“And?” I asked. “Did you quit?”
“I did. I’ve been clean for nearly a year. Now, mind you, the drinking helps,” he said, raising his glass and taking a sip. “But I’ve been going to therapy, too, and that also helps a lot. And more importantly, I’ve made amends with my wife and have just about forgiven myself for the way I treated her. We’re not getting back together, but at least I’m just about ready to maybe start over again with someone else. I’ve had my eye on this cutie in the gift shop for a while now.”
“Charles, you dog!” I said. “But wait. What happened with the statue?”
“He won’t sell it back to me!” said Charles. “The bastard won’t sell it, no matter how high a price I offer. I tried to give him ten thousand and he turned it down!”
“Well, I imagine that in a few weeks you might be able to buy it back for a lot less than that.”
“How so?”
“I think Jay is going through some more rough times with his supplier.” I said. “But this time you’re not at his mercy. This time you’ll be the one with the upper hand.”
Charles frowned. “I’m sorry to hear about Jay,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish bad luck on anybody. But all I want is my statue back. I’m willing to pay him good money for it, and I don’t see why he needs to hit rock bottom before he’ll accept my payment. Blaine, next time you see him, please try to convince him to give that statue back to me?”
“Will do, Charles,” I said, swallowing the last bit of my gin and tonic. “Thanks for the drinks.”
“You’re welcome. Just be sure to watch your back around that man. When people hit the bottom there’s no telling what they’ll do.”
That night I got up the nerve to go back into the Concierge Lounge. What did I care if Semi-Hot Sandra thought I was a creep? Fucking Snow White had tried to seduce me, and Semi-Hot Sandra had nothing on her. So, yeah, definitely her loss, I thought, as I sauntered past her.
“Hello, Mr. McKinnon!” she said gleefully.
“Hi, Semi…. Uh, Sandra,” I said. I started laughing at my slip-up as I walked over to the bar area and poured a glass of wine.
Semi-Hot Sandra came up beside me. “What’s so funny, Mr. McKinnon?” she asked, obviously afraid I was laughing at her. Which, I guess I was.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, still chuckling. I surveyed the empty lounge, and took a seat on one of the sofas, facing a television that was showing my favorite Resort Channel video: Tracey in pigtails going down water slides.
Semi-Hot Sandra sat down next to me.
“How has your stay been so far, Mr….”
I cut her off. “Please, Sandra, please call me Blaine. For some reason when you call me Mr. McKinnon it makes me feel like a dirty old man.”
“Oh. Okay, Blaine.” she said, obviously taken aback. I didn’t give a shit.
“My stay has been… interesting so far, Sandra.”
“Have you been enjoying the parks?” she said, perking up a bit.
“Actually, I haven’t even been to MGM or Animal Kingdom yet. Maybe I’ll do MGM tomorrow.”
I stared at the television. Pigtailed Tracey had nothing on Lisa, either. Nobody did. Lisa was maybe the hottest girl I’d ever seen.
“Yes, MGM is quite the park,” prattled Semi-Hot Sandra. “Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is probably the best rollercoaster in existence! I just love the beginning, when it shoots….”
I turned slowly to her. “Sandra, I think I’d just like to sit here quietly for a while. I’ve had a lot of crazy shit happen to me over the past few days. I saw Princess Leia’s tits and she asked me to cum on them.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“I know!” I said. “Then I watched a nice old lady snort a line of drugs while a couple with a towel baby looked on, waiting their turn.”
She stood up, staring at me in disgust.
“A naked tattooed man accosted Snow White and got arrested. And then a highly respected Cast Member told me story so outlandish that I still don’t know if I believe it all.”
She started backing away.
“So after all of that excitement, I was sorta hoping I could drink a few glasses of wine and just kinda chill for a bit.”
“You’re a very, very crude and abnormal man, Mr. McKinnon,” she said, walking back to the Front Desk.
“Abnormal? Ah, whatever,” I said. “You know you want me.”
“Well, I never!” I heard her say as she turned the corner.
