Part 65 (1/2)
”Off in hippie college-towns you'll always find people with enough brains to realize that their neighbors aren't the boogieman. But there ain't so many hippie college towns these days. I wish you two luck, but I think you'd be nuts to walk out the door in the morning expecting anything better than a kick in the teeth.”
That made Perry think of Death Waits, and the sense of urgency came back to him. ”OK, we have to go now,” he said. ”Thanks, Francis.”
”Nice to meet you, young woman,” he said, and when he smiled, it was a painful thing, all pouches and wrinkles and sags, and he gimped away with his limp more p.r.o.nounced than ever.
They tracked down the crew at the tea-house's big table. Everyone roared greetings at them when they came through the door, a proper homecoming, but when Perry counted heads, he realized that there was no one watching the ride.
”Guys, who's running the ride?”
They told him about Brazil then, and Hilda listened with her head c.o.c.ked, her face animated with surprise, dismay, then delight. ”You say there are *fifty* rides open?”
”All at once,” Lester said. ”All in one go.”
”Holy mother of poo,” Hilda breathed. Perry couldn't even bring himself to say *anything*. He couldn't even imagine Brazil in his head -- jungles? beaches? He knew nothing about the country. They'd built *fifty* rides, without even making contact with him. He and Lester had designed the protocol to be open because they thought it would make it easier for others to copy what they'd done, but he'd never thought --
It was like vertigo, that feeling.
”So you're Yoko, huh?” Lester said finally. It made everyone smile, but the tension was still there. Something big had just happened, bigger than any of them, bigger than the beating that had been laid on Death Waits, bigger than anything Perry had ever done. From his mind to a nation on another continent --
”You're the sidekick, huh?” Hilda said.
Lester laughed. ”Touche. It's very nice to meet you and thank you for bringing him back home. We were starting to miss him, though G.o.d alone knows why.”
”I plan on keeping him,” she said, giving his bicep a squeeze. It brought Perry back to them. The little girls were staring at Hilda with saucer eyes. It made him realize that except for Suzanne and Eva, their whole little band was boys, all boys.
”Well, I'm home now,” he said. He knelt down and showed the girls his cast. ”I got a new one,” he said. ”They had to throw the old one out. So I need your help decorating this. Do you think you could do the job?”
Lyenitchka looked critically at the surface. ”I think we could do the gig,” she said. ”What do you think, partner?”
Tjan snorted out his nose, but she was so solemn that the rest kept quiet. Ada matched Lyenitchka's critical posture and then nodded authoritatively. ”Sure thing, partner.”
”It's a date,” Perry said. ”We're gonna head home and put down our suitcases and come back and open the ride if it's ready. It's time Lester got some time off. I'm sure Suzanne will appreciate having him back again.”
Another silence fell over the group, tense as a piano wire. Perry looked from Lester to Suzanne and saw in a second what was up. He had time to notice that his first emotional response was to be intrigued, not sorry or scared. Only after a moment did he have the reaction he thought he should have -- a mixture of sadness for his friend and irritation that they had yet another thing to deal with in the middle of a hundred other crises.
Hilda broke the tension -- ”It was great to meet you all. Dinner tonight, right?”
”Absolutely,” Kettlewell said, seizing on this. ”Leave it to us -- we'll book someplace just great and have a great dinner to welcome you guys back.”
Eva took his arm. ”That's right,” she said. ”I'll get the girls to pick it out.” The little girls jumped up and down with excitement at this, and the baby brothers caught their excitement and made happy kid-screeches that got everyone smiling again.
Perry gave Lester a solemn, supportive hug, kissed Suzanne and Eva on the cheeks (Suzanne smelled good, something like sandalwood), shook hands with Tjan and Kettlewell and tousled all four kids before lighting out for the ride, gasping out a breath as they stepped into the open air.
Death Waits regained consciousness several times over the next week, aware each time that he was waking up in a hospital bed on a crowded ward, that he'd woken here before, and that he hurt and couldn't remember much after the beating had started.
But after a week or so, he found himself awake and aware -- he still hurt all over, a dull and distant stoned ache that he could tell was being kept at bay by powerful painkillers. There was someone waiting for him.
”h.e.l.lo, Darren,” the man said. ”I'm an attorney working for your friends at the ride. My name is Tom Levine. We're suing Disney and we wanted to gather some evidence from you.”