Pete and RePete Part 1

I started writing this for a kid who asked for it but I have no idea what it's supposed to wind up doing. Anyway, I might as well put it here.

 “Hey, Pete!” said the peacock.

“Yeah, RePete?”, the cat replied eagerly.

“I said. 'Hey, Pete'”, the peacock repeated, this time louder and with a much clearer enunciation.

Pete rolled his eyes. This wasn't the first time he'd had this conversation, not by a long shot. RePete was a heckuva nice guy and he was ferociously hansome with his rainbow plumage, but he really just wasn't that bright. He was also from France and spoke limited English with such a heavy accent that he was nearly impossible to understand.

Asking RePete to repeat something happened fairly often, but whenever Pete asked he never ever once had said, “Repeat”. After all, who says that?

Anyway, Pete was no fool in the first place but he had also learned to field his dimwitted buddy's questions by simply talking about something else. Pete always wore sunglasses to hide the fact that he only had one eye. His glasses were dark so you couldn't tell what he was looking at, but you always imagined that Pete was thinking something deep.

What Pete's glasses couldn't hide though was the scar that ran from the bridge of his nose to his ear. The scar disappeared into one side of the lens and popped out on the other side. Pete always seemed to purr softly, always seemed to wear a smile on his lips.

Though Pete may have looked wistful and brilliant, he was really just smarter than the average cat. He was born without his eye. Then one time when he was a kitten he got in a fight with his sister over a ping pong ball. She swatted him and left the scar on his face.

“WHAT DO YOU NEED, MONSIEUR?”, Pete said loudly with a friendly smile that looked fake but which was really only partially fake. It was real because Pete liked RePete, but it was fake because he was sure that RePete could very well have already forgotten what he was going to say in the first place.

RePete turned to him suddenly as if he had just noticed him. His tail feathers perked up happily. “Monseiur Pete!”, he said, whereupon he continued on for a moment in indecipherable English.

Pete smiled as if he, too had just arrived on the scene, even though the two of them hadn't left each others' sight since they had been in the orphanage together. Sometimes RePete could be a real pain in the butt, but somebody had to look out for him. Pete never teased RePete, he just kinda corralled the conversation so that it would make sense. “You wanna get some ice cream, Monsieur RePete?”, he said slowly and clearly.

As little English as RePete knew, one of the few words that he knew was the word “repeat”. His expression became serious as he looked towards the sky and recited, “You wanna get some ice cream, Monsieur”.

Pete rolled his eyes. “Yes!”

RePete stared at him blankly, “What is it, Monsieur Pierre? What is so exciting?”

Pete took the opportunity to take the reigns on the up-till-now sensless verbal exchange. “I want some ice cream! How bout you, pal?”

RePete's tail feathers sprung up straight, flashing every color in the spectrum. He looked to the sun and emitted a loud and shrill gobbling noise and began shouting “ROCKY ROAD” at the top of his lungs, though with his accent it sounded as if he were at a Black Sabbath concert and screaming “ROCK N ROLL!!!”.

Pete's one eye surely shut behind his sunglasses in as his smile turned almost imperceptibly to a wince. He quickly shushed RePete, saying “I know, I know, pal. Yeah we'll get that kind.”

RePete had been hopping from foot to foot. He stopped and looked at Pete. “Bon jour, Monsieur Pierre!”, he piped cheerfully as he stood at attention, seemingly bubbling over with joy at some sort of news that he could barely contain.

“What is it?” Pete said, certain that he had ducked under a wave of confusion.

“Let us eat some ice cream, Monsieur Pierre!”, RePete blurted. He pronounced 'ice cream' like 'ass cream' and Pete thought about pointing it out but decided it would be better if he kept it to himself. He had done a good job of getting RePete to focus on ice cream and he didn't want to screw it up now by cracking jokes that RePete wouldn't have gotten anyway.

“Great idea, RePete!”, Pete exclaimed. “Maybe we could---”

His sentence was silenced by his rainbow-feathered friend loudly blurting “GREAT IDEA!”

The smile on Pete's face faltered for just an instant. He just as quickly regained his composure and said, “Thank you, RePierre!”. RePete stopped and looked at him with a look of total and complete nonunderstanding. Pete absorbed the silence for a moment before he continued. “YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT, MONSIEUR! DUE TO YOURS AND MINE ECONOMIC WOES, YOU AND I SHALL ROB THE ICE CREAM TRUCK!”, Pete declared.

RePete stared at him with all the intelligence of a bag of hammers. “Repeat?”, he gobbled.

Pete was so excited at his idea, he took off his pirate hat and put his arms around RePete in an attempt to dance as he sang, “We'LL EAT ALL THE ASS CREAM WE CAN! WE'RE GONNA STEAL FROM THE ASS CREAM MAN!”.

As Pete danced circles around him, RePete lolled his head from side to side and repeated, “Repeat, Pete?” repeatedly.