The first day at Triassic Land, my Spinosaurus tail got torn off in the door of my dead grandad’s old Camry. I left home because I was sick of Mom babying me. I was single. Grown up. I was like a twenty-four-year-old boo-boo she wouldn’t let heal. I’d typed up a fake acceptance letter and showed it to her a month ago. Told her I was starting at Central Michigan University’s summer business program early and that a buddy I used to play video games with had a room. She gave me a hundred dollars, a kiss on the cheek, and said she was proud.
I could see all the coasters I’d grown up riding over the barbed-wire security fence. Mad Meteor, Cretaceous Coroner, Chicxulub Impactor—Quivering Timbers had always been my favorite though. No loops, but the wood shook your head like a speed bag. It held all that thrill without any worry of slipping through the harness and falling into the inevitable. I was considering how long it would take to hit the ground when a giant red Silverado pulled up next to me.
“Well guy,” the old driver said, hobbling out of his 4×4 chariot, “that tail’s dangling like a dingleberry.” He looked like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino if Clint Eastwood had been addicted to Diet Coke. When he squinted, he looked older instead of meaner.
“I—”
“I’ll fix y’up don’t worry. I should’ave some duct tape…somewhere ‘n here.”
He heaved his duffel bag out and dropped it on the cracked pavement like a treasure.
“It’s really okay, I’ll fix it later,” I said.
He pulled out some duct tape and shoved it in my face like a trophy.
“Only’ll be a minute and you’ll thank me,” he said.
It was easier to let him do it in the end. Last thing I wanted was a fight with a geriatric Dirty Harry on my first day. When he was finished, he slapped my pleather ass and fondled the Camry to stand back up.
“Name’s Pat. You Gordy’s replacement?”
I’d seen it on the news with Mom one morning. Mom’d said, How is anyone supposed to feel safe anymore? and I’d said, you can do that for a living? The posting online had read: Dinosaurs wanted! 12/hr + meals!
“Yeah. I’m Mortimer.”
“Jordan?”
“Mor-tih-mur!”
He reached out and squeezed my hand, like he was trying to juice me.
“Or Mort. Either’s fine.” I’ve never had a good talking voice either. I mumble or I feel like I’m yelling.
“Suit yerself,” Pat nodded towards the park, “Welp, we don’t want to keep the ‘missus’ waitin’ do we?” His back bent under the weight of his tool bag. I thought to offer help, but I could tell Pat had that old man syndrome where he didn’t let anyone help him, even if it meant he was going to hurt himself.
***
I remember taking photos with Sal the Spinosaurus as a kid. There was a photograph I’d left at home of me crossing my legs thinking it made me look cool only to realize I looked like I had to piss, Mom oblivious, grandad tight-lipped because of his broken teeth, my older brother and his perfect smile. Besides those memories, I knew next to nothing about being a dinosaur. They’d given me no training, just the rule that I couldn’t let people see me with the suit off, which was fine. I was a solid 5, on a good day. On a bad day? Captain Neckbeard. Sal the Spinosaurus suited me.
There was a yellowed, stained fridge in the break room with a picture of someone’s family and shitty motivational posters. Plastic employee of the week plaques littered one wall, each staff member holding up some gift card to Chili’s or Olive Garden. I saw a man with my outfit, the Spinosaurus head roaring under his arm. He didn’t smile. When I saw Pat on my route, I asked him if that was Gordy.
“Scalies used to be able to get away with stuff. Pouncing on people. Gnawing on their bags. People came here to feel something. To get an experience. Now you so much as tap someone with yer tail and you’ll get a bunch of lawyers bearing down on us, again.”
A hammer jangled at Pat’s side like a big iron, sweat collecting in the wrinkles of his gray uniform and forehead.
“Guy, the world’s gone soft.”
Someone next us on the Pterodactyl Terror Shot screamed—a bungee type thing over the pond filled with swan boats in the middle of the park. You sign a contract for “liability” sake and pay extra for it. I’d never done it, but I’d watched my brother launch over the pond. Saw the worry on mom’s face as he soared.
“So you fix things?” I asked Pat, really quiet and real close, my plastic teeth scraping his waxy ear. I waved at kids like I’d seen people do on the floats for the 4th of July parade back home.
