The Second: Tangled

I’m standing in a line that leads into Disney Land.  The cold has caught me again.  It’s a tense, silent, early morning freeze.

I wait. My breath comes out frosted. I imagine that it is so cold that even if I were teleported to the tropics, my breath would still come out frosted for the next six hours. I cannot see around the person ahead of me in line, so I examine my hand, red from the cold, blistering from the burn.  I should play the piano, with such long fragile fingers.  But they only look long to me.  I’ve got to think about relativity. I realize my hand is shaking, slightly.  Just slightly, but I can’t make it stop.

Susan is holding my other hand like I’m a child who might run away.  I’d protest, but her thick fingers radiate heat.

Disneyland would be nothing without its suspense-building lines.  Anything you’re willing to pay loads of cash to stand in a line for must be good.

“You look excited,” says Susan.  I’ve been rocking back and forth on my heels.  “What ride do you want to go on first?”  My teeth chatter in response.  I don’t want to tell her Peter Pan is my ride of choice.  I want to learn how to fly.

“Ah! I said ‘bring a sweater!’” Susan gripes.  I don’t remember her saying that.  I do remember her suggesting that I cut my hair, and the pang of panic I felt.  What would I hold onto? I twist some hair around myself.  Susan catches Jack’s arm in the middle of an extravagant gesture.  “Give her your shirt Jack.”

“What?” His voice is thick with skepticism.  “Are you part of some sort of grand conspiracy to steal all my clothes? Your tactics could use some more subtlety.  You could at least try to hide it.  I feel like a movie star.  I should sell my clothes on ebay.  And my hair. And I should take one bite of a bagel and sell the rest.  Everything I touch turns to gold, right?”

“I meant-“ Susan struggles with suppressed laughter.  “I meant your…your sweatshirt! She’s freezing herself to death, like she always does.  You know how it goes.” Karen pulls Jack’s sweatshirt off him before he can protest anymore.  

“Arms up!” she announces, before dropping it over me.  It wrinkles and bunches, and spreads over me.  The sleeves hang off my arms far enough that I can tie them in a knot to keep the warmth in.  Each time the cloth scrapes against the blisters on my hands, pain knocks the breath from me.  By the time the sweatshirt has comfortably enveloped me, I’m sucking air through my teeth.

“They’re opening the gates,” says Karen.  I can’t see around her.  

Jack leans down and whispers, “It’s just the band that plays inside the park.”  Jack likes to whisper things. I run my unburned forefinger along the inside of my sweatshirt’s zipper, making sure it’s unbroken.  Jack grabs me around the waist and lifts me up into the air.

“Can you see the band?” he asks.  My fingers dig into his hand.  I can see the band.  I can also see thousands of people. And they can see me in my oversized sweatshirt.  People elbow their friends to point me out.  I try to look around without meeting any of their eyes.  It’s impossible. I close my eyes.

“Tell me what you see.”

I open my eyes, and look down at Jack.  His eyes are brown.  He sets me back on the ground.

“Never mind.”

The line moves forward.  A “magic” noise is played from the speakers each time a person pushes through the turnstile into Disneyland.  Susan and Karen go through.  They have a list that tells them what ride they should be on.  Jack said that he and I “will not be bound by the constraints of…constraining…lists.  No, we are free hawks or eagles or what have you and there’s probably soaring and open skies and freedom involved.  Tons of freedom, actually.  And we’re going to have a lot more fun than you.”  I push my ticket into the slot.  It pops back out, reminding me of bread from a toaster.  I push it back in, thinking that I’d like my ticket toasted so long I’d have to take a butter knife and scrape the burnt bits off.  It pops out again.

“Look at me.”

Jack puts a hand on my shoulder, and crouches down so he is closer to eye level with me.  He whispers, “This is serious.  Walk slowly around the corner behind me, and hide behind something. A bush, a garbage can, whatever.  Don’t run. Don’t attract attention. Go now.”

