Magnum said something about a pansy. “Right! Just goes to show you what Fence Flour thinks about the extreme athletes if they send Fellows to make their deal. How much did they offer you, anyway? Nice! Sure, I’ll match it. No problem. I know you wouldn’t go with Fence for any price, but if they think you’re worth that much then I sure as hell think so, too.”
Mac had the feeling Fred Magnum was crying. Fred Magnum was way, way too dedicated to the cause. Mac propped the boy up a few more notches with some “all in this together” platitudes. The kid ate it up.
“I always thought of MacBisCo as like, you know, like Harley-Davidson,” Magnum explained. “One of them companies that is really dedicated to the people buying its stuff. You know what I’m trying to say?”
“God, yes. That’s just right,” Mac effused. “You hit the nail on the head. I love it. The Harley-Davidson of cereal companies! I wonder if them motorcycle boys would let us use their trademark?”
“You mean, like in TV ads?”
“Shit, yeah! It’s brilliant! It’s exactly the right message! Ever thought of getting into big-time marketing when you retire from professional sports?”
“It’s my dream, Mac,” Magnum whined through tears of joy.
Chapter 30
The bellhop was a man in a pointy hat and a long, flowing white beard. The facial hair was fake. The linen robe was a dingy ivory color. The bellhop reached for Chiun’s trunks.
“I got them, thanks,” Remo said, stopping the bellhop before he even touched the trunks. Fingerprints on lacquer was a crime punishable by death—if it was Chiun’s lacquer.
The bellhop had to be satisfied with flourishing the door for them, then he bowed low, sweeping off his hat regally.
“Thanks,” Remo said, and added as an afterthought, “Ho ho ho.”
The young woman at the desk wore a deep-cut gown that barely clung to her shoulders and swept to the floor. Her long straight hair was parted with a tiara, and a glimmering pendant dangled in her cleavage. “Good day, and welcome to the Middle of the Earth”
“Hi,” Remo said. “I guess that means you’re not Mrs. Claus.”
“No,” she said uncertainly. She flipped the pendant to show him the gem-filled engraving. “Hi! I’m the Lady Galadrium, at your service!”
As she processed his reservation a band of gruff-looking maintenance workers appeared with window-washing equipment. They set to work on the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that gave the lobby a magnificent view of the mountains.
“What’s up with the outfits?” Remo asked Ms. Galadrium. She didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. “The janitors? Why’re they dressed like that?”
She shrugged. “We go to great lengths to achieve the right atmosphere.”
Remo was intrigued most by the janitors’ oversize rubber shoes, which were molded to look like hairy, scabrous bare feet. One of the janitors, muttering to himself, opened a ladder and began to toil to get to the top, twisting and flopping the huge rubber feet until the fifth rung tripped him up. He toppled to the rough- hewn granite floor and lay groaning. One rubber foot was still lodged in the rungs and his real foot was only a quarter of the size, but just as hairy.
“C’mon,” Remo said to Ms. Galadrium as more hotel workers hurried to block the guests’ view of the fallen employee. “They Munchkins?”
“No, milord,” she replied peevishly.
“Now I get it. Renaissance festival. Right?”
“No!”
“Hey, don’t get snippy. I’m just trying to make sense of it all.”
“As I said, sir, this is the Middle of the Earth.”
“Lady, don’t tell me about the middle of the earth. I’ve been there. I’ve seen the movie. This doesn’t look anything like it.”
“We’re doing the best that we can, sir,” Galadrium said in a whisper. “And let me tell you it’s not easy. They were going to sue us for using the characters from the books, so we had to change them, just a little bit, but it hurts our authenticity. But we have to have some sort of gimmick because lord knows people won’t go on holiday to a place without a gimmick and the only bleeding thing we’ve got to bank on is that they made those bleeding movies on our bleeding mountains!”
“You’re not even talking about Journey to the Center of the Earth, are you?” Remo asked. “You know, Pat Boone spelunks, duck gets murdered, pet store iguanas walk around with plastic spines glued on their hides?” She pushed the key cards at him and stomped into the back room.
“Hey, Buddy.” It was a mounted gorilla talking—or something with the face of a gorilla. The gorilla-faced thing was, apparently, the concierge.
“What are you supposed to be?”
“I’m an Ork. That’s O-r-k, ork. Not the trademarked-kind. Let me clue you in.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Remo said sincerely.
Chiun eyed the man in the fake beard who was bowing and holding the front door, then perused the chain-mail-clad medics tending to the fallen janitor.
“Remo, is this some sort of poorly executed historical fair?”
“That’s a good guess, but no cigar. They made some movies here a few years ago. The management’s trying to cash in on it. Remember all the fuss about rings and hobbits and dragons and stuff?”
“A puppet pageant for the children?”
“Yeah. But this puppet pageant was three movies and they were each four hours long.”
Chiun shook his head. “This makes no sense. What child would have the patience for it? Were these films considered to be successful?”
“Not really. That’s why the theme park is in New Zealand.”
“I see,” Chiun said seriously, then stopped in front of a rotund, bearded bellhop with a papier-mâché battle-ax. His pendant identified him as Glomli the Dwarf. “Ridiculous!” Chiun said delightedly.
Glomli despondently pointed the way to their room and Remo went for the phone.
“Gotta call work and tell them I didn’t make it in today.”
Chiun sniffed disdainfully. Remo attempted to follow the directions in the hotel’s pamphlet, 19 Easy Steps for Making an Outgoing Call, then gave up and poked the special-services keys until someone agreed to connect him.
“Hi, Olaf,” he said when producer Dasheway barked into the phone.
“Romeo! Where the hell are you, Romeo?”
“Some hotel in New Zealand.”
“What the hell are you doing in New Zealand? We were supposed to shoot the second show today.”
“Sorry. Unplanned trip.”
“To New Zealand? I didn’t know it was a real place. I thought it was the name of the secret sound stage where they did the movies with the gloomy smurfs.”
“Friend of mine is here on business. He needed me to come along.”
“Are you lying to me? Is this a ploy for more money? I’ll give you more money!”
“I’ll call when I get back in town,” Remo said.
“I’m getting a bad vibe here, Romeo. Tell me everything’s okay between us.”
Remo hung up and was lured onto the balcony by the whine of servomotors. He cleared the snow off the wooden chairs and relaxed into one. Chiun joined him and they sat together in comfortable silence.
Remo thought he might have enjoyed the scenery of the Fiordland National Park, if he could just see past the fiberglass, animatronic trolls that battled continuously on the hotel grounds outside a plywood castle gate. Every hour the trolls were joined by a shabby collection of costumed warriors who charged one another for five minutes shouting badly scripted dialogue.
They were hotel staff—apparently the cast included any costumed employee who could be spared from actually running the hotel at any given moment. One battle was all little people with oversize rubber feet. Another fight sequence happened while most of the staff was busy checking in a busload of new arrivals, so the only human participants were three men in rubber tree suits—they couldn’t move their legs and kept falling flat on their face—and a college kid in a plastic spider suit. The trees taunted the spider incessantly.