“Yeah,” she says softly, resting her chin on her hand, making her bangs fall over her eyes. The seagull hops once, then twice, before rising into the air. He banks hard and flies over us, the apple core clutched tightly in his beak.
“How many?” I ask, fiddling with the clips on my earrings. I had to get new ones from the props department. The pearlized coating was starting to peel off the old ones, making it look like they had leprosy.
“I don’t know,” Mark says around a yawn. Besides the dark circles under his eyes, he’s still as handsome as ever.
“Ballpark.”
“A hundred.” I raise my eyebrow. “Okay,” he says, “maybe more. I don’t know. Cassie’s in charge of the list. Not me.”
“What are you in charge of ?” I ask. My voice sounds funny in my ears. All bumpy and pointed. I told myself last night and this morning that I wasn’t jealous, but I can hear it in my voice.
“Ella, what’s wrong? Didn’t you sleep well?” Mark stifles another yawn, which makes his eyes water.
“Better than you, I guess.” I fluff the sleeve of my dress, trying to keep from looking at him. I’ve decided to try harder, and maybe feeling jealous is part of that. Mark is a good guy, I tell myself. He’s polite and kind and pleasant and . . . I try to think of another synonym for nice, but I can’t.
“She’s brutal. I wanted to stop at two, but she wanted to keep going.”
“And what Cassie wants . . .”
Mark puts his hand on my arm, just above my elbow. I finally look at him, watching as he tries to swallow another yawn. I smile at him, and he smiles back.
“Hey, Cassie doesn’t get this,” he says, bending and kissing the side of my neck. The music on the stage changes as the mice push through the curtains and past where we are standing. “Don’t be mad, please.” He kisses me again, letting his lips brush the top of my shoulder. “I told you I was sorry about last night. The time just got away from us.”
“I’m not mad,” I say, turning to face him. And it’s true. I’m not. At least not anymore. He bends down to kiss me again—on the mouth this time. His lips are soft and warm and slightly sweet from the lemon drop he just finished. “Mmmm,” I say, my lips still brushing his. It’s an act, like the one we are about to do for thousands of people. Only this one is just for Mark, and maybe for me. I keep telling myself that if I just keep floating along, no one will get hurt. I’ll do my time here, and when they finally resolve the strike, I’ll head back up north again. If I keep kissing him and letting myself be kissed, it will look like a love story. The music changes again, and Mark takes my hand.
“You ready?” he asks.
“As I’ll ever be,” I say. But saying it aloud scares me. What if it’s true? That all this safe fantasy and pretend magic is all I can handle? What happens if your make-believe turns into make-do? Mark pushes aside the curtain for me, and I step out onto the stage and into the sunlight. A banner flutters in the breeze near the side of the stage. WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE . . . and I wonder if that’s right. Are they your dreams that come true, or someone else’s? Dreams that are packaged and advertised and sold by a marketing team so good that you begin to believe they are your dreams and they actually have come true. Mark slides his hand around my elbow and leads me up the steps toward the waiting throne. The crowd grows quieter as we near the top. Mark steps forward and takes the crown from one of the footmen. He lifts the crown over my head and pauses for a moment as the audience applauds. This is where it happens. This is where the dream factory chugs away day and night, making you want only the things you can buy off a shelf and take home with you. Mark places the crown on my head and the music starts and the crowd claps and the mice dance. Here is where they tell you, if you only believe, you, too, can live happily ever after.
10
Luke
The first thing I think is, I have to tell Amy.
