Chapter 21 - Where the Truth Lies

OUR PLASTIC PASSES GOT US onto the rides without requiring the pastel-colored A through E coupons, an A coupon at ten cents being good for nothing more than a one-way horse-drawn trolley, double-decker bus, fire wagon, or horseless-carriage ride up or down Main Street, an E coupon at eighty-five cents being required for the most expensive attractions: Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean. More important, we could even bypass the lines when we wanted to. In some cases this could be done subtly: For Pirates, we were walked by a cast member in a buccaneer outfit to where passengers disembarked, and were seated in a just-vacated boat before it was floated around to the boarding area. We pulled up to the dock already perched in the prow, and the mere civilians who’d been queued up for an hour enviously wondered who we were to have achieved first-class status while they’d stood in line for economy.

Whatever mindless pleasure Vince was taking in his surroundings, I was taking every bit an equal share. As the day evolved, I realized we were having our own personal prom night. He was the high school quarterback who was also the school rebel. I was, well, I let myself imagine I’d been pinned by Vince. I hadn’t given myself to him yet, and he, being a sensitive rebel, had never pushed the issue. But I knew that someday, when the time was right, it would happen. And I knew it would be wonderful for the both of us.

Vince fired a rifle at the Frontierland shooting gallery and, thanks to the training he’d had for films like Return to the Alamo, won me a Davy Crockett coonskin cap. On the Matterhorn, my date put his arm around me just before we skidded hard into the hidden pool, shielding me from the plumes of water that shot into the air upon impact. On the Mad Tea Party ride, my beau spun the center wheel of our baby-blue teacup so that we rotated far more dizzily than I thought possible on such an innocuous-looking attraction. Our motion rivaled the twisted turns of Bel Air. I found myself laughing uncontrollably until after the ride had come to a full and complete stop.

In the Blue Bayou, the restaurant built within the “prologue” of the Pirates of the Caribbean, it is always a perfect, deep blue evening, even at high noon. One sits “outside” on the terrace of a handsome antebellum mansion designed in neo-Ashley Wilkes. Spanish moss clings both to the creamy-white trellises and an immense tree whose boughs reach to the water like drinking straws. The evening sky is full of uncountable stars and the odd comet. The moon fades away behind a cloud and then reappears, this with reassuring regularity. A bullfrog recites his low, sad poem. The placid surface of the Louisiana bayou sloshes as a gator slides sideways off the riverbank. “O Susanna” is picked out slowly on a banjo played by an old man in a shack across the water from our table, where we consume absolutely forgettable food in a memorable setting. We had been placed by the water’s edge, at the best and most private table in the house. Vince sat with his back to the rest of the patrons, and so was able to remove his sunglasses and hat. We watched the boatloads of passengers gliding by in silence, some of them deceived by the languid faux evening around them and the easy glide of their craft. If they had never been this way before, they might be blithely unaware that in a matter of seconds they would enter a dark tunnel and go toppling over the edge of a precipice, borne down by cascading waters. Vince placed his hand over mine at one point, and I turned my hand around so as to cup his hand back. Peggy Sue and Bobby Joe.

I was having a dreamy time with Vince, and I took comfort from its being so different from my day with Lanny. Lanny’s itinerary had been for me to witness him. Eat his food. Hear him sing. Fly his helicopter. Watch his film. Ride his thing. Vince, on the other hand, seemed so eager for things to not be about him. Whenever we had gone out, we had hardly ever mentioned his career.

And sex was not an issue, because we were definitely not going to have sex until our work was done, and we definitely were going to have sex upon its completion. What a brainstorm that had been. It gave me (and presumably Vince) an inviolable comfort zone.

As a child, I had savored Christmas Eve more than Christmas itself. I loved to stave off the opening of my presents for as long as possible, ecstatically sitting in their midst, wriggling within the thrill of expectation. I was wonderfully comfortable now with Vince, and every time I looked at him, I saw a continent of Christmas presents, gleaming and unopened in the first light of dawn on December 25.

And today Vince seemed the happiest he’d been since we’d met. The dark rides were particularly enjoyable for him because as we entered them, he could remove his sunglasses and become everybody else. For anywhere from three to seven minutes, he didn’t have to be Vince Collins.

