Chris Mitchell (21 page)

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“This is the Orlando Jai Alai Fronton. It’s one of six in the state, the last six in the country.”

As far as I could tell, we were the only ones there. “Are we allowed to be here?” I asked.

Brady tilted his head at me as if I had just passed my “sell by” date. Then he turned and limped down a hallway. I followed him to a locker room where he chose a locker seemingly at random and opened it to reveal a lineup of wicker scimitars and plastic helmets. “Try on one of these,” he said, tossing me a helmet. It stank like disinfectant, but it fit. Brady was brandishing one of the wicker weapons.

“This is the
cesta
,” he said. “Hold out your right hand.”

He pushed my hand into a leather pocket at one end of the cesta, palm flat against the wicker, then strapped it to my arm using a long leather lace. It felt awkward, but sturdy, like an elongated baseball glove. After strapping himself in, we walked back onto the court.

Brady dropped a ball into the pocket of my wicker cesta. It was about the size of a baseball, but as hard as a golf ball. “We call this the
pelota
,” he said. He placed me in the center of the floor about twenty-five yards from the front wall. “Now, what you
don’t
want to do,” he said, “is throw like a softball. Relax your arm and throw from the shoulder. The pelota will find its own course.” I took my best shot, but the ball flew wide, into the net on the side of the court.

“Good start,” he said with Disney sincerity.

He showed me how to lean over the cesta and follow through with the arc until, eventually, I was able to hit the front wall. Catching the ball was another story. I could never quite predict the placement of the little pelota. More than once, it bounced into my ankles, leaving quarter-sized bruises that turned blue almost immediately. Brady’s throws were only a little better than mine, but he had more control over his catches. He was able to catch and hurl in one fluid motion that had me baffled.

After about fifteen minutes, a man appeared at the top of the stairs. He was whippet thin with dark hair and a dark mustache. When Brady saw him, he called out in Spanish, and the two embraced like brothers.

“This is Beltran from Mexico City,” Brady said. “He’s been teaching me the art of jai alai.”

“Brady is a good man,” Beltran said in a thick accent, rubbing the back of his head. “But I’m afraid his jai alai is a little unpredictable.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

Brady and Beltran sat in the front row of the stadium and spoke in hushed Spanish while I practiced throwing and catching. After a few moments, Brady called me over.

“How would you feel about going to a party in the Caribbean?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Not at all. Beltran’s brother loves Disney, but he’s too sick to come visit on his own, so he’s offered to fly a couple of genuine Cast Members down to his beachside villa for a birthday party. Crystal blue water, exotic rum drinks, and we’ll still be doing a good deed under the radar.”

“You had me at ‘Caribbean.’”

The three of us played jai alai together for a while and then Brady and I took off. I probably should have been more suspicious about this Caribbean birthday party, but it didn’t really occur to me. Maybe it was Disneyfication, but it sounded just good enough to be true.

On the drive home, I felt less apprehensive, but I was still relieved when the untamed scrub brush gave way to gardens manicured by Disney gardeners. Brady dropped me off at the Ghetto, then sped off. No sooner had I pulled out my keys than my phone rang. I recognized Calico’s number, but I could barely understand what she was saying through the tears. I was at her apartment in five minutes. I found her sitting on the couch under a potted palm with her legs pulled up against her chest. Her mascara was smudged and her eyes were red from crying. When she saw me, she jumped to her feet and ran into my arms. I made a few comforting sounds while I stroked the back of her head and waited for her to speak.

“There was this girl,” she sniffed, her voice raspy. “This beautiful little girl. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old. She had such enormous blue eyes.”

Calico pressed her lips together, but fresh tears came anyway. She pulled her hands out of mine to wipe her eyes. “I had a special request from a Wish kid who wanted to meet Ariel. My coordinator asked if I’d do it and, of course, I said yes. I put on a fresh set of shells and got in the fin. When I was ready, my greeter brought her in.

Calico stopped talking and let the tears run down her face. She hiccupped and looked at me, startled, then laughed. I held onto her and let her wipe her face on my shirt. She was so vulnerable. I thought about Orville’s words: Disney would help me find Magic, but only if I dropped my journalistic defenses. More than anything at that moment, I wanted to be present for her; I wanted to show that I wasn’t just an emotional voyeur, hiding behind a camera.

When Calico reached for a tissue, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “My mom has cancer,” I said. “Lymphoma. She’s back at home in LA right now going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments and macrobiotic diets and everything she can think of.”