“Fix things? Guy!” He swatted at my maw. “If you’re being simple about it, sure, but I notice things. Things no one else notices.”
In front of us, a little girl tugged her dad’s arm. Mad Meteor careened in a corkscrew above.
“Some stupid soccer mom bust the turnstile? My job. Plank hanging low on a coaster? My job. The freezer in the Dippin’ Dots cart overheats? My job. If there’s too much shit for me to do? I tell the ne’er do wells mannin’ the rides what needs fixin’. And customer-staff relations? Oh, I track that too Martin.”
“Um, what’s—it’s Mortimer—”
“Yup, I’ve been around long enough to know how people are. See her?” he pointed at the little girl and the two men holding her hands. “She’s only been listening to her uncle and her dad hates that.”
“How do you know they’re brothers?”
“What else would they be?”
I didn’t respond.
“Them three come here a lot, yeah. The girl loves it when yuh scalies fall over. Saw Gordy faceplant last year and that little girl laughed so hard she almost gave me an ulcer.”
I could fall. Did it all the time. Tripping over nothing. Hesitating whenever I rounded a corner or stopped at a 4-way. I was an expert at making mistakes for no good reason, and now I had one.
I ran out in front of the family and stumbled into a trash can. Melted ice cream and soiled paper bowls full of crusty chili like dry blood spilled all over the baked concrete. The men glared. The little girl shrieked. For some reason the Peanuts theme song was playing over the speakers.
“Stupid stupid! Isn’t he stupid?”
“Come on Olivia,” one man said.
“We don’t call people stupid,” said the other. He whispered, “…in front of them.” I remembered how I felt when I was a kid. How I knew there was someone in the suit but how it was more fun to imagine something else was making them stomp and roar and make their way through the world.
“Stupid, stuuuupid!” The girl pointed.
I wriggled on the ground until the girl’s giggles were out of earshot, then stood up, cotton candy stuck to my mesh eye holes so it was hard to see. Pat came over and wiped it off.
“You’re a natch-u-ral Mikey!”
Everything is a bit when you’re wearing a dinosaur suit. No matter what stupid shit I did, someone would want me.
***
Home feels different when you get back after a new job, and my studio apartment in Mt. Pleasant didn’t feel like much of a home to begin with. I had a lawn chair in front of the TV, a mattress I’d spent an hour contorting to fit in the Camry for the drive from the west side, a bunch of Faygo varieties in the vegetable tray of the fridge, and a series of Stouffer’s frozen casseroles.
It didn’t make any sense why the city I was in was called Mt. Pleasant either. There aren’t any real mountains in Michigan, and all the best parts, all the big lakes were about as far away as they could be. The only water in walking distance was a tiny stream behind my apartment complex flanked by two golf courses and a strip mall containing a Subway, a Family Fare, and a pole-dancing studio.
The walls of the apartment were thin, but sometimes that made life more exciting. Guessing that banging sound next door gave me something else to do besides playing Halo and watching Jurassic Park—you gotta enmesh yourself in your life in the character, or at least, that’s what people like Daniel Day Lewis do, right? He’s a good actor, I’d heard. It was a small space, but that was okay. Too much space and you start to feel like you should have more stuff, or even moreso, someone to share that space with.
After I’d get back every day, I’d shed my suit and drape it on the lawn chair in the living room. I’d crack open a cold Red Pop Faygo and sit down. Boot up my Xbox. My brother always gave me shit for the living room lawn chair at Mom’s house. I say having cupholders is important, and I couldn’t afford a full-ass recliner on a dino salary.
During the first few weeks Mom texted me a lot. Eventually, because she kept asking the same questions, I started calling her instead of texting back.
“Hey.”
“So, how’d today go?”
“It went fine.”
“…and?”
“That’s it. Nothing to report.”
“The apartment okay?”
“It’s alright. Kinda small, but you know, I like that.”
“How’re classes?”
“Couldn’t tell you Mom. Still feeling them out.”
“Are you looking for a job? You know your brother says he has a job in a warehouse over there he could get you, right?”
“I know Mom.”
