The Magic Kingdom

Carla was fascinated by me.  That much is fair to say.

“Do you have a background in acting?” she said.  The sputtering light of an aromatic candle added an extra dash of mystery to the scene.  Carla’s eyes were wide with unfeigned interest.  Eyes that reminded me of Gloria, whom I may or may not have seen the other day.

“Not at all,” I said.

“But how did you end up in,” she smiled, “this gig you’ve got?”

“I don’t want to bore you,” I said and let my voice trail off as I poured her another glass of the fine, fruity Italian number that I’d picked up from the liquor store.  Anyway, the trick worked – Carla protested that she did want to hear my story.  I twirled my glass in the manner of a connoisseur, inhaling the perfume of the wine as though savoring the memories of a life well lived.

“Believe it or not,” I said to Carla, “I used to work for a software company, selling products to small business. That is, until this one day about three months ago.  As it happens, the day started off badly.  Traffic was backed up on the Long Island Expressway and I got to the company late.  I don’t like being late – you spend the whole day feeling like you’re on probation.  Somebody’s Volvo had taken my usual parking place, so I had to deposit my car in a remote corner of the lot.  

“My cubicle was in a state of considerable disarray.  The cleaning lady had evidently been taking out her aggressions on my workspace, even knocking over the little nameplate (a gift from Gloria) with its calligraphed “Alvin J. Puffin.”  I was still trying to establish a modicum of order on my desk when Jeff, a co-worker, said that I really ‘shouldn’t bother’ about the desk so much.  That was the kind of attitude I had to combat daily at that job: why clean your desk when you could be closing yet another sale? 

“It’s true what they say about office jobs – they crush the soul, they squeeze the life out of you until your every move, every action, every preference and personal attribute is directed toward the bottom line.”  I wasn’t just saying that to impress Carla – there is more to life than closing a sale.  Every once in a while you do have to take time to clean your desk, or have a leisurely lunch, or sneak out of the office for a matinee or baseball game even though you’ve been repeatedly reprimanded for absenteeism.  That kind of thing.

Carla was drinking it in.  “Sounds like a genuine case of existential angst,” she observed.  Carla was a college senior and she used words like angst, which kind of turned me on.   She brought me back to my early days with Gloria, when we were both undergraduates at St. John’s and, believe me, the bon mots flew fast and furious.  I knew they were bon mots because Gloria had a minor in French and she knew such things.  We both had roommates back then, so there was a good deal of sneaking around and frustrated sofa-groping.  But those days – autumn leaves, football games, parties, my arm around my sweetheart – they were magic.

“It was the day I usually gave my report to Mr. Franklin (to get back to the story), the head of my division.  His secretary – a crusty old Irish woman – stopped me from going in, saying that I lacked an appointment.  This was obviously some new strategy of her own devising, since I had never required an appointment in the past.  I was doubly annoyed, since my report was particularly good that day.  I had even stayed up late the night before until my (then) wife, Gloria, more or less ordered me to bed.

“‘Mr. Franklin will not be available all day,’ the secretary said firmly.  ‘Now go away before I call building security.’  What a flair for dramatics these Irish have!  I almost told her to stop talking such a load of ‘blarney,’ but I decided to come back after she’d had her coffee, or tea, or whiskey, or whatever it was that made her human.   I figured that Mr. Franklin would be asking after me soon enough.

“Next, I went to accounting, where I handed the clerk some receipts for my recent expenses.  The clerk jabbed a few code numbers into the computer and told me, in a reedy, nervous voice, that the expenses were ‘not authorized.’  I could hardly believe it.  I mean, there I was standing before him – flesh and blood – and he was obeying his computer rather than the evidence of his senses.  What had we become?  I was more than a collection of code numbers; my life was not a footnote to the office manual!  I went on in that vein until the clerk summoned his supervisor. 

“‘Oh, it’s you Puffin,’ said Krauss, the supervisor, emerging from the safety of his large, but windowless, office.  ‘You can’t get these expenses reimbursed,’ he said with a weary sense of responsibility.

