18. The Band-Aid House Was Rude #2
"Put him outside," I say. "And guard the door. Kevin is banned from the candy supply bedroom."
Beck deposits Kevin on the plaza tile. Kevin stands there for a moment, legs rigid, offended to his core. Then he walks in a small circle, lies down in front of the door, and begins chewing a piece of taffy he smuggled out in his mouth.
Kevin always wins. Kevin operates on a plane of existence where defeat is not a concept and consequences are a suggestion.
Joel labels the candy shop: THE CANDY BEDROOM. Close enough.
We clear the rest of the plaza through the afternoon.
Three smaller gift shops. Two are empty.
The third has one wrong person trapped behind the register and another in the stockroom.
The souvenir photo booth, empty. The storage building behind the fountain, locked and clear.
Building by building, door by door. Joel locks.
Joel labels. My words go up on the walls, one by one, a vocabulary of a world being renamed by a woman with a crayon plan and a man with a Sharpie who doesn't know he's writing love letters on the architecture.
We handle the remaining stragglers one at a time, using vendor carts and locked storefronts to control the space.
The larger eastern cluster takes longer.
Captain draws them through the open gate of the fenced parade-staging yard, Grant recalls him over the wall, and Joel and Beck slam the gate behind the last one.
Thirty-something wrong people contained behind twelve-foot fencing.
Beck names it Big Middle Timeout. Nobody has the energy to argue.
By late afternoon, the big middle is secured.
The four of us stand in the center of the plaza. The Wondie statue near the emporium is still glowing. The tile under our feet is scuffed and stained and marked with evidence of a day that demanded everything and got it.
"We did it," Beck says.
"We did the big middle. The whole park," I say.
"The public zones," Joel says.
"The whole park sounds better."
"Public zones is accurate."
"The whole park is motivational."
"We still need to do perimeter checks," Grant says.
"We should eat," Joel says.
Beck grins. I grin. Grant does something with his face that I'm learning is Grant's version of a grin, which is smaller and warmer and happens mostly in his eyes.
Before dinner, Grant and Beck make a run back to the crime boat.
Grant won't miss Pepper’s next bottle, and none of us are crossing the park after dark.
They return with her insulated pouch and the salvaged ride battery powering its heating pad.
The other animals stay on the secured deck with food and water until morning.
Kevin stays with us because Kevin rejects every plan that contains the phrase “Kevin stays.”
We eat in the Sunrise Grill. We sit at a booth designed for a family of four, which is what we are, in the loosest and weirdest possible definition of family.
Joel found canned goods in the kitchen and heated them on the gas stove, which still works because the restaurant's gas line is separate from the park's electrical grid.
Canned chili. Canned corn. Fried cheese.
Canned peaches for dessert, and I eat the peaches straight from the can because utensils require a level of civilization I haven't maintained and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
The crayon plan is spread on the table between plates and cans and a skull mug full of water and Kevin's face pressed against the restaurant window watching us eat with the intense focus of a goat who's memorizing our food storage practices for future raids.
"Okay," I say through a mouthful of peach. "Status report. Adventure part, secured. Garden part, secured. Every public building in the big middle, secured. Fish-tube base, secured."
"Celestial Bay still needs a complete sweep," Joel says. "So do the service passages and outer perimeter."
"Fine. Motivationally, the whole park is ours."
“Motivationally,” Joel agrees. "We need to talk about long-term water. Emergency power is carrying the filtration and circulation systems. It wasn’t designed to carry the full load indefinitely.”
“Joel.”
“We need a permanent power plan.”
“Can we have one moment before you tell me the aquarium is going to die?”
"We did a good thing," Joel says.
"Thank you."
“The power is still a problem.”
"I know, Joel."
Beck laughs. Grant smiles into his chili. Captain, on a chair back, ruffles his feathers and settles.
I pull the crayon plan toward me. I need to add the power problem because Joel is right. Joel is always right about infrastructure, and I need to account for it on the plan because the crayon plan accounts for everything.
I pick up the periwinkle. I start writing. Item sixteen: FIX THE POWER MACHINE THING (Joel knows what I mean). Item seventeen: CELEbrATE (mandatory). Item eighteen: KEVIN CONTAINMENT STRATEGY. Item nineteen: SLEEP.
Sleep. That's the one that's been whispering since this morning. Since before this morning. Since the day I jumped the hip gate and walked into a park that didn't want me and decided to keep it.
The crayon moves slower. The letters get bigger. My hand is heavy. The restaurant is warm.
Joel is talking about power and something about the aquarium's secondary pump system, and the sound of it is so steady, so even, so predictably Joel that it becomes a rhythm, a pattern, a hum.
My eyes are doing the thing. The funnel cake sugar crash combined with a full day of clearing buildings and fighting wrong people and managing Kevin.
My body says: there's a shoulder next to you and you're tired and the shoulder is warm.
Joel's shoulder is right there and my head finds it the way my head found the poncho pillow on the bench, the way everything I do happens accidentally, completely, and without the intermediate step of thinking about it first.
I lean into him. My head touches his shoulder. His shirt is soft against my cheek.
He stops talking mid-word.
My eyes close.
The last thing I feel before I go is the breathing of a man who's choosing very carefully not to move or do anything that might disturb the head on his shoulder, and I think: oh.
Oh, I should probably not be doing this.
I should probably sit up and apologize and blame the peaches and the exhaustion and the sugar crash.
But I don't. And Joel doesn't move.
The warm dark takes me down gently, and the ground doesn't reach for me.