This Must Be the Place (15 page)

Hope looked out over the new Potsdamer Platz. Soon it would look like any other newly built complex of shopping malls and prefab tourist attractions like somewhere in the middle of the United States, she thought. It was a pity they couldn’t leave that space as it was as a memorial, like the church, to remind people of the distance they had traveled to reconnect. She might have liked to stay longer in such a place. Speeding past Potsdamer Platz on the elevated train, she imagined the Atlantic Ocean, dark under the wings of the plane. Another no-man’s-land, a moat. Her buffer zone. She imagined herself holding on to Dave’s hand on one side and Walter’s on the other, arms stretched so wide that they lifted her up, feet dangling like a child’s, toes dipping every so often into the water.

The city flew by out the window and she thought about discussing it with Walter at the end of the day. That he spoke nearly perfect English with no regional accent made him seem familiar, yet he was unlike any American she knew. He understood the geography of the United States better than most, but had never been anywhere except Southern California.He made references to the popular culture of her youth, but his delivery of this information was oddly clinical, as if he’d been storing it up for years and examining it privately; as if this were the first time he’d actually taken it out and played with it. To the extent that he was American, he seemed to her like the result of a bizarre and not unsuccessful social experiment: the boy in the bubble, grown up in a hermetically sealed container overseas, exposed to only the bold-faced facts of the culture, not its daily reality. He held a U.S. passport but had never filed American taxes. He had never voted for president. He knew all the songs from the movie
Fame,
all the lyrics to the song “I Sing the Body Electric,” and yet had never graduated from a real American high school, had not experienced the disappointment of a dry cap-and-gown graduation ceremony (no songs, no clapping, no dancing on tables). The thrill of high school was still intact for Walter, as it existed in her imagination as a child: a glamorous future fantasy culled from movies and television and the older kids on her Kansas City block. He was older than she was by about five years, she figured, but his inexperience with her world made him seem innocent. Where she had memories, not just of high school, but also of everything else (college, marriage, New York City) he still had it all to look forward to. He listened to her stories with a wide-eyed fascination that touched her. It had been a long time since someone courted her like this. It had been a long time since someone listened to her stories and remembered every detail, accepting her version of events as truth. Dave always tried to persuade her to see things differently; he always tried to cheer her up. He rationalized her emotions and bullied her with positive suggestions. But Walter didn’t mind when she stared into space for too long. When her eyes filled with tears he didn’t try to cheer her up, and for this she was grateful. Because in his gaze, and he gazed at her often, she was beginning to see her own reflection again. It was something she had not seen clearly in a long time.

11

The Prince Charming costume had permanent sweat stains in the purple velvet at the armpits and was threadbare on the seam where the ruffled yellow collar met the hole for his neck. Walter removed the cotton T-shirt he’d been wearing during the drive down from Los Angeles and pulled the heavy costume over his head, holding it away from his body for as long as possible, as someone knocked at the door of the windowless dressing room and opened it before he could respond.

“Can I join you? We’re on in a minute.”

He had met Sharon at his audition the week before. She was smaller than he was and deeply tan. She quickly removed her clothes so that Walter glimpsed her breasts before the blue polyester gown obscured her body from view, long enough to notice that, like all the American women he had known intimately in the past year, her breasts were very white. German women sunbathed topless.

“Zip me up?”

Sharon held up her long brown hair and turned the open back of her dress toward him.

“I’ve been playing Cinderella since 1981,” she said. “At least three other guys have played Charming since then. I can’t believe they haven’t made you a new costume.”

“It is kind of disgusting.”

“Don’t worry, during the performance the audience can’t see it. They’re too far away from the stage. But when you go into the crowd to take pictures just make sure not to lift your arms up too high. It gets pretty hot in there under the lights.”

She giggled, hiking the blue dress up around her thighs and rubbing on lotion from a bottle she’d pulled out of her bag. Walter pulled on the tight bottom half of his purple costume.

“Never let ’em see you sweat,”
Sharon quoted the popular commercial for deodorant. “You got the slipper?”

He grabbed the clear plastic slipper sitting on the window-sill and followed her onto the outdoor stage.

At his audition, Walter had been given the script and five minutes to prepare the scene in which Charming fits the missing slipper to Cinderella’s foot. He had decided to do the prince as he thought the Brothers Grimm would have imagined him, and had read the whole scene in English with a Bavarian accent. Sharon had giggled and kissed him with an open mouth during the finale.

“The Cinderella story comes from Germany, as I do,” he told the casting director afterward. “I was trying to bring some authenticity to the role.”

“I thought Cinderella was French.”

“French?”

“The whole royalty thing seems French to me.”

“Actually, all the fairy tales are German,” said Walter. “This one is called ‘Aschenputtel’ in the original.”

“‘Aschenputtel,’” Sharon repeated softly.

“In the original version, one of the stepsisters cuts off her heel and the other one cuts off her toes, trying to fit their big feet into Cinderella’s little shoe.”

“That’s gross.”

“When the prince sees the blood everywhere, he knows they’re lying.”

“I don’t think the blood would work for our audiences.” The casting director tapped her clipboard thoughtfully with a pen. “But what you say is interesting, because we do have a lot of German customers at Disneyland. A little European authenticity might give our production a special edge.”

When Walter signed his contract, the human resources department representative from Disneyland went over the routine with him in full. Four scheduled performances a shift, each one followed by a fifteen-minute meet-and-greet session with the audience, followed by a stroll around the grounds to socialize with the other customers. When spoken to, he was always to respond in character. If asked personal questions, he was to smile and move on. If asked for an autograph, he should sign only the name Prince Charming in a fully legible script. Any violation of these rules would result in the immediate cancellation of his contract. On stage before the curtain went up, Sharon gave him the lowdown.

