* * * * *

He'd had this game, her dad, that he liked to play with her when he was drunk or stoned or whatever. Which, in other words, was most of the time. He'd come home and open the front door and pretend she was invisible.

"Suzanne, girl, where are you?" he'd cry. "I can't see you!"

"Daddy!" she'd holler. "Right here!" She'd pound her fists against his legs.

"Suzanne!"

"Daddy!"

He'd trip over her, stumble, knock her gently down to the shag with him, tickle her until she could barely breathe, until her laughter was just weak, wet, happy squeaks.

"Suzanne! Where are you darlin?"

Well, when he wasn't drunk or stoned, lifting her over his head like a surfboard and tickling her down to the grass and threatening to surf her hiney all the way to Australia, then she really was invisible to him. Sobriety, she would have to conclude, was as a general concept highly overrated.

She always seemed to think about her dad late at night, when it was time to go home. She'd been only five years old when he died, and yet her memories of him were sharper than yesterday's. Particles of dust churning in a shaft of July light. The texture and taste of American cheese slices, the crinkle of the cellophane wrapper. American cheese was his favorite snack, and sometimes he'd flip squares to her like fish to a seal.

Marvin punched her card – 1:03 a.m. – and motioned her through the gate with a flick of his MAXIM. She slid her time card up under the sun visor. It was 1:03 a.m. and her day from hell was officially over.

She turned off the a.c., which was worthless anyway. Her hand, she noticed, was trembling, and no wonder. One dead man on the Matterhorn; one giant psycho; forty bucks worth of perfectly good pot flushed down the toilet. A cool, fishy breeze had managed to work its way inland, and there wasn't much smog; what smog there was even seemed kind of romantic, made the stars down along the horizon look fuzzy and soft.

Not another car in sight, either direction, but the light stayed red. She wasn't in any particular hurry, come to think of it. Right turn, left turn, straight? The apartment in West Hollywood was out of the question, of course, because of the wicked stepsister and the rent money Suzanne didn't have; Robert's van was a possibility, if it hadn't been impounded since she last talked to him, but it was a VAN for God's sake, decorated with yellow tennis balls he'd cut in half and glued to the walls. The thought of a night alone in there (Robert worked the dog shift till dawn) was just too lonely, too depressing, for words.

That old song from the Nineties was on the radio, "Stupid Girl," her own personal anthem. The light changed and Suzanne eased off the clutch, whispered a short prayer of the please-God-please variety. The engine fluttered for a second, but her Rabbit rolled out of the employee lot and onto the street without conking again.

"Thank you, God," she murmured, just in case. You never know, right?

She turned...left. Why not? Ahead of her were the guest lots, empty now, three motels, every window dark and curtain drawn, the Pick-N-Pay, another motel, and an abandoned Church of the Holy Pentecost. On the wall of the church there was a faded picture of a child riding an escalator up to heaven, up out of a tangle of pale yellow flames. Suzanne wondered if there was a down escalator too, if there was a food court in heaven, a Nordstrom's, and (drowsy, floating in that weird in-between, that trippy frappe of asleep and awake and old music on the radio) she almost didn't see the car with its hood up and engine smoking; she almost didn't see the man who stepped out to flag her down.

Reflex, she tapped the brakes, gave the wheel a jerk. That was a mistake, she realized, even before she'd done it. Her little Rabbit was pretty single-minded, when it came to following instructions; you could turn, or stop, but not really both at the same time. The car stalled, blew a big sweet breath of gasoline at her, and rolled into the parking lot of the Holy Pentecost.

Fuck, Suzanne mused. She cranked the ignition, just for the fun of it. Nothing.

The guy tapped on her window. She glanced up at him — he was unshaven, about forty years old, with blue bloodshot eyes and a stringy ponytail. Perfect: just the sort of drifter you'd want to encounter late at night, in an abandoned Orange County parking lot. She tried the ignition again.

"Hey," he said through the glass, "could you give us a lift to a gas station?"

Us? she wondered, just as (Did she need this shit? Did she really need this shit?) rumbling up into the puddle of yellow streetlight came the big black maniac from the Skyway.

"Billy," he said, "you didn't let me finish explaining my theory about Critter Country." He saw her. "Snow White!"

Suzanne made sure her doors were locked and held up her cellphone. "Leave me alone!" she screamed. "I'm calling the police!"

This was somewhat of a bluff since she hadn't paid her cellphone bill in recent memory. She thought she remembered something about being able to call 911 even if you service had been suspended, but her cellphone wasn't charged, because why charge it when your service had been suspended?

"I'm calling them right now!"

"Wait!" the drifter said. He edged away, palms up. "Shit! What is your problem?"

"What is MY problem? MY problem?"

"I know YOU!" the big maniac said suddenly, excited. He rumbled closer.

"Leave me ALONE!" Suzanne screamed. She stared up, up, up the slope of the big guy. It was impossible, how huge he was. "Get BACK!"

He studied her face intently, one long, surprisingly slender finger pressed against the bridge of his glasses. He lifted his chin and lowered it very slowly.

"Come on down and meet some friends of mine," he began to sing – SING! — in a frail little wisp of a voice that couldn't possibly come out of a monster bod like that, "meet some friends of mine, down at engine house, engine house number nine."

