Any similarities of this story to any other Girl Scout Nookie stories by talented writers, such as the ones previously mentioned plus Jack C. Lipton, are absolutely coincidental and have nothing to do with the fact that they remain taped to the computer desk in front of me. My own Girl Scout Nookies en Passant and Girl Scout Wookiees are taped there as well, and you should confine your snooping to those only. The three or forty insignificant similarities, which are sometimes incorrectly described as "being identical," aren't worth worrying about anyhow, except for Girl Scout Nookies en Passant and Girl Scout Wookiees because these events take place after those two.
"Nothing beats a fine gin & tonic," I've always said. Well, I was wrong. A second job to pay for three mortgages means "nothing" is all I can drink, and "nothing" sucks. As I finished changing for that second job, the doorbell rang.
I dodged around the stacked cases of Girl Scout Cookies in the bedroom, hallway, and living room. Habit caused me to grab the Thesaurus when I reached the front door. I looked through the peep hole and saw, almost to my relief, a pasty-faced, bedraggled man wearing the kind of cheap brown suit that meant he was one of the rare breed in this town: an honest cop. One who therefore couldn't afford an expensive brown suit.
That's how you tell the bell-ringers apart. Brown suit, cops. Black suits, Mormons.
And hairy suits with Girl Scout uniforms over them, walking cash vacuums seeking to clean out my bank account. But you already know that because you've read Girl Scout Wookiees.
When I opened the door he looked at the book in my hand, craning his neck to the side to look at the cover. His lips started moving. Slowly. When they stopped moving he straightened his head, looked at me, and said, "Thesaurus?" Well, at least he could read. "How is it?"
I blinked at him. "I can't think of the words to describe it."
"That good, huh? Who wrote it?"
I blinked at him again, because I couldn't think of a new response. "Roget."
"Foreigner, huh? That's the trouble with this country. Too damned many foreigners in it."
"Who are you?"
"My name's Sergeant Wojcechowicz. We had a complaint about you."
"Me?"
"You're Hoistigon, aren't you?"
Here we go again. "No."
Sergeant Alphabet frowned at me, as if straining to produce either a fart or a thought. He achieved the second goal. "She said you were Mister Hoistigon and you were a pervert." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Mrs. Coldmelon's house. I saw the reflection from her binoculars in the living room window.
"'Hoisington.' And the pervert lives there." I pointed next door. Hey, what do you call someone who won't cheat on his wife, not even with his own daughters, but still appears in my stories?
"She said you had four hairy little beasts in Girl Scout uniforms on your front porch the other day, and that they turned into four naked girls."
I tried to look extremely disappointed at the man's intelligence. Which required very little effort. "That didn't tell you she was a few bars short of a cellblock?"
Sergeant Unpronounceable looked highly impressed that I spoke the language of his profession. Linguistic skills are necessary for any good writer, you know. "Well, it did make me wonder."
I nodded parsley. I was out of sage. "And, of course, her husband confirmed her story?"
Officer Consonant-Collection shrugged and scratched his neck while looking at the dust on his polished black shoes. "Well, no. He said he didn't see any such thing."
Mr. Coldmelon told the truth. He'd come home late and missed the show. He obviously omitted that he was now coming home either on time or early in hopes of catching a repeat performance.
"But," he added, "we have to check these complaints out. Say, this dent in your porch looks... well, I don't know how to describe it."
I refrained from handing him the Thesaurus. "I think that's where she rested her battering ram."
"Battering ram?" Back to thought-or-fart. His eyes rose to meet mine and widened. "She?"
Could I resist an evil grin? Of course not. "Officer Sherry."
His pasty face turned sickly white. "Oh! I see! I, um, I didn't know, well, that this was, um, her case. Damn those dispatch idiots. I, um, I don't want to intrude on her case. Forget I was here, okay? Don't feel obligated to mention it to anyone. Anyone! Especially her!"
He fled the porch at a dead run and almost bowled over four small figures in Girl Scout uniforms at the end of the sidewalk. "HEY!" shouted an unfortunately familiar voice.
"YOU BUTTWIPE!" Also unfortunately familiar.
There was a burst of Spanish that I couldn't begin to understand. Also unfortunately familiar.
"YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS, YOU WORM!" The most unfortunately familiar of all. Mister Happy was already in full retreat, hoping to avoid any further pain. I wanted to retreat back into the house, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. They'd just forge my name to a fourth mortgage, and maybe a fifth if I ran. I wanted to tinkle down my leg, but I didn't know where Mister Happy was hiding.
I spotted a new binoculars-flash across the street. Mr. Coldmelon had claimed the bedroom window. Meanwhile, the quartet clambered up the steps and stood in their usual order.
"Hello, Mister Hoistigon," Maria said, smiling in the toothy manner of sharks. "Still toting that dumb old Thesaurus around, I see."
"It's 'Hoisington,' remember?"
"Who cares?" scoffed Mistress Star. Her quirt flicked a bug from her studded leather uniform.
"The Boss sent us," explained Buffy.
"We're here to make you a deal," added Ming, who, I noticed, wasn't carrying her usual thick sheaf of papers. Oh, crap, I thought. This time they're going to take the whole house with them.
"What kind of a deal?" I asked.
"If you'll stop interrupting, she'll tell you!" shouted Mistress Star, snapping her quirt on my crotch. My yelp wasn't the reaction she wanted. "Hey! What'd you do with it?"
I shrugged one shoulder. "He went into hiding. I think he crawled up my ass."
Her chocolate face turned positively red. She growled in a low voice, "Did I order you to go fuck yourself, worm?"
Uh oh. "N—n—no, M—Mistress Star."
"Then get it out of there and out here right now!" She snapped the quirt on my thigh.
I screamed, and then gasped, "But, the neighbors. They'll call that cop again."
"Who cares?"
"Wait," said Ming, patiently. "The Boss wants this kept quiet. We'd better go inside."
"That's right," said Buffy, correctly.
"You should invite us in," said Maria, invitingly.
"Or else!" promised Mistress Star, painfully.
Sorry, Mr. Coldmelon. I invited them in.
Buffy closed the door as Mistress Star snarled, "Now, get it out."
I put the Thesaurus on the book shelf because I needed both hands. I eventually found Mister Happy and fished him out through the fly. Mistress Star took him in her dark little hand. Mister Happy started to respond. Started to.
I vaguely remember four rapid blows from the quirt. I awoke in pain, face up on the floor, spitting water, and seeing Maria standing there holding an upside-down glass. One last drop fell from it and hit me between the eyes.
I looked at my wet clothes and groaned. "Now I gotta change before my second job!"
"How'd you like to quit your second job?" Ming asked as she seated herself on a black ottoman I didn't remember owning.
"I'd love to, but for some reason I seem to have two extra mortgages to pay off."
"The Boss has a deal that will make you enough money to pay them off," Maria said.
"You see," Ming began, but then she screamed as the ottoman rolled and dumped her on the floor. Her green skirt slid up to her waist, and I received a reminder that I couldn't prove whether she was a true redhead. Yes, she'd forgotten her panties.
"I didn't forget them," she scowled. "I never wear them."
"You read my mind?" I asked.
"No, I read it three paragraphs above this one." She gave Mistress Star a hopeless look. "We gotta talk to the girls in Troop 469. They think Mister Gamera is lame? Wait till we tell them about this bozo." Then she yelped again as the black "ottoman" lurched unsteadily to its four paws.
Baggins is now the normal weight for a fully-grown Labrador retriever. Unfortunately he's still the height of his father, who was some sort of small terrier. He waddled to a case of shortbread cookies, nosed the flap open, shoved his head in, and began munching. His tail rose and he farted, blasting out a thin cloud of cookie crumbs.
"Stop him!" they screamed in unison.
"You can't stop a dog from farting," I said. "I've tried. At least now they smell like...."
"Not that!" shouted Buffy.
I was beginning to wish they had brought more fish to stick in my ears to muffle all the screaming and shouting.
"He's eating up our profits!" wailed Maria.
Ming nodded, which wasn't easy to notice because her skirt hem was still up around her waist. "The more he eats the longer you'll have to keep your night job."
That got my attention as surely as her missing panties did.
"They aren't missing!" she shrieked. "I just don't wear them!"
Whichever. I grabbed Baggins' tail and pulled him back from the carton. He growled and spun to face me.
Angular momentum can be a terrible thing. He tried to keep his feet under him and succeeded for a full three-sixty plus another quarter turn before toppling over onto his side. He tried thrice to get his feet under him, farted once more, and began snoring.