“Mostly they just want to take pictures of you with their kids. Just put your arm around them and smile and move on as quickly as you can.”

“No problem,” said Walter. “I’m an expert at
Knuddelbilder.
”

“What?”

“Cuddle pictures with fans. I do twenty of those a day in Germany when I go out in public.”

“You’re famous in Germany?”

“I’m pretty huge there.”

“That sounds like a joke.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“No, I mean like when people say that so-and-so is ‘huge in Europe,’ it’s like they really mean he’s a total flop here, you know?”

Sharon was cute, thought Walter, but not that cute.

“Seriously. I’m famous in Germany.”

“For what?”

“What do you think we’re doing here?”

“I’m just putting myself through school. I’m in dental hygiene at Long Beach.”

“You’re not an actress?”

Walter was pouring sweat under the velvet and the lights weren’t even on. Sharon giggled.

“If you’re so famous in Germany, what are you doing here?”

Walter brushed his hair to one side with his hand and shrugged. He pulled the yellow collar away from his neck to let some air into his costume.

“Hollywood, you know.”

“In Orange County? No offense, but we’re a long way from all that down here. Bartending in L.A. is probably a better way to get into the business than working at Disneyland.”

“If you must know, I have family down here.”

The phrase sounded strange coming off his tongue. Although it was true, he felt nervous saying it aloud, as if someone might contradict him. But Sharon was a complete stranger; she knew nothing of his life, so new details would not surprise her.

“My grandparents live in Irvine—” he started.

Before he could continue Sharon held one hand to her mouth. On the other she counted off the seconds with her fingers until the lights came on and the curtain went up.

12

First thing in the morning, Walter arrived at the studio and turned on the lights, illuminating the wide expanse of purple carpet at his feet. He walked into the middle of it, stretched out his arms and rolled his head side to side then bent forward so that his fingers just barely touched the ground. He was teetering precariously over the carpet when Orson came in.

Walter stood up, shook out his limbs like a rag doll. “Try it,” he said. “It feels good.”

Orson raised one eyebrow over the cup of tea he was carrying.

“Who is she?”

“I just want to get in shape. I’m doing a cleanse too.”

“A cleanse?”

“Boiled potatoes for a few days. At night I drink a shot of schnapps.”

“Where did you get that?”

“That’s what they prescribe at the cures in Bavaria.”

Orson laughed.

“Only in Bavaria do potatoes and schnapps constitute diet food. You might as well just lick the pavement.”

“What?”

“You’ve never been to India? When you’re traveling there everyone tells you the story of the fat guy from England who went to India to lose weight. He traveled for eight months but he never got sick. People wasting away from dysentery all around him and this guy with the stomach of steel, eating curry and gaining more weight. He was so frustrated that the last day he was there, on his way back to England, he licked the pavement outside the New Delhi airport.”

“What happened?”

“He was wrecked. I wouldn’t recommend it. Lost tons of weight. But he . . .”

Walter wrinkled his nose in an attempt at a grimace but his lips collapsed into a smile that revealed all his teeth. Orson walked up the spiral staircase at the back.

“Nice shit-eating grin,” he said.

“You’re just too young to understand the revitalizing effects of exercise.”

Orson shook his head.

“I ride my bike everywhere, man. Even in the winter. There’s a woman. I can tell.”

On screen, a romance bloomed. Walter grinned up at Tom Cruise like they were sharing a secret, pleased to see their lives setting a parallel course. Soon they would be drinking champagne on a terrace overlooking the Pacific. Less than a month left until the premiere and he was spending almost every evening with Hope, since her husband was almost always away. How could he just leave her alone so often? She was clearly traumatized by what had happened to her in New York. If, before they met, the war had hovered in the background of Walter’s consciousness like bad interference on the radio, now it roared to the forefront. She had drawn a direct line between his daily life and the telegenic doom on the other side of the Atlantic. He hadn’t felt so patriotic since he watched O. J. Simpson run the Olympic torch up the Pacific Coast Highway in the summer of 1984. He was almost ready to pin a yellow ribbon to his winter coat. My people are at war, he thought, looking up at Tom Cruise. Our people. Hope avoided the news, so Walter determined to know it all for her. How better to watch over her? He reviewed the newspaper at work and kept the significant facts in his pocket at the ready: how to differentiate anthrax from aspirin or baby powder; where to procure an emergency prescription for Cipro; how to work a short-wave radio. Although he was careful not to concern her with any of the details, he liked knowing that he could come to her rescue if necessary, that he could keep her safe.

At lunchtime he walked with Orson to a small restaurant on the corner. They bent into the wind, their shirt collars pulled up around their faces. The sun was low in the sky. It inched its way around the earth’s belly two continents farther south, casting long shadows through the trees. Walter ordered a large plate of potatoes and doused them with salt.

“Did you know that there are two Kansas Cities? One in Missouri, the other in Kansas. They’re right next to each other, like East and West Berlin.”

“There are a lot of double cities in the United States. Minneapolis and St. Paul, in Minnesota. Dallas and Fort Worth, in Texas.”

“Dallas and Fort Worth aren’t technically the same city. They just share an airport. But that’s pretty good. Would you be able to name all the states that touch Missouri? Or, say, Kentucky? Do you know which city is further west, Chicago or Detroit?”

“What is this?”

“It’s a geography test for American students. Most of them don’t know the answers, apparently. I did pretty well.”

“Cool. You pass fourth grade.”

Walter smiled.

“How about history? If you had to name the five most important moments in history what would you say?”

“What—ever?”

Walter nodded.

“What is going on with you?”

“The Emancipation Proclamation tops most people’s lists.”

“If it isn’t a woman,” said Orson, “what is it?”

“I’m just brushing up on my American. You know, I’m going to Los Angeles in December.”