“Sorry, folks, you heard the lady. Family emergency. Um, here—” He rummaged under the counter, came up with scraps of paper. “Mrs Torrence’s tearoom across the street—they make the best cappuccino in the hood, and the pastries are all baked fresh. On me, OK?”
“Come on,” Suzanne said. “Time’s short.”
She accompanied him to the maintenance bay and they pulled the doors shut behind them. Hilda looked up from her robot, wiping her hands on her shorts. She was really lovely, and the look on her face when she saw Perry was pure adoration. Suzanne’s heart welled up for the two of them, such a perfect picture of young love.
Then Hilda saw Suzanne, and her expression grew guarded, tense. Perry took Hilda’s hand.
“What’s this about, Suzanne?” he said.
“Let me give this to you in one shot, OK?” They nodded. She ran it down for them. Sammy and Guignol, the postcard and the funny circumstances of their visit—the phone call.
“So here’s the thing. He wants to buy you guys out. He doesn’t want the ride or the town. He just wants—I don’t know—the creativity. The PR win. He wants peace. And the real news is, he’s over a barrel. Freddy’s forcing his hand. If we can make that problem go away, we can ask for anything.”
Hilda’s jaw hung slack. “You have to be kidding—”
Perry shushed her. “Suzanne, why are you here? Why aren’t you talking to Lester about this? Why hasn’t Lester talked to me about this. I mean, just what the fuck is going on?”
She winced. “I didn’t talk to Lester because I thought he’d be easier to sell on this than you are. This is a golden opportunity and I thought that you would be conflicted as hell about it and I thought if I talked to you first, we could get past that. I don’t really have a dog in this fight, except that I want all parties to end up not hating each other. That’s where you’re headed now—you’re melting down in slow motion. How long since you and Lester had a conversation together, let alone a real meal? How long since we all sat around and laughed? Every good thing comes to some kind of end, and then the really good things come to a beginning again.
“You two were the New Work. Lots of people got blisteringly rich off of New Work, but not you. Here’s a chance for you to get what you deserve for a change. You solve this—and you can solve it, and not just for you, but for that Death kid, you can get him justice that the courts will take fifteen years to deliver.”
Perry scowled. “I don’t care about money—”
“Yes, that’s admirable. I have one other thing; I’ve been saving it for last, waiting to see if you’d come up with it on your own.”
“What?”
“Why is time of the essence?”
“Because Freddy’s going to out this dirtball—”
“And how do we solve that?”
Hilda grinned. “Oh, this part I like.”
Suzanne laughed. “Yeah.”
“What?” Perry said.
“Freddy’s good at intelligence gathering, but he’s not so good at distinguishing truth from fiction. In my view, this presents a fascinating opportunity. Depending on what we leak to him and how, we can turn him into—”
“A laughing stock?”
“A puddle of deliquesced organ meat.”
Perry began to laugh. “You’re saying that you think that we should do this deal for spite?”
“Yeah, that’s the size of it,” Suzanne said.
“I love it,” he said.
Hilda laughed too. Suzanne extended her hand to Perry and he shook it. Then she shook with Hilda.
“Let’s go find Lester.”
By the time the call came, Sammy was ready to explode. He got in a golf cart and headed to the Animal Kingdom Lodge, which backed onto the safari park portion of the Animal Kingdom. He snuck himself onto the roof of the grand hotel, which had a commanding view of the artificial savanna. He watched a family of giraffes graze, using the zoom on his phone to resolve the hypnotic patterns of the little calf. It calmed him. But the sound of his phone ringing startled him so much he nearly did a half-gainer off the roof. Heart hammering, he answered it.
“Is this Sammy?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Landon Kettlewell,” the voice on the other side said. Sammy knew the name, of course. But he hadn’t been expecting a call from him.
“Hello, Mr Kettlewell.”
“The boys have asked me to negotiate this deal for them. It makes sense—it’ll be hard to make this happen without my contributions. I hope you agree.”
“It does make sense,” Sammy said noncommittally. This wasn’t the best day of his life. The giraffes were moving off, but a flock of cranes was wheeling overhead in quiet splendor.
