“I’m not the one who bailed,” I said defensively.
“Put yourself in his shoes. He’s only trying to make the most of his time as a star.”
“He’s a soccer player, not a movie star or an action hero,” I snapped as we sped along Fifth Avenue past Rockefeller Center.
“Wrong,” Maple said. “It’s all the same thing. Do you think the House of Wu would be in business if they sold the same stuff over and over again? Change is a necessary thing, and maybe in Meacham’s case, he needed a change.”
I didn’t reply. I stared out the window as we passed a horse-drawn carriage full of tourists heading into the park. I did not like where this conversation was going. Maple was making too much sense.
The scene in front of Flutbein’s fortunately brought the subject to a close. It looked like Oscar Night. All that was missing was Joan Rivers and her daughter. A long line of stretch limousines crept toward the curb, where a red carpet made a path to the street. Rows of photographers were packed behind lines of policemen, their cameras aimed at the approaching cars. One after another deposited stylish passengers.
“There’s the mayor,” I said to Maple, but she was fixated on the girl exiting the car in front of us. “Oh my gosh! It’s Royal T, and she is sooo thin. Can you believe she is wearing the same Karen Wu dress she wore at the Grammys?”
I looked, but Royal T had already disappeared amid a barrage of flashbulbs. Next thing I knew, our door was open, and there was the familiar happy face of Freddy the doorman. “Now this is the way to arrive at Flutbein’s,” he said with a wink and a hand for Maple.
The crowd erupted into a cheer, and Mom, Dad, Rumpy, and Lukie scurried down the red carpet to meet us. We smiled and waved to the cameras as Freddy kept us moving past the throng and through the safety of the revolving doors.
Inside, several efficient handlers dressed in chef clothes and exercise outfits quickly led us to the main dining room. It was more packed than the night of the mayor’s birthday party. The crowd applauded as we were escorted to the head table, where the mayor and his mother greeted us. We took our seats.
Mom looked gorgeous in — what else? — a Karen Wu / Maple McBride dress they had designed especially for the occasion. Dad had bought a new pair of jeans, had gotten his hair cut, and actually wore a pair of socks. Rumpy had bows on her head and tail, and Lukie sported a bow-tie collar. The lights went down, and the big screen at the front of the dining room lit up.
CHAPTER 46
Pig Out
RUMPY
WELL, OKAY, I will admit my mistakes when I am proved wrong, and I was wrong about Oliver. Back in Vertigo, when those kids barely had their father in the picture and Ellie worked incredibly hard to be a good single mom, the name “Oliver” meant “big-time loser” to me. Any reference to Oliver made me angry, and I would become particularly ill-tempered when he showed up to play the role of substitute parent.
I confess now that I actually attacked him once. He was trying to act like Father of the Year and to fit in, and I was playing with a piece of shag carpet that I chewed on for fun. When he tried to involve himself in my game, I let him think he was welcome. Then, when the perfect chance came, I bit him on the butt. Hard. Now, watching myself tango on the big screen to a room filled with laughter and applause, I was going to have to eat my words. In the end, Oliver finally came through for his family, and I was an apologetic pig. It might have been Ellie’s desserts that got things rolling, but it was Oliver’s Peter Pan propensities that finally paid off.
Oliver got up and introduced Ellie, called for the lights to be lowered, and then rolled the first episode. The top secret show he and Ellie had cooked up for the Food Network featured Ellie talking to Royal T about what she liked to eat. Since Royal T was originally from Louisiana, her favorite meal was a jumbo oyster / soft-shell crab po’boy sandwich, fried green tomatoes, okra salad, and a giant chocolate-macadamia-bread-pudding king cake for dessert.
In the episode, Ellie and Royal T cooked the meal, and then Royal T sat down and ate it. As she dined, though, the plates were connected to some kind of a computer that flashed the number of grams of fat and calories that went into her body with each bite.
Halfway through the meal, who should sit down at the table on the screen but Darryl Meacham! I thought Barley was going to faint. The audience in Flutbein’s went wild. Meacham didn’t say a word. He watched Royal T eat her dream meal, and while she did so, he took notes.