The disgusted look they gave Baggins didn't change when they turned their livid little faces to me. "That's your dog, all right," Maria scoffed.
"You must be very proud," Buffy sneered. "He turned out just like you."
At least no weapons had appeared. Yet. Except for the quirt Mistress Star was using to raise the flap on a case of Thin Mints. "Hey, there's only one box! You eat that many already, worm?"
"No! Well, yes. Well, no."
Ming pulled her knees up and crossed her arms atop them, resting her chin on the upper arm. Her legs wobbled and her nookie winked as she shook her head. "Can't even answer a two-choice question. How'd you ever graduate from school with its four-choice multiple guess questions?"
"YEEEEOOOOWWWW!!!!"
Mistress Star seemed very pleased that she'd been able to find Mister Happy again. "If you'd stop looking at Ming's nookie, we could get some questions answered and get out of this dump."
"The fact that she isn't wearing panties is very distracting."
"You aren't distracted by the fact that the rest of us aren't wearing them," scoffed Maria.
I hurt my toes by bouncing my jaw off them. "You aren't?"
Buffy rolled her ice-blue eyes. "We're your characters! What kind of writer are you, anyway?"
"Not a very good one," sneered Mistress Star. "Now: what happened to the Thin Mints, worm? I thought they were your least favorite."
I shrugged. "Well, they were. Until Allie started crumbling them into her...."
"Allie?" Ming's face looked so worried that I forgot to ogle her nookie. "Irena Allikapona from the Ukraine? That Allie?"
"Yeah." I pointed at the chrome-free trailer hitch by the Thesaurus. "There's her calling card."
Buffy checked it out. "It's her, all right. That fat bitch!"
I was incensed. "Now, listen here! She happens to be a very nice girl who—YEOW!"
Ming had produced her sheaf of papers from somewhere and was withdrawing one, her little face so furious that I feared looking at her nookie. She scanned the page. "Because of her the Boss is out the twenty-seven thousand dollars that she had to refund to Mister Four. All we got to keep is the three thousand dollar restocking fee. And now she's wasting all the profits of our next venture?"
I was getting loster by the second. "What venture? Will someone please explain what's going on"?
Mistress Star turned to me. "Shut up!" she explained. "Or else."
"No, wait," Buffy said. "We have to explain it to him, or both of the people who read this will think that nice Mister Gamera has lost control of his character and that she's turned to crime."
Surprised by her comment, the rest agreed that Buffy, who was the true blonde instead of Mistress Star, was correct.
"Is that a blonde joke?" Buffy had her wooden stake pointed at my heart and mallet drawn back.
"Ummm... no?"
"Good." She lifted her skirt, produced a pen, and began counting cases, recording numbers on one of Ming's papers.
Ming took over. "Once we receive our doctoral degrees in scoffing, Officer Sherry wants us to come work for her. She's not happy with the quality of police explorer candidates that are volunteering. So, she's planning to buy the Girl Scouts and promote the best choices to police explorer candidates and send them to her new training academy. We're going to run it for her."
"She's going to buy your Girl Scout Troop?"
Maria rolled her eyes and sighed. "How can anyone so lame stand up, let alone walk?"
Buffy looked up from counting cases in the hallway. "It's a medical miracle." She shook her head at me. "She's going to buy all the Girl Scout troops. The whole organization. It's part of her secret plan."
"But, how can it be a secret if I just wrote about it?"
All four rolled their eyes. "Look," said Maria, as if she were explaining something to a small child, a mental defective, or Kenny Gamera—OUCH!"
"Don't you dare include that nice Mister Gamera in that list," said Mistress Star, drawing her quirt back into striking position for additional emphasis.
"And don't substitute Mister cmsix, either!" added Maria.
I quickly erased his name. "Texans in general? OUCH!"
"I'M FROM TEXAS, YOU WORM!"
Now what? "Ball Four?"
Maria sneered scornfully. "You truly have no shame. You'd include that nice Mister Four after he was kind enough to send you that fat bitch."
I hurried to think of something. The quirt was about to strike. "How about this:"
"Look," said Maria, as if she were explaining something to a small child, a mental defective, or me.
Mistress Star rolled her eyes. "Redundant, but keep writing, worm."
