“That’s the same thing as us killing him.”
“He’s Maleficent’s spy. He has to be dealt with.”
“Listen to you! Do you hear what you’re saying? There!” she said, pointing.
“A microwave?”
“You don’t start a microwave without opening it.”
Philby nodded. “And a microwave is vented, so he won’t suffocate.”
“Maybe they won’t use it for a day or two.”
“Maybe they’ll use it tonight.”
“Either way, it won’t matter.” She added for the sake of Philby’s obvious hunger for vengeance, “She’s going to freak when she can’t find him. Have you ever lost your dog or cat?”
“I lost Elvis, my cat, one time,” Philby said.
“Find a cookie sheet. We need to move him.”
“We run the microwave for two minutes and he cooks from the inside out.”
“You need your head examined.”
“True story.”
* * *
“From the moment we use our Cast Member cards to enter,” Finn told Charlene, poised in front of the CAST MEMBERS ONLY door on Deck 1 that accessed the I-95 corridor, “both Security, and possibly the OTs, will know we’re in. And if they know we’re in—”
“—the OTs will know we’re headed to the hospital.”
“And any advantage of surprise we might have is blown.”
“The OTs could be waiting for us.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Yes.” It did not escape him that Maybeck could be the bait and Charlene the ultimate prize. The sacrifice. He felt responsible for her; he had to protect her.
“It’s not like we have a choice,” she said.
“Actually,” Finn said, “I think we do. That is, I think we have to consider that this could be a trap. That while one of us goes in, the other could hide here, alongside the stairs.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!”
Far more agile and quick than he knew himself to be, Finn shoved Charlene and unbuckled her ID lanyard at the same time. As she fell off balance, her lanyard came loose from around her neck. No ID card, no access.
Charlene grabbed the lanyard, but couldn’t hold on as she fell.
With her ID already in hand, Finn unlocked the door, slipped through, and pulled it shut, locking her out.
Charlene raised her fist, about to pound on the door, but stopped herself. To bring attention to Finn was stupid.
“I hate you!” she hissed at the closed door. Then she stepped back and stomped her foot. “Not really,” she said.
* * *
This is so cool! It’s boiling out here. I forgot my suntan lotion. I’m so bored.
The thoughts in Mattie Weaver’s head were not hers. Instead, she heard a loud tangle of expletives, happiness, frustration, malcontent, desire, joy, elation, hunger, apprehensiveness, and angst. They came to her in whispers and shouts, complaint and celebration. Like something from a nightmare. It made her so dizzy that she had to stop amid the press of human flesh on Vibe’s deck and collect herself.
A large brass band was performing in front of a five-story hotel with a vast terrace restaurant on ground level and a balcony restaurant on the roof. People, both on shore and on the ship, were clapping in time. Banners read:
WELCOME, DISNEY DREAM!
and
DREAMS DO COME TRUE!
and
PANAMANIACS ♥ DISNEY
By her watch, they were still forty-five minutes from the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the second lock. The morning’s Navigator had implied that the second ceremony might be considered the most important of the four.
While Mattie considered the best deck from which to view the festivities, she took her eyes off the crowded deck outside Vibe. When she looked again, there he was: wide shoulders, pink skin raw from the sun, a stubble of hair atop an enormous head, ears like a cartoon character’s puffy cheeks, piggish eyes. Greg Luowski, as they’d described him.
It was a risk worth taking, but a risk nonetheless. Some people could feel it. The experience went back as far as the New Testament. If he had that kind of sensitivity, she would be in big trouble. Big, as in six-feet-one, one hundred and eighty or ninety pounds. Seriously big. The kind of big capable of picking her up like an oversized pillow and launching her over-board.
No sound whatsoever now; everything in slow motion, driving her right shoulder between kids as she worked her way toward him. Heads, hair, and shoulders bouncing in unison—something beyond the rail had excited the gathering all at once. Mattie never took her eyes off the man-boy’s freckled neck. His height made him an easy target.
Closer now. Only a yard to go. The crowd jostled, crushing her. She fought against the invasive voices, resisting them, holding them back as best she could. But it was like trying to fight off a fire hose with a napkin. The voices rose from the depths of the silence.