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a tip -- try the football
panzerotto: it's a fried pizza turnover as big as a football, with
beef-jerky laces. It's my favorite!"
"I want a football!" the youngest said.
"We'll have it for dinner," the eldest said, looking off at the skyline of
coaster-skeletons in the distance. "Let's go on some rides first."
George beamed his idiot's grin at them as they left, then his face went
slack and he went back to wiping down the surfaces. A moment later, a
hand reached across the counter and plucked the cloth from his grip. He
looked up, startled, into Joe's grinning face. Unlike his brothers', Joe's
face was all sharp angles and small teeth. Nobody knew what a child of
a tongue was supposed to look like, but George had always suspected
that Joe wasn't right, even for a third son.
"Big guy!" Joe shouted. "Workin' hard?"
George said, "Yes." He stood, patiently, waiting for Joe to give him the
cloth back.
Joe held it over his head like a standard, dancing back out of reach,
even though George hadn't made a grab for it. George waited. Joe
walked back to his counter and gave it back.

"We're dozing the FreakZone," Joe said, in a conspiratorial whisper. He
put a spin on We're, making sure that George knew he was including
himself with the Island's management.
"Really," George said, neutrally.
"Yeah! We're gonna flatten that sucker, start fresh, and build us a new
theme land. I'm a Strategic Project Consultant! By the time it's over, I'll
be an Imagineer!"
George knew that the lands on Pleasure Island were flattened and
rebuilt on a regular basis, as management worked to stay ahead of the
lightspeed boredom-threshold of the mainland. Still, he said, "Well, Joe,
that's marvelous. I'm sure you'll do a fabulous job."
Joe sneered at him. "Oh, I know I will. We all do just fabulous jobs,
brother. Just some of us have fabulous jobs to do."
George refused to rise to the bait. He could always outwait Joe.
Joe said, "We're thinking of giving it a monster theme -- monsters are
testing very high with eleven-to-fourteens this year. Dragons, ogres,
cyborgs, you know. We may even do a walk-through -- there hasn't
been one of those here since the sixties!"
George didn't know what Joe wanted him to say. He said, "That sounds
very nice."
Joe gave him a pitying look, and then his chest started ringing. He
extracted a slim phone from his shirt-pocket and turned away. A
moment later, he turned back. "Gotta go!" he said. "Meeting with
Woodrow and Orville, down at Ops!"
Alarm-bells went off in George's head. "Shouldn't Bill go along if
you're meeting with Orville?"
Joe sneered at him, then took off at a fast clip down the midway.
George watched him until he disappeared through one of the access

doors.
#
Bill was clearly upset about it. George couldn't help but feel
responsible. He should have called Bill as soon as Joe told him he was
meeting with Orville, but he'd waited until he got home.
He'd been home for hours, and Joe still wasn't back. Bill picked
absently at the dinner he'd made and fretted.
"He didn't say how Orville found out?" Bill asked.
George shook his head mutely.
"Why didn't he invite me?" Bill asked. "I always handle negotiations
for us."
George couldn't eat. The more Bill fretted, the more he couldn't eat. It
was long dark outside, hours and hours after Joe should've been home.
Bill fretted, George stared out the window, and Joe didn't come home.
Then, an electric cart's headlights swept up the trail to their cabin. The
lights dazzled George, so he couldn't see who was driving. Bill joined
him at the window and squinted. "It's Joe and Orville!" he said. George
squinted too, but couldn't make anything out. He took Bill's word for it
and joined him outside.
It was indeed Orville and Joe. Orville was driving, and Joe was lolling
drunkenly beside him. Orville shook hands with Bill and nodded to
George, who lifted Joe out of the cart and carried him inside.
When he got back, Orville and Bill were staring calmly into each
other's eyes, each waiting for the other to say something. Orville was
dressed in his working clothes: a natty white suit with a sport-shirt
underneath. His bald head gleamed in the moonlight. His fleshy,
unreadable face was ruddy in the glow from the cabin's door. George
bit his tongue to keep from speaking.

"He's drunk," Orville said, at last. Orville didn't beat around the bush.
"I can see that," Bill said. "Did you get him drunk?"
"Yes, I did. We were celebrating."
Bill's eyes narrowed. "So you know."
Orville smiled. "Of course I know. I set it up. I thought you'd approve: