“All right,” he said reluctantly. “You go first.”
Swallowing, she started inside, only having to hunch a little. Doug followed on his hands and knees, glancing over his shoulder right before he went into the tunnel. Sure enough, just as he feared, a woman pushed through the double glass doors into the play area right at that moment. She was short and mousy, but she had a mean frown, the way his middle-school librarian, Mrs. Hampton, frowned when she caught someone sticking gum under the card catalog. He smiled weakly, then followed Rosie.
The plastic felt gritty, like the plastic bowls at home felt, the ones they’d had since college. Years of sweaty hands had given the tunnel the musty smell of a locker room. Rosie hesitated where the tunnel started up, and Doug encouraged her, holding her waist as she climbed. “Step here,” he said. “Use the footholds.” With each step, she gained confidence. Doug had a little more trouble, his leather shoes slipping. Eventually they reached a landing, where the color went from red to bright yellow. Tiny plastic bubbles above let in light, and other than a glimpse of the blue ceiling, he couldn’t see anything outside.
Rosie was nearly at the next tunnel, one that went up another forty-five degree angle. Doug, however, was already winded.
“Wait a minute,” he said, leaning against the wall.
“But I wan’ go dere, Da-ee!”
“I know, dear. But just... wait a second. Isn’t this neat? We’re way up here, in this castle.”
She stared at him, brown eyes blinking. Sometimes talking with her, he felt like he was Mission Control and she was on the space shuttle, and he had to wait for his signal to bridge the vast distance between them.
“Way up ‘ere?” she said.
“Right. Way up here.”
The next tunnel was blue, the next one after that green, twisting left and right, sometimes straight, sometimes climbing. Rosie chattered excitedly, repeatedly saying, “Way up, Da-ee, way up ‘ere.” She got a little ahead of Doug, and then when he rounded a sharp bend, entering another blue tunnel, she was already out of sight. He heard the sounds of shoes squeaking and thumping, but they seemed as if they were coming from a long ways off.
“Rosie?” he said.
When she didn’t answer, a vicious panic took hold of him. The tunnel darkened, going from blue to black, pressing in on him, tightening. He put his hands against the sides, as if he could hold the vise at bay, but the feeling persisted. There was pressure on his lungs, as if someone was sitting on his chest. Each breath came short and quick, and he felt sweat break out all over — on his back, his forehead, his neck. He’d never felt such intense anxiety in all his life — the only time he’d felt anything even remotely similar was when his father died years ago — and he told himself it was foolish. She was just a little ahead. Christ. Calm down. Calm.
He was still sitting there trying to get a hold of himself when a brown-skinned boy in a blue baseball cap scooted around the bend, coming from the direction Rosie had gone. He gave Doug a curious look.
“It’s okay,” Doug said. “I’m with her.”
The kid frowned, then passed without a word and continued down, a little faster than he had been moving before. Great. Kid was probably going to complain to Mommy that some adult was up here.
“Da-ee?” Rosie called from up ahead.
Relief flooded through him. “Coming, dear,” he said. “Just wait, okay?”
When he caught up to her, she was crouching by a round window, one that bubbled outward as if they were on the inside of an eye looking out. She faced away from him, tiny fingers pressed up against the scuffed plastic. There were actually four windows, one on all three sides, plus one above. Just beyond the area, a blue tunnel continued upward, and another, a short green one, ended at the beginning of a slide.
“Look, Da-ee! Look!” Rosie said.
“You really shouldn’t go ahead of me like that, Rosie,” Doug said, crawling up next to her. Sweat glued his polo shirt to his back. “Daddy likes to be able to see you, and if you...”
He trailed off, having gotten a glimpse of the play area down below. He saw something, something black moving along the wall, that didn’t seem quite right. He moved closer to the window and looked beyond the tiny fingerprints and the scratch marks and saw the mural of the train — but it wasn’t just a mural anymore. The train was moving, white puffs rising from its smokestack, the whole thing chugging along the wall, as if it wasn’t a wall at all but a giant television screen. And that wasn’t all. The train had changed, now less realistic and more a cartoon, shorter, more compact, and with giant yellow wheels. Then he recognized it. It looked like the toy train Rosie had at home.
“Look!” Rosie said again. “Look!”
He looked where she was pointing and saw that the green plastic floor was no longer plastic, but real grass, at least a foot high. The doors to the restaurant were huge and crooked. The restaurant, through the glass windows, was out of focus. He saw the shapes of people, but he couldn’t make out any of their features. Two squealing boys ran past, and their faces were clear but huge; their heads were at least twice the size they should have been, bulging as if someone had inflated them with air.
Doug blinked a few times, but nothing changed. “That’s odd,” he said. He cleaned his glasses on his shirt, but this didn’t do the trick either.
Rosie smiled at him. “We up eye!”
It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “Yes,” he said. “We’re very high. Honey... what do you see out there?”
She stared. Earth to space shuttle, waiting...
“Dere?”
“Yes. Do things... do they look different?”
She looked at him a moment longer, then clambered past him. “Look, Da-ee! Side! Go side now!”
Doug looked back at the window. Surely if she saw the same thing, she would have said something... He looked more closely at the clear plastic, wondering if it was some kind of trick, a projection maybe, but he didn’t see any equipment.
His heart racing, he joined Rosie. She glanced at the slide and bit down on her lower lip. The green plastic angled downward steeply. He didn’t like heights much. He also didn’t like going fast. A bad combination.
“Why don’t you get on my lap, honey,” he said. He sat at the edge of the slide, his legs extended in front of him.
She hesitated.
“It’s okay, dear,” he said. “You’ll be with me.”
Slowly, she moved onto his lap. She was no longer a little feather, and he stifled a groan when the full weight of her settled onto him. But when she clutched onto the scruff of his slacks and leaned into him, her back warm against his chest, he felt a tingle up his spine. He placed his arms lightly around her and scooted forward. For just a second, before he pushed off, he saw them from the outside, a snapshot of father and daughter, and he told himself to remember it. This moment here. Put it in the scrapbook of his mind.
They zoomed around the curves, picking up speed as they raced over the green plastic, each of them laughing. He felt the rush of air on his face. It lasted only a moment, and then they were at the bottom, his long legs skidding on the grass.
Real grass.
Giggling, Rosie hopped off his lap and headed back for the tunnel’s entrance. “Side!” she cried. “Go side!”
Doug rose, so mystified he barely noticed the ache in his knees. The room... The grass felt soft beneath his shoes. The locomotive grinded and screeched along its tracks. Big-headed children dressed in solid blues and greens ran past, laughing, and the few adults around the room were looking at Doug with out-of-focus faces. He glanced at the castle and saw that it was a real castle now, with towers and parapets, although still painted in alternating solid colors.