able to move back in and get PBU running again within the next couple of days. They're restoring it exactly, and I'm going to add some magical support beams from my hat, so it can't be knocked down again."

"Excellent. But what about the Hunter-Gatherers?"

"Lessee. Lucky is now rooming with my friend, photographer and amateur DangerChef, Dave Maudlin. I believe you've met him. I think Lucky finds him mildly annoying, but a far cry better than Bob Sagat."

"Without doubt."

"Max has been checked into Central State Mental Hospital, where he's getting help. So long as he wishes, anyway. They can't keep him there unless he volunteers, as he's 'not a danger to himself or others'. Same sort of situation as my brother, Jimi. Anyway, Renée has found an apartment, and I got her a car from my hat to help her get around to find a job. We've been on a few dates recently, and I think something could come of it."

"Simon and Simoné?"

"They'll be managing Lego House, which should be up and running any day now."

"What was Newton's fucking problem?"

"I wish I knew," I said. "For whatever reason, I didn't gain any of his memories so I'm at a loss."

"What about Big Bird?"

"And Mr. Conductor and Thomas the Tank Engine?" added Dawn.

"Well, there's good and bad news involved there," I said. "With Big Bird back on Sesame Street the neighborhood got back its heart and soul. They've pulled together and are cleaning up, and Big Bird himself chased the Prairie Dog gang out of the park. And we're doing a benefit show at the Canary next weekend to raise money for major repairs on Sesame Street. Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem are headlining."

"Cool!" said Repo Man, "I'll be there."

"What about Thomas?" asked Spring in a tiny voice. I might not have heard her if I didn't have my antennae.

"Thomas has recovered nicely, and Mr. Conductor got a brand new uniform. Lucky had a little chat with the owner of the Shining Time Union Station Hotel. He indicated that Fricassean readers might think ill of him if they learned that he was raking in buckets of cash while the cause of that profit was being neglected. He told Lucky that he was 'already planning' to start funding the show from hotel profits.

"Riiiight! So where's the bad news there? It all sounds good to me," commented Repo.

"Sesame Street and Shining Time Station are both still losing viewers. They may not last. Lucky said he's looking into it, but I don't see what anyone can do if no one wants to watch the shows."

A sleek black limousine pulled up next to the park. Charlie Sheen poked his head up through the sunroof and called out, "Hey bro! We've got a story meeting in ten minutes! C'mon! Right now, or I'll tell Dad!"

Repo Man laughed. "I'll be right there, Chuck!" He gave me a hug and then one to Dawn and Spring. Then he hugged Spring goodbye and then Dawn. They each gave him a long farewell kiss, Fannie Mae licked his face and he moved on towards the limo.

Halfway there, he stopped and turned back to me. "Hey, Animal!" he called.

"What?"

"What happened to the cop that shot Thomas and Lucky? What's his name?"

"Officer Danny Steele. Well, I didn't want to see yet another Metro cop decorated for an 'Accidental Shooting In The Line of Duty', so I stripped him naked and placed his uniform and all his cop gear into a dumpster. Then I tossed his naked ass into a freight train bound for Alaska."

"Good job!" he laughed and rode away with his brother.

I was about to take my leave and post some more flyers around town for the Muppet Relief Show, but Dawn, her fiery red hair as gorgeous as her namesake, and Spring, the silent beauty of the waters, stopped me.

"I believe," said Dawn, "that you promised us three hours."

That wasn't exactly what I'd said, but who was I to argue? I allowed them to drag me into the woods.

"Three hours, then," I said with a lecherous grin, "but afterwards I get my sweet revenge."

They giggled as they stripped me naked.

End of Book One

BOOK TWO -- Coffee Nips Anonymous

The Muppet Relief benefit show took place on October 15th, 1988, and we decided to make it a Halloween party as well. Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem hadn't played Nashville in years, and Pirate radio station 91 Rock was kind enough to give publicity at a reduced rate, so ticket sales were superb. The place was already getting crowded as the first opening band, Grimace and the Plowmen, set up their equipment. Grimace, I noted, had come a long way since losing two of his arms (the lower pair) nearly two decades back in a tragic milkshake-related accident.

"Hi-ho! Test, test," said Master of Ceremonies Kermit the Frog as he tested the microphone.

Scanning the crowd, I saw that there was, of course, a good representative body from Sesame Street. Cookie Monster, dressed as a Crusading Knight was bobbing for apples with Bert and Ernie, who wore Ernie and Bert costumes. Mumford the Magician was doing some conjuring for the crowd of children that gathered around him dressed as various monsters and superheroes. And Bob, dressed as a skeleton, was handing out Halloween treats to everyone.

As well, there were many Elliston Place regulars, such as Eddie the Screamer, appearing live and in person as Elvis Presley with Pricilla on his arm (played by none other than his lovely girlfriend Clöe), David Shepherdspie in a High School Varsity wrestler costume, Othello the Polar Bear as Hamlet holding a grinning skull, the Night Stalker as the Frankenstein Monster (or Herman Munster ... I wasn't sure which), and countless armadillos and penguins and punk rockers in a wide range of scary or silly costumes.

Not only were Sesame Street and Elliston Place well represented, but there were people and critters from all over Nashville and beyond in attendance. A British Secret Agent in a Viking costume ... or was he a Viking in a British Secret Agent costume? Anyway, he was wearing a tuxedo and a bull-horned helmet, and he was sharing a drinking horn full of honeymead (shaken, not stirred) with a couple of women dressed as lingerie models. Slim Goodbody, disguised as Batman, glared angrily at television personality Adam West, who'd dared show up in the exact same costume. A bear and a turtle wearing sunglasses, bowties and Speedos were dancing on a table, as several middle-aged women in Elvira costumes stuffed dollar bills into their waistbands. And Samantha Fox -- Nude was there as well, wearing a lovely Lady Godiva costume, and Dave Maudlin (wearing a homemade chain mail shirt and carrying a stuffed Sock on a Stick™) was taking photos of her every time she turned around, sexily flinging her hair, or struck a sexy pose (which was every thirty three and a third seconds).

It was a good crowd, and we had easily surpassed our fundraising goal.

I greeted the folks that I knew (and some that I didn't) including Maria, Luis and Gina who walked in with Cat and Talisman. We'd spent a good deal of time getting to know the folks on Sesame Street over the past couple of months, as we worked together to organize this bash.