The one time he publicly owned up to his identity that day was, significantly, a moment of openhearted generosity, as you’ll see.

We both liked the Alice in Wonderland ride. But it was very much an orphan in the park. Disney himself had never been totally comfortable with Alice’s story (though not so uncomfortable that he didn’t replace Lewis Carroll’s name with his own in the movie’s opening credits: Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland). The feverish, surrealistic story, with its neurotic cast, centered on a young girl who took unknown medicines without a prescription, passed through mirrors unscathed, ate mushrooms that caused her to change shape; this—how can I put it?—this was not your quintessential Disney girl. A Disney girl did not unquestioningly eat food simply because it was labeled EAT ME or imbibe unidentified liquids just because their bottle advised DRINK ME.

Perhaps because of this, the ride looked and felt very different from the Fantasyland dark rides that had preceded it: Snow White, Mr. Toad, Peter Pan. Its use of myriad muted pastels glowing under gobs of black light seemed to have anticipated the psychedelic sixties, even though it had been built in the late fifties. You moved more slowly and languorously than on the other rides. Appropriately, your vehicle on this journey was the Caterpillar, whom, we all smugly noted, smoked a water pipe. Not for nothing did we drift pleasantly through Alice’s world of wonderment as if sweetly stoned, gliding upside down across the ceiling and floating through fields of Day-Glo flowers, who hummed fitfully about the golden afternoon.

The ultimate sign that the ride was the troubled child of Disneyland was the value given her by the company. She was a B coupon. Twenty-five cents, two bits, just one notch better than a one-way bus ticket. No other dark ride was a B coupon.

After we got off the ride, we heard an amplified female voice singing. “Who’s that?” I asked Vince. The voice was one moment similar to Astrud Gilberto, then Ella Fitzgerald, then Marianne Faithfull.

“I don’t know,” said Vince. “She’s good, whoever she is.”

We walked a few steps over to an area of tables and chairs that had been cordoned off just outside the Salada Tea concession. Signs standing on the pavement identified this as being the Salada “High Tea” Party. At four o’clock each afternoon you could sit at a table (if you could find one vacant), drink iced tea, and hear live entertainment.

The singing voice we heard was that of Alice herself. Understand that in the world of the Disney theme parks, there are “atmosphere characters” (those who dress up as Mickey, Goofy, Captain Hook) and “face characters” (costumed but unmasked, such as Snow White, Peter Pan, and Alice). The search for a Snow White or Alice was always particularly challenging because the faces of the animated characters had such a very distinctive look. Replicating this in real life couldn’t be done simply by makeup because the face actors had to interact with the crowd from a foot or two away, in bright sunlight. In essence, they had to really be Snow White or Alice.

This exquisite, fairer-than-fair Alice was flanked by Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who were there both to work the crowd and to dance behind her as she sang songs from the musical score that bore her character’s name.

She was singing my favorite song from that underappreciated score, “(I Give Myself) Very Good Advice,” in which Alice laments that, while she certainly knows the difference between right and wrong and is able to give herself wise counsel, she tends to ignore her own advice and instead await the moment when something “strange” will begin. And no, it was not my favorite in the score because I in any way identified with it. Perish the thought.

A backup band dressed like four playing-card Jacks accompanied this otherworldly Alice who sang in such haunting fashion. She sounded a bit like a folksinger, a Joni Mitchell or a Judy Collins, although her voice transcended any category with its clarity and lilt. I looked at Vince and the crowd that had gathered. They were all listening intently.

And looking. Alice was so breathtakingly lovely that I could not even be jealous; it would have been like being jealous of Bardot when she was discovered by Roger Vadim at seventeen, or of a cave painting on the isle of Minos representing the ideal of youth. Her hair was fine but luxuriant, golden yellow with a rich bounce that had been waved into it. Her face was truly Alice’s face (from the Disney version), unspeakably pretty with a small bow mouth and a dainty nose. As she sang, her lower lip would unknowingly pout a bit and her jaw tremble, not from fear but from her ethereal vibrato. Her eyes were full of white, and where they were watery blue, they were big and accepting. If you were close to her, you’d want to take that face in your hands and search it, trying to find what in its composition made it so exquisite.