Suzanne couldn't help but snort. "You actually remember that?"

"You lived with your dad who was a fireman," the big guy said, "and a dalmation named Lazy."

"Nobody remembers that," Suzanne said. "It was only on two seasons and a half."

"Sunday nights on the Disney Channel. The plotting was somewhat derivative, but the acting was superb. You reminded me of a young Hayley Mills. Suzanne Bailey."

Somewhere, not far away, a dog barked, paused to hack something up, then started barking again; across the street, razor wire coiled down off the dead Best Western sign like a strand of Christmas tree tinsel.

"Listen," Suzanne said, "if you guys are star-stalkers? I'm guessing you could do better. I know a girl who played a girl in the second HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, if you want her number. One of the minor cheerleaders. My career is currently on hiatus."

"Don't lose heart," the big guy said. "Look at Walt Disney, for example. PINOCCHIO when it was first released, was a financial disaster. My name is Walter. This is my friend Billy. I'm sorry we acted so impetuously on the Skyway, but you shouldn't smoke cigarettes when you're in costume. You really shouldn't smoke at all, you know."

"Could you put that phone down?" the drifter said. "I have a thing about cops."

Suzanne shrugged, tossed the phone onto the passenger's seat. "You and me both," she said.

"It must be very exciting," the big black guy said, "to be a cast member at Disneyland. "Would you like to know what I think is the only negative aspect of Disneyland?"

"The stupid shows?" his friend asked. "The right-wing patriotism and corporate butt-licking? The colorful audio-animatronic Third World peasants?"

The only negative aspect," he continued cheerfully, "is that eventually you have to leave. Not so at Walt Disney World in Florida. When you go home for the night, you can take the monorail to the Polynesian Resort and wake up in the morning to a stunning view of the castle." He straightened his glasses. "Suzanne," he said, "what would you consider the ten most indelible moments in Disney animated history?"

"Here we go," the drifter muttered.

"Indelible?"

"Memorable," the big guy said. He bounced on his toes and Suzanne wouldn't have been surprised if he'd soared off suddenly like a helium-filled cartoon parade balloon.

"No offense?" she said. "But are you like some sort of fanatical Disney freak?"

"The proper appellation," the drifter said, in what she had to admit was a pretty dead-on imitation of his buddy, "is Disney enthusiast."

"Of course one must include the final scenes of both Snow White and Pinocchio," the big buddy went on, "but I'd argue the final sequence of Cinderella is just as rich with possibilities."

She shrugged. "Never seen it," she said, and you'd have thought from the horrified look on his face that she'd suggested he go in for a rectal swab. "I liked MONSTERS, INC."

"MONSTERS, INC.?" The big black guy chuckled.

The drifter guy sat up, rubbed his thumb along his bottom lip, contemplated the torn toe of his Chuck Taylor high-top. He wore rings on all the fingers of his right hand, even the thumb. "What show did you say you were in?" he asked.

"ENGINE HOUSE NUMBER NINE," his buddy said. "Oh, she was superb, Billy. Suzanne had the sort of elusive Disney star quality one doesn't see much of anymore. A young Hayley Mills."

"You know," the drifter guy said, rubbing rubbing his bottom lip, hooking a lank of hair behind his ear, "I might have an idea. I might have just stumbled across the opportunity of a lifetime."

Suzanne leaned back against her Rabbit. She took off her Dodgers cap and raked fingers through her hair. For a moment she pretended there was someone, out there, who was tracking her progress across the wide, white face of a clock, in a cheerful kitchen, someone who was sipping coffee and watching a FRIENDS re-run and expecting her home at such and such a time, on the dot, and would be worried if she was a minute late.
"What?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

* * * * *

"Picture this," Billy said. He set his coffee cup down on the counter and gazed up at the ceiling, at the fluorescent tubes lisping and fluttering there. He was telling her how famous and rich it was going to make her, his opportunity of a lifetime, how she'd get soap operas and sit-coms and all the parts Miley Cyrus turned down, how she'd have a condo in Malibu with room for as many dogs as she wanted.

They were at the IHOP a couple of miles from the park and across the street from the gas station where she'd driven them. Two a.m. They'd offered to buy her breakfast, and she'd agreed. Why not? She hadn’t had anything to eat since her shift break at four, and then only a bagel with hummus. She knew she shouldn't trust the two of them, but she had to keep reminding herself. Not once had either one of them brushed against her boob or tried to slide an arm around her shoulders. She hadn't caught them, not once, looking at her with the subtle, acquisitive, half-lidded lizard stare she was used to. They might be dangerous — she wasn't that naive — but at least, she reasoned, they would be dangerous in original ways.

Billy made a fist and pressed it against his ear. She realized the rings on his fingers weren't rings at all, but tattoos. A black-ink circle of vines and tiny thorns tooled around each finger, just beneath the second knuckle.

"Hello?" he said, fist still pressed to his ear.

"What?" she asked.

He shushed her. "I've got a call. Hello? This is Pepsi. Who was that blonde girl I saw on the tube last night? Suzanne Bailey? Get her in here. We want her for our Super Bowl spot."

"Please," she told him. "National commercials are impossible. There are a million girls for the smallest part."

"You're not a million girls," he said. "It's all about exposure. Once they see you, they'll have to have you."

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