“I’m just saying, it pays good.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“I know. I know. I just hate, y’know, seeing you…y’know.”
That’s how most of our conversations went. Tip-toeing around each other until either of us had the stomach to bear our grievances, then backing down anyway. Our family was easy that way. Life was easier that way.
***
By the end of the first month, I was the Mickey Fucking Mouse of dinosaurs, stalking people on all fours, bobbing my floppy muzzle like a bird. I became a skilled practitioner of Cretaceous Cardio, started looking at myself naked in the busted bathroom mirror, watching those little love handles I’d earned doing nothing with my life and dating no one melt away.
Even better, they announced a year-round initiative. They’d have a winter carnival in the off months and build an event space to make up lost revenue from the Gordy incident. I’d have a stable gig where I didn’t have to man a register and put on a face. No one would have to see my crooked smile. My yellow teeth.
Once my routes became ritual, I realized everything at Triassic from when I was a kid was still there. The horses-dressed-as-ankylosaurs. The viking-boat-turned-megalodon. A random Harley Davidson they still had on display, because why not. The park proved that time doesn’t actually change everything like Mom was telling me more and more every year. I kept pictures saved of every ride for when I was ready to tell her what I was really doing in Mt. Pleasant. Once I’d proven I could make it here on my own. Maybe, once I’d found someone to share the apartment with.
Besides Pat, none of the other staff talked to me, so I didn’t talk to them. From the conversations I overheard in the break room or behind the rides, they treated the place like it was just a stepping stone on the way to their next big thing. As if everyone can have the next big thing. You know what was a big thing? Dinosaurs. To be a dinosaur is to embrace nostalgia for a time we can’t be sure even existed the way we imagine. What’s wrong with that? With Pat’s tips about regulars, and late nights watching every dinosaur movie I could get my hands on, I started pulling five-star reviews. I broke in the hard plastic of the claws. Figured out how to piss without taking it off. By June, the break room was littered with pictures of Sal the Spinosaurus holding Chili’s and Olive Garden gift cards.
People asked why I kept the suit on.
“You don’t get anywhere without some extra commitment,” I said. Pat had told me that one day.
There was this one girl though. She started the month after me. A new “scalie” called Rachel Raptor. I told Mom about her over the phone. Told her Rachel was in a class on entrepreneurship, or whatever business classes were called.
Rachel and I weren’t supposed to be in the same place at the same time, but sometimes we’d cross paths in front of Coroner, right under the loop. I studied her. Waited for her to say something. She didn’t walk with the weight of her life in each step like I did. She didn’t hesitate before she did anything. She was gentle to the concrete and knelt down to let kids pet her. I wondered what she looked like underneath. I hoped she hadn’t noticed me watching. Whenever people notice me looking at them, I feel like I’ve been shot. Like one of those dreams where you’re naked and you don’t know how you ended up where or why you even are.
***
Mom called to offer a trip to Florida my brother and his fiancé were going on. I held the phone to my ear while I was playing Halo, some kid shouting about how gay I was in the background. Telling me to touch grass. That I probably had no bitches.
“I don’t like the beach, Mom.”
“What are you doing instead?”
“I told you, I’m in the campus cafeteria.” I wondered what the most convincing job was. Burrito wrapper? Sandwich crafter? Everything seemed perfectly menial.
“The warehouse job pays pretty good Mort. I could talk to your broth—”
“I’m good at this and I’m paid enough Mom.”
“I know…what about that girl?”
“I’ll keep you updated. I’m going to ask her to get coffee soon.”
***
By the middle of sweat-bucket-summer, the park had spent a lot of money prepping for the new winter initiative, but numbers were down. They made some cuts to the maintenance team. Pat was busy trying to figure out what was wrong with the bolts in Quivering Timbers, whining about how he used to have a whole army of guys with tools at his disposal. I looked up at him from the ground, waiting for some other guests to walk by me. I liked watching him when I could. There’s something about a guy fixing a massive roller coaster that seems divine. The knowledge of what bolt to use, the deftness with a wrench or a drill. I dreamed of the day someone would witness me like that.
