Dan turned to greet someone, and I looked to see who it was. Lil. Of course. She was raccoon-eyed with fatigue, and she reached out for Dan’s hand, saw me, and changed her mind.
“Hi, guys,” she said, with studied casualness.
“Oh, hello!” said Suneep. He fired his finger at her—the flying ghosts, I imagined. Lil’s eyes rolled up for a moment, then she nodded exhaustedly at him.
“Very good,” she said. “I just heard from Lisa. She says the indoor crews are on-schedule. They’ve got most of the animatronics dismantled, and they’re taking down the glass in the Ballroom now.” The Ballroom ghost effects were accomplished by means of a giant pane of polished glass that laterally bisected the room. The Mansion had been built around it—it was too big to take out in one piece. “They say it’ll be a couple days before they’ve got it cut up and ready to remove.”
A pocket of uncomfortable silence descended on us, the roar of the Imagineers rushing in to fill it.
“You must be exhausted,” Dan said, at length.
“Goddamn right,” I said, at the same moment that Lil said, “I guess I am.”
We both smiled wanly. Suneep put his arms around Lil’s and my shoulders and squeezed. He smelled of an exotic cocktail of industrial lubricant, ozone, and fatigue poisons.
“You two should go home and give each other a massage,” he said. “You’ve earned some rest.”
Dan met my eye and shook his head apologetically. I squirmed out from under Suneep’s arm and thanked him quietly, then slunk off to the Contemporary for a hot tub and a couple hours of sleep.