“Fucking prude,” I muttered. But, in all honesty, I probably would have had reacted the same way if someone had told me all of that shit just a few days ago.
“I’m sorry, Sandra!” I yelled. No response.
So, I sipped my wine, watched Tracey running around the parks in tight pants, and tried my damnedest to digest the events of the past two days into some sort of palatable series of memories that would fit into the framework of my emotionally stunted existence. But my thoughts and feelings were all jangled up and strange. More crazy shit had happened over the past 48 hours than had happened in the entirety of my previously sheltered life. It was like I’d entered a parallel dimension, like in one of those bad episodes of
Star Trek
where Spock has a beard or some crap like that.
And, I guess in a way this really was a new and exciting world for me to explore. Even with all the terrible stuff that had gone down…. I sorta liked it.
I felt alive.
The next day I didn’t hear anything from either Jay or Lisa. I figured Jay would be fine, but if Lisa was really getting off The Dust…. I kicked myself for not getting her number. She didn’t have mine, either. But she knew my name, and she knew where I was staying, so she could always call the Front Desk and have them transfer her to my room.
So, like a jackass, I sat around the room for two days, waiting for her to call.
I had some books sent up from the gift shop downstairs, but they were all snoozers and my mind was constantly drifting back to Lisa. Was she okay? Did she have feelings for me? Had she really left Jay for good? Had she enjoyed kissing me as much as I’d enjoyed kissing her? Then I’d start thinking about the way she smelled and tasted, and I’d nearly go crazy just wanting to see her again.
It was driving me nuts, and I needed to take my mind off of her. So I asked the Concierge to send up some really trashy Paparazzi rags, ordered some Giordano’s Chicago-Style deep dish, and sat in my Jacuzzi for two days eating pizza, drinking beer, and enjoying the misfortunes of celebrities.
Poring over those magazines, it occurred to me that these people’s lives weren’t so different than mine had been lately. Stories of rich dipshits, drugs, love triangles, arrests, eccentric personalities…. Except it was funny when that crap happened to them. Which, in a weird way, sorta gave me some perspective on everything that had happened to me, and made me feel better. At least there was the possibility that I could eventually look back on all of this and laugh.
The next day I left the room, and decided to head to MGM Studios. Lisa could leave a message.
I decided to walk there, past The BoardWalk, and down a path that ran along the canal that the Friendship Boats sailed along. The weather was perfect, and the walk was calm and relaxing.
Cute little lizards were everywhere, sunning themselves and scrambling whenever I walked past them. I remembered as a kid, girls used to catch the lizards, somehow get them to bite their ears, and then walk around wearing them like earrings. I also remembered how if you held them by their tails for too long, the tails would separate from their bodies. The lizard would scurry off and you’d be left holding its wiggling appendage. Then over the next few weeks you’d catch sight of that same lizard, its lost limb slowly growing back.
Then I remembered how once when I was a little kid, I’d purposely stepped on one of these cute, harmless lizards, crushing it and killing it. I don’t know why I did it. Kids have a streak of curious cruelty, I think. Anyway, the carcass laid there for weeks, a little bit of its intestines squeezed out of its mouth. The ants stripped it bare after a while, and it turned into a skeleton. I remembered walking by it every day, knowing that I’d killed it, and feeling so horribly guilty. I imagined that maybe the little lizard had baby lizards, and I worried that I’d killed their mother, and now the babies would starve to death or something.
And then thinking about the dead lizard brought up memories of Sam, hanging there with his intestines draped to the ground. And me looking at him, wondering how anyone could do something so cruel to an innocent animal. But I’d done nothing less to that lizard. Did it matter that Sam was much bigger than that little lizard? They were both living things with the ability to feel pain. Did size dictate the morality of killing something?
I wondered if Ricky Lu felt as guilty about what he did to Sam as I felt about that lizard? I hoped so. I hoped it was tearing him apart. Probably not, though. Asshole.