It was the first time I’d said the words out loud, and they felt horribly inadequate. I stood up and went to the window. Outside, I could hear the wind blowing through the leaves of the banana trees and a symphony of crickets. When I turned around, I saw that Calico was standing with the tissue in her hand, her eyes red, waiting for me to continue.

“At first, nobody told me. My dad said she had appendicitis, which was easy enough for me to believe because, I mean, what do I know about appendicitis? Or cancer? My brother was the one who finally broke the news months after her first treatment. But I should have known. There were days that she could barely stand up. It took her fifteen minutes to get from the couch to her bed. She stopped eating.”

Calico walked over and put her arms around me. “It’s okay,” she said.

“And what did I do? I ran away to Never Land. I left her there. And my dad and my brother are dealing with everything.”

“Ssshh.”

“I’m an asshole.”

She stroked the back of my head while she kissed my eyelashes. “It’s not your fault,” she said.

That night, we made love, and for the first time, I told her I loved her. There was a thunderstorm and the sky was exploding every few minutes with lightning. She was soft and gentle as if she were giving a part of herself to me. We started on the couch and finished on the balcony, where we could reach out and touch the curtain of rain that separated us from everything else in the world.

I could feel myself falling for her. She was so open, so honest with her emotions. In my weakened state, I was eminently grateful for her vulnerability and her willingness to trust me.

I
n September, love bugs descended like a plague on Orlando. They swarmed over the plastic picnic benches, swam through water fountains, and pranced around the parasols of baby strollers in a ubiquitous mating lambada. Other than the name, there was nothing cute about the love bug. It was black and spiny, no bigger than a Tic Tac, with a little red splatter right behind its head. It flew, but its flight was slow and drunk, like it was tripping over the wind, another species of languid Southern insect with nothing better to do on a sticky summer day.

They were called love bugs, but the “love” they experienced was entirely physical in nature. You rarely saw just one bug; usually they were a dual entity, attached at the butt. It was a mystery where they came from or where they went when September ended, but for one month, Florida was overrun with thousands of these creatures, fucking wherever they pleased.

It was kind of ironic actually, these bugs having sex all over Disney property. In August, Disney was the most pristine family entertainment park in the world, and less than a month later, it was a bordello. They were especially attracted to the color green, making it downright hazardous for any Peter Pan in September. I couldn’t reach for a mustard packet or tie my shoelaces without uncovering an orgy of insects going at it. They dragged each other across my eyelashes, crunching under my feet like stale popcorn.

But as annoying as they were and as much as they ruined bowl after bowl of crisp, green salad, there was something sweet about their singular desire for companionship. Maybe it was just anthropomorphism, but people went out of their way to avoid killing these sex-starved insects. And if somebody happened to be in love when the bugs swarmed, well, everything took on a whole new level of symbolic meaning.

As summer came to an end, the crowds melted away like a snow cone. Park attendance dropped to a humble hundred thousand a day, and resort managers granted second-string masseurs extra days off. Little by little, the humidity evaporated, and each autumn day more closely resembled the lazy summer afternoons of Everywhere Else, USA. Guests were happier. Bouncing children laughed and waved at colorful characters from high atop the strong shoulders of kind-eyed fathers. Every couple took on the sappy posturings of a Honeymoon pair, holding each other close without the fear of sweat.

Backstage, life was more peaceful, too, without the constant rumble of air-conditioning machinery. Performers spent less time in the break rooms and more time chatting outside in the afternoon breeze. Powerade consumption declined. Tiggers didn’t pass out as much. Parades were less torturous when Cast Members weren’t tethered to a float like eggs frying sunny-side up in a pan.

Autumn at Disney wasn’t like autumn anywhere else. The trees stayed green and the flowers continued to bloom. On property, landscapers replaced wilted plants with new growth, ripe with buds, bursting with color. You couldn’t judge the seasons by the landscape, or you’d think it was always spring in Orlando. As for me, I had never been happier now that I was finally immersing myself in Disney culture, giving myself over to Walt’s wonderful philosophy.

I spent all my free time with Calico, discovering the hidden gems of Disney World. One afternoon, we were light petting in a Pirates of the Caribbean boat when a solitary woman in the back row, right behind us, pulled out a mason jar. I probably wouldn’t have noticed her since her black dress almost completely smothered her, but at the time, I was half turned around nibbling Calico’s ear and noticed a gleam of light as the woman unscrewed the tin cap. Over the Jolly Roger BGM, I could hear the woman sobbing, her shoulders shaking out of sync with the drunken sailor tack of the boat’s track.

