“I can’t go back yet,” I told my brother. “I have a job here. And a girlfriend. And it’s just not the right time.”
“Fine,” he said. “It’s your decision. I just don’t want to see you do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”
Hanging up felt like I was cutting away a piece of my heart. I needed a shower and a home-cooked meal. Calico wasn’t picking up, so I stopped at the supermarket and bought a six-pack of beer and a bottle of Scotch. At least, there was good ol’ Johnny. I could always count on a little generic sympathy from my roommate.
The sun was setting as I crossed the parking lot of the Disney Ghetto with my Publix bags and my duffel, the sky streaked with cloudy wisps of Pluto orange and Minnie pink.
On the stairs, two boys nearly knocked me over in their rush to get past. They ran directly into my apartment, leaving the door wide open. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My living room was filled with people, Cast Members draped over the furniture in the living room, giggling and kissing and getting high. I recognized a Mickey, three Poohs and a Pluto, but there were at least a dozen other people whom I had never met before. One partygoer, a shirtless boy with nipple rings and spiky hair, took the beers out of my hand and began passing them around. Within seconds, Johnny’s face appeared at my side.
“Isn’t this great!” His cheeks were flushed deep red, his eyes glassy with Scotch. “Ah haven’t been this excited since the prerelease party for No Strings Attached.”
“What’s going on?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“Ah mentioned it the other day,” he said. “It’s our debutante ball—sort of a coming out party. Ah didn’t want to tell you too soon because ah didn’t want to jinx it, but…ah am the producer of what is going to be the first ever gay boy band!” The shirtless boy—who I guessed to be about fifteen—lay back on the kitchen table while Jazz Jericho poured beer into his mouth. “And ah have you to thank.”
“Me?”
“You said if ah don’t follow my dreams, somebody else will come along and screw it up.”
“I never said that,” I said. “That was Jazz.”
“Well, this is my dream.” He grinned. “And ah’m doin’ it!”
When I first moved in with Johnny, I admired his shallow simplicity. A glass of Scotch, a Jeff Gordon ball cap, and everything was rosy. But now, he was complicating his life with aspirations and mixed up with people like Jazz Jericho, who was a sure recipe for disaster.
“Ah’ve been doing a lot of research,” Johnny swirled the ice around his glass. “Ah mean, it’s unbelievable, but nobody has done this angle yet. Everybody is so focused on ethnic diversity or personality profiles—you know, the Nice One and the Brooding One and the Tough Guy—We are going to be the first ones ever to do sexual orientation! We even have a token Bi. Jazz knows some guy who has his own recording studio so we’ll be able to get a demo together no problem. And ah have access to the airwaves so…” He shrugged. “You want a beer?”
Jazz sat down behind the bar and began fumbling with a New Kids on the Block CD. Drop. Conceal. “So what did he say?” he asked no one in particular. “Will he do it?”
Johnny cleared his throat. “Ah have a favor to ask.” His tone was slurred, yet businesslike, Dean Martin pitching a used car. “Would you do us the honor of shooting our first album cover?”
I looked from Johnny to his Scotch to the spiky-haired kid who was now making out with one of the other young boys on Johnny’s sofa. Jazz had poured a pile of cocaine onto the New Kids CD and was dividing it into lines with a business card.
“Tell him the concept,” Jazz said.
Johnny shifted into a director’s pose, his hands held up like the frame of a lens. “Picture this,” he said. “Five beautiful boys. They look frightened. Not terrified. Not teeth chattering, but just…vulnerable. They’re wearing society’s wardrobe: the starched collar, the power tie, the blue blazer with shiny naval academy buttons. Their hair is neatly combed, everything in place. Spic and span.”
Jazz looked up from his coke, beaming. Flick. Reveal. “And here’s the kicker…they’re in a closet. There are clothes on hangers and shoes at their feet. Hats in turn-of-the-century hatboxes, and maybe some naughty blue magazines just out of reach.”
