“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.
He was down on all fours, his ass stuck way up in the air, when Perry came through the door. He looked back through his ankles and squinted at the upside-down world. Perry’s expression was carefully neutral, the same upside-down as it would be right-side-up. He grunted and went down to his knees, which crackled like popcorn.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Perry remarked mildly.
“Funny man,” Lester said. “Get over here and help me up, will you?”
Perry went down in a crouch before him. There was something funny about his eye, the whole side of his head. He smelled a little sweaty and a little gamy, but the face was the one Lester knew so well. Perry held out his strong, leathery hands, and after a moment, Lester grasped them and let Perry drag him to his feet.
They stood facing one another for an uncomfortable moment, hands clasped together. Then Perry flung his arms wide and shouted, “Here I am!”
Lester laughed and embraced his old friend, not seen or heard from these last 15 years.
Lester’s workshop had a sofa where he entertained visitors and took his afternoon nap. Normally, he’d use his cane to cross from his workbench to the sofa, but seeing Perry threw him for such a loop that he completely forgot until he was a pace or two away from it and then he found himself flailing for support as his hips started to give way. Perry caught him under the shoulders and propped him up. Lester felt a rush of shame color his cheeks.
“Steady there, cowboy,” Perry said.
“Sorry, sorry,” Lester muttered.
Perry lowered him to the sofa, then looked around. “You got anything to drink? Water? I didn’t really expect the bus would take as long as it did.”
“You’re taking the bus around Burbank?” Lester said. “Christ, Perry, this is Los Angeles. Even homeless people drive cars.”
Perry looked away and shook his head. “The bus is cheaper.” Lester pursed his lips. “You got anything to drink?”
“In the fridge,” Lester said, pointing to a set of nested clay pot evaporative coolers. Perry grinned at the jury-rigged cooler and rummaged around in its mouth for a while. “Anything, you know, buzzy? Guarana? Caffeine, even?”
Lester gave an apologetic shrug. “Not me, not anymore. Nothing goes into my body without oversight by a team of very expensive nutritionists.”
“You don’t look so bad,” Perry said. “Maybe a little skinny—”
Lester cut him off. “Not bad like the people you see on TV, huh? Not bad like the dying ones.” The fatkins had overwhelmed the nation’s hospitals in successive waves of sickened disintegrating skeletons whose brittle bones and ruined joints had outstripped anyone’s ability to cope with them. The only thing that kept the crisis from boiling over entirely was the fast mortality that followed on the first symptoms—difficulty digesting, persistent stiffness. Once you couldn’t keep down high-calorie slurry, you just starved to death.
“Not like them,” Perry agreed. He had a bit of limp, Lester saw, and his old broken arm hung slightly stiff at his side.
“I’m doing OK,” Lester said. “You wouldn’t believe the medical bills, of course.”
“Don’t let Freddy know you’ve got the sickness,” Perry said. “He’d love that story—’fatkins pioneer pays the price—”
“Freddy! Man, I haven’t thought of that shitheel in—Christ, a decade, at least. Is he still alive?”
Perry shrugged. “Might be. I’d think that if he’d keeled over someone would have asked me to pitch in to charter a bus to go piss on his grave.”
Lester laughed hard, so hard he hurt his chest and had to sag back into the sofa, doing deep yoga breathing until his ribs felt better.
Perry sat down opposite him on the sofa with a bottle of Lester’s special thrice-distilled flat water in a torpedo-shaped bottle. “Suzanne?” he asked.
“Good,” Lester said. “Spends about half her time here and half on the road. Writing, still.”
“What’s she on to now?”
“Cooking, if you can believe it. Molecular gastronomy—food hackers who use centrifuges to clarify their consomme. She says she’s never eaten better. Last week it was some kid who’d written a genetic algorithm to evolve custom printable molecules that can bridge two unharmonius flavors to make them taste good together—like, what do you need to add to chocolate and sardines to make them freakin’ delicious?”
“Is there such a molecule?”
“Suzanne says there is. She said that they misted it into her face with a vaporizer while she ate a sardine on a slab of dark chocolate and it tasted better than anything she’d ever had before.”
“OK, that’s just wrong,” Perry said. The two of them were grinning at each other like fools.
Lester couldn’t believe how good it felt to be in the same room as Perry again after all these years. His old friend was much older than the last time they’d seen each other. There was a lot of grey in his short hair, and his hairline was a lot higher up his forehead. His knuckles were swollen and wrinkled, and his face had deep lines, making him look carved. He had the leathery skin of a roadside homeless person, and there were little scars all over his arms and a few on his throat.