Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

Only he must be careful to follow old Plute’s cryptic warnings, his tricky, understated guidelines. If not, he could kiss his opportunities good-bye. If not he’d be out on the street without even the mangy old doggy suit to cover him. Remember, then, it was strictly hands off the customers. It was absolutely gentle as she goes.

He glanced from Matthew in the Pluto suit to the Kingdom’s sickly new clientele, then moved smoothly into his audition in his soaring countertenor.

“You guys are something else,” said Mickey Mouse. “‘The Fated Follies.’ I love it!” He pointed to Tony Word. “How long they give you to live?”

Tony shrugged.

“Hey,” said Benny Maxine.

“An hour? A day?” Mickey insisted.

Tony shrugged.

“Hey!”

“Because if it’s less than a day you can forget about Rome. Know why?”

“Hey,” Benny said, “ you!”

Tony Word shrugged.

“Because Rome wasn’t built in a day!” roared the Mouse.

“Is he crazy? Why’s he saying these things?”

“Why’s he bullying sick children?”

“The Mouse is a rat.”

“All right,” Mickey Mouse said, “let’s see a show of hands. Who wants to be cremated? What, nobody? All right, who’s for being planted? Hands? Not anyone? Buried at sea then? Recycled? We’re running out of options here. Boy, you’re some tough kids to please.”

Pluto seemed to have slipped away. Mickey hadn’t heard him leave. Perhaps he was listening in the bathroom.

“Alone at last,” said the Mouse. “Let’s see, where were we? Right, we were discussing what’s to become of you. Or I was. You all seem a little shy about the subject. Oh, I know why, of course. This particular mouse wasn’t born yesterday. He’s been around the block a time or two. I’ll tell you the truth, though. I was never really into tragedy. Control was always my thing, my gift. My special talent, you might say. Well, I never had any enemies to speak of. Popeye has enemies; Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Tweetie-Pie. Heckel and Jeckel have enemies. The Pink Panther. But not old Mickey the Mouse. I never had enemies. And neither do the people I hang with. My duckies and doggies. Life’s too short. Hey, no offense.” He looked around at the unsmiling children. “All right, all right,” he said, “enough about me. What would you have wanted to be if you’d lived?” Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, Happy, and Sneezy stared at him, their ancient humors clogged, choked, stymied as ice, their deflected phlegms and cholers, their thickened bloods and biles subsumed in stupefied wonder. “Tch tch tch,” said the Mouse, “you kids, you poor kids. I don’t think I ever saw such losers. Where’d you grow up — on Fuck Street?”

Pluto tittered in the toilet. “On Fuck Street. Fuck Street! That’s some mouse!”

“This is terrific for the nervous system,” Lydia Conscience said.

“Oh?” said Janet.

“It makes it nervous.”

“Because really,” Mickey Mouse said, “I mean, it’s a raw deal. What, are you kidding? I mean, all the King’s horses, all the King’s men?” He stared directly at Benny. “Those are some odds. Still,” he said, “I suppose there’s advantages, silver linings in the shit. Sure. Of course. Why not? Run amok. Break a law. Pillage and plunder. Smoke if you got ’em. I mean, what’s to worry? Today is the first day of the rest of your life! You may never see Fuck Street again.”

“They may never see Fuck Street again,” echoed Pluto, laughing.

“You know, it’s strange,” the Mouse said philosophically. “It is. It really is. What goes on, I mean. I mean, people really do die. Your age. I mean there you are, you’re going along taking pretty good care of yourself. You look both ways before crossing, you don’t accept rides from strangers, you brush after each meal, then whammo! Whammo and blammo! Whammo and blammo and pow and zap! Kerboom and kerflooey, I mean. Mayday, I mean! But who’s going to hear you? And what good would it do if they could? No one can help. All right, maybe they take up a collection, maybe you get to be guests of honor at the watering place of your choice. Lourdes, the Magic Kingdom.

“But what’s strange, what’s really strange, is that after the melodrama, after all the best efforts and good offices of the go- betweens, the mediators, the maids of honor, the honest brokers, and best men, after the prayers and after the sacrifices, after the candles and after the offerings, worse comes to worse anyway. The unthinkable happens, the out-of-the-question occurs, all the unabashed, unvarnished unwarranted, all the unjustifiable unhappy, all the unwieldy unbearable. The unbelievable, the uncivil, the uncharitable, the uncalled-for. The undivided, undignified uncouth. The unkempt, unkind unendurable. The uncontrollably uncomfortable. All that unethical, unbridled, unconditional undoing. All the ungodly unhinged, all the unfriendly unnatural. The unpleasant, the unimaginable, the unprincipled. The unfit, the unsavory, the unforeseen. The unsurpassed, unsightly unruly. The untimely unsuitable, the unwelcome unutterable. The undertaker, I mean.”

“Untrue,” Mudd-Gaddis objected. (Because everything has a reasonable explanation, and Charles felt so old, time like some plummeting second-per-second weight in free fall, time like the incremental, famous dragged-out absences of love, the seconds minutes, the minutes hours, the hours days, weeks, that he no longer believed in even the possibility of death.)

“But unusual,” said Benny Maxine.

“I have to admit,” Mudd-Gaddis said.

Which is when the uprising started, the commotion. (Though it still wasn’t too late. All that was needed was someone who could have seen all sides.) Because most of them were filling the room now with their “Heys!” and their outrage. They’d been in Florida almost a week. Bombarded with special effects, with lasers, with 3-D like a geometry of the literal and a rounded stereophonics that sought the projections and deeps of the ear like a sort of liquid, they had seen science and engineering enlisted in passive play, at the service of the lesser wonders and mocking, it sometimes seemed to them, the priorities. By now they were accustomed to the little miracles as, two hours or so into their overseas flight, they had already adjusted to the idea of great speed, to eating in the sky, to pissing in it, to flying itself, and were offended — they needed someone to see round their corners — that the Mouse would betray them, that he had not come with a message of hope for them — they hadn’t expected him, after all, hadn’t even asked for him — showering dispensation, strewing reprieve. And offended by Pluto. Madder at the mutt, perhaps, than at the Mouse. Who’d failed to stand up for them, who’d slunk off to the bathroom when Mickey’s monologue had turned embarrassing. He had — there’d been no opportunity to speak of this; to a certain extent at least they were thinking collectively, were in touch with the protocols and instincts of death — betrayed the dumb goodwill of his lampoon loyalty.

Now Pluto, drawn perhaps by their racket, by their promising clamor, was back. He had shambled into the room and was glancing from one to the other with his fixed and serviceable expression, universal, one-size-fits-all.

“Where’ve you been?” Mickey Mouse asked.

“Been in the washroom,” said the Dog.

“Made a mess, have you?” the Mouse said, thinking they were into a different routine now, hoping they were, knowing as he did that he’d bombed with the first one. “Well, have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Made puppy poop.”

“Made puppy poop? Me?”