She wore Alice’s mandatory blue-and-white pinafore, the well-starched front of its “apron” stiff across her breasts. Her legs were in white stockings that ran for cover up the hem of her dress with a graceful curve, hiding amid a slew of petticoats. In this she differed a bit from Disney’s Alice, who, I always thought, had been given cow legs. This Alice’s legs were beautifully slim and tapered. Despite the absolute respectability of her hose, I am sure there were men in the crowd who looked at those white stockings and at where they went, and envisioned what they met there.

Her singing had momentarily transformed this small corner of the sun-drenched park into an intimate cabaret. She’d made her Alice song into a torch song, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a yearning song, like “Over the Rainbow.” When she finished, the crowd that had gathered applauded her so loudly that passersby wondered what had elicited such a response and came over to see what they were missing.

Clapping enthusiastically, Vince asked me, “What do you think of her?”

I shouted over the applause to him, “How can she be that beautiful and sing so wonderfully?”

He nodded his head. “You know, they’re probably paying her not a cent more than Tweedledee and Tweedledum there. I bet she’s nonunion too. So you definitely do think she’s good?”

“I love her,” I shouted back.

Alice was now making the rounds of the audience, which had formed a circle around the bandstand: curtsying to those who had something to say to her, shaking hands gently with children, introducing them to her friends Tweedle A and B, who were proficient at bumping into each other in a funny way and waving busy-fingered waves to the crowd. When someone in the crowd reached to touch Alice’s hair, one Tweedle interposed his big belly between them and shook a scolding finger at the offender. It was clear that the two Tweedles were also doubling as “handlers,” those who ventured out with Disney characters to serve as their bodyguards.

A determined look came over Vince’s face, even behind his sunglasses and broad-brimmed hat. “Look, I want to help her out. She’s too talented to be doing this for the next ten years. Trouble is, if I have my manager contact Disney, they’ll give him a total runaround, we won’t find out who she is, and meanwhile they’ll realize what they’ve got and they’ll sign her to a five-year contract. She’ll never be heard of again. I’ve got to let her know who I am. Is that okay with you?” It was so different with Vince. Here he was, asking for my approval, my permission for him to be Vince Collins. He warned me, “I mean, you know if I get spotted by this crowd, it could get messy. You okay with that?”

“Speak to her. I’ll try to block you as best as I can.”

Alice was working her way around the circle. She shook hands with a little girl next to us.

“I hope you are having a nice time here today,” she said in a skillful imitation of Kathryn Beaumont’s voice from the Disney movie. She gestured at her costumed cohorts, who were playing a game of patty-cake behind her. One took a roundhouse swing at the other, who ducked it. Alice laughed to a nine-year-old, “I’m afraid my friends Tweedledee and Tweedledum are making quite a spectacle of themselves. What silly boys they are!” One of the “boys” hugged the other, and both were back to being friends. Alice smiled. “And the more they fight, the closer they become!”

She passed by us, and Vince called out, “Miss Alice!” and asked her for an autograph. When she saw the WED Guest card he offered for her to sign, she looked up at him, aware that this was someone whom the management viewed as a VIP.

Vince whipped off his sunglasses as I blocked the side view of his face. “Kiddo, listen, my name is Vince Collins, I do some singing myself. Do you recognize me?”

She put her hand to her chest in a very un-Alice gesture. She said, minus her British accent, “Oh, Mr. Collins. I grew up listening to your albums.”

Vince smiled at me, amused by how her response aged him. He said to Alice, “Great, look, you sing incredibly well. Like Peggy Lee when she started, with some Blossom Dearie too. I want you to promise me you’ll keep at it. It’s very hard in our industry. No one makes it. But you can make it.” Vince pulled a business card from his wallet. He put a big grin on his face, so that anyone looking would think he was saying what a nice time he and the little woman were having here in Disneyland. He beamed at her, “Listen, I know you can’t talk. This is the card of my manager, his name is Billy Bishop. Call him tomorrow. When the secretary tells you he’s not in, say that ‘Sir Ron Lyman’ told you to call.”

“Sir Ron Lyman,” Alice repeated.

