The coach let them off to a group of Hawai'ian-shirt-clad staff who
shouted "Aloha!" at them as they debarked, and picked up their luggage
with swift, cheerful, relentless efficiency. Her check-in was so
painless she wasn't sure it was over until a nice young lady who
looked Chechen picked up her bag for her and urged her out to the
grounds, which were green and lush, like nothing she'd seen since
landing in Florida. She was surrounded by the hotel structures,
long-houses decorated with Polynesian masks and stalked by leggy
ibises and chirping tropical birds. Before her was a white-sand beach
fronting onto an artificial lake ringed with other luxury hotels: a
gigantic 1970s Soviet A-frame building and a gingerbread-choked
Victorian hotel. The lake was ringed with a monorail track and plied
by handsome paddle-wheeler ferry-boats.
She stared gape-jawed at this until the bellhop gently tugged at her
elbow, giving her a dazzling smile.
Her room was the kind of thing you'd see Lucy and Ricky checking into
on honeymoon in an old *I Love Lucy* episode -- wicker ceiling fans,
bamboo furniture, a huge hot-tub shaped like a seashell. Outside, a
little terrace looking over the lake, with a pair of cockatoos looking
quizzically at her. The bellhop waved at them and they cawed at her
and flew off. Suzanne must have made a disappointed noise, because the
bellhop patted her on the arm and said, "Don't worry, we feed them
here, they come back all the time. Greedy birdies!"
She tipped the bellhop five bucks once she'd been given the grand tour
of the room -- a tame Internet connection that was "kid-friendly" and
a likewise censored video-on-demand service, delivery pizza or sushi,
information on park hours, including the dazzling array of extras she
could purchase. It turned out that resort guests were eligible to
purchase priority passes for boarding rides ahead of the plebes, and
for entering parks early and staying late. This made Suzanne feel
right at home -- it was very Russian in its approach: the more you
spent, the better your time was.
She bought it all: all the fast-passes and priority cards, all of it
loaded into a grinning Mickey on a lanyard, a wireless pendant that
would take care of her everywhere she went in the park, letting her
spend money like water.
Thus girded, she consulted with her bellhop some more and laid out an
itinerary. Once she'd showered she found she didn't want to wear any
of her European tailored shorts and blouses. She wanted to disappear
into the Great American Mass. The hotel gift shop provided her with a
barkcloth Hawai'ian shirt decorated with tessellated Disney trademarks
and a big pair of loose shorts, and once she donned them, she saw that
she could be anyone now, any tourist in the park. A pair of cheap
sunglasses completed the look and she paid for it all by waving her
Mickey necklace at the register, spending money like water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account