It was.
"Okay, gang," he said, "we can come out now."
"You're sure about that?" asked Sandy D, late of the movie "Grease," but currently employed by the Backstage Hotel Room Service. She was wearing a black and pink French maid's outfit with no front on the dress, a blouse cut under the breasts, and of course no underwear. (Her breasts were a lot bigger than they'd been in the movie, too!)
"I'm sure," said Joe.
Now Gurney Juniper, maintenance man for the Backstage Hotel and secret voodoo master, raised his head over the bar too. He was a burly, bald black man with deep, magnetic and startlingly blue eyes. (He moonlighted as a janitor at Jim's high school in the BE AddVenture at large.)
"You're right," he said. "Someone's ruined a salad, though."
"Where are the waiters?" Joe asked. "They'll have to go out there."
The waiters, Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe, who were still cowering under the bar, didn't move.
Juniper sighed. "Hop to it, you three," he ordered, "or I'll stick pins in your dolls again!"
They hopped, pausing only to argue and stick fingers in each other's eyes.
"Knew we should've recruited the Marx Brothers," Joe grumbled.
"They were too expensive," Sandy D reminded him.
"Speaking of siblings," Juniper asked, "how did the redundants fare through all this?"
"I'll buzz them," Joe said. He pressed a button on the intercom. Fortunately, its restoration by Sid after the god crisis had lasted through the author crisis.
"Yes?" responded the crackly voice of Madame Ursula Shchmadem, head of the Backstage Hotel Whorehouse.
"It's Joe, at the bar. You and your girls fare okay during the crisis?"
"Ariel almost got fucked to a frazzle by Trojan before he went out to the bar, and Demonica tried to restore the girls' tails before I talked her out of it," Ursula reported. "After that we hunkered down, and the only one to come in was an Author named Volkov, who wanted to know where the viewing rooms were so he could see the Zapruder film. I pointed the way, and he left."
"Are you sure that was all?" Joe asked. "I have it on good authority the Men in Gray were after him."
"There was a noticable pause, then "that's as may be. I can't tell you anything about what followed, under penalty of death."
"Ah, I see," said Joe, understanding. "Let's just say -- is whoever threatened you with that penalty gone?"
"Yes."
"No more questions."
"Thank you. Now, if you don't mind, poor Ariel needs medical treatment."
"I'll contact the ER," Joe promised. "Bar, out."
He shook his head. Whoever had thought the Backstage Hotel needed a bordello, when the characters got so much action in the AddVenture at large, must have been crazy. And then to stock it with the seven daughters of Triton (suitably humanized) from "The Little Mermaid" --! Well, his was not to reasion why...
He called the ER, which in its Backstage version was still presided over by George Clooney. All was okay there. It had dealt with injured Backstage personnel and Frontstage characters with its usual efficiency, and was now cleaning up. Joe told George to expect Ariel.
Next he called Central Casting, and learned that was up and running again too, expecting new clients momentarily.
Meanwhile, the Stooges had cleaned up the salad, which they bore back into the kitchen to the cook, naked earth mother Julia Child. She was the only one Backstage (other than Gurney Juniper) the Stooges actually seemed afraid of...
From the bellow of her voice as she reminded the Stooges where the garbage can was, Joe concluded that she, too, had weathered the crisis okay.
"All right then, crew," he told the staffers present. "It seems the troubles over. Time to get back to work. The portals are working, so we can expect more characters to come in between episodes at any time. Let's try to make their stay her a pleasant one, shall we?"
Fri Apr 6 17:57:03 2001
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