“Sir Ron Lyman. Billy will take your call when he hears that. We’ll see if we can set up some auditions for you, for TV, records. You may not see me again, but the world is going to see you again. I want you to know that.”

Alice took the card and quickly hid it in a pocket in her pinafore. She reverted to her British accent and cried out to the crowd, “Oh, I think I see the White Rabbit, I must follow him.” She waved to Tweedledee and Tweedledum. “We must leave or the Queen of Hearts will be wanting my head! Goodbye everyone! Have a golden afternoon here in the Magic Kingdom!”

The two Tweedles flanked her protectively as she turned and rounded a corner. They were as effective at manipulating the crowd as entertaining it. As people started to follow the lovely blonde, the two intervened, pretending to be fighting again, allowing Alice to step over to an unmarked door in the side of the Mad Hatter’s Hats concession. A Fantasyland security officer (dressed in a purple frock coat and green top hat) was keeping the door just slightly open. Alice ducked in and began her descent into the underground of the park—which Disney cast members referred to as “backstage”—where there were changing rooms for the employees and a break room where one could have a soda, a sandwich, or a smoke.

“Do you think she’ll call?” I asked Vince as Dee and Dum followed Alice through the doorway and the crowd dissipated. We were now walking back toward Main Street, to depart via the same secret passage by which we’d arrived. Vince took off his cowboy hat for a moment and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Hard to say. She’d be risking her job if she did. But she can’t play Alice in Wonderland forever.” He looked at me as if he’d been foolish. “I wasn’t trying to show off, you know.”

“I know that.” I did know that.

“You don’t hear many fresh-sounding voices. I was a shameless Como impersonator when I started out; there was nothing original about me. It’s exciting when somebody comes up with a new instrument.”

Here Vince had taken the time to help this girl, running the risk that someone in the crowd would spot him and a mob scene would ensue, and he was afraid I’d think he was showing off. He and Lanny might at one time have been a duo, but they certainly were not a matching pair.

The drive back to L.A. was a bit depressing. We both knew that tomorrow we had things to discuss that were not going to be pleasant. We didn’t talk about it, not one bit. Vince had put up the Skyliner’s patented Hideaway roof, which lifted automatically out of the trunk, as the evening had gone quite cool. On the push-button radio, he tuned in a “Beautiful Music” station (a format that usually called for large doses of Mantovani and Tony Bennett) and we talked about the passing scenery until Vince’s voice came over the radio singing “Non Dimenticar.” He snapped off the radio and we drove for a long time without talking.

For dinner, he took me to the restaurant at the Hotel Bel-Air. It was quiet and comfortable there, he said, and very private. We parked near the reception office, which was in its own building, separate from the hotel. Getting to the restaurant required crossing over a lovely footbridge that spanned an idyllic pond. We stopped midbridge to look at the swan that floated sedately near a willow whose tendrils grazed the surface of the water. It looked to all intents and purposes exactly like the Disney rendition of the riverbank where Alice’s older sister had been reading to her when her adventures began.

The swan was the logo of the Hotel Bel-Air. I’d seen its likeness at the main gate.

I indicated the swan to Vince, who looked more vulnerable without his cowboy hat and sunglasses, squinting into the setting sun. “Look at her,” I said. “She’s a trademark and doesn’t even know it.”

Vince grimaced. “There’s a lot more she doesn’t know. See, there are coyotes in these hills.” He gestured to the scrubby slopes behind and above the low, elegant bungalows of the hotel. “Some nights they come down here and manage to kill the swan. There’s no effective way to stop the coyotes, so it’s easier for the hotel to simply have a ready supply of swans available to replace the dead ones on a regular basis.”

I looked at him to see if he was joking, but clearly he wasn’t. “That’s horrible!” I responded. “But do coyotes swim?”

He shook his head. “No, Kerry, they come down in pairs. The first coyote races toward the east bank of the pond, snarling like crazy, and this frightens the swan, who swims away and gets out of the water on the west bank. Where the other coyote is silently waiting. He kills her, and then the other coyote comes around the pond or over this bridge and the two of them share the feast.”

I could picture the entire scenario. And as I pictured it, for some silly reason, I gave the coyotes the names Tweedledee and Tweedledum.