Max was drenched in sweat. Before donning the costume, he’d been advised to guzzle water until his stomach ached. Now, he was certain there were extra pounds of perspiration trapped in the cheap synthetic fur. The stench was unmistakable, but the cardinal rule of wearing the suit was clear: never remove the head.
“That’s an instant reprimand,” Jake had warned. “If you do it, and Olivia discovers you filled in without clearance, say goodbye to your weekend shifts, pal. Good luck scraping by on Tuesday tips.”
“I get it, I get it,” Max had insisted. “I’ll steer clear of any revolutionary mobs.”
Jake frowned at him, the mascot suit resembling a deflated, lifeless husk in his arms. “I’m dead serious about this. You cannot take your head off until you’re back in the changing area. This place thrives on illusions, and no parent wants to see a decapitated giraffe on a cigarette break. The moment you stop being a storybook character, you’re just a grown man in a budget costume, embracing children at an awkward height. If that becomes our reputation, this park will shut down, and I’ll end you before that happens. If you feel dizzy, you can sit down, and someone will keep an eye on you, but do not remove your head.”
Max was well-versed in the importance of appearances. He’d received the same lecture back when he was on litter patrol, about how no parent wanted to bring their child to a dump. He learned as a substitute ride operator that “uh-oh” should never be in his vocabulary. “This place runs on wonder,” according to the owner, Charlie. “And any skilled illusionist works tirelessly for ages to make it look like they haven’t done anything at all.”
Max was all for preserving the magic. He’d visited this park himself as a child and wanted the little rascals tearing through the place to have the same warm, nostalgic memories to buoy them through their own quarter-life crises. He remembered all the awe he felt wandering through the delighted screams in the cotton candy-scented air, and wanted the same joy for the kids who could feed their pocket money to a rigged game and still leave feeling like champions. Max did his utmost to make everything perfect, but he’d only had the head on for five minutes before his nose began to itch. Unbearably.
And Jake wasn’t joking about the hugs. Thinking the children wouldn’t be as interested in him, as a giraffe and not, say, a unicorn, Max was completely blindsided by a five-year-old who ran up from one of the suit’s many blind spots, and was just slightly shorter than Max’s belt buckle. His eyes watering, Max managed to stick to protocol: two pats on the back, then gently guide the child out of the danger zone. Pat, pat, push, that was the rule. Many kids wanted hugs, but none of them got a long one.
There were a few other children needing attention, and Max had to turn quickly to accept hugs from the side, then pat, pat, push the kids to a safe distance. Once he had a little space cleared, Max performed one of the tricks from the scripted show: a hand-stand kick that sent both hind legs shooting into the air. Max quickly realized how much harder it was to land on concrete rather than the shock-absorbing stage, and his head, which hadn’t quite been secured properly, had to be seized before it started to slip off. Still, the kids cheered, but there was an ugly, mocking laugh from a group of teens.
Teenagers were a source of anxiety for Max, since they were too preoccupied with being cool to enjoy themselves, and didn’t yet realize how that impacted everyone who lived and died by customer satisfaction. One of them, a boy with a hand in his girlfriend’s back pocket, took a drag from his cigarette and used the hot end to pop a six-year-old’s balloon. The little girl looked shocked, staring wide-eyed at the limp ribbon on her wrist, and her bottom lip started to quiver.
If Max had been working his regular shift, he would have been wearing no more costume than a bright yellow t-shirt, a cap sporting the park’s logo, and a cheerful grin. The smile was crucial, especially in a situation like this, so Max could kindly lead the little girl back to her parents, and gift her another balloon. Today, however, Max was the giraffe. He had permission to be a bit of a jerk.
Theatrically crossing his front hooves in a huff, Max sidled up to the offending boy, and used one hind hoof to administer a light kick in the rear. There was no possible way it could hurt, but the boy was so surprised he jumped, and dropped his cigarette. Max crushed it out with a hoof and gave a punctuating nod, big ears flopping, and the little girl started to laugh. Actually, several people were laughing, including one or two of the teens, and the smoke-less boy was turning red. “Hey!” he shouted. “Where’s your supervisor?”
Max put a hoof to his furry brow and used his plastic eyes to scan the crowd. Snapping to attention, he pointed to something behind the teen, and the boy turned to look over his shoulder. As soon as he did, Max kicked his behind again, then gazed innocently in the opposite direction as the small crowd laughed. Even the boy’s girlfriend was sniggering behind her hand, and that made the boy withdraw his hand from her pocket, and ball it into a fist.
“Look you…jerk!” the boy started, but Max put his hooves over the giraffe’s mouth in shock. This did mean he temporarily couldn’t see through the dark mesh that provided his only air flow, but he could hear a dozen little voices saying in unison, “Awwwwww!”
The teen boy took a look around, and realized that the crowd of children had attracted a rear guard of parents, waiting expectantly to see what kind of example he intended to set. His own friends were a little distant from him, enjoying the show at his expense. The kid shoved his hands in his own pockets, and started slouching away, until Max used a piercing whistle to attract his attention. One hoof on his hip, Max pointed out the No Smoking sign.
“Nice one, Jake,” said somebody, patting Max’s shoulder. Max turned his head, but couldn’t see who it was through the mesh of the giraffe’s mouth. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the stage.”