Johnny motioned Jazz to go on, so he did. “But then, the cover unfolds to reveal—The beautiful boys have come leaping from the closet, no longer wearing expressions of fear and uncertainty but of pride and confidence! Their hair is styled now. Not just combed. And some of the boys have piercings. And of course, they’re dressed differently. They’re no longer clad in society’s garments. Now they’re wearing the clothes that were just hanging around them in the closet: lightweight, surplus, ripstop pants. Shirts of silk fabric in bright colors, unbuttoned to the waist to reveal their hard, sculpted bodies. Society’s clothing is left on the hangers and strewn around the closet behind them. And, above everything…a rainbow. Shimmering over them.”
“So.” They were both a little breathless, staring at me, waiting for my reaction. “What do you think?”
I was careful to keep my expression neutral. “A gay boy band?”
“Ah know!” Johnny gushed. “It’s so simple. But then all the best ideas are.” He held up his Scotch glass to toast Jazz and the spiky-haired kid who was scratching his nose, staring at the CD. Johnny and Jazz and the rest of the gay boy band and their friends were staring at me, waiting for some reaction, some pledge of allegiance to their cause. Over Johnny’s shoulder, I could see my Publix bags, now filled with empty beer bottles.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” Jazz broke the silence. “Just think about it for a while and figure out if you’re ready to make a strong political statement.”
I helped myself to a Corona and settled on the balcony where I could ignore the revelry and watch the stars come out. What the hell was going on here? Johnny wasn’t the kind of guy who took chances. He did the same safe thing day after day. Nevertheless, here he was, tipping back Scotch, demonstrating Pearlman-sized delusions of grandeur.
He had generously attributed his burst of ambition to my influence, but there was another puppeteer pulling his strings. Eventually, the balcony door opened, and a girl joined me. I’d seen her around. She was a Cinderella at the Magic Kingdom. She had a soft, round face and dazzling blue eyes.
“Interesting day?” she asked.
“You have no idea.”
“I wasn’t always a princess, you know. I used to be a paramedic. I took EMT courses and everything. So, if you choke on that lime in your beer, I can resuscitate you.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Actually, I don’t have a choice. When I got my EMT license, I took an oath to help people whenever and wherever possible. So, even if you were a jerk”—when she stirred her cocktail, she did it with her fingers fanned out, glossy French tips hovering over the rim of the glass—“I’d be duty bound to try to save you.”
After Johnny and Jazz’s ambush, I was feeling the opposite of flirtatious, but the girl showed no sign of leaving, so I threw some words together. “Have you ever saved anyone’s life?”
She sipped her drink, careful not to smear her lipstick on the glass. “The other day, this man in my line just keeled over. My greeter thought it was dehydration, but I could tell it was a heart attack.” When she smiled, she wrinkled her nose a little. “So I had this one side of me that knew what was going on because of all the EMT classes and whatever. Then there was the other side of me—the princess side.”
I shook my head. “Which side is that?”
She clucked her tongue as if I had forgotten the very essence of Disney. “You’re a Cast Member. You should know this.”
“I’m not a princess.”
She set her drink down so she could talk with both hands. “When I’m onstage, I must stay in character at all times. Cinderella has a working knowledge of sewing and scrubbing—maybe a little singing—but not CPR. Under no circumstance
is it acceptable for a princess to perform mouth-to-mouth!”
It was an ethical predicament. Should she break character in order to save the man’s life or preserve the Magical Experience for all the children who came to see Cinderella?
I was interested now. “So what did you do?”
“What do you think?” She picked up her drink and took a sip.
“I think you dropped to your knees and pounded his chest until he started breathing again.”
“Are you kidding?” She practically spat her drink through her nose. “Do you know how long it took me to get approved for that role?”
