Puppet Wrangler (6 page)

He laughed.

“Yeah. I've got the same problem with that theory.

There's not really much point to being me—at least as far as I can see.”

“I know the feeling.”

We both sort of smiled and looked away. We weren't mad at each other anymore, but neither of us was about to admit it.

“So got any other theories?” I said, figuring his mood had improved.

“Whaddya mean? About ‘how the Incredible Bitsie came to be'? I don't know! How did you come to be?”

I wasn't sure if he was ready for this. But hey, I wasn't ready for a talking puppet. He'd just have to brace himself.

“Well, basically, the female body produces eggs and the male body produces…”

I didn't have time to finish.

“Stop! Stop! Please! I've seen the Health Channel!” He made a “don't-make-me-gag” face. “You people look at puppets like we're the weirdos! At least we're not oozing fluids all over the place.”

“Hey, you asked!”

“That's not what I meant. I was talking about the bigger picture. Not where did you come from. But where did the first egg and…whatever…come from.”

I hate thinking about things like that. Mum and Dad fell in love, had Bess and then had me. That I can understand—though the part about having another kid after Bess always throws me a bit.

But trying to figure out how the whole thing started, how the first person started—that's too big. It's like swimming in the middle of the ocean. You could paddle around forever and ever and never reach the place you're trying to get to.

“Well?” he said, all smart-alecky again.

“I don't know. Some higher being made them I guess.

God or something.”

“And so why couldn't He…”

“Let's say She…” I can be obnoxious too.

“Okay, why couldn't She have made a talking puppet?

It's not the strangest thing She came up with. She made platypuses. She made those hairless cats, not to mention people who actually find them cute. Hey…She made your Aunt Kathleen!”

We both laughed.

“Good point,” I said. “So is that really what you think happened? Some god made you?”

Bitsie sighed. “Who cares?!? We can sit around here figuring out the meaning of life—or we can go out and actually try to live one.”

On one hand, that sounded pretty good—in an Oprah Winfrey kind of way. (I could tell Bitsie was really proud of it too. Like he was Mr. Inspirational or something.) On the other hand, it sounded a lot like the type of thing Bess does.

By which I mean scary and/or illegal.

There was a long pause (by Bitsie standards, anyway). I figured he'd said everything he was going to say.

Oh, right. Like that would ever happen.

“Anyway, in answer to your question, I do have three theories about how I came to be. One: I'm a freak of nature. Sort of the five-legged frog of the puppet world.

Don't look so shocked! I'm perfectly fine with that. If that's who I am, that's who I am. Theory two: I'm a figment of your imagination.”

Oh boy, that made me mad. I practically attacked him.

“What?! You just spent all this time bullying me into believing you're real, and now you're telling me I just made you up!”

Bitsie rolled his eyes at me, which, frankly, no figment of my imagination would ever have the nerve to do. My imagination was the one thing I had any control over. Or at least I used to.

“Hey, it's just a theory. I thought you'd be pleased. If you ask me, as figments go, I'm way more interesting than your little under-the-bed world. Think of me as a sign you're improving!”

That was just mean and there was no way I was going to ask the little know-it-all creep what his third theory was.

As if I'd have to.

“Theory three: You're a figment of my imagination. That's the theory I like best because it means I don't have to waste anymore time talking about this crap.” He gave me a phony smile and turned away.

Fine.

Jerk.

Neither of us said anything for a long time. Bitsie sat flicking his mecs. I cracked my knuckles. After a while it made me laugh. I couldn't help it. It was so obvious we were both just trying to bug each other.

Bitsie snorted too. I knew he was thinking exactly the same thing. He gave his eye mec a major yank and his eyeballs started bouncing around in his head like bingo markers. It was hilarious.

He may not be real. And he's definitely irritating.

But right then I knew he was my friend.

13
HE GROWS ON YOU.

We just goofed around for another hour or two. Bitsie even let me try puppeteering. It meant sticking my hand up his bum, but it was still a lot of fun.