The front hooves were just cuffs of stiffened felt, so Max could still have the use of his fingers, and a hand slipped into his. Max still couldn’t identify the hand, but he could see the bright yellow of a staff t-shirt, which he followed to Fairytale Stage. He thought he’d left the changing room with plenty of time to walk the park before the show started, but it was easy for Max to believe, given the amount of sweat pooling in his least favorite crevices, that he’d been baking in the sun for hours. And his nose still itched.
It was cooler under the plywood shade behind the stage, but so much hot air had been trapped inside the suit that Max was radiating steam and body odor. His guide took him to the shielded area off stage left, where the performers who didn’t have to wear five pounds of foam on their heads could get into wigs and make-up. Max’s hand was dropped, and a long, red braid flicked across his vision. “God, I hate cool kids.”
It was Olivia. The shift manager intimidated the hell out of Max, who suddenly felt cold beneath the insulating fur. If she guessed that it was not Jake in the giraffe suit, Max might spend the next weekend looking for a new job. Olivia’s long artificial lashes brushed her freckled cheeks as she lit a slim cigar with a butane flame, breathing in the smoke. Max held his breath to keep from coughing.
“Swear to God, Jake,” Olivia sighed, leaning on the prop table and flicking her braid over her shoulder. “Charlie’s driving me up the fucking wall. I can either be a smiley-ass little cheer bucket OR I can keep teenagers from dry humping in the gingerbread house; I cannot do both. It’s an impossible standard. It’s just so subjective, and the goal posts keep moving.”
It was possible to talk, with the giraffe head on, but even shouting, it would be hard to understand. Max had to hope Jake didn’t talk much, offering up a mute, sympathetic shrug.
Olivia exhaled a mouthful of smoke, then reached up and took the whole braid off. Max had guessed that it was not her real hair, but it was still unsettling to see, and Olivia looked very fragile without it. With the casual ease of routine practice, she parked her cigar between his fingers. “I know, I know, it is what it is,” she said, kicking off her sneakers. “I just hate being mean mom all the time. Charlie gets to be everybody’s friend, then he’ll come whisper in my ear about enforcing the rules.” She untucked, then completely removed her shirt.
Jake was probably gay, but Max definitely wasn’t, and the last thing he needed was for the suit to get tighter. He didn’t want to alert the shift leader to his distress, but inside the furry head, Max quickly closed his eyes. Well, he peeked. He did close them. But he peeked.
Olivia took her costume off the rack and pulled it over her head, momentarily disappearing behind yards of emerald silk. In the show, she wore painter’s stilts, and the hem of her gown just brushed the stage. Without them, her skirts pooled around her bare feet, and she looked very, very small. She took her smoke back and turned her bare back to Max, who knew enough to know he was expected to zip her up.
Taking one last drag, Olivia crushed out the slim cigar and smiled. Max had seen her smile a thousand times, bright white teeth stretching up to her cheekbones, every cord in her neck involved in the effort of cheer. This smile was different. She smiled with the slightest bow of her lips, a small crease at the corners of her green eyes. She looked a little tired, and perhaps a little sad, but brimming with warmth and tenderness. With her short hair, and her too-long dress, and her sleepy smile, Olivia didn’t look intimidating at all.
“It’s so dumb,” she said. “I just have all these memories from when I used to come here as a kid. Everything was perfect, everything was magical. Now I see how the sausage is made, I feel like it’s up to me to make it perfect for everybody else. Truth is, there was probably trash on the ground and busted toilets when I was little, but I only remember the magical things. I hugged a hundred mascots, can’t remember the smell.”
Max put a hand on her shoulder. He pointed to her, then closed and opened his fingers next to the giraffe’s mouth, in what he hoped looked like a chef’s kiss. Olivia smiled her gentle smile and hugged him, leaning her head against his furry chest. Pat, pat, push, Max remembered, but he stayed where he was. Olivia could have a long one.
The show went well. Max remembered his cues, his comedic brays, the handstand kicks to combat the evil queen Olivia. All the mascots had an early curtain call, then booked it to the changing room, half a dozen sweat-soaked animals decapitating themselves to gulp down buckets of water.
Max waited until he was in the bathroom, then stripped out of the suit. His t-shirt was translucent, his hair sticking up in hedgehog spikes, and he peeled off his dripping socks just to feel the cool tiles under his pruning feet. Even though it didn’t itch anymore, Max spent a luxurious amount of time scratching his nose.
Wiping his phone with a paper towel, Max sent Jake a quick text to say that everything was alright. Jake texted back immediately, “Pre-show chat with Olivia?”
Max wiped the sweat out of his eyes to make sure he’d read it right. It was too specific to be an innocent question, and Max’s hands shook as he texted back, “I could have been fired! I still could be, if she finds out! Did you even have a family emergency?”
“Why are you mad? I didn’t do anything,” came the next text. “You gonna ask her out?”
Alright, fine, Max did like her, but he was trying hard not to. The whole encounter had been thrilling, but completely inappropriate, an out-of-character episode he was going to blame on heat exhaustion. “She’s my boss.”
The three dots appeared, and Max made eye contact with the giraffe’s head, grinning at him from the pile of fur. The incoming text read, “You two are so busy being perfect, you can’t see how you’re perfect for each other. Break a rule. Ruin the magic. She’s better out of costume, and you are, too.”
Max texted him back, but the autocorrect changed it to, “Go Puck yourself.”