The girl’s phone rang, and she drifted to the other side of the balcony to take the call. Just then, the door opened again, and Johnny’s face appeared, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. “So,” he said, shutting the door behind Cinderella, “have you given it any thought?”
I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. “A gay boy band?”
“You don’t like it?”
“Ever since the Beatles, boy bands have relied on a fan base of screaming females.”
“Exactly!” Johnny stabbed the air with his finger. “There is nothing out there for the screaming male fans. That’s why it’ll be such a huge success!”
“I hope it is,” I said. “But I just don’t feel comfortable shooting your cover.”
He nodded and sipped his Scotch. “Ah understand.”
“Johnny,” I said. “Have you heard about anyone who died at Disney World recently?”
“Died?” He made a face. “No, why?”
I glanced up at Cinderella, still gushing into her phone. “It was just a rumor I heard about a guy having a heart attack.”
“Ah haven’t heard anything,” he said, his cheeks flushed Queen of Hearts red. “But then Disney’s got one hell of a medical team. And an even better PR crew. As Walt was fond of saying, ‘You can dream, create and build the most beautiful place in the world, but it takes people to make that dream a reality’!”
The next day, the temperature skyrocketed to well over a hundred degrees. Even the Florida natives were uncomfortable, laid out in armchairs or draped over the vented slats of benches, fanning themselves with soggy maps. It was so hot that by noon Magic Kingdom had already lost a Meeko, a Gideon, and two Captain Hooks to heatstroke and the Mad Hatter’s nose kept melting off his face. Hydration reminders were posted on the tunnel walls, at every stage door, and on corkboards hung over the urinals. Still, Cast Members were dropping like popcorn, dizzy and gasping for air, drowning in the humidity.
When I finished at DAK, I went to the Magic Kingdom to meet up with Calico. I hadn’t been able to reach her the night before, so we rode the Monorail while I brought her up to speed on all the events of the past couple of days. I told her about Havana and Brady and then Johnny and his boy band party. She was shocked.
“You have to be careful who you make friends with around here,” she warned. “Not everyone’s as sweet as me.”
“I tried calling you last night,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “I am so sorry. I got your messages, but my mom was really sick last night, so I went over to her house to take care of her and fell asleep watching a movie.”
“Is she alright?”
“She’ll be fine.” Calico waved it off. “It’s mostly in her head. She can be such a hypochondriac.”
Through the window of the Monorail, I could see a small crowd gathered around a wedding party. The bride and groom were standing in front of the Disney Chapel, waiting to get into Cinderella’s horse-drawn carriage. Mickey and Minnie flanked the happy couple. The BGM was “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”
I nodded toward the scene. “What would you do differently?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Put the groom in black leather, the bride in barbed wire.”
“Artsy.”
“Or dress them in meringue and hose them down during the vows.” Calico gave a dark chuckle. “What’s the point? They’re doomed anyway.”
Everything went suddenly dark as the Monorail went around a corner and into the Contemporary Hotel. My head ached from the crush of the pressure change. “You’re not going to be a very popular wedding planner.”
Calico’s smile was without joy. “Wedding planners don’t have jets.”
That weekend, I made reservations for us to stay one night at Universal’s Portofino hotel, a five-star resort with spa treatments and gondola service to their theme parks. I told her to take Saturday and Sunday off, but I didn’t tell her why. I wanted it to be a surprise.
It was noon when I rang her doorbell. Check-in time. I smiled to myself, imagining her delight at a mud treatment and body exfoliation. Would she be in a frisky mood or would she be sweet and gentle? Lately, it was kind of a coin toss. I rang the doorbell again and checked my watch. It was 12:05 and clouds were just beginning to darken the sky, so I retreated to my Jeep and left a message on her voice mail. An hour later, I still hadn’t heard from her.
As I thought about it, it occurred to me that she might be with her mom. Calico had been there a lot recently, helping her plant new rose bushes in the garden. Her phone didn’t get service at her mom’s house, so I couldn’t call, but I remembered the address. Calico’s mother was wearing gardening gloves and sunglasses, talking on her portable phone when I pulled up.
