The Nix(98)
“Did you hear me?” Faye asks. “I said I’m going to Chicago.”
And now Frank Andresen finally speaks, and when he does there is just nothing in his voice, no emotion, no feeling. He’s dislodged himself from the moment.
“Damn right you are,” he says, and he turns away from her. “Leave and never come back.”
| PART FIVE |
A BODY FOR EACH OF US
Summer 2011
1
“HELLO? Hello?”
“Yes? Hello?”
“Hello? Samuel? Can you hear me?”
“Barely. Where are you?”
“It’s me, Periwinkle! Are you there?”
“What’s that noise?”
“I’m in a parade!”
“Why are you calling me from a parade?”
“I’m not really in the parade! More like walking directly behind it! I’m calling about your e-mail! I read your e-mail!”
“Is there a tuba right next to your head?”
“What?”
“That noise!”
“So I wanted to call and say I read the—” Sudden silence on the line, a muffled indistinct digital gibberish, signal coming into and out of strength, a robotic garble, the sound all compressed and Dopplerized. Then: “—is what we expected, more or less. Can you do that for me?”
“I missed literally everything you said.”
“What?”
“You’re cutting out! I can’t hear you!”
“It’s Periwinkle, goddammit!”
“I know that. Where are you?”
“Disney World!”
“It sounds like you’re in the middle of a marching band.”
“One second!”
Seashell-like whooshing sounds, friction noises as a thumb or the wind passes over the microphone, abstract musical whooping, then a diminishment, as if Periwinkle were suddenly encased in a thick lead box.
“How’s that? Can you hear me?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Cell coverage seems bad at the moment. Bandwidth problems, I’m guessing.”
“Why are you at Disney World?”
“For Molly Miller. We’re promoting her new video. Cross-promo’d with the reissue of a classic Disney animated film, now digitally remastered and in 3-D. I think it might be Bambi? All the parents are filming the parade with their phones and texting their friends. I think it’s jamming the cell towers. Have you ever been to Disney World?”
“No.”
“I’ve never seen a place so utterly committed to dead technology. Animatronics everywhere. Automatons with their wooden parts clacking together. I guess it’s quaint?”
“Is the parade over?”
“No, I ducked into a store. Ye Olde Soda Shoppe, it says. I’m in this facsimile of Main Street USA. This charming little street that multinationals like Disney helped annihilate in the real world. Nobody here seems to mind the irony, though.”
“I am having trouble imagining you enjoying things like roller coasters. Or children.”
“Every ride, it’s the same conceit: agonizingly slow boat trip through robot wonderland. Like that ride It’s a Small World, which by the way is just a horror of narcotized puppets doing the same rote tasks over and over in what I’m sure Disney totally did not intend to be an accurate and prescient vision of third world labor.”
“I believe that ride is supposed to be about international unity and global peace.”
“Uh-huh. The Norway ride at Epcot was like floating through a life-size pamphlet for the oil and natural gas industries. And there’s this one ride called the Carousel of Progress. Heard of it?”
“No.”
“Originally made for the 1964 World’s Fair. Animatronic theater. A guy and his family. The first act is in 1904 and the guy marvels at all the recent inventions: gas lamps, irons, washing cranks. The amazing stereoscope. The incredible gramophone. You get the idea? The wife says it now only takes her five hours to do the laundry and we all laugh.”
“They think they have it easy, but we know better.”
“Right. Between each act they sing this terrible song that is so catchy in a uniquely Disney way.”
“Sing it.”
“No. But the chorus goes like ‘It’s a great big beautiful tomorrooooooow.’?”
“Okay, don’t sing it.”
“Song about unending progress. Been stuck in my head nonstop and I think at this point I’d lobotomize myself to remove it. Anyway, they move on to the twenties in the second act. The age of electricity. Sewing machines. Toasters. Waffle irons. Icebox. Fan. Radio. Third act is in the forties. There’s a dishwasher now. And a big refrigerator. You see where this is going.”
“Technology keeps making everyone’s life better and easier. Unstoppable forward movement.”
“Yeah. What an adorable mid-sixties conceit that was, eh? Everything is going to improve. Hah. I swear to god, me being at Disney World is like Darwin being at Galápagos. And by the way, the employees of the soda fountain have been smiling at me like maniacs this entire time. There must be a rule, a smiling-at-the-customer rule. Even when I’m on the phone and”—yelling now—“OBVIOUSLY NOT INTERESTED IN A CREAM SODA!”