For a minute I can’t think of his character name—Foul-weather? Foulmouth? Actually, that would be pretty funny. J. Worthington Foulmouth, and all his animated movies are rated R. But no, as soon as I say that to myself, I remember . . . Foulfellow. His costume is unmistakable—a giant fur fox head that looks about ten times heavier than my Dale head, a big green top hat, cape, cane, spats—all of it just the way Mark described. I’m thinking, too, that he must be on break because he’s sitting on the ground with his back against a palm tree, and he’s eating a plate of nachos. The weird thing is the way he slips a nacho, dripping melty cheese, up under his fur head and, I assume, into his mouth, but it doesn’t really look like that. The move is so deft that I can’t even see the character head move, and it pretty much looks like one of Pinocchio’s friends is just hanging out and eating nachos. I can’t see how he does it. I mean, all this week Cassie and I are supposed to give out these rubber pencil toppers of Chip and Dale, only I can never pick up the little Dales when I’m wearing the fur hands, no matter how hard I try. I end up just reaching into the bag and scattering them on the ground, and Mr. Forrester has already yelled at me for it twice. “The pencil toppers are not birdseed,” he told me. Of course, sitting around and eating nachos is also a mortal sin in the Church of Mr. Forrester, but what’s he going to say? The guy is on break, trying to have lunch, and still he’s greeting little kids, shaking hands, posing for pics, all of it. A true believer.
The only reason I’m in Fantasyland in the first place is because I got a note from Ella that morning saying it was probably better if we just split the rest of the list and work separately and that I could have O thru Z. I start with an easy one, Tinker Bell, and after I forget about J. Worthington Foulfellow and his nacho trick, I find about a million Tinker Bells in the gift shop: Tinker Bell key chains and wallets and rubber stamp kits. And as soon as I pick one up and hold it in front of me and hold the camera out and point it at myself, I remember Evelyn’s first rule—we are competing in pairs. Siamese twin pairs, not distantly orbiting stars pairs. Damn. For half a minute I even have the stupid idea to find some substitute, some thin brunette girl, maybe wearing sunglasses, who would pose next to me and smile, and if the picture were cut off or blurry enough, it would be good enough to fool everyone. I’m also wondering if we are really distant stars in orbit, and right now Ella is in some similar gift shop holding a Buzz Lightyear doll, looking around for someone who looks like me.
But it’s not because of the contest, not even close. It has been two days now, and Ella won’t even look at me. I walk into breakfast and she just keeps scraping her spoon in the bottom of her oatmeal bowl like she wants to tunnel her way through. I’ve gone as far in my head as to wish she would be all over Mark because I know somehow that would be for my benefit, but there is none of that. And then I hope she will sit far away from me, like even negative attention is still attention, but there is none of that, either. This morning she sat right across from me, and I said, “Good morning, Ella,” more like it was a question, which I guess it really was, and she just glanced up, looked at me, gave a half smile—an elevator smile—and went back to eating.
I look around the store one more time, still standing there like a moron, holding the camera and the Tinker Bell doll, and spot several young brown-haired women, some of them with sunglasses. At the same time I totally give up on the idea, for one simple reason—there is no one else like her.
Back outside, before heading back for the after-lunch parade, I take a few minutes to watch J. Worthington Foulfellow finish the last of his nachos. It’s not until he stands that I can see in him the age that Amy described. He moves like an old man, a little slow to get up, using his prop cane, stretching his back after he does so. Some phantom he is, I think. Then again, maybe if you are stuck long enough—in your costume, in your past—you really do become a phantom, some slippery shadow of yourself, haunting your own life.
On the way back I work my way through the crowds, from the Peter Pan pavilion all the way over to Cinderella Carousel, and there he is again—J. Worthington Foulfellow, shaking hands,
walking with his brass cane, posing for pictures. For half a second I’m thinking that Amy is right, because I just left him standing beside the tree and there’s no way he passed me and I didn’t see it. He’s just here, from out of nowhere. I walk over near him, notice the little smear of nacho cheese on his white glove, and when he walks past me, I touch his sleeve and he stops.
“How did you get here?” I say.
He starts to do the whole pantomime—putting his hands on the sides of his head, exaggerated shrugging—the things we were taught to do when we’re at a loss, like the time a Japanese tourist group asked me where to find Elvis.
“Okay, stop,” I tell him, making sure to speak into the eye vents. “I work here, as Dale. How did you get here?”
He marches off to the side into the trees, still in character, motioning me to follow him.
“You’re a scab, aren’t you, kid?” he says, his voice muffled, rough, a smoker’s voice.
“We all are—except you.”
“I don’t get your question,” he says. I can nearly see him through the mesh, a pucker of wrinkles around his eye, a shock of white hair hanging wet across his forehead.