“I’ll tell you where we’re at. We’re going to do a deal with you, a fair one. But a condition of the deal is that we are going to destroy Freddy.”
“What?”
“We’re going to leak him bad intel on the deal. Lots of it. Give him a whole story. Wait until he publishes it, and then—”
Sammy sat down on the roof. This was going to be a long conversation.
Perry ground his teeth and squeezed his beer. The idea of doing this in a big group had seemed like a good idea. Dirty Max’s was certainly full of camaraderie, the smell of roasting meat and the chatter of nearly a hundred voices. He heard Hilda laughing at something Lester said to her, and there were Kettlewell and his kids, fingers and faces sticky with sauce.
Lester had set up the projector and they’d hung sheets over one of the murals for a screen, and brought out a bunch of wireless speakers that they’d scattered around the courtyard. It looked, smelled, sounded, and tasted like a carnival.
But Perry couldn’t meet anyone’s eye. He just wanted to go home and get under the covers. They were about to destroy Freddy, which had also seemed like a hell of a lark at the time, but now—
“Perry.” It was Sammy, up from Orlando, wearing the classic Mickey-gives-the-finger bootleg tee.
“Can you get fired for that?” Perry pointed.
Sammy shook his head. “Actually, it’s official. I had them produced last year—they’re a big seller. If you can’t beat ’em… Here—” He dug in the backpack he carried and pulled out another. “You look like a large, right?”
Perry took it from him, held it up. Shrugging, he put down his beer and skinned his tee, then pulled on the Mickey-flips-the-bird. He looked down at his chest. “It’s a statement.”
“Have you and Lester given any thought to where you’re going to relocate, after?”
Perry drew in a deep breath. “I think Lester wants to come to Orlando. But I’m going to go to Wisconsin. Madison.”
“You’re what now?”
Perry hadn’t said anything about this to anyone except Hilda. Something about this Disney exec, it made him want to spill the beans. “I can’t go along with this. I’m going to bow out. Do something new. I’ve been in this shithole for what feels like my whole life now.”
Sammy looked poleaxed. “Perry, that wasn’t the deal—”
“Yeah, I know. But think about this: do you want me there if I hate it, resent it? Besides, it’s a little late in the day to back out.”
Sammy reeled. “Christ almighty. Well, at least you’re not going to end up my employee.”
Francis—who had an uncanny knack for figuring out the right moment to step into a conversation—sidled over. “Nice shirt, Perry.”
“Francis, this is Sammy.” Francis had a bottle of water and a plate of ribs, so he extended a friendly elbow.
“We’ve met—showed him the bicycle factory.”
Sammy visibly calmed himself. “That’s right, you did. Amazing, just amazing.”
“All this is on Sammy,” Perry said, pointing at the huge barbecue smoker, the crowds of sticky-fingered gorgers. “He’s the Disney guy.”
“Hence the shirts, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“So what’s the rumpus, exactly?” Francis asked.
“It’s all been hush-hush around here for a solid week.”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Perry said, nodding at the gigantic screen, which rippled in the sultry Florida night-breeze, obscured by blowing clouds of fragrant smoke. It was lit up now, showing CNNfn, two pan-racial anchors talking silently into the night.
The speakers popped to life and gradually the crowd noises dimmed. People moved toward the screen, all except Francis and Perry and Sammy, who hung back, silently watching the screen.
“—guest on the show is Freddy Niedbalski, a technology reporter for the notorious British technology publication Tech Stink. Freddy has agreed to come on Countdown to break a story that will go live on Tech Stink’s website in about ten minutes.” The camera zoomed out to show Freddy, sitting beside the anchor desk in an armchair. His paunch was more pronounced than it had been when Perry had seen him in Madison, and there was something wrong with his makeup, a color mismatch that made him look like he’d slathered himself with Man-Tan. Still, he was grinning evilly and looking like he could barely contain himself.
“Thank you, Tania-Luz, it’s a pleasure.”