“So good to see you!” she said when she finished her call.
“Hi, Sandra. How are the roses?”
“Wonderful!” she said. “I just clipped a dozen perfect Dutch Centifolias. Would you like some iced tea?”
“No thanks. I was just looking for Calico.”
“Oh,” Sandra pulled a strand of hair away from her face. “Let’s see, if I remember correctly, she is working today.”
“Really?” I said, chewing on a fingernail. “Because I could’ve sworn she had today off.”
“Well,” she laughed gaily. “I’ve been wrong before. My memory isn’t what it used to be, and we see her so rarely these days.”
“Is that right.”
“I’ve hardly seen her since she got the part as that dog lady.” She pocketed her gardening shears and smiled. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come in and have some iced tea? I’d love to hear what you two have been up to.”
As I sped away from her parents’ house, I could hardly breathe. Nothing made sense. Calico told me she had been over there at least three times in the past week. Either Sandra was in the middle of a full-blown delusion or Calico was lying to me.
What did I really know about my girlfriend? In the few months we had been together, I had learned that she was a Method actress and a box of Godiva could pretty much get me out of anything, but beyond that, it was hard to describe her personality.
Most of the time, Calico was the perfect princess, sensitive and genuinely sweet. She said “please” and “thank you” and blushed when she heard an off-color joke. She called everybody by a pet name, nothing creative, usually “baby” or “honey” worked for people she had just met. For me, she reserved “sweetie” or “sweetheart,” a term of endearment that comforted me because nobody else got that one.
She was vivacious and hungry for experience. If you knew how to say “I’ll have the chicken, please” in Catalan, she wouldn’t let you go until you taught her the exact pronunciation. She commanded attention whenever she spoke and took no more than half an hour to become acquainted with an entire room full of strangers. She was pretty—not cover-girl beautiful, but possessing a very confident aura of sexual awareness. She knew her strengths and didn’t waste time covering her naturally attractive features with makeup—unless she was rehearsing a new part.
There was something else there too. When she talked to you, she made you believe that you were the only guy who understood her and that for the first time in her life, she was baring her soul to a kindred spirit. You got so caught up with the hidden tumultuousness of her life and the secret camaraderie of her confessions that you began to think of you
rself as her personal savior, as the only person in the world who could offer sanctuary from her tragedies.
The catch was, she had this effect on everybody: the busboy who poured water at her dinner table, the shoe salesman at the outlet mall, the gas station attendant. No encounter was too distant or too brief for her to weave a total stranger into the tapestry of her charms.
I didn’t hear from Calico that night or the next day. At sunset, I drove back over to her apartment and waited. I felt like a stalker, but I didn’t care. I had to know what was going on. I downloaded some phone apps. I switched my ringtone from “Ev’rybody Wants to Be a Cat” to “Be Prepared.” Eventually, her car pulled in to the parking lot. I was standing there when she stepped out.
“Did you get my messages?”
“Oh! Sweetie, you startled me.” She put her hand to her chest and took a couple of breaths.
“I waited for you all day yesterday.”
“I am so sorry. I tried to call you from my mother’s house, but I couldn’t get any signal and—you’re not gonna believe this, but her power line went down, so I couldn’t even call you from her phone.”
“Really?” I fought to keep my voice even. “That’s funny because when I went over there yesterday, the phone was working fine.”
Her lips tightened around her smile. “You saw my mother?”
“She was gardening and making iced tea. She wanted me to tell her about all the things we’ve been doing lately, since she never sees you anymore. What’s going on, Calico?”
Calico’s chin began to tremble, and she put her hand up to her face. Before I could react, she collapsed into her car seat.
“Oh God,” she moaned, her eyes moist with tears. “I can’t do this. It’s just too much.”
Chris Mitchell Page 24