Calico fumbled with my zipper as I watched the woman through a veil of dirty blond hair. Very carefully, she dislodged the contents of the jar into her hand. Under the dim light of the caverns, it looked like dirt, but I knew she wasn’t mourning a few ounces of earth. Muttering a prayer to herself, she scattered a bit of the ash into the waters of the Captain’s Room and again at the Wench Auction. When we got to the Burning Jail, she reluctantly opened her fingers and let the rest go.

When the boat brought us back to the Bayou, we disembarked and the woman disappeared into the crowd. I didn’t say anything about it to Calico. Instead, I renewed my efforts to keep myself distracted. On the hottest days, I would take Calico to ride the waterslides at Typhoon Lagoon, then watch the sun set over martinis at the Yacht and Beach Club Resort bars. She showed me the hidden break rooms at Hollywood Studios, and I showed her the forgotten storerooms in the Magic Kingdom tunnels where we paid homage to the love bug lifestyle.

One bright September day, I clocked in five minutes early, whistling a tune from
Fantasia 2000.
I didn’t notice Marco slithering in beside me until he spoke.

“Hola, chico.”

His accented simper made my teeth hurt. “Hello, Marco.”

“I hear you’ve been very busy.” He smiled as he walked out the door. “It has been such a pleasure working with you. I will hate to see you go.”

It was the first time we had spoken since Disneyana. After months of working side by side with Marco, I had become pretty good at avoiding him and ignoring his wisecracks, but these ominous words shook me.

Had someone seen Calico and me sneaking around beneath the Magic Kingdom? Had I been recognized and reported? Was Calico in trouble? Or was this another one of Marco’s lame schemes? I stumbled through my morning schedule, distractedly taking photos of guests at Pooh’s kiosk, constantly checking over my shoulder for my manager’s arrival.

Sure enough, when I returned from lunch, Orville was there, and he asked me to join him in his office. While I pulled up a chair, he closed the door. I had never seen him so serious.

“What’s up?” My attempt to sound lighthearted fell flat.

“I just spent the entire morning with the head manager of the character program.” He cleared his throat, and I could see his chins struggling for recognition. “This is not a nice man. He oversees character coordination for all four parks: Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and Magic Kingdom, and he’s not someone I ever wanted to have to meet face to face.”

To say that Sam was “not a nice man” was like calling deep space “kinda chilly.” I immediately thought of Calico. I imagined her sitting down in a meeting just like this one across the table from him.

“This manager has been forced to take drastic measures, and he made it clear that my job was on the line if I didn’t do the same. As you can imagine, he put me in quite a position. I had to promise him that I would do everything in my power to follow through on my end.”

“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean ‘drastic measures’?”

“He has to take care of problems in his department, and I have to take care of problems in mine.”

“Did he have to
fire
anyone?” In all my time there, I hadn’t actually witnessed anyone being let go, but I was positive that my SOP trysts with Calico constituted fair grounds for both of us. My heart accelerated to techno BPM. I didn’t care what happened to me, but I couldn’t let Calico lose her job over something that would embarrass her for the rest of her life. Orville reached for a manila envelope.

“It was all my idea!” I blurted. “She had nothing to do with it.”

“Relax.” Orville put a hand on my arm and then pulled a photo out of the envelope. “You don’t recognize this, do you?”

It was “Mickey Flashing Tit,” one of my better pieces from an afternoon photo session. The girl wearing the Mickey head had a pierced nipple and a tattoo of a rose around her areola. I had focused on the tattoo and the nipple ring and let Mickey’s face blur into the background. It was erotic and a little disturbing. Good color balance.

“Do you?” Orville was shaking his head, urging me to agree with him. “You have never seen this before in your life.”

I nodded as everything fell into place. “I have no idea where that came from,” I concurred.

Orville slid the photo back into the manila envelope. “I told the manager I’d ask around, but I probably wouldn’t have any luck. I have a staff of professional photographers after all. Anybody could have adjusted the aperture, balanced the exposure setting, and added an off-camera flash. And since the negatives never turned up”—he gave me a meaningful look—“I have to assume that it didn’t come from this lab.”

“Um, Orville, about what I said…”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said as he stood up.

“And what about the girl?”

“Unfortunately, this little Mickey was recognized thanks to her—how should I put this—outstanding characteristics, and her contract has since been terminated. Oh,”—he turned to me, his face serious again—“should you happen to get any ideas about doing shots like this in the future,”—one two three—“don’t.”