Pat was asking me for a socket wrench when I heard a group of high-school kids staring at me and whispering evil teenager type shit to each other. I didn’t know what the fuck a socket wrench looked like. Just another thing I felt like I should have learned before Grandad died. I looked through the duffel bag, hoping some manly instinct would kick in. I heard the teenagers hee-haw from behind.
“Losersaurus Rex,” one shouted standing in line for the Mammoth Ears.
“Pervert.” another said. Despite being far shorter, squatter, and, from what I understood, better at the job than Gordy, people occasionally thought I was the same guy. Some creep. A prehistoric peeper.
Pat ignored me asking him what the wrench looked like, climbed down the coaster stairs, and stuck his hand in the duffel bag.
“Don’t worry Mort, most of em’ probably won’t stop sucking their mom’s teet till they’re thirty. I tell you, when I was a teenager I wasn’t hanging out at a theme park. I was in a war.” Pat shook his head, patted his hammer on his hip, “I could make an accident happen to em y’know. Rig a ride to go a little too fast when they get on.” He winked.
That’s when I felt something hit my back. I’d stopped wearing anything but underwear underneath to cool off; I could feel things better that way anyway. Whatever hit me was damp. Cold. Smelled like the color blue.
They’d thrown a fucking slushie at me.
I stood still, boiling in my suit. Literally and metaphorically. The ice packs under my armpits had gone lukewarm.
I turned to face the teens, careful to maintain my signature Spinosaurus poise; me, Poiseasaurus Rex. I saw a bush the same green-brown as my suit between the teenagers and the corner of the Mammoth Ear stand as an opportunity. All my time spent watching dinosaur movies, being patient playing Halo, listening to Pat and practicing—I had a skill. I could get payback.
While the teenagers were ogling some girls coming from the waterpark, I huddled behind the bush. Waited for about three minutes. I was Saunasaurus Rex stalking his prey.
When they came up to order, I sprang out and swatted at them with my rubber arms. One fell over so hard it looked like he might have shattered his elbow. He started crying. I squeezed the sound box from Ebay I’d programmed with roar sounds—a fucking steal for $10 plus shipping—over and over, standing above him making eye contact through the mesh in my mouth.
The teenager reeled back to punch me, but instead he started crying. I looked back at Pat heh-heh-heh-ing and wheezing, one crooked, hairy thumb up. They ran away. I thought I would feel better.
What I hadn’t noticed was the American dream-type family behind the teenagers. One with a girl and a boy and two parents that looked like they ran together at 5 in the morning before work and posted pictures of the sunrise.
One of the kids, the little boy, was crying. Scared. Blonde bowl cut like I’d had. Chunky fingers despite the rest of him being a fucking twig. Looks like he’d get bullied. Like he’d play trumpet in middle school and get so angry he can’t hit high notes like the rest of the boys that he’d smash the instrument into his bed post and make his mom pay $200 to fix the rental.
I tried to play stupid and ran into a wall. Being stupid’s only funny because I shouldn’t be stupid. A dinosaur should have some instinct that defends against stupidity. Some feeling of where to go and what not to do. An instinct for a successful life. No one wants someone who can’t decide what to do.
The kid kept sobbing and the parents pulled him away, looking at everything but me.
When I looked back, Pat shrugged.
It was as good a time as any to cool down, so I went to the break room to swap out the ice packs. On the way back, I watched the ticketers at the turnstile. Saw the look of death on their faces. One swiped on their phone. I’d thought about getting on a dating app, but that meant I needed pictures. Maybe the suit would be a funny gag.
When I pried the screen door open, Rachel Raptor—the girl who played her—was at the lunch table. I still had a little bit of adrenaline left from my ambush, so I sat next to her. She had this short purple hair and freckles I’d never seen on anyone before. She shifted a seat away and put the bottom half of her costume between her and me.
She was drawing a cow skull adorned with snapdragons, like the one’s mom kept in her garden. Little flowers I’d spent time sticking my pudgy fingers in, imagining them coming to life. I’d make fire-breathing noises and tell mom each dragon bulb’s name, which ones was mom, dad, and the kids. I’d fabricated a whole family. A comfortable family.
“Snapdragons! Right?” I blurted out, forgetting to breathe.