When she moved her napkin out of her lap and onto the table, Ellie asked Meacham what he thought. He said that while she was eating the meal, he had come up with a soccer workout routine that would guarantee she would lose all the weight of the meal in an hour. Ellie then informed the TV audience that if Meacham’s routine did indeed work, a $25,000 check would be donated to each of their favorite charities.
The live audience let out a collective sigh as the video scene then switched to Meacham and Royal T on a soccer field. She now had wires attached all over her exercise suit, and the same computer that gauged her dinner was now hooked up to a giant flat screen on the side of the field. At the sound of a gun, they went to work, music played, and a crowd cheered as Royal T went through a hellish routine of running, kicking, and diving — grinding, groaning, and sweating buckets.
As the hour drew to a close, Royal T worked frantically with Meacham’s instructions, and with ten seconds left, a big 0 appeared on the screen. The video ended to the audience erupting into thunderous applause. The lights came up, and Royal T and Darryl Meacham walked out onto the stage in front of the screen with the name of the new show flashing behind them in large pink letters: pig out.
Meacham was dressed in a tuxedo, and Royal T pulled off her black Karen Wu dress to show her slim, buffed shape in a leotard and a tight-fitting miniskirt. Ellie joined them in front of the screen with two larger-than-life checks for $25,000 written to Royal T’s and Meacham’s favorite charities. At that point, Ellie, Oliver, and I were called to the stage, music blared, and I led the whole cast in my tango routine. The crowd leaped to its feet and clapped in time as we danced to the Pig Out theme song.
We didn’t have to wait for the reviews. Pig Out was an instant smash hit.
CHAPTER 47
Always a Madridista
BARLEY
I DOUBT VERY much if I would have ever met Darryl Meacham if we had stayed in Vertigo, but I was surely not acting very “New York” about it. I stood there as speechless as the Statue of Liberty for what seemed like an eternity, not able to move my limbs or my lips as I stared at my ultimate hero on the stage. It was Dad who brought him over to the table and introduced us.
“I hear you’re pretty upset with me,” Meacham said with a slight smile.
I wanted to run like Forrest Gump out the fire exit, up Fifth Avenue, over the George Washington Bridge, down the New Jersey Turnpike, hang a left at Pennsylvania, and not stop till I got to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was Meacham’s voice that stopped me.
“Tell you what, mate. I’ll meet you in the park tomorrow morning, and we’ll kick it around a bit. Seven good for you?”
I couldn’t speak. All I could do was nod my head up and down.
“Seven it is then, mate.”
Meacham was whisked away by a press lady to an adoring crowd.
Of course I had trouble sleeping that night. I don’t know if it was sheer nerves or the can of Red Bull that Mom suggested I drink in order to stay awake for the party. In the morning, I crept out the revolving doors of the hotel. Fifth Avenue was deserted, and a chilly breeze whistled through the trees as I crossed the street, wondering what words would come out of my mouth when I got to the Great Lawn.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon, and the sky was orange around it and blue above. A few early birds jogged in the park, and I bounced my ball as I walked. It was strangely silent — no cab horns, no sirens, no yelling, no nothing. Then suddenly a fluttering above my head broke the stillness. I looked up to see Rumpy’s
flock of pigeons as they circled the trees and then dove in front of me. They landed in formation on the road and escorted me directly to the soccer field. I guess the word was out.
Meacham was already there. He wore a plain black workout suit and was sitting on the bench, reading the sports section of the New York Times. I knew that every soccer nut in the world would want to be standing in my cleats, but I had a sudden urge to turn around and go home. I didn’t have time to finish the thought of fleeing because Meacham saw me approaching and waved.
“Where’s your pig?” Meacham called to me as he put down his paper.
“She’s not up yet,” I told him.
“That’s one smart animal you have there, you know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ve been thinking of getting a pig myself,” he said as we walked toward the Great Lawn.
I couldn’t believe that I had Darryl Meacham all to myself, with the opportunity to ask him anything — How does he make the ball go where no one else can? What is it like to score the winning goal in the European championships? — and all we were talking about were pigs.
