Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

Her arms dropped to her sides and she flailed across the entire width of the bed, using all her body now, her torso, her arms, and her legs, digging into the bedspread with her face, trying to bite it away from the sheets with her teeth, very nearly smothering Noah before Lydia and one or two of the others thought to pull him away.

I’m wrong, thought the Mouse, it’s an even bigger finish, and burst into applause. “Bravo, bravo!” Mickey Mouse cried. “Most bravissimo bravo!”

She’d worked the bedspread free. Great dollops of black congestion dropped from her nose, from her mouth.

“Ring our rooms!” Benny Maxine shouted. “Get Colin, get Moorhead!”

“What, actually go near her, you mean? Isn’t that the buddy’s job?” said Janet Order.

“The buddy’s indisposed,” Benny said. “Shit,” he said, and picked the phone up, just inches from Rena’s head, himself.

There was no answer in 627. He dialed the other rooms.

“Why haven’t they called? I thought they were going to call.”

(But everything has a reasonable explanation.

(It hadn’t occurred to the adults that the kids would be in the hidey-hole. They’d looked for them throughout the hotel, in the shops, in the game room and restaurants. High and low. Recalling their splendid afternoon on Shipwreck Marsh, Mary and Colin believed they might have gone there. The marina closed in the late afternoon, but the more they thought about it, the more Colin and Mary were convinced that they’d taken a boat out, perhaps even stolen one. The marina man (who lived in Orlando and had to be called at home and told to drive the twenty or so miles back to the park) said that while he didn’t think any boats were missing he couldn’t be sure because at any given time there were always a few in the shop for maintenance. He’d a record of these in his notebook, of course, but hadn’t thought to bring it with him when he’d driven in. He was sorry. Rather than return to Orlando and lose precious time, he took a Water Sprite and suggested Colin follow in a big slow canopy boat, the only craft large enough to carry them all back together should they be found. They looked for them on Shipwreck Marsh and, failing to find them there, went on to Discovery Island.

(Meanwhile, Eddy Bale and Nedra Carp went with the search party — Security had been called in — through the half- dozen lands of the Magic Kingdom, and Moorhead and Mary, attaching themselves to some of the park’s policemen, trailed along with them through Epcot Center. Security, taking the disappearance seriously, alerted the transportation system: the buses and riverboats and monorails.

(So they never thought of the room. Because everything, everything, has a reasonable explanation and none of the adults ever understood why seven kids would want to coop themselves up in a stuffy hotel room.)

“You think we should go down?”

“I don’t know. Ought we to move her?”

“Maybe one or two of us could go down and wait in the room in case they return.”

“Take the kids then,” Lydia Conscience said.

“Not you, Benny,” Rena pleaded through her choking. “Please not you.”

“Maybe we all ought to stay put.”

“Get Tony out of here, at least.”

Now that Noah had calmed a bit, relieved to be out of harm’s way perhaps, Tony had taken up his friend’s war cries. He bellowed like one at the stake.

“Tony, darling,” Janet said, “I’m your buddy and you’re my buddy. We’re each other’s buddies and have got to make sure that nothing happens to either of us. Clearly it isn’t a one-for- all, all-for-one situation we have here. You wouldn’t want something to happen to me, would you? I know you wouldn’t. Yet all your screaming is giving me the heebie-jeebies. Do you know what the heebie-jeebies are, Tony darling?”

“The Hebrew jeebies?” he pouted.

“That’s right, sweetheart,” she said, ignoring Maxine’s glare. “The Hebrew jeebies are these dangerous palpitations, this shortness of breath and angina. They’re my symptoms. You don’t want your buddy to die on you, do you, Tony?”

“No.”

“Then please shut up,” Janet Order said.

Rena reached out for Benny Maxine’s hand.

“I beg your pardon,” Pluto said timidly. “Just who is it you were expecting to call?”

There was so much talent in the world, Mickey Mouse thought. Even Matthew. His friend’s panic couldn’t entirely have been an attribute of the cunning mask. He had to admit: The Dog got a lot more out of the Pluto suit than he ever did. Gee, he thought sadly, remembering other auditions he’d blown up and down central Florida, maybe I’m not nearly the theatrical champ I’m cracked up to be.

“Benny?”

“Righty-o,” Maxine said, “hit’s our Benjamin ’ere.”

“Please, Benny,” she said, her voice crackling in her heavy phlegm like a sort of static, “could you give me your hand?”

Inside his mask, Mickey Mouse began to cry.

“Me ’ and? Give you me ’ and? Why, wot an idear! I don’ fink dat’s a bolt from da blue.”

Because many of them were seeing straight now. And had begun to drift toward the door. Lydia Conscience pushed Mudd- Gaddis’s wheelchair. Pluto tugged at Mickey Mouse’s arm and whispered something in his big ear the foolish but ultimately not unkindly Mouse couldn’t quite make out, though he believed he caught the Dog’s gist — which he hadn’t at all — and, nodding, reluctantly joined him in the exodus, all the while looking back over his shoulder, rubbing his big white gloves against what he’d forgotten were only one-way black glass buttons and not eyes, and thinking, the not-so-standoffish softy Lydia Conscience had been told about in her dream, that perhaps it made better art not to be in on the very end of their performance, that perhaps there were some things best left unstated in theater, following, nodding, glancing back over his shoulders and rubbing his eyes, perhaps the only one to get out of there with his honor intact.

Because despite the fact that the children were dying themselves, they had gone and bought trouble anyway. Getting home free had been denied them, not having to apologize had. All they could hope for now was to cover their ass.

“Hey,” Benny called, “where you off to then? Lydia? Charley? Hey, Noah,” he called.

“Let them,” Rena said. “Benny?”

“Yeah,” he said, “sure,” watching them leave.

The buddy system had broken down completely. Noah had thrown his arm about Tony Word’s shoulder. Janet Order fell into step between Pluto and Mickey and dared them to speak once they’d left the confines of the room and were in the hall again. Pluto kept his own counsel, but Mickey Mouse, grown into his part, said he thought all of them had done a wonderful job.

“Do you think you could hold me?” Rena asked.

“Hold you?”

“I shouldn’t ask. I know I’m a mess.”

“Listen,” he said, “are you going to be all right?”

“After that night,” she said, breathing brokenly, “we explored the hotel, when we had all that fun…”

“What?” Benny said. He could hardly hear her. “What?”

“Oh,” said the fastidious girl, “look at this bed. What I’ve done to the sheets.” Some of her handkerchiefs, wadded, stained, had shaken loose from the sleeves of her dress, from her collar and waistband, from the hem of her skirt. They lay about her like ruined flowers, exploded ordnance. “Please,” she said, “hold me. Just till they find us.”

He held her, and it hurt where even her frail weight pressed against his chest, his belly, his heart. He held her, and she told him she’d never taken her eyes off him that day they’d all undressed on the island. He held her, and she told him she loved him.