She jumped.
“Um, yeah. That’s right?”
“I’m Mortimer.” I stuck out my hand.
“Nice to meet you?” she didn’t grab it.
Questions, right, I thought. Grandad always told me to ask questions. People are supposed to enjoy talking about themselves.
“So are you doing skulls to say you’re not afraid of death or something?” I tried to mask how I’d forgotten to breathe. I did my best to stay still. To be still was to be stoic. Prehistoically-inclined.
“Uh, no. I just think cow skulls are cool.”
“They are pretty cool.” I caught my reflection in a mirror, stared at the inhuman eyes. My floppy mouth. Rachel stopped drawing.
“So you’re…” she asked, pointing at the employee of the week pictures adorning the walls.
“That’s me, yeah.” For the first time since I’d arrived, I wasn’t proud of the pictures.
“You really never take off the suit, do you?”
“I heard about this thing called method acting. Daniel-Day Lewis did it for—”
“Yeah, I know about that. Everyone on set called him an asshole.” She looked at the door across from us for a few seconds. I felt like I was talking to an alien and no one had given me the briefing on first-contact engagement.
“Do you uh, what do you do?” I asked.
“I’m in art school.”
“That’s cool.”
“What do you do? Outside of here?”
“Uhhh…well I….” I couldn’t tell her I played video games. That was too unimpressive. I thought about telling her I played music, but then she might ask to hear something. Maybe writing?
“Sooo, I actually have a specific question for you. Maybe it’s a little personal.”
I leaned in, terrified and excited to answer a question. Smelled her coconut shampoo. Felt too close to her. Leaned back.
“I’ve got an assignment. Like an art project. I’ve gotta ask people what they’re in awe of and draw something inspired by it.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
“Honestly, since you’re a total stranger,” I ground my teeth at the word stranger, “I think this is more interesting. Everyone else here is giving me normal answers.”
“Well. I dunno. The ankylosaurus-horses. Pretty cool right?”
“No no no, anywhere else but here. Like, you’ve never seen something or thought of someone and you just go, wow?”
I thought about the last time I was home, driving on the S-shaped highway that cuts through the city, coming back from the mall movie theater to see Zombieland 2. I’d been swimming through that post-movie existentialism, blasting the jazzy theme song to Halo: ODST, pretending I was in a destroyed civilization, the one living person left behind, a hoard of invading aliens oblivious to me in the camry, swerving left and right with one hand on the wheel like I actually knew what I was doing. I got chills thinking about it. Or maybe that was just my sweat getting cold. I wondered if I smelled.
“I really don’t know. Guess I never thought about it.” I said.
“That’s kind of sad. I mean—sorry,’ her mouth hung open, “Uh, you should do something! Go somewhere. Everyone should have something.”
I thought I was doing something. I had gone somewhere. Bumfuck nowhere.
“I’ll let you know when I think of something,” I said.
“Cool.” She shrugged.
I’d never been so disappointed in myself that I wanted to cry before. I stood up, swapped my ice packs out for the new ones, stashed the sweaty ones next to Pat’s brown bag in the fridge, and walked towards the door before Rachel had a chance to leave first.
Moments like this were why I kept the suit on.
***
Approaching fall, the park was getting slower. This was normal, Pat told me, like how the dips and peaks of climate change are normal. I spent my free time thinking of something to tell Rachel. Something that would show her I wasn’t just a loser in a suit. I wasn’t artsy. I considered the few times I’d gone camping with my family, watching a storm roll over Lake Michigan from the height of a dune, the view looking down from my first skyscraper in Chicago, the first time I’d nailed a trumpet solo. They all felt too normal or too lame for me to be in awe of. I avoided the break room so that I wouldn’t bump into her before I had the answer. But, when I stopped running into her under Coroner’s loop, I asked Pat if he’d seen her lately.
“The weird one with the purple hair? Guy she no-call no-showed twice. No surprise there. No one wants to work any more.”
***
Pat was wrong about the normal dip in park numbers. We were tanking. Management sent an email with the subject line: “WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SAVE THE DINOSAURS?”. It seemed that no amount of good reviews could make up for the worry that staff, that people like me, might be a total creep like Gordy. Not in the age of internet memes and Twitter.