“I’ve read about George Clooney and his pig, Max. It seems that having a pig is a pretty good way to deal with the ladies in your life. I guess there are those who like pigs, and those who don’t. How does that work for you?” he asked.
“I don’t have a girlfriend. Rumpy is just my goalie.”
“See? There’s another perfectly good reason to get a pig. Do you think George Clooney’s a soccer fan?”
“I have no idea,” I replied, “but I’ve heard that things are very different in Los Angeles. My dad used to work out there. He says that some giant like Paul Bunyan grabbed the country by the neck and shook it like a big sack, and all the fruitcakes and weirdos landed in the bottom of the bag — and that’s California.” I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as I said it.
Meacham just laughed. “Well, I guess I am about to be one of those fruitcakes. Right, mate?”
He held his hands out, an indication that he wanted my ball. I tossed it to him, and we walked farther onto the field. It was empty, and he motioned for me to run to the corner as he snapped his right leg and sent the ball in a missilelike trajectory out ahead of me. Somehow I managed to catch up with it and kick it back.
“I thought a lot about this California move, whether it was the right thing to do and how pissed off the fans in Europe might be. But I can tell you two things, Barley McBride,” he said as he kicked the ball back to me. “It’s true, I did it partially for the money. You know these legs won’t always be as strong as they are now, and I think I have earned the right to secure my future. But I mostly did it for the adventure. I grew up a poor kid in Liverpool, and I still can’t believe my lucky stars that all this has come my way. Would you turn down an opportunity to star in a movie?” he asked.
“I see your point.”
“Besides,” Meacham continued, “Europe was ready to find a new me, and I wanted to go to a place where I could still be the old me. And although I will now be playing out there among the ‘fruitcakes,’ as you call them, I can tell you one more thing, Barley McBride. In my heart, I will always be a Madridista. And you may be the next me.”
With that, he unzipped his warm-up jacket and dropped it into his gym bag. He had on his Real Madrid jersey with the famous number “5” on the shoulder. At the same time, he pulled another jersey out of the bag and tossed it to me. “That’s the last real one left. Put it on.”
I slipped the jersey over my head, trying to digest what had just happened, and when I could see again, there up on the big rock near the Great Lawn sat Mom, Dad, Maple, Freddy, and Syrup. Walking out onto the field were half a dozen hotel workers in a variety of soccer clothes. They were dressed to play. Right behind them, Rumpy and Lukie waddled toward the opposite goals. Rumpy was wearing a very decorative fiberglass mask that Maple had made for her after the attack to protect her scarred snout.
“I think we’ve got a game, mate!” Meacham said with a grin. Then he yelled, “Madridistas forever!”
“Madridistas forever!” I echoed, and we ran together toward the field.
“Let the games begin!” Maple yelled from the big rock.
I let out a huge whoop and laughed.
“Swine not?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOR DECADES, Jimmy Buffett has delighted readers and music lovers with his highly imaginative songs and stories. Born in Mississippi and raised in Alabama, Buffett splashed down into the world of fiction in 1989 with Tales from Margaritaville, the longest-running bestseller of that entire year. Two subsequent novels, Where is Joe Merchant? (1992) and A Salty Piece of Land (2004), topped the bestseller lists, and with the publication of Buffett’s autobiography, A Pirate Looks at Fifty (1998), he became one of only nine writers to have claimed the #1 bestseller spot on both the fiction and nonfiction lists of the New York Times. Among his many professional accomplishments, he has recorded more than forty albums, most of which have been certified gold, platinum, or multiplatinum.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
IT WAS serendipitous when longtime friend Helen Bransford showed Jimmy a short manuscript and photo-illustrations based on her pet pig, Forkie. For years Helen’s friends had been entertained by her funny stories about her adventures in New York City, hiding the family pig in an upscale hotel. Now Bransford, an author and artist, presents readers with an unforgettable pig accompanied by a tale that only Jimmy Buffett could invent.
Jimmy Buffett, Swine Not?
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