Dream Factory (15 page)

 

“I just went for a walk.” Amy leans over the railing of the bridge and watches the koi swimming in the pond. “It’s weird that they have real fish here. You’d think they’d have robot fish or something.”

“At Disney we don’t call them robots. We refer to them as
animatronics
. And you’re changing the subject.” I lean over, too, and watch the bright orange one, my favorite, swim under the bridge and disappear from sight.

“I just got upset is all. Don’t you get sick of those assholes with all their double entendres, like they’re the stars of their own cable show?”

“They’ve been like that all summer.” The orange fish swims back into view and does a hard turn to the right, following a black-and-white marbled one. “You get a bunch of eighteen-, nineteen-year-old boys in a room with too much time and that’s what happens. I mean, that’s a pretty big generalization; but for the most part, it’s true.”

“Maybe,” she says, twisting a strand of her hair around and around her finger until it looks like it’s wrapped in gold ribbon. “Ella, do you think it’s possible to like someone before you even really know them?”

“Like who?” The two fish zip by again, the orange one in the lead this time.

“Theoretically.”

“As in, I have this friend who has this friend who has this friend who might possibly like someone?” I say.

“Okay, Ms. Holmes, you have seen through my artful ruse.” A family walks onto the bridge, stomping their feet on the planking and scaring the fish back into the shadows.

“Are you asking me if I believe in intuition? Like if you can know something without really being able to explain why?” The breeze blows around us, shifting the water, so that it’s harder to see through it.

“I guess,” she says. “Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever really been drawn to something or someone without any real reason?” I keep watching the water as if I’m going to find an answer spelled out in the ripples. The truth is, I have felt that . . . maybe am even still feeling that.

“Maybe,” I say. “I mean, it’s tricky, you know?”

“Tricky how?”

“I think it’s easy to confuse intuition with wanting something.” I’m trying hard to keep this about Amy, but tiny bits of me keep poking through.

“But what if it isn’t something you wanted, or looked for, or even imagined? And what if it pulls at something so deep inside you that you didn’t even know it was there?”

“I think it can be dangerous.” The fish are beginning to slip back out of the shadows, the sunlight making their scales flash as they swim. “I mean, what if all of that is true? What if you have found something big and real and profound, and you open yourself up to it—then
wham
.”

Amy turns and looks directly at me. “Wham?”

“Yeah, like what if suddenly that thing that you’ve been floating on, holding on to, and falling into is suddenly just gone?” She tilts her head at me, and we are both quiet. Both listening to the splash of the water as the koi nip at the gnats hovering just over the surface.

“I don’t know, Ella,” Amy says, leaning back over the handrail. “Even if that is true. Even if all you get is a glimpse of that big thing or you just get to hold it for a second, I think it’s better than not having it at all.”

“Maybe,” I say. The orange fish is chasing the black-and-white one again.

“What if someone told you that you could have one piece of the very best chocolate in the whole world?”

“How big of a piece are we talking here?” I ask.

Amy just shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “Not big. One bite. But you have a choice. You can either have that one piece of chocolate with the possibility that you could have a lot more or you can have a lifetime supply of Oreo cookies.”

“Gross. But what are the odds that I’ll get more of the really good chocolate?”

“You don’t know. No one knows.” The wind blows again, harder this time, and the water ripples, so that the fish disappear. “We’d better get going,” she says. “We’re going to get soaked.” I look up at the sky, watching the clouds that are forming over the castle, changing it from fairy castle to scary haunted castle.

“I told Luke we’d meet him at the Morocco pavilion at four,” I say, checking my watch. Cinderella’s arms point to four and eleven. A gift from Mark. “We still have about five minutes.”

“Are you thirsty?” Amy asks.

“I’ll buy you a sweet lassi from the Indian market.”

“Mango?” she asks.

I make a pffting noise with my lips. “As if there’s another kind.”

“Well, there’s plain.”

“Blasphemy.” We start walking past Fantasyland and toward the gates that will take us to the Epcot monorail.

She laughs. “The church is getting pretty strict if not adding fruit to a yogurt drink is considered an affront to God.”