Pat and I spent more time by the central pond. He said he’d planted fish in it fifteen years ago to give himself something to do on lunch break.
“Ain’t got no mercury poisonin’ in them like the big lakes neither.” All I knew about mercury was that it’s the stuff that they put in thermometers. Did someone dump a bunch of thermometers in the great lakes? People call things like that accidents all the time. Like they’re pretending it isn’t anyone’s fault. But you have to try hard to fuck something up that bad. I suspected a conspiracy somewhere, like how people said Obama turned the frogs gay.
“So why are you actually here, Mort?”
“I don’t know. I like it. I’m good at it.”
“That’s right.” I watched him catch a couple bluegills, or at least, that’s what he called them. I didn’t think their gills looked blue. I never understood catch-and-release. It seemed cruel, especially in a place like this. As if the fish stuck in the theme park pond hadn’t had enough. As if they weren’t doing the best they could with the pond they were stuck in.
***
I stuck with Pat by the pond instead of my routes after the third round of layoffs. A bunch of empty swan boats where normal people who loved each other used to fill up bobbled. Pat had a bouquet of pink work orders tucked in his belt.
“Guy, hasn’t been this bad since a guy’s safety belt came loose on Chix—, Chic… Chaclub, oh fuck whatever it’s called.”
“Chicxulub?”
“Yeah, that one.”
He spat on the ground.
“You know what Mort? You could be Donald Duck. Go on down to Florida and make them Disney bucks, but you’re here. Doing work that matters in a place that people forgot was good to them.”
“I’m too old for Disney Pat.”
“Guy, too old like the ocean’s too blue.”
“What?”
“I was younger ‘n you in ‘n Vietnam.”
“I know.”
Next to us, one of the few mothers left and her two sons were petting an Ankylosaurus-horse while the handler explained how their tails were clubs. One kid reached for the horse’s exposed leg and his mom yanked him so hard the kid dropped his Dippin’ Dots. He watched them melt. The mom said, “I told you to be careful!” and they walked away, her son reaching back towards his coveted, disposable plastic bowl. The kid started crying. His brother looked up at the sun stupidly. It was Sal’s time to shine.
I ran to the ice cream stand and got some more. I stomped over and handed him the cup, holding on with both of my stubby plastic claws. His mom went, “Oh that’s not necessary. Oh, thank you so much.” I pretended to gobble the ice cream the boy had dropped like a predator gnashing at its prey, shoving my face into the concrete and smashing my roar button over and over, like pressing harder would make it sound any different.
The kid stopped crying. He pointed and looked at his mom while his older brother fried his eyeballs in the sun. The younger one looked like he had something important to say, like he’d just had an epiphany.
Maybe that was it—that look on that kid’s face. The way you can fabricate a good memory out of nothing for someone. That was the closest I’d ever come to being in awe of anything.
***
In early fall—that fake fall where you know it’s going to get muggy and shitty again but you try to enjoy the little time you have left anyway, hoping this time it will be different—Pat was fixing the Chicxulub Impactor, arguing with himself about how to pronounce it. The asteroid that was supposed to smash into the plastic-mold crater was broken. It was going too fast. Crashing into the crater with a real force over and over again. No safety breaks.
“What happened to the guy who’s harness came off on the coaster?”
“Splat,” Pat said, not taking his eyes off the electric panel.
“I mean what happened to the park? When did things get better?”
“I ever tell you the story about the kid in the rice patty, Mort?”
“What?”
“We were up in Da Nang.”
Pat leaned against a fake stone wall with plastic vines hanging down, wiping the sweat from his stubble with an already-dirty rag. I knew how these war stories went. Those memories had swelled up inside Grandad until he was bloated with them. Told me all about it on his deathbed. Dead friends. Dead kids. Dead dreams. He sent my grandmother a letter and told her to start finding someone else because he didn’t think he’d survive.
“Little kid missing half his hair comes up to us asking for candy every single day while we’re working on a bridge over a patty. Even has this little pet monkey who follows him around. Asks if he can sit with us in the jeep.” Pat turned and smacked the meteor so hard it fell off the metal spring.