“What is this (I asked Krauss)?  Was I now supposed to pay business expenses out of my own pocket?  Was it not enough to sacrifice the best years of my life to the company?  Would I now have to subsidize my own descent into the bowels of corporate America?”

“Wow,” said Carla.  “What did Krauss say?”

“Oh well,” I said, knocking off the last of the wine, for this was a delicate part of the story.  “He just gave me some blather about how the expenses had been incurred after I was ‘let go,’ and so I said-”

“Let go?” said Carla.  “What?  You mean you’d been fired?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘fired.’” I made little quotation marks in the air, indicating my distaste for the word.  “Besides, technically, it takes a few days for the paperwork-”

“But you knew you’d already been ‘let go?’”

I admitted as much.

Carla was shaking her head. “And you . . . stayed up late writing a report for this Mr. Franklin?” Her voice was twisting upward like a corkscrew.  “And you cleaned up your desk?  And submitted expense reports?  Why?”

I had been afraid of this reaction.  “Please, let me finish the story,” I said.

“Let me guess,” said Carla, reaching for her handbag, “this is the part where you pull out the AK-47 and mow down a dozen innocent co-workers?”

“Oh dear! Have I told you this one already?” I cried, trying to make a big joke out of the whole thing.

“Look Alvin, it’s late.”  She stood up.

“Just a few more minutes,” I pleaded.

For the rest of the story, I allowed Carla to position herself near the front door.  This involved no great maneuvers, for I live in a very small efficiency apartment.  In any event (as I explained to Carla), I guess you could say I was in denial.  It is, after all, a textbook reaction to any shock and getting fired certainly had been a shock.  But it wasn’t just that I couldn’t admit the truth to myself; I couldn’t admit it to my wife. 

You see, there had been trouble in paradise, as they say, for some months now.  Even though Gloria and I had been college sweethearts, living as man and wife turned out to be totally different from dating.  I mean, Gloria had become terribly judgmental – nothing I did was any good.  I left for work too late or I came home too early.  I spent my weekends with my nose in a book instead of cleaning up the condo, or doing the laundry, or taking her into the City for dinner and a show, or any one of the mutually exclusive things she wanted me to do all at once.  Without any warning, her mood would sometimes shift and she would demand that we start having children (which I wasn’t going to do with our relationship on the rocks, thank you very much). 

How could I tell Gloria that I’d been fired?  It would be the ultimate “I told you so,” the conclusive proof of my worthlessness.   After my run-in with the accounting department, I got into my car and started driving down back roads with no particular direction.  I kept hearing Gloria’s voice in my head:  “Well Alvin, what are you going to do now?  What are you going to do now?” 

This imaginary conversation brought to mind a series of ads that had run on TV a few years back – perhaps you remember them?  They featured supposedly impromptu interviews with people who had achieved great fortune.  In each ad, the interviewer would say something like, “Hey, Joe Blow, you just won the lottery.  What are you going to do now?”  To which, Joe Blow would answer, “I’m going to Disneyworld!”

So that’s when I decided to go to Disneyworld.  (Carla put her hand on the doorknob at this point).  I had a nice drive down the coast; I even called Gloria from Philadelphia to let her know that I was taking a little vacation.  But she launched into such an irrational tirade that I had to hang up on her.  And within a few days, I arrived –

“I should really get going,” Carla said, opening the door. “Thanks for dinner.” 

“But . . . ”

She was gone. Not that I blame her; I know that my story sounds a little weird.  And I’ll be the first to admit that my original reasons for going to Disneyworld were a little sketchy.  But the thing is (which I would have explained to Carla had she given me the chance) that once I arrived at Disneyworld, the whole trip took on a new meaning.  Life is like that sometimes; you do things by pure instinct – turning down a side street, ordering a new dish, buying a book with a nice cover – only to find out that your actions, in retrospect, made perfect sense.