“I take my beverages very seriously.” I watch the shadows disappear as the clouds move over us. “Are you excited to meet this Foulfellow guy?” We walk toward the faux marble buildings and the tented booths that are supposed to mimic a Moroccan street fair.

“I just can’t get my mind around working here for thirty-three years.”

“As a fur character.”

“As anything,” Amy says. We walk under a series of awnings toward India Star.

“Apparently he lives here, too.”

“In one of those houses at Bay Lake?” The rain is starting, making soft noises as it hits the canvas canopy. “I thought only Disney elite got to live there.”

“Luke said Foulfellow used to live there, but it got too crowded for him.” We make it to the front of the line, and Amy orders two mango lassis—large.

“There’re only eight houses. How crowded could it be?” she asks, turning to look at me.

“Okay, Amy. This is a guy who has worked all of his adult life as an evil fox who wears a top hat and white gloves.” We take our lassis over to a table on the edge of the food court.

“Point taken. So.” Amy takes a sip of her drink. “What’s the deal with Luke?”

“The deal?” Without wanting to, I feel myself blushing, my cheeks turning pink.

Amy looks at me for a long moment, taking another pull on her straw. “I meant him and Foulfellow.”

“Oh, I guess they’re friends. Sort of.”

“Kinda like ya’ll are friends?” Amy asks, and I can feel her watching me. Watching as my blush deepens. I try to think of something to say when I feel a poke between my shoulder blades. “Luke,” Amy says, still watching me. “We were just talking about you.”

“Good things?” he asks. He pulls out the chair next to me and sits down. “Ella, give me a drink of that, you will,” he says, stretching out his legs.

“I feel strangely like I should give you a sip of this,” I say, starting to pass him the cup and smiling.

“Weak mind,” he says.

“Then again.” I pull the cup back and put it on the table in front of me.

“Please?”

I look over at Amy. She’s chewing slightly on her straw and watching us.

Luke takes a sip of my lassi. “I’m glad you got mango.”

“You like mango?” Amy asks.

“As if there’s another kind,” Luke says. “I mean,
plain
? Please. That’s a culinary tragedy.”

“That’s pretty strong language,” Amy says, still watching my face.

“I take my beverages very seriously,” he says. “What?” he asks, seeing her smiling at me. “I do.”

I feel myself getting warm again, feel my cheeks get hot, but this time it doesn’t stop with my face. I feel the warmth spreading into my chest and stomach and spilling down my legs.

“So what do you say?” Luke says. “Should we get going? Foulfellow’s place is over on the other side of the park, but I know a shortcut.”

“You are in the know,” I say, pushing back from the table.

“I am,” he says. “I mean, in the know.”

I can’t stop laughing as we head out into the rain. It’s cold on my skin, but it doesn’t touch the warmth that keeps spreading and washing through me.

12

Luke

The living room of Foulfellow’s trailer is pretty much the whole thing, other than a kitchenette, as he calls it, and a small bathroom, and a bedroom with a pile of dirty clothes shoved in one corner. The whole place looks like a museum exhibit called something like
American Life: The 1970s
because everywhere you look, it’s dark paneling, and orange shag carpet, and avocado appliances in the kitchenette, and an eight-track stereo system up on a bookshelf on the wall, with a shoe box of tapes (all the paper covers wrinkled) by bands like the Bee Gees and the Electric Light Orchestra. Foulfellow keeps running around straightening things, shoving copies of
Playboy
and
National Geographic
under the couch, which is decorated with scenes of covered wagons and horses, the middle cushion sagging badly. By now, after having lunch with him three or four times and helping him last week to move a new TV into this place (which he just set on top of the old, broken TV), I am pretty much used to seeing him without his costume; but I can’t, no matter how hard I try, get used to his name. He repeats it now, shaking hands with Amy and Ella.

“Name’s Bernard,” he says. “Bernard Fitzgerald Laurant, which is Cajun French, except for the Fitzgerald part, which I like to think of was me being named for Kennedy, you know. The president? Of course, that’s impossible, at my age and all.” He wipes his mouth with his fingers, but little white flecks remain at the corners of his mouth. I get the feeling we are the first real visitors he’s had here in . . . God knows. Twenty-five years it could be. I keep trying to peg his age, but the best I can do is older than parents, younger than grandparents.
Bernard
, I tell myself again.
Bernard, Bernard
.