I reached down and picked the plastic rock up as he talked. It was heavier than I expected.
“One day, kid walks up and says his monkey has a present for us. Has this thing wrapped in flimsy paper. I thought it was a gift.”
Pat took the asteroid out of my hand, held it up to the sun like an offering.
“Turns out, it’s one of our grenades. I threw it back in the kid’s direction. Didn’t mean to. Just instinct.”
He twisted the asteroid back on the pole. Every problem I had seemed infinitely small. I imagined a young version of Pat. Him and a wife swigging Diet Coke in their kitchen dancing to oldies. Them in a swan boat.
“That’s fucked up.”
“Guy, that ain’t the worst that happened. Wanna know what’s really funny?”
I knew that wasn’t really a question.
“The monkey got away. Not a scratch on ‘em.”
Pat laughed, and whacked the asteroid again for good measure. That fixed it.
We sat there and watched it, the fate of the dinosaurs playing over and over again the way it always had, like a cautionary tale told too many times to mean anything anymore.
***
When I was a kid, my birthday being in early September was good because it’s pretty far from Christmas and I’d get gifts in the middle of the year-ish. Now I was just excited for Labor Day. Despite me not responding to her for a few weeks, Mom had sent me a Visa gift card. We called. She asked about Rachel and I told her she was gone and she’d said something in that Mom voice that made me feel like a boy in the worst way possible.
I put on the button-up Mom had gotten me. Took out all the pins and needles knowing I’d never be able to fold it back the way it came. I’d lost weight so the clothes didn’t fit me right. I tried to tuck the shirt in, but it made me look like an old man or one of those churchy kids you knew would turn out to be a sicko one day. I went to the coffee shop I’d planned on going to with Rachel, hoping that I might see her. Argue for why our shared vocation was something deserving of awe.
When I got there, the coffee shop was busy. There was a line with people who had the money for good-fitted clothes and who knew how to wear them, but no Rachel. I thought about leaving, but I pictured someone noticing me leaving after walking in—like someone would see a squirrely guy who can’t decide what to do and go what’s his problem?
I ordered a mocha latte because I knew mocha means chocolate. I sat down in a cubby. When a woman walked into the cubby, I felt like I was intruding on her space, so I moved to the bar against the wall where people usually set up their laptops, next to a little library. I grabbed a book about dinosaurs—Triassic infected the whole town. There was a chapter listing alternative theories to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs: an ice age, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, all perfectly reasonable things to stop something from living to its full potential. I wondered, who would I hold onto if the world ended like that tomorrow? What would I do?
I looked at everyone in the coffee shop. The smiles. The focus. The contentment and normality they exuded. How comfortable they were in their own skin.
Rachel hadn’t even been her real name.
***
The nail in the coffin for Triassic was the kid that died on Timbers, just an hour before closing on one of the last days we were going to keep the coasters open. Right when it was getting cool enough for me to stop wearing ice packs. After one of the guys running the coaster saw the bloody body in the cab, he called the ambulance. From what I could overhear, it was a plank that had been dangling too low. Our boss sent a group text saying we can’t talk to anyone, not that I wanted to, reminding us of the NDA we signed. They also mentioned the winter festival was on hold indefinitely.
I went back to the swan pond and found Pat fishing like I thought I would. Nothing we could do but wait for the paramedics to get here and pronounce the kid dead. To pronounce the park dead.
“I’m a damn good repairman, but I’m not God,” he said. The few guests on the other side were being shooed away, confused and complaining that they’d paid for their tickets, that they’d planned these couple days months in advance, just to bring their families here. “Management cutting my team killed that kid. Not me.”
By the time the paramedics had left and the few remaining customers had been ushered out, it was getting dark. The inside of the park looked like a level in a video game without any NPCs walking around. Triassic was going to be one of those abandoned places you see on TruTV with a poorly reenacted story about that kid who died haunting it, or something like that.
“You afraid Pat?”
“Afraid of living long enough I want to die, maybe.”
We could see the reflection of Coroner and Timbers in the pond. It was beautiful. Like two contorted snake-fish water dinosaur things in a mating ritual. I think Rachel would have dug that. I wished she were here so I could tell her about it. She’d probably noticed already, but it’d be something to say.