Disneyworld exemplified those mysterious workings of life.  My parents had never taken me there and so the place was a total revelation to me.  It was full of the things that we seem to have lost in the working world: a sense of joy, wonder, play, safety, and cleanliness.  During the first few days, I knocked around Epcot, Universal Studios, and all the rest, calling Gloria several times a day.  I knew that if she would only join me down here, it would give our relationship a new lease.  Couples need that – they need a framework, a certain set of shared memories that form their secret myth.  With Gloria and me, our college days were fading into the past; we needed a new start, namely, Disneyworld.

Gloria wasn’t buying it.  She started screening her calls and eventually switched to an unlisted number.  After a couple weeks, she had my ATM card and credit cards frozen.  I checked out of the motel and spent a very uncomfortable night in the Hyundai.  But the next morning, I still wanted to stay near Disneyworld!  That was when I marched right up to the Disneyworld Office of Personnel and asked what jobs they had available immediately for somebody with no relevant experience, no references, and no permanent address.  I was referred to a Mr. Crumble, an older man with a beard and habit of sucking on breath mints all day. 

Mr. Crumble was quite forthright in telling me that jobs were not ordinarily available for the picking, “like ripe peaches from the tree,” to use his colorful phrase.  “However,” he said, looking me over, “you might be tall enough for Goofy.”  It seems that one of their Goofies had quit without any advance notice, leaving them in a fix, Goofy-wise.  Well, the costume fit and so I began my career of delighting young and old alike as an official Goofy in the Magic Kingdom portion of Disneyworld.

Don’t get me wrong – my ego took a hit.  I had been a salesman for one of the leading software distributors in the Northeast.  Now I was wearing a Goofy costume.  These transitions take their toll.  Most of my time was spent in the company of toddlers, who are prone to pee in their pants and/or vomit in the presence of larger-than-life cartoon characters.  But the job did allow me to move out of my car and get an efficiency apartment.  I was even able to buy a few furnishings, on credit, from the employee store (everything is decorated with Disney characters, but it kind of grows on you).

I worked hard at the job and never complained (despite the oppressive heat of that damn costume).  Mr. Crumble was clearly relieved that he had been right to take a chance on me and he began to regard me as his protégé.  I took to stopping by the personnel office to have a chat with Crumble and, incidentally, to see if any new “opportunities” had come up.   That was how I met Carla, who was doing some kind of work-study thing to complement her business degree at Florida State.  I told Carla about my life as a Goofy in lurid surrealist tones that seemed to amuse her.

My date with Carla; that is, the date I was describing just a minute ago, was not a great success. But then, it was my first date since Gloria had asked for a divorce and I still needed to refine my pitch.  The facts of life are given; what really defines us is how we tell the tale.  I thought a lot about how to tell the story of my young life, for the purposes of my next date, or my next friend, or whatever.  Thinking about the past inevitably leads one to thoughts about the future.  It was like writing those reports for Mr. Franklin – I had to try to link up my past experiences with my future strategy.

One thing that Carla said kept coming back to me: was I an actor?  No, but maybe that’s where all this was headed.  After all, wasn’t my brief career as a salesman akin to being an actor?  And isn’t being a Goofy a kind of performance, no matter how rudimentary?   Fortunately, Disneyworld offers unparalleled opportunities for thespians of all levels.  With Crumble’s help, I was able to get a bit part providing background “color” in a 1940’s New York street scene that plays more or less permanently in Disneyworld.  I was supposed to strike up improvised conversations with passing tourists.  What with my New York background, I was able to develop a pretty convincing shtick that pleased my supervisors no end. 

Soon, I was landing more small parts in the never-ending cycle of productions that make Disneyworld such a delightful place.  It was great fun, and it meant extra cash with which I was able to get some decent clothes for my after-work life.  It was during a crowd scene in the abridged Hunchback that I found myself standing next to Lucy, an aspiring actress.  Lucy had rather mousy hair, but the sweetest smile and she knew how to wear a French peasant dress if you know what I mean.  During one of the breaks, I bought her a Diet Coke and made her laugh with my Quasimodo impression. 