I finally passed through the turnstiles of MGM Studios. I walked down the main avenue, a recreation of 40s-era Hollywood, and turned right onto Sunset Boulevard. I smelled something that made my mouth water, and spied a turkey leg stand. I hadn’t eaten breakfast, so I instinctively bought one and eagerly chomped down on it. I tore into that turkey leg, breaking through the muscle and fat. And when I pulled it away from my mouth it was bright pink and there were little blood vessels hanging from the meat.
With Sam and the lizard still fresh on my mind, I couldn’t help but make the obvious connection.
I spit out the meat, disgusted.
Minutes earlier I’d been beating myself up about killing a lizard over twenty-five years ago, and hoping the man who had murdered my dog was wracked with guilt. Yet here I was eating a dead animal who for all I knew was just as loving and smart as Sam. And a goddamned turkey was certainly smarter than a lizard.
I was about to throw the foul thing in the trash, but then felt bad about wasting it. I didn’t know what to do with it, though. It was seriously grossing me out. But who the hell was going to want a turkey leg that had a bite taken out of it?
Theresa Skywalker, that’s who.
I saw her following a parade float, screaming at the characters onboard. What was actually a moving stage stopped in front of the giant blue Sorcerer’s hat from
Fantasia
, which now completely blocked the previously scenic view of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
Theresa was wearing a skimpy cheerleading uniform which matched those of the girls on the stage. She was swinging around pom-poms and perfectly mimicking all of their cheerleading moves.
She kept screaming, “I love you, Troy Bolton!”
What the fuck was this nonsense?
“
High School Musical
Pep Rally,” read the signage on the float.
“Seriously, Theresa?” I asked as I came up behind her.
“Blaine!” she shouted, nearly knocking my head off with a pom-pom.
The show ended and the cast posed for pictures with the crowd. Theresa jammed a camera into my hands and pushed herself to the front of Troy’s line. She stood next to him, grinning, as I snapped the picture. Then she whispered something into his ear which made him gasp, and then blush, and then smile slyly. I can only imagine she was asking him to cum on her tits.
“Hi Blaine!” she said cheerfully, taking back her camera. “Isn’t Troy a dreamboat?”
“He sure is,” I said.
“I think we’re going to hang out later!”
“What will Luke think? And what happened to Ron Stoppable?”
“They’re both holding out on me. I need some serious deep dicking, Blaine!”
I laughed, and then laughed some more at the fact that her lewd pronouncement hadn’t shocked me at all.
“Here, take this,” I said, handing her the turkey leg.
“Oh, thank you!” she said. She looked at it and frowned. “There’s already a bite taken out of it.”
“I know, that was from me.”
She crinkled her nose.
“I just decided I didn’t want it,” I said, pushing it at her.
She still wasn’t convinced, but I was determined that this turkey hadn’t died for naught!
“It’s got my saliva on it, so if you eat it, it’ll almost be like we’re making out.”
Her eyes lit up, and she snatched the turkey leg. She then proceeded to lick the place where I’d bitten it, and then sucked on it, and then licked it some more. She was giving the turkey leg a blowjob. It was at once horribly disgusting and extremely hot.
“Whoa, cool it down, Theresa! Save it for Troy!” I said.
“I can fuck both of you!” she said loudly. Mothers turned their heads toward her and covered their children’s ears.
“Yeah, yeah, I suppose you could, in theory. But I’m sorta holding out for Lisa, and I don’t think she’d be too happy if I let you… lick my turkey leg.”
“You and Lisa?!” she squealed.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, hesitating. “We kinda had a thing the other night, and she left Jay, and….”
Theresa stopped me. “She left Jay?”
I nodded.
“Well, how’s she going to get….” She trailed off.
“The Dust?” I asked, finishing her sentence.
“Yeah, The Dust.”
“She’s quitting it. She’s not doing it anymore.”
“Oh. That’s not good.” She looked at the ground and shuffled her feet.
“Is there something you need to tell me, Theresa?”
“It’s just that… everyone takes The Dust for a reason, Blaine. I mean, I take it because I’m socially awkward and have trouble interacting with real people. The characters here get paid to talk to me and they have to at least pretend that they like me. People in the real world don’t have to do that. They’re usually mean to me, actually. Without The Dust I’d probably never leave the house except to come here. I wouldn’t even be able to interact with the cashier at the grocery store. It helps me act like a normal person.”