“You ever thought about building one of your own?” I asked. It was a stupid question but anything not about the dead kid was better than nothing.
“My own what, Mort?”
“Roller coaster.”
“Haven’t,” he said. Then he gulped. The coasters wriggled in the pond water. “Fixing things is a helluva lot different than building them.”
“It’s getting cold,” I said.
“Starting to think I should have worn a suit like you right now,” Pat said, laughed, then coughed.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, Pat.”
“Well, guy, I don’t know either. Guess I could do something with the old swingset in my backyard now.”
“You have grandkids?”
“No.”
I stared.
“Guy! Something wrong with a grown man having a swingset?”
“No. I guess not.”
“You could help me fix it up if yuh want.”
“Not good with my hands,” I said, flopping my pleather arms.
“Just need someone to hammer nails.”
“I’d probably break it.”
“I’ll pay you a fair wage.”
How? I thought, but I didn’t say it.
“I’m going to the top of Timbers,” he said. You wanna come?”
“Not really.”
“Gonna pussy out the last time you could ever do this? Regret’s a bitch Mortimer, trust me.”
“Fine.”
I followed Pat to the Timbers entrance, to the open air and narrow stairs bolted along the coaster’s track. There was a sign that said “AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY”. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was trespassing.
“You gunna keep gawking at me or are you gunna grow some dino-gonads to match yer skin?”
I followed him to the stairs.
“Told you you wasn’t a loser.” He grinned.
Our weight bent the steps. I kept my muzzle pointed up. The costume broke the wind for me mostly, but I could see Pat’s arms shaking as he grasped the splintered handrail. He looked brittle for the first time since I’d met him in the parking lot.
When we reached the top Pat was squinting so hard it seemed like the creases would stick together. We sat in the two-by-four box at the top of the first peak, the highest peak, the Triassic Park flag waving wicked beside them. A cartoon version of Sal—of me—flailing next to us. Pat sat down so his legs hung over the side, the swan boats swirling below. It almost looked like they were alive, celebrating their freedom. I pointed my snout at Pat and waited for him to say something, but nothing came out besides guttural sighs and the occasional “yup” or “guy”. I mulled over options for conversation until a question busted out of me like an alien.
“You ever been in awe of anything Pat?” I said it so stupidly. Pat didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not. “I mean, have you ever seen something and just gone, like, wow, this is impossible and I can’t explain wh—”
“I heard yuh.” Pat looked up, almost shocked, smiling. “Whaddabout this view, eh?” Before us was a sea of trees that surrounded the park grounds. Blinking lights above Chicxulub and Coroner. Headlamps from the final cars blinking through the slants of the trees all around the park. In the corner of my eye, I caught a stray dog pissing on a tree.
“Gotta be honest with you Mort.”
“What?”
“The kid and the monkey,” Pat’s face was a rock, “there was no damn monkey.” He took the hammer off his belt and started tapping it on a loose nail sticking out of the wood posts, then hammering it. He kept hammering after the nail had all but disappeared into the dry, rotted wood. “I just shot that kid cuz he scared me.”
We just heard the wind for a while.
“It’s a nice view, yeah,” I said. In twilight, the cracks in the parking lot looked like a face. Like it was watching and waiting for us to realize something together.
I stood up and crossed my arms. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again. Stared at the plunge down.
“Welp.” Pat slapped his knees and groaned as he stood back up. “S’pose it’s time to retire.” He looked at the water below too. The sun dipping behind a cloud was making it harder to see the reflections.
“So you’ll come around to help with the swingset?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
I turned and walked down the stairs expecting him to follow me. I heard his tools jangling, then nothing. I didn’t look back. I was too worried he wouldn’t be there. On the way down the steps, I imagined holding Rachel’s hand.
When I reached the turnstiles, I stopped. Looked around. Took off the suit and draped it over a ticketing station. I walked back to the camry in nothing but my underwear, keys jangling in my hand. I texted mom that I was coming home. I got in the car, and pretended Rachel was in the passenger seat. Told her everything I was in awe of.