The Hollow Man

What the hell am I doing? His mind’s voice was barely audible above the constant roar of neurobabble from the tens of thousands of fun-seeking souls above him.

Running, he answered himself. Hiding.

Why?

The neurobabble hissed and surged.

Why? Why not just tell the authorities what happened? Lead the police back to the lake? Tell them about Vanni Fucci.

Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, let’s have fun, goddamn it, these three days are costing me a fortune.…

Bremen squeezed his temples.

Uh-huh. Tell the authorities. Let the cops call to confirm your identity and find out that you’re the guy who just burned down his house and disappeared … then you just happen to be on hand when a gangster dumps a dead body. And how, pray tell, sir, did you happen to get both the gangster’s and corpse’s names?

Why did I burn down the house?

No, later. Later. Think about that later.

No cops. No explanations. If you think this place is hell, try a night or two in a holding cell. Wonder what’s in your bunkmates’ little craniums … do you want a night or two of that, Jeremy old boy?

Bremen unlocked the stall, walked to the urinal against the wall, tried to urinate, couldn’t, zipped up, and went over to the sink. The cold water helped. He was startled as the pale, sick face rose up in the mirror in front of him.

To hell with the cops. To hell with Vanni Fucci and his pals. Just go away from here. Go away.

There were more voices in the hall. Bremen whirled, but although the door to the ladies’ rest room across the hall banged open, no one came in here. Not yet.

Bremen stood there a second, flicking water from his cheeks. The trick, he realized, was not just getting out of this labyrinth unchallenged, but getting out of the park itself. Vanni Fucci would have met up with the other gangsters by now—Sal, Bert, and Ernie, Bremen remembered—and they would be watching the exits.

Bremen found a paper towel and dried his face. Suddenly he froze and lowered the towel. There were two faces in the mirror, and one of them was grinning at him.

The golf cart came up behind Bremen in one of the main corridors. The heavyset man behind the wheel said, “Wanta ride?”

Bremen nodded and got in. The cart hummed ahead, following a blue stripe in the concrete. Other carts passed going the other way, following a yellow stripe. The second one that passed carried three security guards.

The driver shifted an unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth and said, “You don’t have to wear your head down here, you know.”

Bremen nodded and shrugged.

“It’s your sweat,” said the man. “Headin’ out or in?”

Bremen pointed upward.

“Which exit?”

“The castle,” said Bremen, hoping his voice was suitably muffled.

The driver frowned. “The castle? You mean Forecourt B-four? Or the A side?”

“B-four,” said Bremen, and stifled the urge to scratch his head through the heavy material.

“Yeah, I’m goin’ by there,” said the driver, and turned right down a different corridor. A minute later he stopped the cart by a stairway. The sign read FORECOURT B-4.

Bremen slid out and gave the man a friendly salute.

The driver nodded, shifted his cigar, and said, “Don’t let the little fuckers stick any pins in you like they did Johnson,” and then he was gone, the cart whining into the dim distance. Bremen went up the stairway as quickly as his limited visibility and oversized shoes would allow.

He was almost out, down the phony length of Main Street and out, when the children began to gather around.

At first he kept walking, all but ignoring them, but their shouts and his fear of being noticed by adults made him pause and sit on a bench for a moment, letting them circle him.

“Hey, Goofy, hi!” they cried, pressing in. Bremen did what he thought characters were supposed to do … overacted, stayed silent, and raised his fat-gloved, three-fingered hand to his bulging pooch nose as if embarrassed. The kids loved it. They crowded closer, trying to sit on his lap, hugging him.

Bremen hugged them back and acted like Goofy. Parents took pictures and shot video. Bremen blew them kisses, hugged a few more kids, got to his oversized, cartoon feet, and began shuffling away toward the exits, waving and blowing kisses as he went.

The pack of kids and their parents moved away, laughing and waving. Bremen turned and confronted a quite different group of children.

There were at least a dozen. The youngest might have been about six, the oldest no more than fifteen. Few of them had any hair, although most wore caps or bandannas, and one girl—Melody—wore an expensive wig. Their faces were as pale as Bremen’s had been in the rest-room mirror. Their eyes were large. Some were smiling. Some were trying to smile.

“Hey, Goofy,” said Terry, the nine-year-old boy in the last stages of bone cancer. He was in a wheelchair.

“Hi, Goofy!” called Sestina, the six-year-old black girl from Bethesda. She was very beautiful, her large eyes and sharp cheekbones emphasizing her fragility. Her hair was her own and set in precise cornrows; she wore blue, green, and pink ribbons. She had AIDS.

“Say something, Goofy!” whispered Lawrence, the thirteen-year-old with the brain tumor. Four operations so far. Two more than Gail had had. Lawrence, lying in the dark of postop and hearing Dr. Graynemeir telling Mom in the hallway that the prognosis was poor, three months at the most. That had been seven weeks ago.

Seven-year-old Melody said nothing, but stepped forward and hugged Bremen until her wig was askew. Bremen—Goofy—hugged her back.

The children surged forward in a single movement, an orchestrated motion, as if choreographed far in advance. It was not humanly possible, even for Goofy, to hug them all at once, to find room in the circle of his arms for them all, but he did. Goofy embraced them all and sent a message of well-being and hope and love to each of them, firing it in laserlike telepathic surges of the sort he had sent to Gail when the pain and medication made mindtouch the hardest. He was sure they could not hear him, could not sense the messages, but he sent them anyway, even while encompassing them with his arms and whispering soft things in each of their ears—not Goofy- like nonsense, although in Goofy’s voice as best as he could imitate it—but secret and personal things.

“Melody, it’s all right, your mother knows about the mistake with the piano music. It’s all right. She doesn’t care. She loves you.”

“Lawrence, quit worrying about the money. The money’s not important. The insurance isn’t important. You’re important.”

“Sestina, they do want to be with you, little kitten. Toby’s just afraid to give you a hug because he thinks you don’t like him. He’s shy.”

The parents and nurses and trip sponsors … a woman from Green Bay had been working on this Dream for two years … all stood back while this strange hugging and huddling and whispering continued.

Ten minutes later Goofy touched the children’s cheeks a final time, waved jauntily, and walked down the rest of Main Street, rode the monorail around its circuit, stepped off at the Transportation and Ticket Center, walked out past the ticket booths, saluted Sal Empori and Bert Cappi and a red-faced Vanni Fucci where they stood watching the crowd, sauntered out to the parking lot, and boarded a chartered bus just leaving for the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress. The elderly tourists on board the bus cheered and patted Goofy on the back.