Chapter 25

On the track down 405 they sit in the three rows of seats in Humphrey’s car and talk. Sandy, slumped in the front passenger seat, just smiles; he looks zoned, as if he’s catching some rest before he dives back into it in La Jolla.

Humphrey tells them about a trip he and Sandy and some others took to Disneyland. “We had been in the line for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for about forty-five minutes when Chapman went nuts. You could see it happen—we were all standing there just waiting, you know, hanging out and moving with the line, and suddenly his eyes bug out past his nose and he gets that happy look he gets when he’s got an idea.” The others laugh, “Yeah, yeah, show us the look, Sandy,” and half-asleep Sandy shows them a perfect simulacrum of it. “So he says real slow, ‘You know, guys, this ride only lasts about two minutes. Two minutes at the most. And we’ll have been in line for it an hour. That’s a thirty-to-one ratio of wait to ride. And the ride is just a fast trackcar going through holograms in the dark. I wonder … do you think … could it be … that this is the worst ratio in Disneyland?’ And he gets the insanity look again and says, ‘I wonder, I just wonder … which one of us can rack up the worst ratio for the whole day?’ And we all see instantly we’ve got a new game, a contest, you know, and the whole day is transformed, because it’s a miserable day at Disneyland, totally densepacked, and there’s some real potential here for racking up some fantastic scores! So we call it Negative Disneyland and agree to add points for stupidest rides combined with the worst ratios.”

The four in back can’t believe it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, no! It’s the only way to go there! Because with Sandy’s idea we weren’t fighting the situation anymore, you know? We were running around finding the longest lines we could, stepping through our paces like we were on the ride itself, and timing everything on our watches, and every time we turned another corner in the line we’d see Sandy standing there up ahead of us towering over the kids, eyes bugged out and grinning his grin, just digging these monster delays to get on Dumbo the Elephant, Storybook Canal, Casey Junior, the Submarine…”

Sandy’s smile turns blissful. “It was a stroke of genius,” he mutters. “I’ll never do it any other way, ever again.”

“So who won?” Jim asks.

“Oh Sandy, of course. He totaled five and a half hours of waiting for eighteen minutes of ride!”

“I can beat that,” Tashi says promptly. “Hell, I’ve beaten that trying positive Disneyland!” Sandy denies it and they make a bet for next time.