Bitsie checked the time and made sure the night watchman wouldn't be around for a while. Then he hooked everything up for me. The camera. The sound. The lights. Everything. (For a puppet, he's pretty smart.) We crawled under the set and he put Jimmy's sweatband
¹¹
around my forehead. It had this little tiny microphone attached to it. And I mean “tiny,” like halfway between a Tic-Tac and a jelly bean. Sort of like a Cherry Nib but black and not as fat. I guess you could say it was more like a Licorice Nib but rounded at the end.

Anyway, you get the idea.

Bitsie taped a script on the wall in front of me, then turned on one of the televisions—though, of course, when I called it a television he made this big deal about it being a “monitor.” A Mon-I-Tor, as in “you idiot.” He was shaking his head and snorting as if I'd called it a donut or a bicycle or something. It sure looked like a TV to me. How was I to know it only played back what the camera was recording? I thought the puppeteers were under there watching
Seinfeld
or something when they weren't busy.

I'm not even going to tell you what Bitsie said to that. He a had good laugh at my expense, then finally pulled himself together enough to explain that the puppeteers watch the monitor so they can see what their puppets are doing.

Bitsie attached these two metal rods to his hands and climbed up onto the set. I stayed underneath and put my right hand over my head, through the set and up his bum.

He suddenly started screaming like he was in terrible pain.

I yanked my arm out as fast as I could. I didn't know what I'd done.

Nothing of course.

Bitsie was just doing that to bug me. He couldn't feel a thing. I mean, he's a puppet after all! I was sort of embarrassed I even fell for it. How stupid was that?

When he finally stopped laughing enough that he could stand up, I tried again. I put my right hand up his body and into his head. My fingers were on the top part of his mouth and my thumb was on the bottom. That made him talk in a funny voice, sort of the way you do when the dentist has her hand in your mouth. He told me to take the cord that was hanging out of his insides with my left hand. There was this little springy thing at the end of it that looked exactly like the gizmo Dad has on his camera. The one he uses to snap family pictures when he wants to be in the photo too.

You know, that long cord thing. Sort of like a TV remote for picture-taking except it's attached to the camera.

Maybe you don't. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You don't have to know exactly what it looked like. It was just the thing that made Bitsie's eyes move. His eye mec.

Depending how you squeezed it, you could make his eyes blink or move side to side or up and down. My left hand is pretty klutzy for starters, so I was already thinking I'd never be able to do this. Then Bitsie made me hold the rods that move his arms with my left hand too.

According to Bitsie, “all I had to do” now was read the lines on the script stuck to the wall, move his mouth in time to the words and make him wave goodbye to his “friends at home.” It was “easy.” I just had to watch Bitsie on the monitor. I could see everything I was doing as I did it. I'd get used to it in no time.

Yeah, right.

Have you ever seen a video of baby giraffes? They try to stand up right after they're born, but their legs can't hold them so they keep doing the splits. Then they manage to get their bum up in the air, but their head's too heavy so their neck bounces around like they just lost a big prize-fight or something.

That's what Bitsie looked like.

No. Not quite. It was more like a cross between that and Frankenstein's monster. A very drunk monster.

With a limp.

And a broken jaw.

It was terrible. Scary, in fact. Can you imagine if Bitsie ever went on TV like that? All his little “friends at home” would be screaming for their mummies to call 9-1-1.

After a while I managed to get Bitsie's mouth flapping, but he didn't really look like he was talking. What he looked like was Grammie trying to chew without her false teeth in.

I tried to get his eyes moving too. Most of the time nothing would happen at all; then suddenly one eye would twitch and you'd start to think that maybe Bitsie had a violent streak you didn't know about.

I felt like such a klutz at first. I couldn't even figure out how to read the script and watch the monitor at the same time, let alone move the puppet too.

But after a while I seemed to be getting the hang of it.

Bitsie's mouth started to move in sync with the words, his eyes looked left and right and I actually got him to walk across the set without looking like he was recovering from a serious car accident.

I felt so proud of myself.