Lucy and I became an item.  We lingered over coffee at the employee cafeteria, falling into those playful but passionate debates for which artists are famous.  Lucy was a follower of Stella Adler, believing that she could best realize her characters through abstraction, a kind of “pure” acting.  I favored the more Strassbergian take on the Stanislavski “method,” drawing on life experiences to inform my interpretation of Goofy as well as the other characters in my repertoire.  During these debates, Lucy would repeat the old chestnut about Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier on the set of Marathon Man; the one that ends with Sir Laurence saying “why not try acting, my dear boy?”  When Lucy delivered the punch line with a plummy English accent, we would collapse into giggles.

Am I in love with Lucy?  No.  But she does have a heart of gold.  She makes no demands on me, and expresses gratitude when I treat her to a Diet Coke or a movie ticket. She knows when I need to brood (artists need brooding time).  Sometimes I think Lucy is the only thing that has made my new life worth living.  But we’re not computers, we don’t ingest data and spit out love; it has to happen naturally.  I have settled into a routine with Lucy that is comfortable and satisfying, even though part of me yearns for some indefinable je ne sais quoi, as Gloria used to say. 

Which brings me to the other day, when I may or may not have seen Gloria here at the Magic Kingdom.  I say “may or may not” because I was on Goofy duty at the time, and the costume cuts down on one’s peripheral vision rather severely.  By the time I swiveled around to get a better look at her, some brat was tugging at my sleeve. When I looked up again, she was gone.  The glimpse I caught looked like her – the auburn hair, the sensuous hips, a ghost of a smile on the three-quarter profile.  And it would not be unusual to find Gloria in a place like Disneyworld.  She worked as a travel agent and was constantly getting offered free promotional trips to resort places.  She was also with a man, but whether it was a boyfriend or just her brother Jim, I couldn’t tell.

I was haunted by the possible sighting of Gloria.  She would know from my recent postcards (I hadn’t stopped writing, even though she never wrote me, except through her lawyer) that I was still in Disneyworld.  I wondered why she would come, except to find me.  At other times, I was convinced that the woman I saw was a perfect stranger, sharing only the most basic features with my soon-to-be ex.

Lucy noticed the change in me right away and started bugging me to take a vacation.  Everyone needs a vacation, Lucy said, even from Disneyworld.  Lucy seemed a little put out when I told her that I was taking a vacation alone, but she came around like a trooper.  It being October, things had slowed down enough for me to get a couple of weeks off, with Crumble’s help. 

I jumped into the old Hyundai and just started driving north a couple days ago.  It was one of those life decisions I talked about a minute ago – no good reason, just a gut feeling.   Once again, the logic of thing became clear only after the fact.   As I made my way up through Virginia, then Maryland and Delaware, the autumn nip in the air and the blazing foliage told me I was doing the right thing. 

Now, nursing my beer in the comfort of a motel room in King of Prussia, PA, I know that I will go to Long Island.  I will stop by Gloria’s travel agency, maybe surprise her with flowers, and take her out for a nice lunch.  Not romantic, but just as a gesture; a way of apologizing for the abrupt way I left.  And maybe I’ll be able to explain what a hard time I was going through that day I drove away; the way my self-esteem was at an all-time low, the way that marriage and working suddenly crashed down around me like a prison sentence. 

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to convince Gloria to take a road trip to St. John’s to see the football game (there’s one this weekend).  We could put on our old sweatshirts and caps and maybe leave all the unpleasantness behind us.  There is still time for reconciliation.  I’ll get an office job – office jobs aren’t so bad, in reality – and we could even start a family.  It certainly isn’t wrong for me to make one last attempt with Gloria.  I mean, even if she still wants a divorce (“I wouldn’t blame you,” I’ll say to her), at least we could end things on a positive note. 

The last dregs of beer put me in a philosophical mood.  Even if things don’t go well with Gloria it won’t be the end of the world.  As long as I get back to Orlando in twelve days, I’ll still have my job.  With the weather cooling down, the Goofy costume will be more comfortable.  There’s certainly room to grow as an actor and – what the hell – I could end up on Broadway or in the movies.  Then Gloria would be sorry!  And, of course, Lucy will be waiting for me when I get back.  This time, at least, I didn’t burn my bridges.  Who says people can’t change?