“You were at Peter Pan, ten seconds later you’re here. What gives?” I hold my breath, half expecting him to just vanish suddenly.
“Utilidors,” he says, a word that sounds vaguely familiar, like some Spanish phrase I may have once learned. I shake my head.
“The utility corridors,” he says, impatient. “God, you newbies don’t know shit. What are they teaching you in orientation?”
I shrug. “No drugs. No groping. That’s about it.”
He clucks his tongue, and I wish more than anything he would take off his head to talk to me; but of course, there is no way he will. Rule number one. “Yeah, the short version. You aren’t exactly here for the duration, are you?” he says. “Strike is going to be settled any day now.” I wonder if that’s true. Every day the picketing crowds outside the gates grow larger.
“Why didn’t you strike?”
He shrugs. “My job. I have never missed a day. Not once in thirty-three years. Anyway, you use the tunnels, kid. Nine acres of them, under the park. That’s how we move around. Think about it—you ever see a delivery truck here? An ambulance? A plumber? The bread man? Don’t you think we have all those things? All underground, where you are supposed to be when you walk over to the parade or the campfire or what have you.”
“Why?”
He uses his white-gloved hand to rap me on the head. “You think some little kid wants to see Chip and Dale walking around with the Seven Dwarfs? See Minnie eating lunch with Snow White? How confusing would that be? Use your damn head, kid.” He shakes his giant fox head sadly. “They aren’t teaching you guys a damn thing, are they?”
“I guess not.”
“It’s easy.” He points beside us, a pink door next to the restrooms marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. “You go in the pink door, down the steps, head south. You’ll see a bunch of wires and crap, hoses, peat moss, what have you, and it’ll look like a parking garage under there. Keep walking, see more steps, look for a purple door, and that’s Tomorrowland. Brown is Frontierland, and so on. Piece of cake.”
“Cool,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, kid,” he says. “You need a Band-Aid? A rake? A stretcher? Duct tape? It’s all down there. Just remember—anything real is hidden.”
The next afternoon we’re given an ice-cream social in honor of Cinderellabration, which is only a week away, and we inexplicably have it outside the Enchanted Tiki Room, sitting on the lawn listening to the mechanical toucans squawk. At least there’s some shade, though eating ice cream in the Florida sun is not the best idea, it turns out. People end up more or less drinking their sundaes and banana splits, while Anna and Robin Hood explore some of the erotic possibilities of chocolate syrup. Jesse hangs out with the other Merry Men while they joke about cherries and make halfhearted attempts at food fights, and every five minutes or so, he goes and sits by Amy, who is leaning against one of the totem poles, looking like the lowest and saddest of all the carved faces. We hardly ever see management types anymore—Estrogen, Bill Tubbs, Mr. Forrester—they all seem to be missing in action, and I wonder if J. Worthington Foulfellow is right about settling the strike. The idea of it gives me a stomachache, going back to the world that’s waiting for me, leaving things the way they are with Ella forever. Then again, things can stay that way forever even if they never settle the strike. She barely looks at me anymore. The weird thing is, she barely looks at Mark, either, and they are totally a couple now. It’s not even enough effort to make me feel jealous. When he walks into the cafeteria, she doesn’t even notice he’s there until he walks up and kisses the back of her neck, and when he leaves with Cassie, she doesn’t even watch him go. She smiles when he talks, listens to him, holds his hand, but there’s something empty about it. She holds his hand like someone else said, Here, hold this, like you would hold a can of Pepsi or something.
Robin Hood looks up from spooning ice cream into Anna’s mouth. “Hey,” he says, “how come Cinderella gets her own celebration?”
Ella blushes, smiles. “Maybe I deserve it?” she says.
“Yeah, but Robin Hood steals from the rich,” he says. “That’s cool.”
“And he gives to the . . . what do you call them?” Anna says. “The unrich.”
I’m happy to see Ella briefly cut her eyes at me, to see me react.
“The unrich and the poor,” I say.
“Exactly,” Anna says, and even Robin Hood looks a little embarrassed.