It was only when Bitsie started doing a perfect version of the Macarena that I realized I wasn't such a brilliant puppeteer after all. He'd been pulling my leg. He'd been doing everything for me!

It was pretty funny. Even I had to laugh.
¹²
I mean, who did I think I was? Some puppet prodigy or something?

We realized the security guy was going to be by on his rounds any minute, so we had to stop right in the middle of Bitsie's hip-hop routine. We rushed around and got everything turned off and ourselves back under the set just seconds before the guard opened the door, poked his head in, closed the door and left. (Gee, some security.)

We just lay under the set for a while. I was tired, but Bitsie was still going strong. He could do the wickedest imitations of people. His one of Kathleen completely cracked me up.

I know it's hard to believe, considering he was only a meter high and had big bulgy eyes and a nose like a beak, but Bitsie actually managed to look like Kathleen when he did it. It's probably because he had her walk down perfectly.

I thought I was going to wet my pants, I was laughing so hard.

In fact, I realized that if I didn't find a bathroom soon that's exactly what I'd do. Luckily, Bitsie had stolen one of the computer cards that unlocks the studio door. (He'd also stolen keys to the storage room so he could let himself in and out, keys to the control room so he could watch TV whenever he wanted and keys to Mel's car just to bug him.)

I'd just crawled out from under the set when I heard Nick's voice going, “Oh, good, exactly what I was looking for!” I thought it was Bitsie imitating him. (I had made the mistake of admitting that I thought Nick was cute.) I was just about to say something smart back like “Nick, darling, I thought you'd never get here!” when I heard footsteps. Good thing I kept my mouth shut.

It's times like that when you realize your mother is right about a lot of things. Like not wiping your mouth on your T-shirt after you've had chocolate chip cookies, for instance. It leaves these really gross stains.

They were probably the first thing Nick noticed about me.

¹¹
Ewwww…

¹²
Though not as hard as Bitsie did, of course. I was worried about his heart for a while there.

14
EVERYTHING GORGEOUS
NICK SINGH SAID TO ME
THAT NIGHT.

1. “Tally?!?”

2. “You're still here?!…Ha-ha. I guess that's pretty obvious. I'm just a little surprised 'cause Kathleen left an hour ago to go out for dinner…How are you getting home?”

3. “You know, come to think of it, I bet she wanted me to take you. I've got a key. Yeah. I'm pretty sure of it. She's been so busy, you know, with the way
Bitsie 'n' Bytesie
is so far over budget and her trying to develop another series and all that. She must have just forgotten. Not forgotten
you
. Ha-ha. I mean, she must have just forgotten to remind
me
to take you home. I hope you weren't waiting long.”(Adorable smile)

4. “Just let me get these scripts for tomorrow. Here—want to read one?”

5. “That's my car over there.”

6 “Mind if I take this call?” [“Hello…Oh, hi!…Un-huh …Un-huh…Yup…I'm just taking Tally home… Kathleen's niece…Sure. Red or White?…Okay…Yeah. Me, too…”(Cute little laugh) “Bye.”]

7. “So whaddya think? The TV business is pretty neat, eh?”

8. “I love it. Especially since I get to work for your aunt. She's pretty amazing, you know. I've learned a lot from her. I've got a series I'm hoping to get going myself one day, so this experience has been invaluable.”

9. “Well, here we are!…You going to be okay until she gets back?”

10. “Look, ah, here's my cell-phone number. Just call if you need anything. And take this too. Kathleen never has anything in the fridge. C'mon. Take it. I've got a feeling you like chocolate.” (Another cute little laugh) “See you tomorrow, Tally.”

15
EVERYTHING I MEANT TO SAY
TO GORGEOUS NICK SINGH
THAT NIGHT.

1. “Actually, it's ‘Telly.' My big sister couldn't say Teresa. In fact, nobody in Beach Meadows could say it—the way my mother wanted them to anyway. The Italian way: Tare-ray-sa. So Telly just kind of stuck.”

2. “I thought I'd just take a limo—as usual.”

3. “Oh, no. Not at all. It's given me a chance to study the sets.”