As I walk away from Jack, I feel justified, like I’d practiced fire drills for years in a building that just caught fire.  Around the corner, things are quieter. A shaky bent man clutching a bouquet of roses trudges across the empty concrete courtyard.  Once he is past, I kneel down between a bush and the fence separating the courtyard from Disneyland.
 
I pull my knees up inside the sweatshirt.  Hidden behind the bush, unable to see anything but leaves and the inside of my sweatshirt, I listen for Jack’s voice.  He’ll tell me that he’s got a girlfriend I don’t know about, and he didn’t want her to see him with another me while I’m wearing his sweatshirt because she’s a very jealous person, and then we’ll both laugh.

Ten minutes pass.  I change my mind.  Jack must have spotted a sniper.  He saw a man with a Bomb Gun Knife Stick with Sharp Pointy End and he’s gone to alert Disneyland Security The Police Proper Authorities.  Would I hear gunshots or screaming or police loudspeakers?

I hide behind the bush for hours.  I name the bush Laurel.  All the other bushes in the courtyard are in pairs.  Laurel is alone, like me.  I think about setting Laurel up with a partner.  I’d drag in a huge plant in a clay plot, but Laurel would hold her leaves high and say, “He’s too young.”  I’d have to buy plant after plant, only to listen to Laurel’s complaints.

“I don’t like the way he holds himself. He’s drooping!”
“His leaves aren’t green enough.”
“Too many insects on him.”
“Not enough branches.”

Finally, frustrated, I would yell at her, “You have to pick one!”

Her branches would sway indignantly.  “I won’t.”

“But…why?” I would ask, exhausted.  Laurel would grow still, sympathetic. At last, embarrassed, she would confess, “I don’t want you to leave.”

I fall asleep behind Laurel, face pressed against my knees.  Only my ears are cold, even with two caps.  I dream there are a dozen of me, and I stand around in a circle arguing with myself about who I am.

I wake in the dark, to the smell of cigarette smoke.  Whenever I wake up, I feel as if I had dreamed the one true solution to all my problems, but now that I’m awake I can’t remember exactly what it was.  I don’t try to pin down the fading images this time.  I’ll try next time. There is something important happening in the real world right now, if I can just remember that instead…

I’m at Disneyland.  Or outside it. Behind Laurel. It’s night. Where is Jack?

I yawn, and stretch so far tremors run through my body.  If I’m yawning I must not be worried, I tell myself.

Rough knuckles press into the back of my neck, and their fingers catch hold of my shirt.  The man I saw carrying roses earlier lifts me several feet into the air.  Tremors tear through his body like they did mine when I was stretching, but his don’t ever stop.

“Miss Grey, Miss Grey!” he croaks.  I twist in the air, unable to grab hold of anything but myself.  Laurel watches.

“Superb…finding you.  Alice awaits.”  He wraps an arm around me, pinning both my arms to my sides.  I clutch a fistful of my own hair, and try to decide if it’s just him shaking, or if I am too. The smell of cigarettes coats him like a thick perfume.

His movement is nauseating.  Street lamps blur and their light stretches as we pass.  He stops under one of the street lamps.

A woman in deep red is there.  Her shoes and business suit and the ring on her hand and even her hair: Red.  She’s bigger than Susan. She’s hard where Susan is soft.

“Horace!” she commands, like she has said “Heel!” to a dog.

Horace drops me.  Alice catches my wrist in a hold that forces me to bend my arm awkwardly.  

“Don’t touch Grey, ever. I’ll tear out your heart, Horace.” Her lips press together tightly.  Red lipstick.

Her free hand drives into Horace, lifting him off the ground as easily as he had lifted me.  His shirt tears under his weight, sending him stumbling backwards.

She produces handcuffs from her coat and snaps them on me with an experienced hand.  My wrists are so small they almost won’t fit.  She pulls me around to her car, red, opens the backdoor, and pushes me in.  Jack is in there.

“Tell her where she’s going, Jack.”

"I'm sorry," is all Jack will say.

Before she shuts the backdoor, I hear Horace say “Apologies. Apologies, Alice.”

“Thank you, Horace.”