Amy and Ella shake his hand and introduce themselves and take nervous little glances around the place, at all the orange shag and paneling. Now that I get a good look at the place, there are some details I hadn’t noticed last week, like the strips of flypaper next to the front door; or the frozen dinner trays in the trash; or the piece of string across the kitchenette, where he has hung up coffee filters with clothespins, I guess so he can use them again; or the back wall that’s covered with old Disney bumper stickers. Some are from way back, like the faded one that says DISNEY, IT’S A WHOLE NEW WORLD! from when the park first opened, and some are newer, GOT MICKEY?, and some just weird, like the one that has a picture of Eeyore and reads TALK TO THE ASS! That one, I’m betting, isn’t official.

“So,” he says, “you kids like working here?” We are all just standing in a cramped circle around his coffee table, which is filled with pieces of jigsaw puzzle, some of them spilled on the carpet, mixed in with spilled potato chips. We nod and say it’s okay, it’s not bad except for the heat, and suddenly, I’m wondering if this whole visit is a mistake. I mean, why did we come here? Just to look at him?

Finally, he tells us to sit, sit, and we all do, the three of us squeezed in on the wagon-train couch while he sits across from us in a faded blue recliner, and then just as quickly jumps up to get us something to drink, saying all he has is tequila and tomato juice and root beer. And water, he says, but no ice. His gray hair is standing up in crazy cowlicks, like he just got out of the shower and brushed it with his fingers, and he’s wearing a Ron Jon surf T-shirt and Dickies work pants and Wal-Mart sneakers with Velcro instead of laces. I’ve noticed this, how much more nervous he seems without his J. Worthington Foulfellow getup, as if all the smart-ass remarks, all the “hey kid” stuff and his raps on the head are things he puts on with his costume.

“So,” Amy says, once we all get our tomato juice in jelly jars, “thirty-three years, huh?”

He nods. “Yessir, thirty-four if you count the six months I worked garbage detail. Let me tell you, garbage can bring this place to its knees.”

I can feel that none of us has a clue what that means, so Amy just keeps asking questions. “So,” she says again, “I guess you have seen a lot of changes around here.”

He nods and sips his tequila. “Yes,” he says.

Ella is quiet sitting next to me, but she nudges me with her knee, signaling . . . something.

“Well,” Amy says, “do you have any examples?”

He looks worried for a second, and the longer we sit there, the more agitated I feel, almost like it’s hard to keep sitting. I look around the room, collecting details of it—the bottles of rubber cement sitting next to a pile of ragged sneakers, the dusty Niagara Falls needlepoint hanging on the wall, the magnetic poetry kit on the fridge, a framed photo of a woman on a beach in some old skirted bathing suit and rhinestone sunglasses, the computer on the floor behind the recliner with a bald eagle screen saver. His whole life is in the place.
Life in a can
, I think, like it’s something sold in a convenience store.

Bernard is still thinking, then he starts nodding so fast, he spills some of his drink. I feel Ella’s knee pressing into mine. “Yes—hey, you kids will get a kick out of this one.” He smiles, his teeth large and whiter than I have ever seen, so much so that I decide they must be fake. “Back in seventy-one, right after the park opens, the big thing is Tomorrowland, right?” He looks at all three of us until we nod, confirming this. “Well, get this. One of the main attractions of Tomorrowland is called—” He starts laughing so hard he can hardly get the words out. “It’s called
Flight to the Moon
. Can you believe it?” He shakes his head, still laughing, his face red. “Flight to the freaking moon,” he says again, rocking back and forth a little.

Ella and Amy and I cut our eyes at each other, and Amy gives a slight shrug. “Wow,” Ella finally says, her voice uncertain, “what were they thinking?”

Bernard looks at us. “Well, you get it, right? I mean, this is 1971. The first moon flight had been
two years earlier
. I mean, what’s that, Yesterdayland?” At this he cracks himself up laughing, so that he’s bending forward. Amy and Ella look at me like all of this is my fault, but Ella can’t keep herself from smiling.