I looked at her in her cheerleading outfit and snickered.
“You know what I mean!” she said, hitting me on the shoulder.
“Anyway, you can’t just stop unless you’re willing to deal with the things that made you start taking it to begin with,” she said.
I thought about Charles telling me how he’d gone to therapy and reconciled with his wife. And how he’d also turned to booze as a crutch to help him through the bad times. I wondered what Lisa’s crutch would be?
“So, what made Lisa start taking it?” I asked.
“We never really talked about it,” she said. “It’s sort of bad manners to talk about that kind of stuff when you’re on The Dust. But she’d let little things out every once in a while.” She stopped. “Do you really want to hear this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
But, on the off-chance Lisa finally called, I wouldn’t be much help if I didn’t understand what she was dealing with.
“Yeah, I guess I need to know,” I said. “But I’m going to need a drink first.”
Theresa Skywalker/Stoppable/Bolton jumped up and down.
“I want an alcoholic milkshake at The Tune-In Lounge!”
“Okay, sounds good,” I said. “Finish your turkey leg.”
She devoured it as we walked to the bar area of The 50s Prime Time Café, a re-creation of a 50s house, where “Mom” cooked and your “Cousins” served you. They played old sitcoms like
I Love Lucy
on mini TVs mounted to each table. I hated the place as a kid because the waiters would always scold me for not cleaning my plate. It was all in jest, but I didn’t get that as a kid, and my parents laughing at the whole situation just made it worse.
But man, they sure made a mean alcoholic milkshake.
Even better, at one point “Cousin” the bartender said, “You better finish that whole thing, or Mom will be angry!”
To which I replied, “Go fuck yourself, Cousin,” and relished the shocked look on his face. It was awesome retribution for my childhood torment. But then I felt bad, because he was just a Cast Member being paid to perform this role, so I left him a $100 tip.
“Thank you, Cousin!” he yelled.
I rolled my eyes and turned to Theresa.
“So what’s the story?” I asked, as she finished her milkshake.
“What’s the story, morning glory, what’s the word, hummingbird?” she sang.
What a weirdo.
“Seriously, Theresa. What’s Lisa’s deal?”
“Like I said, I don’t really know much,” she said, and then started loudly sucking the remains of her milkshake through a straw. She stopped, and then started doing it again.
“Theresa!” I shouted.
“Geesh, Blaine.”
“I can get you another one, if you want.”
“No, I don’t want another one.”
“Then please stop being annoying, and tell me about Lisa’s… deep, dark secrets, or whatever you think you have on her.”
“I dunno. I just remember overhearing her talking to Jay once about some cult she was in, and her father was the leader. And then the police came in and tried to make them all leave. But there was a fire and her mother and father were killed. And she was on TV, and….”
“Wait, a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Was this here in Orlando?”
“Yeah, I think that’s what she said.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“No, why?”
“I totally remember the chemical engineers talking about this when I was working at Goddard! This destitute cult was cooped up in that crazy Xanadu House of the Future. The whole thing was basically made out of Styrofoam, and when the cops shot the tear gas in there it ignited an oil tank and the oil mixed with the Styrofoam and turned the building into a big ball of napalm! I heard the fire burned for weeks.”
“I don’t really know what you’re talking about,” said Theresa.
“Holy shit.” I thought for a second. “She’s twenty-three, so that means she would have been… ten years old when it happened. Wow.”
I sat there, totally knocked for a loop. Theresa noisily sucked on her milkshake again.
“Hey!” I yelled.
“What?!” yelled Theresa Skywalker.
“Her number?”
Theresa shook her head in confusion.
“Her phone number. Lisa’s phone number? Do you have it?”
“Sure,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “This is it right here.”
I copied it into my phone and jumped off my stool.
“Thanks, Theresa. Good luck with Troy. I hope he gives you what you’re looking for.”
“You mean a serious deep dicking?”