“Now, take us through the story. You’ve been covering it for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Oh yes. This is about the so-called ’New Work’ cult, and its aftermath. I’ve broken a series of scandals involving these characters over the years—weird sex, funny money, sweatshop labor. These are the people who spent all that money in the New Work bubble, and then went on to found an honest-to-God slum that they characterized as a ‘living laboratory.’”—out came the sarcastic finger-quotes—“but, as near as anyone can work out was more of a human subject experiment gone mad. They pulled off these bizarre stunts with the help of some of the largest investment funds on the planet.”
Perry looked around at the revellers. They were chortling, pointing at each other, mugging for the camera. Freddy’s words made Perry uncomfortable—maybe there was something to what he said. But there was Francis, unofficial mayor of the shantytown, smiling along with the rest. They hadn’t been perfect, but they’d left the world a better place than they’d found it.
“There are many personalities in this story, but tonight’s installment has two main players: a venture capitalist named Landon Kettlewell and a Disney Parks senior vice president called Sammy Page. Technically, these two hate each others’ guts—” Sammy and Kettlewell toasted each other through the barbecue smoke. “But they’ve been chumming up to one another lately as they brokered an improbable deal to shaft everyone else in the sordid mess.”
“A deal that you’ve got details on for us tonight?”
“Exactly. My sources have turned up reliable memos and other intelligence indicating that the investors behind the shantytown are about to take over Disney Parks. It all stems from a lawsuit that was brought on behalf of a syndicate of operators of bizarre, trademark infringing rides that were raided off the backs of complaints from Disney Parks. These raids, and a subsequent and very suspicious beating of an ex-Disney Park employee, led to the creation of an investment syndicate to fund a monster lawsuit against Disney Parks, one that could take the company down.
“The investment syndicate found an unlikely ally in the person of Sammy Page, the senior VP from Disney Parks, who worked with them to push through a plan where they would settle the lawsuit in exchange for a controlling interest in Disney Parks.”
The anchors looked suitably impressed. Around the screen, the partiers had gone quiet, even the kids, mesmerized by Freddy’s giant head, eyes rolling with irony and mean humor.
“And that’s just for starters. The deal required securing the cooperation of the beaten-up ex-Disney employee, who goes by the name of ’Death Waits’—no, really! — and he required that he be made a vice president of the new company as well, running the ’Fantasyland’ section of the Florida park. In the new structure, the two founders of the New Work scam, Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks are to oversee the Disneyfication of the activist rides around the country, selling out their comrades, who signed over control of their volunteer-built enterprises as part of the earlier lawsuit.”
The male anchor shook his head. “If this is true, it’s the strangest turn in American corporate history.”
“Oh yes,” Freddy said. “These people are like some kind of poison, a disease that affects the judgement of all those around them—”
“If it’s true,” the male anchor continued, as if Freddy hadn’t spoken. “But is it? Our next guest denies all of this, and claims that Mr Niedbalski has his facts all wrong. Tjan Lee Tang is the chairman of Massachusetts Ride Theorists, a nonprofit that operates three of the spin-off rides in New England. He is in our Boston studios. Welcome, Mr Tang.”
Freddy’s expression was priceless: a mixture of raw terror and contempt. He tried to cover it, but only succeeded in looking constipated. On the other half of the split-screen, Tjan beamed sunnily at them.
“Hi there!” he said. “Greetings from the blustery Northeast.”
“Mr Tang, you’ve heard what our guest has to say about the latest developments in the extraordinary story of the rides you helped create. Do you have any comment?”
“I certainly do. Freddy, old buddy, you’ve been had. Whomever your leak was in Disney, he was putting you on. There is not one single word of truth to anything you had to say.” He grinned wickedly. “So what else is new?”
Freddy opened his mouth and Tjan held up one hand. “No, wait, let me finish. I know it’s your schtick to come after us this way, you’ve been at it for years. I think it’s because you have an unrequited crush on Suzanne Church.