The next morning, I went in early to take care of some “loose ends.” That was Orville’s way of telling me to destroy the out-of-character shots on the last few months of negatives. It was still dark when I pulled in to the Cast Member parking lot. The lab was locked, so I walked over the bridge in front of the Tree of Life to watch the sun rise. All around me, frisky animals were just beginning to stir: anteaters snuffling through palm fronds, macaws clicking and calling out like horny college coeds on spring break. I’d become so accustomed to the DAK soundtrack with the music and recorded animal sounds that I’d forgotten the nuanced beauty of authentic animal noises. It was so peaceful that morning, watching the hot air balloons float over the parks, and breathing the reclaimed irrigation water as it evaporated into the Florida humidity. As the sky over Cocoa turned Silvermist blue, a Space Shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral, and I watched it rise up and out of the atmosphere. I imagined its thin, white trail as a thread joining heaven and earth, as a long ladder that allowed free passage between people of both worlds.

Backstage, somebody pushed play on the BGM, and once again, Disney asserted its dominance over the animal kingdom, as the real animal noises became indistinguishable from the recording. Shredding the negatives didn’t take long, but it affected me on a profound level, like I was extracting pieces of my soul. I could feel myself transforming into a corporate automaton, erasing history for the conceit of the Company. Had I slipped so far that I wouldn’t be able to return? I needed to ground myself again with somebody who knew the difference between right and wrong—even if he didn’t always choose the obvious answer.

I went through the day with a bad taste in my mouth, then clocked out and called Brady. He picked up on the first ring. “Moshi moshi.”

“Where are you? Can you talk?”

“Honto desu.” He sounded like a bad voice-over on a martial arts video game. “I’m at home. What’s on your mind, gaijin?”

“Why are you butchering Japanese?”

“I went fishing today, and caught my dinner. Sashimi-wa oishii desu. If you want to come by, you’re welcome. There’s plenty.”

Fresh sushi sounded pretty good, so I accepted. After a quick shower, I walked over to Brady’s apartment. It was one of the identical units in the Ghetto, not far from my own. He answered the door dressed in a kimono, holding a Samurai sword. He had painted his face white and accented his eyes and forehead with thick red lines like a kabuki actor. On his head, he wore a Shang wig, slick black hair tied back into a fist-sized bun.

“Irashaimasen!” he exclaimed, throwing the door wide. “Welcome, tomodachi!”

His living room was decorated to look like an eighteenth-century European parlor. Overstuffed sofas and chairs made from rich, dark woods and decorative fabrics were meticulously placed around the room in a way that ensured ease of conversation. Strategically positioned halogen spots highlighted textured oil paintings of fruit bowls and European landscapes done in the Renaissance style. Side tables displayed antique treasures: silver candelabras, a snuffbox inlaid with mother-of-pearl detail, and a blown-glass candy dish filled with inedible butterscotch candies that only ever seemed to exist in the sitting rooms of very old ladies. The BGM was
Madame Butterfly.

“My, Grandma,” I said, “what a fantastic interior decorator you have.”

“Hate all you want,” Brady said. “When the Queen comes to Orlando, we’ll see where she wants to dine.”

I looked him over in his long silk kimono and painted face. “From what I can tell, the Queen has already arrived.”

He flashed the Samurai sword in mock menace, then stepped aside. “Please sit.” He gestured to the dining table, a massive baroque hunk of wood, surrounded by eight formal antique chairs, patterned with pink silk. The space above the table was dominated by a crystal chandelier that refracted the light magnificently around the room like a Gothic disco ball. Two places were set with simple black plates and chopsticks. Brady arranged a single orchid in the center of the table, then disappeared into the kitchen.

Instead of sitting, I wandered over to a bookcase whose shelves were bowed beneath the weight of an enormous stack of books. There were books on every subject from financial theory to fairy tales, Agatha Christie mysteries, self-help manuals, poetry, pop-up books and books on globalization. And in the center of the case, a hardcover edition of Ayn Rand’s
Atlas Shrugged
, the novel that had set me on my path of self-reliance as a professional skater.

“Have you read all of these?” I asked.

Brady looked up from the serving plate where he was arranging cut rolls and sashimi, using the edge of the Samurai blade. “Those are the ones I liked enough to read more than once,” he said.

“How many times have you read
Atlas Shrugged
?”

“Actually, I never really stop reading it. I use it as a reference manual every time I start to lose focus.”

Like all philosophy, Randian objectivism meant different things to different people, but the fundamental principle was universal: A person must take responsibility for his actions.

“I could use a little focus right now,” I said. I told him about the pictures and how it had made me feel sick to destroy what I had created. Brady placed the sword on the counter, and walked past me, into the living room where he picked up a framed picture off the coffee table, and handed it to me. It was my picture, “Mickey Flashing Tit.” I had only given copies to one other person: the subject of the photo. “How did you get this?”