“You keep that up and we’re not going to Disney World!”
It was the magic sentence, the litmus test for Disney’s currency. As it rose and fell, so did the efficacy of the threat. If Sammy could, he’d take a video of the result every time this was uttered.
The kids looked at Dad and shrugged. “Who cares?” the eldest sister said, and grabbed the boy again.
Sammy turned to Guignol and waggled his eyebrows. Once he was back in the car, he said, “You know, it’s risky doing anything. But riskiest of all is doing nothing.”
Guignol shook his head and pulled out his computer.
He spent a lot of time looking at the numbers while Sammy fought traffic. Finally he closed his computer, put his head back and shut his eyes. Sammy drove on.
“You think this’ll work?” Guignol said.
“Which part?
“You think if you buy these guys out—”
“Oh, that part. Sure, yeah, slam dunk. They’re cheap. Like I say, we could make back the whole nut just by settling the lawsuit. The hard part is going to be convincing them to sell.”
“And Hackelberg.”
“That’s your job, not mine.”
Guignol slid the seat back so it was flat as a bed. “Wake me when we hit Orlando.”
It took IT three days to get Sammy his computer back. His secretary managed as best as she could, but he wasn’t able to do much without it.
When he got it back at last, he eagerly downloaded his backlog of mail. It beggared the imagination. Even after auto-filtering it, there were hundreds of new messages, things he had to pay real attention to. When he was dealing with this stuff in little spurts every few minutes all day long, it didn’t seem like much, but it sure piled up.
He enlisted his secretary to help him with sorting and responding. After an hour she forwarded one back to him with a bold red flag.
It was from Freddy. He got an instant headache, the feeling halfway between a migraine and the feeling after you bang your head against the corner of a table.
:: Sammy, I’m disappointed in you. I thought we were friends. Why do I have to learn about your bizarre plan to buy out Gibbons and Banks from strangers. I do hope you’ll give me a comment on the story?
He’d left the financials with Guignol, who had been discreetly showing them around to the rest of the executive committee in closed door, off-site meetings. One of them must have blabbed, though—or maybe it was a leak at Lester’s end.
He tasted his lunch and bile as his stomach twisted. It wasn’t fair. He had a real chance of making this happen—and it would be a source of genuine good for all concerned.
He got halfway through calling Guignol’s number, then put the phone down. He didn’t know who to call. He’d put himself in an unwinnable position. As he contemplated the article that Freddy would probably write, he realized that he would almost certainly lose his job over this, too. Maybe end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. Man, that seemed to be his natural state at Disney. Maybe he was in the wrong job.
He groaned and thumped himself on the forehead. All he wanted to do was have good ideas and make them happen.
Basically, he wanted to be Lester.
Then he knew who he had to call.
“Ms Church?”
“We’re back to that, huh? That’s probably not a good sign.”
“Suzanne then.”
“Sammy, you sound like you’re about to pop a testicle. Spit it out.”
“Do you think I could get a job with Lester?”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“Freddy found out about the buyout offer.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m gonna be in search of employment. All I ever wanted to do was come up with cool ideas and execute them—”
“Shush now. Freddy found out about this, huh? Not surprising. He’s got a knack for it. It’s just about his only virtue.”
“Urgh.”
“However, it’s also his greatest failing. I’ve given this a lot of thought, since my last run in with Rat-Toothed Freddy.”
“You call him that to his face?”
“Not yet. But I look forward to it. Tell you what, give me an hour to talk to some people here, and I’ll get back to you.”
An hour? “An hour?”
“He’ll keep you squirming for at least that long. He loves to make people squirm. It’s good journalism—shakes loose some new developments.”
“An hour?”
“Have you got a choice?”
“An hour, then.”
Suzanne didn’t knock on Lester’s door. Lester would fall into place, once Perry was in.
She found him working the ride, Hilda back in the maintenance bay, tweaking some of the robots. His arm was out of the cast, but it was noticeably thinner than his good left arm, weak and pale and flabby.
“Hello, Suzanne.” He was formal, like he always was these days, and it saddened her, but she pressed on.
“Perry, we need to shut down for a while, it’s urgent.”
“Suzanne, this is a busy time, we just can’t shut down—”
She thumped her hand on his lemonade-stand counter. “Cut it out, Perry. I have never been an alarmist, you know that. I understand intimately what it means to shut this place down. Look, I know that things haven’t been so good between us, between any of us, for a long time. But I am your dear friend, and you are mine, no matter what’s going on at this second, and I’m telling you that you need to shut this down and we need to talk. Do it, Perry.”
He gave her a long, considering look.
“Please?”
He looked at the little queue of four or five people, pretending not to eavesdrop, waiting their turn.
“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.