“Here’s what’s really happening. Lester Banks and Perry Gibbons have taken jobs with Disney Parks as part of a straightforward deal. They’re going to do research and development there, and Disney is settling its ongoing lawsuit with us with a seventy million dollar cash settlement. Half goes to the investors. Some of the remainder will go to buy the underlying titles to the shantytown and put them in a trust to be managed by a co-operative of residents. The rest is going into another trust that will be disbursed in grants to people operating rides around the country. There’s a non-monetary part of the deal, too: all rides get a perpetual, worldwide license on all Disney trademarks for use in the rides.”
The announcers smiled and nodded.
“We think this is a pretty good win. The rides go on. The shantytown goes on. Lester and Perry get to do great work in a heavily resourced lab environment.”
Tania Luz turned to Freddy. “It seems that your story is in dispute. Do you have further comment?”
Freddy squirmed. A streak of sweat cut through his pancake makeup as the camera came in for a closeup. “Well, if this is true, I’d want to know why Disney would make such a generous offer—”
“Generous?” Tjan said. He snorted. “We were asking for eight billion in punitive damages. They got off easy!”
Freddy acted like he hadn’t heard. “Unless the terms of this so-called deal are published and subject to scrutiny—”
“We posted them about five minutes ago. You could have just asked us, you know.”
Freddy’s eyes bugged out. “We have no way of knowing whether what this man is saying is true—”
“Actually, you do. Like I say, it’s all online. The deals are signed. Securities filings and everything.”
Freddy got up out of his seat. “Would you shut up and let me finish?” he screamed.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tjan said with a chuckle. He was enjoying this way too much. “Go on.”
“And what about Death Waits? He’s been a pawn all along in this game you’ve played with other people’s lives. What happens to him as you all get rich?”
Tjan shrugged. “He got a large cash settlement too. He seemed pretty happy about it—”
Freddy was shaking. “You can’t just sell off your lawsuit—”
“We were looking to get compensated for bad acts. We got compensated for them, and we did
it without tying up the public courts. Everybody wins.” He cocked his head. “Except you, of course.”
“This was a fucking ambush,” Freddy said, pointing his fingers at the two coiffed and groomed anchors, who shied away dramatically, making him look even crazier. He stormed off the stage, cursing, every word transmitted by his still-running wireless mic. He shouted at an invisible security guard to get out of his way. Then they heard him make a phone-call, presumably to his editor, shouting at him to kill the article, nearly weeping in frustration. The anchors and Tjan pasted on unconvincing poker-faces, but around the BBQ pit, it was all howls of laughter, which turned to shrieks when Freddy finally figured out that he was still on a live mic.
Perry and Sammy locked eyes and grinned. Perry ticked a little salute off his forehead at Sammy and hefted his tee. Then he turned on his heel and walked off into the night, the fragrant smell of the barbecue smoke and the sound of the party behind him.
He parked his car at home and trudged up the stairs. Hilda had packed her suitcase that morning. He had a lot more than a suitcase’s worth of stuff around the apartment, but as he threw a few t-shirts—including his new fake bootleg Mickey tee—and some underwear in a bag, he suddenly realized that he didn’t care about any of it.
Then he happened upon the baseball glove. The cloud of old leather smell it emitted when he picked it up made tears spring into his eyes. He hadn’t cried through any of this process, though, and he wasn’t about to start now. He wiped his eyes with his forearm and reverently set the glove into his bag and shut it. He carried both bags downstairs and put them in the trunk, then he drove to just a little ways north of the ride and called Hilda to let her know he was ready to go.
She didn’t say a word when she got in the car, and neither did he, all the way to Miami airport. He took his frisking and secondary screening in stoic silence, and once they were seated on the Chicago flight, he put his head down on Hilda’s shoulder and she stroked his hair until he fell asleep.
Epilogue
Lester was in his workshop when Perry came to see him. He had the yoga mat out and he was going through the slow exercises that his physiotherapist had assigned to him, stretching his crumbling bones and shrinking muscles, trying to keep it all together. He’d fired three physios, but Suzanne kept finding him new ones, and (because she loved him) prettier ones.
Makers Page 53
