Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town Page 19

  His daughter was fine. Yes, indeed.

  Unless there was a window. Maybe that was how she would be taken from him. Through a window. He realized that he had seen lots of women exiting the bathroom, but he wasn't sure he had seen any go in who hadn't already come out, meaning his daughter might be alone in there with no one to protect her from--how could he have missed it?--that kidnapper with the rolling bucket and mop. That kidnapper who had been pretending to be a park employee all day, just waiting for the moment when he'd be alone in the bathroom with a small child. In an instant he'd have her gagged and they'd be gone, the two of them disappearing forever into the January twilight.

  He saw an older woman with bluish hair and a Camp Mickey sweatshirt approaching the bathroom, her mouth working hard on what had to be an apple-fritter-sized piece of chewing gum. She wasn't a young mom with a child in tow, but she would do, and he was about to ask her to check on his little girl, make sure she was all right--good God, simply make sure she was even still inside the damn bathroom!--but before he could make his own mouth open, she was through the archway and gone.

  But that was good, too. It meant that the criminally insane, incompetent-to-stand-trial sociopath who had spent his day in the bathroom just waiting for a small child on which to prey could no longer operate with impunity. There was a third person inside there. Did it matter that his daughter's protector was a gum-chewing senior citizen in a Camp Mickey sweatshirt? Certainly not.

  Unless this woman happened to be dangerous. He knew from an article he had read a year ago that there were forty-three women on death row, and some of them were senior citizens. Child murderers.

  And, clearly, the woman with the bluish hair was strong enough to steal or murder his child, if that was something she wanted to do.

  But why would anyone want to do that, ever? Why would anyone want to hurt a child? Yet bad things happened all the time, and they happened to kids every bit as adorable as his. Look at what she was already having to endure: Her mother had died.

  He could make no mistake about this: A bad thing--a very bad thing--could happen at any moment, and there was no way he could even begin to explain or justify or rationalize the grotesque bits of tragedy that appeared in this world out of nowhere. A physical exam with something unexpected in the blood work. That was all it had taken to begin the slide--and slide was precisely the right word, he decided, with its connotations of a quick and slippery and out-of-control descent--that had done in his wife. Five months, start to finish. Five months.

  Every single day, children disappeared in a positively incalculable fraction of that amount of time. A blink. They disappeared on their way home from school, they disappeared as they played on their front lawns, they disappeared from grocery stores while the parents pressed their thumbs into melons in the extra-wide aisles of fruit.

  And, he had to assume, they disappeared from Disney World. The only reason you never heard about those kids or saw them on milk cartons or the TV news was because the Disney empire controlled the world. Didn't they own some TV network? Of course they did. They probably owned all 500 channels on the satellite dish that sat outside the guest-bedroom window back home.

  It was 5:19 and 55 seconds. Almost 5:20. She'd been in there three minutes.

  Her bladder couldn't possibly hold three minutes of pee. His could--he figured it had about three hours' in there right now--but not hers. Something clearly had happened, and that's when it hit him: No one was interested in abducting her from the bathroom, because that wasn't possible. There was no second entrance; there weren't even any windows. Instead, someone had hurt her and left her bleeding or unconscious in a far corner stall. It had been one of the last women he'd seen leave the bathroom. The tall woman who'd been wearing the scarf and the sunglasses.

  He knew firsthand there was no need for sunglasses at this time of day, unless your intentions were suspect. (Hadn't he taken his off?) That woman had done something: She had done something awful.

  He resolved firmly that if his daughter wasn't outside in sixty seconds, he would go in after her. Four minutes was his limit; it was all he could endure.

  But what if four minutes was too long and he lost her--lost her forever? Then what? He couldn't imagine. He just couldn't imagine. He tried to slow his breathing while wiping his forehead under his cap with his handkerchief. He was sweating, sweating profusely--a human fountain oozing fluids from every pore--even though it was the end of the day and he was in the shade. The cotton square in his hand was now the color of oatmeal from his perspiration, and it was as damp as a used beach towel.

  Inside, he heard another great whoosh of water, and a moment later the woman in the Camp Mickey sweatshirt strolled through the arch, applying a coat of burgundy-colored lipstick across her mouth as she walked. She had eyeglasses the size of coffee cup saucers, and he decided to ask her if she had seen a little girl in the bathroom, a charming first-grader in a gray denim baseball cap with what looked like a fish on the front but was in actuality a whale--a souvenir from their summer trip to Cape Cod, their last as a family of three.

  He lunged toward the woman, one hand before him, and stumbled, recovering awkwardly.

  "Harold!" she cried, moving quickly away from him, her eyes wide behind the goggles that passed for eyeglasses. An older man appeared out of nowhere, wide-shouldered and robust, with a mound of hair on his head the color of ash from a woodstove. He took the woman by the elbow and led her away, where they disappeared quickly into the crowds that milled by the souvenir stands and ice cream carts, and the conga lines that snaked around almost every ride.

  He wondered if they were going to report him to security, and he was about to meet the Disney World Secret Police. But he didn't care about that, all he wanted was to see his daughter--all he wanted was to see that little person with eyes as green as her mother's, scuffing her sandal-clad feet through the ladies' room arch.

  He turned, oblivious to his resolution to wait a full four minutes, uncaring that he still had a solid fifteen seconds to go, and started into the ladies' room--was he crying out her name as he walked? He hoped not, but he thought he might be, when he realized he could see the line of white sinks opposite the stalls, and she was standing on her toes, whipping the last drops of water from her small fingers.

  In his head he murmured thank you, thank you, and it was all he could do not to fall on his knees or, perhaps, spread wide his arms in a giant "V." Victory. Hallelujah. Amen. He turned, hoping to retreat before she knew he was there, but it was too late. She'd seen him.

  When she emerged, her arms were folded across her chest and she was shaking her head. He knew she was about to chastise him for checking on her, for worrying, but she saw his tears and she paused. She looked up at him, then straight at him because he was kneeling before her, and, understanding everything, she touched her palm to his cheek. He lifted her and stood, and held her against him for a long time, trying to make light of his panic but not really caring that his jokes must have sounded pathetic and lame.

  He promised her that he would try not to worry next time, though he was quite sure that he would. He felt her nodding before she buried her head in the small pillow of flesh where his shoulder met his neck, her chin a pear against his collarbone, and her body relaxed completely in his arms.