Cassie and Mark are nowhere around, off winning the contest. Some of the Merry Men have even tried to beat them by cheating, all of them wearing identical Atlanta Braves hats down low over their faces for the pictures so that they can have three teams out at once, the pictures interchangeable, and they are still getting their butts kicked by Mark and Cassie.
Last night I got back to the dorm after she did, even though we did a Chip and Dale Campfire together on the beach and some little four-year-old kid wanted me to explain to him, while he was crying, why we weren’t allowed to have an actual campfire and instead have a fake fire, one of those orange-lit, wavy fabric things. And even though we aren’t supposed to talk, I learned that comforting a four-year-old with hand gestures is damn near impossible, and so I spoke, gave him the whole Smokey the Chipmunk routine about fire safety, just making it up. When I finally did get back, Cassie was gone with Mark again, but she had propped up one of the brochures for the Old Key West Resort on my pillow, along with a perfumed note on pink paper, written in her small, neat writing, telling me how soon those two nights will be ours and how it will be a memory that will last us forever. And I knew what she meant by it, knew how sweet it was, how romantic, and I knew, too, that Robin Hood and Jesse would think that note was a gift from God, but somehow when I read it and read it again, I just couldn’t breathe. And not in a good way, either. We would have those nights, and I would take her home to meet my family, and she would charm them, and she’d be with me on holidays and take me home with her, and the whole time I would just be going along with all of it, going along like the little kids at the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway racing around thinking they’re driving, steering those cars around the track, but the whole time the cars are just on rails, and there’s only one direction they can go.
“You know what we need?” Robin Hood says. “Robin Hood-abration. I am kind of the unsung hero of the whole enterprise.”
Jesse leans back in his chair and laughs. “Well, I bet Anna there already has a few Robin Hood abrasions,” he says, making the other Merry Men and the Army Men laugh.
Suddenly Amy stands and throws her plastic banana-split boat against the totem pole, so that bits of banana and ice cream soup go everywhere. “God, you are so gross,” she says, practically yelling it. Ella and I cut our eyes at each other. Amy stomps across the grass and stands in front of Jesse. “You don’t alw
ays, always have to worry about impressing those assholes, you know? Maybe you ought to worry about impressing someone who’s worth it.” She looks around like she’s searching for something to throw at him, but all she can find is the plastic spoon she’s been holding the whole time, and that she just drops in his lap. Then she leaves, out past the Country Bear Jamboree, and gone. Ella tries to follow her out but comes back a minute later, shaking her head.
“That was random,” Robin Hood says.
Jesse makes a couple of halfhearted attempts to play it off, but I can tell he’s shaken up, hardly looking at anyone.
“You know what we really need?” I say, trying to slice through some of the embarrassment. “We need . . . Dalebration ! with an exclamation point.”
“Well, the exclamation point is what makes the whole thing work,” Ella says when no one else takes me up on it.
“Hey, you might have something there, Krause,” Robin Hood says. “Celebrate all the second bananas.” Anna briefly looks into her banana-split boat before figuring out that’s not what he’s talking about.
“Hell, yeah,” Jesse says, looking relieved to be off the hook. “Chip gets all the glory, gets top billing. Screw Chip.”
“I wish,” Robin Hood says, then looks at me. “Sorry, dude. But Jesse is right on. I mean, are ya’ll pickin’ up what he’s puttin’ down? Man, let’s celebrate Brer Fox, and Governor Radcliffe, and Liver Lips, and Launchpad McQuack, and Max, and . . . you know, all the losers.” He looks at me again. “Sorry, dude.”
Ella leans forward, waving her hands. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, “and we can have like those off-brand sodas from the grocery store, like, you know, when they name them Dr. Perky, and Mr. Aaah, and Southern Lightning. And like ‘fig bar cookies’ instead of Fig Newtons, and—”
“And generic beer,” Jesse says.
“Wow,” I say, “you guys are making me feel like crap.” But the party is planned, the party to celebrate everything forgotten and second-rate. But Ella is looking at me for the first time in days, and she’s smiling, and that, by itself, is enough to celebrate.
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