"Yeah," said Turtle. Snake rumpled the plush on top of his head. He hated that.
Snake and Turtle passed their neighborhood movie palace, which was showing a Puppetropolitan remake of The Lost World. Turtle was crazy about the movies. He didn't care what was playing.
A porpoise in an eyeshade and sleeve garters was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a hole-in-the-wall tongue store. He looked like a foreigner. Snake wondered why so many foreigners looked so sad. Weren't they happy to be here?
Snake and Turtle walked past the apartment block where Snake lived. They ducked up an alley. Snake stopped under a fire escape. "You hear that?" she said. "That bunny is breaking dishes again. Working up a head of steam for when Teddy gets home, I bet you. That bitch sent Teddy to the hospital last month."
"I wonder why they got married," said Turtle. "They don't got no kids."
Snake and Turtle walked east. The parade of stuffies never ended. There went a llama in a priest's collar. There went a lantern fish and a twelve-legged cow. Part of a Humpty Dumpty. A swan and a vulture. A lion and a headless lion tamer. A punching bag and a little black Sambo. Plush City was like a masquerade ball that never ended.
Turtle wanted to stay here forever.
Edna Pinkbunny stood in her den and ironed her husband's shirts. A complaining electric fan provided a meager breeze while it drowned out Edna's radio. Perspiration dripped from her nose onto the steam iron. It was an ugly iron. The shirts were ugly shirts. Her doll furniture was ugly tasteless doll furniture, and the shoddy pasteboard walls of the apartment were ugly walls.
What killed Edna was that on Teddy's salary as an armed guard at the bank, they should've been able to afford a better place. The problem was Teddy's unfortunate habit of drinking half his paycheck every weekend. Edna imagined the look on Teddy's face if she accidentally dropped this iron on his big smelly foot. It would serve him right.
The radio was tuned to a morning soap opera about glamorous well-paid medical professionals who all worked at Pattern General Hospital. A nurse with a sexy voice was the ice princess of the nursing staff. All the doctors were hot for her, but she treated them like dirt. Edna wanted to be like that.
While Edna daydreamed in the den, Cuddles was in the bathroom, having her way with Fang. Edna ignored the torture chamber parrot laughter and the agonized rodent squeals. She had her own problems.
Cuddles was experimenting with a theory of hers that the sewer pipes beneath the toilet bowl were inhabited by little shit-eating sewer fish. Cuddles was convinced that if she fished in these sub-toilet waters with the proper bait, she could hook one of these sewer fish and capture it for science. She'd constructed a fishing pole from a curtain rod, some dental floss, and a paper clip. Her bait for today was none other than Fang.
Fang couldn't breathe underwater, but Cuddles took account for that. Every couple of minutes she hauled him to the surface. After he caught his breath, he usually started to squeal. But that was easily remedied. Cuddles simply flushed.
"Hamster want a cracker?" said Cuddles.
"Glub," said Fang.
Meanwhile Edna was collecting some cleaning supplies from a kitchen cupboard. She arranged the cans and bottles on the dinner table.
She glanced at the ceiling. The dance instructor upstairs had been playing the same record all morning. That Gopher Sisters number. The big band slid casually from chord to chord, while the trio sang sweet swing harmonies into the stale city air. "Next morning where the two had sat, they found no trace of dog or cat. And some folks think unto this day that burglars stole the pair away."
Edna sat down, put on her glasses, and studied the labels on the cleaning products. With particular attention to the instructions given in case of accidental poisoning.
Doris the Doll turned the corner of Storytime Avenue onto Taffeta. She wore a mauve cloche hat and a topcoat, although it wasn't raining. She clutched her beaded purse as she walked, and fussed nervously with the blonde curls of her wig.
Doris was on her way to Ladybug's bar on the other side of the elevated tracks. Her purse was full of play heroin. Her hair wasn't her hair, and the heroin wasn't her heroin. It belonged to Mama Sloth.
Fucking Syndicate bitches. Doris wanted to sink them all in the harbor in galoshes of cement. She also wanted to go to Candy Land and climb the Licorice Tower. Doris wanted to do a lot of things.
She paused at a newsstand run by a fat old sea cow with a mustache. She loitered on the sidewalk reading headlines. The wooden toys of Ark had invaded Lawn County and slagged hundreds of tin toys. The ceramic toys of Kiln were expected to mobilize before dark. Taxidermia, Inflatia, and the Baked Goods Section were expected to form an alliance for mutual protection. This would trigger a declaration of war from the mayor of Plush City. Fabulous. Giant monsters weren't enough for him. Now he needed a war. Meanwhile the paper dolls of Drawer were preparing to test their new super-bomb.
"This ain't a library," said the sea cow. Doris took off. She had places to go and people to see.
Doris didn't let the city drag her down. When she felt blue, she went to the movies. When she got home from the movies, she sat alone in her smoky apartment and played her records day and night, just to drown out her thoughts. Drinking coffee. Taking pills. Running errands for the scum of the west side. Some life for a nice little Kewpie doll from the Ohio State Fair.
What she really ought to do was slit her wrists. Do it up right. Get out while the going was good.
The sidewalk went on forever. An evangelist was preaching on the radio. Doris could follow the sermon through people's open windows. The priests said that the grown-ups of the material plane created dolls in their own image. But if that was true, then why did the grown-ups let dolls be used as the mute and paralyzed playthings of children. That seemed like truly demonic behavior to Doris.
The priests said that when a good little stuffed toy went to the Burn Pile down there, her soul ascended to the Table Land and was blessed with speech and mobility as a reward for her terrible sufferings down below. Did that make any sense?
What kind of an afterlife was this? People died here. What happened to your soul if you died here? Some second afterlife? To Doris the whole arrangement looked senseless. But very little made sense to Doris anymore. Except for one thing. One thing made lots and lots of sense.
She could end it all. She could go home right now and take all her pills at once. She could dispose of herself and do everybody a favor.
Unseen cymbals crashed behind the blue silk sky. Cold rain fell like funeral veils. The gingham dog was seen on the flatlands, running hard across the hard-pack. Shreds of ripped fabric hung loose from his shanks. Already he was leaking goose down and snow flurries of white pinfeather followed in his wake. He fled south from the Wiggly Mountains. He was making for the city. Already the calico predator of the mountains had chewed off his fine gingham tail. Now she was giving her prey a lead across the flatlands. That was how the cat operated. She was playful. She made a game of the thing. The dog would be just as gutted by sundown.
The dog's eye stitchings were red, and his ribs showed through his pelt. He'd been hiding in a cave for days, with nothing to eat but bats and centipedes. The cat had flushed him into the open perhaps an hour ago. He was far too exhausted to fight back. Perhaps he'd find a new hiding place in the cardboard city of the small folk.