It wasn't going to be all that easy. In the next few weeks Kermit and his friends found out that producers are geniuses when it comes to saying no. the met one producer who could say no while shaving, and two others who didn't even have to look up from their newspapers to know they weren't interested in "Manhattan Melodies." Another producer didn't even have to say a word-he just turned out the lights and left the room while the Muppets were singing for him. One simply fell asleep, and the cleverest of them all managed to eat lunch, talk on the telephone, and doze off while the gang was singing. And he still managed to say no by gestering toward the door with his chin between snores.
Soon the weeks became months. They were still living in the bus terminal and still getting nowhere. The streets of New York, which once had seemed so exciting and busy, not seemed noisy and unfriendly. Their hopes, their money, everything seemed to be running out, and all the responses form the producers seemed to add up to one gigantic "No!"-a "no" bigger than the Empire State Building and louder than a thousand doors slamming in their faces.
It was a sad and bad-tempered group of Muppets who slouched along the sidewalk one hot summer night. Kermit felt worst of all because he felt worst of all because he felt responsible for all the others.
"Maybe we could sell the script if you wrote in some great special effects, like exploding socks," suggested Gonzo.
"Lame idea," commented Janice.
"Oh, yeah?" Gonzo snapped back.
"Don't yell at her!" yelled Floyd.
"Stop making trouble," added Scooter, and anyone who felt like it joined in the argument.
"Kermit, tell them to stop bickering!" Piggy pleaded.
"What do you think?" Scooter asked, tugging at Kermit's arm.
"Yeah, Kermit," the others chimed in. "What do you think we should do?"
And suddenly it was all too much. Too much pressure, too much responsibility, too much of his friends arguing because they were tired and losing hope. Kermit-quiet, gentle President of the Class Kermit-exploded. "I don't know!!" he shouted. "I don't know what to do next! We failed...we tried and we failed!" And he sagged, too miserable to yell anymore.
"We may as well eat," he suggested in a quiet, sad voice, and the others followed him in to Pete's, the luncheonette they happened to be passing. When they were seated, a waiter came to take their orders. This waiter was a little different from most other waiters. He was a rat named Rizzo.
"Kermit! The waiter is a rat," hissed Fozzie as Rizzo approached.
"What'll you have?" Rizzo asked.
"The number for the board of Health," Floyd snickered.
The waiter threw down his tiny tray in disgust. "That does it! Another rat joke! I work my whiskers off twenty, sometimes twenty-nine hours a day for tips, and you act like I got no feelings!" The rat began to sob, and Fozzie immediately put his arm around the poor fellow.
"Gee...we're really sorry. We know how it is. We don't have any money either."
The waiter suddenly stopped sniffing. "Sorry. Not my table," he snapped, and walked away.
"What a rat," remarked Fozzie, trying very hard to drown out the sounds of a bear stomach growling in hunger.
Just then Kermit looked up to see a pretty young woman come running through the door. "Sorry I'm late, Pop," she called breathlessly to Pete, the owner. "But you'll be so proud of me. I passed the test!" She pulled on a uniform as Pete put a hamburger on the hatch.
"Jenny, very rapid quick hurrying with cow juice and patty taking to lady," he said.
Kermit heard this and got the distinct impression that Pete was not a native New Yorker. He got up and walked over to the hatch. "We'll take eleven bowls of soup, please," Kermit said to Pete. "But there is one thing I should tell you. We've got this show that's going to be a big hit on Broadway. But right now we're all broke."
Pete stopped, gave Kermit a strange look, and leaned very close to him. "I tell you what is. Big City no buildings, no subway choo-choo, no Cadillac bus. Big city peoples...is dancing...is tomantoes, is music...yes? Peoples is peoples, okay?"
Pete went back into the kitchen, and Kermit shrugged and started walking back to the table. He was getting pretty used to rejection. Then Jenny took his arm. "Wait...I just know my father is back there getting soup for you and your friends right now." There was something about her smile that made Kermit, worried and hungry though he was, smile back. Kermit had the feeling that they would be spending quite a bit of time at Pete's Luncheonette.
While he and Jenny were chatting, a very different kind of discussion was going on at the table. Piggy was the only one not joining in, because she wsa too busy watching her frog.
"I feel terrible about Kermit," Fozzie told the others.
"Me, too," agreed Scooter. "We put too much pressure on him."
Floyd nodded sadly. "The frog was right, back there...we do depend on him too much."
"Maybe if we all went out on our own, it would make things easier for him," Scooter suggested, and no one disagreed.
Piggy didn't say anything. She was straining to hear Kermit and Jenny. She heard Jenny tell Kermit that she planned to go to fashion design school. I'd like you to leave for design school right now! Piggy thought. A school nice and far from Kermit...in Siberia, for instance, or even better, on the moon!
"It we all go away and get jobs," Scooter was saying at that moment, "Kermit will really be proud of us."
This time Piggy heard. "But I can't leave him!" she wailed. "We're pinned!"
There was no time for anyone to respond, because just then Kermit arrived back at the table.
"Well, Kermit," Scooter announced. "We've had some job offers."
"Right!" the others chimed in. "Terrific offers."
"Great!" said Kermit. "So we'll have the money to repaint our lockers at the terminal."
Scooter had to think fast. "The offers are all out of town," he stammered.
"That's right...way out of town," added Fozzie, backing him up, and the others all nodded their agreement.
"Piggy, are you going too?" Kermit asked softly.
She whimpered pathetically. "Yes," she finally managed to say.
"We'll all write to you," said Fozzie.
"And we all believe in the show," added Scooter, realizing that he was only making eveyone feel worse.
The good friends looked sadly at one another. No one knew what else to say. "Well...gee," Kermit stammered as Piggy fought back her tears. "So that's it, I guess."
"Guess so," agreed Scooter.
"Yep," added Fozzie, who suddenly couldn't look Kermit in the eye.
Kermit shrugged, trying to look cheerful. "Well, then," he announced, "I guess that's that."
The very next day the group split up to go their separate ways. Fozzie had his teddy bear with him as he hopped a freight train heading north, and Gonzo and the chicken of his dreams, Camilla, bounced around on the back of a truck going due west. Scooter set off alone on his bike. Rowlf rode the bus out of town, and Dr. Teeth and the Electic Mayhem Band hitched a ride on the highway.
At the tain station Kermit ran along the platform as Piggy waved from the window of her compartment. The train gathered speed pulled out of the station, and then suddenly Kermit was left alone. Alone in the middle of a railway station in the middle of a big city.
It was a forlorn frog, who wandered around the streets of New York that night, too lost in his lonely thoughts to notice where he was heading. When he looked up and realized he was at the base of the Empire State Building, Kermit decided to go in and ride to the top.
Up, way up on the observation deck, he looked down on the city. He felt very sad at losing his friends. But he felt something else too. Determination. In a small but defiant voice he addressed the millions of lights twinkling below him. "I'm going to get my friends back and we're going to make it on Broadway!" Kermit shouted into the night. "Do you hear me? I'm staying and I'm going to make it!"
Far below, at the bottom of the immense skyscraper, a mysterious figure waited in the shadows. A ferdora, the favorite hat of mysterious firgures stepped out of the shadows and looked upward. Beneath the hat was a familar face, with familar long eyelashes and a familar snout. Piggy had returned to be next to her frog!