"It's going to stay a secret," Maria continued. "How many people do you think read your crap?"
"Oh." Okay, she had an excellent point. "So, what does this plan have to do with me?"
Maria rolled her eyes and waved a hand at the stacks in the room. "Cookies."
Ming extracted another sheet of paper. "Even though the cookies are fifty percent butylhydroxyaldehyde, butylhydroxytoluene, and formaldehyde, they'll still spoil before you can eat them all," she pointed at Baggins, who was snoring at both ends, "even with the help of Slarty Fartblast and the fat bitch. We're going to resell them. Now that the season is over and people are going into withdrawal, the prices are climbing higher than my skirt."
That reminded me to look at her smooth little nookie. I wondered if Thin Mints would taste as good if they were crumbled into it as they did when Allie crumbled them into hers. Maybe I should run a comparison analysis: put both side-by-side and.... Wait a minute! Why stop with just two? I could put all four side by side with Allie. Maybe bring in Nykki for a non-Girl-Scout control sample. Maybe bring in—"YEEEOOOWWW!!!"
"Stop digressing!" yelled Mistress Star. "We're almost through with Page Six and aren't at the end yet!"
Ming continued, as if I hadn't rudely interrupted her by screaming in agonizing pain. "We need a supply of cookies. You have a supply. We'll sell them and give you five percent."
"Only five? I thought the standard fencing fee was ten percent."
Ming's Chicom AK-47 appeared and she rose from the floor. Her skirt fell. The floor show, sadly, was over. "It's twice as much as the two and one-half percent we could give you."
Flexibility is, of course, the key to any successful negotiations. "Five percent sounds like a nice round number." You can't get much more flexible than that.
Maria vanished the switchblade I hadn't seen her produce. "It's more than enough to pay off your second and third mortgages, especially the way the price of Thin Mints is climbing."
Ming waved a paper at me. "Samoas are up to twenty bucks a box. Thin Mints were at thirty this morning. In another week they'll be up to fifty and well over a hundred this time next month."
Baggins stirred briefly, then farted another cloud of shortbread crumbs. Ming looked at her paper and produced an abacus. She shoved the beads around. "Every time he farts today it costs you two and one-quarter cents."
I was down two hundred bucks, and it was only five p.m.! "He needed to go on a diet anyway."
"We'll sell small quantities at first,"Maria added. "Just enough to keep everyone from going cold turkey. By the end of summer we'll need a money launderer."
"Nothing like clean filthy lucre, I always say. OUCH!"
"If we want bad jokes," sneered Mistress Star, "we'll go see Mister Lipton or Mister Wheeler."
Buffy returned, handed the inventory to Ming, and lifted her skirt. The pen disappeared.
Ming looked up from her abacus. "You should be able to pay off your extra mortgages and have a profit of about thirty big ones."
She obviously meant thirty thousand dollars because she certainly wasn't talking about her chesticular enhancements.
The AK-47 muzzle looks remarkably large when it's poking you between the eyes. "But," I added, "I'm certain they'll be very nice when they finish growing. After they start. Soon."
Mistress Star pushed the muzzle aside with her quirt and replaced it with her nose, which wasn't easy to do since she's half my height. "Do you ever think about anything except sex?"
"Of course I do," I scoffed. "Gin and tonic. YOWTCH!"
"We'll do the scoffing around here, worm," she sneered before jumping down from Maria's shoulders, causing both her skirt to rise and me to consider crumbling a hundred bucks of Thin Mints. Each produced a Safeway shopping bag and took two boxes of every variety.
"Got some sugar junkies waiting at the mall," Buffy explained as they headed for the door.
As I started to close the storm door behind them I also started thinking. Thirty thousand dollars! What I could do with an extra thirty grand! Unfortunately for the two of them, some major pleasure changes were now in effect for both Baggins and Allie.
"That reminds me," said Ming as she whirled about on the porch and shuffled through her papers. "Did you ever pay the thirty thousand fee for the fat bitch?"
I was so startled that I almost dropped the Thesaurus I hadn't realized I'd picked up.
"No," I said. "She was a gift from Ball Four."
"Who got a refund for her." She waved Buffy over. Buffy hiked her skirt and produced the pen. Ming pulled a form from the sheaf. "Sign here, please."
© Russell Hoisington 2005
