The engineers had earnestly presented several options for the Amazing Kingdom—Jungle Coaster, Moon Coaster, Alpine Death Coaster—but Kingsbury rejected each for the obvious reason that roller-coaster cars and roller-coaster tracks cost money. So did the electricity needed to run them.
“Gravity!” Kingsbury had grumped. “The most underused energy source on the planet.”
“So you’re suggesting a slide,” ventured one of the engineers. “Maybe a water slide.”
Kingsbury had shaken his head disdainfully. Slides look cheap, he’d complained, we’re not running a goddamn State Fair. A tube would be better, a sleek space-age tube.
“Think condom,” he had advised the engineers. “A three-hundred-foot condom.”
And so the Wet Willy was erected. Instantly it had become a sensation among tourists at the park, a fact that edified Kingsbury’s belief that the illusion of quality is more valuable than quality itself.
Lately, though, ridership figures for the Wet Willy had shown a slight but troubling decline. Francis X. Kingsbury decided to investigate personally, without notifying the engineers, the ticket takers, the Security Department or anyone else at the park. He wanted to test his theory that the ride had become less popular because it had gotten slower. The stopwatch would tell the story.
The way the Wet Willy was designed, a 110-pound teenager would be able to slide headlong from the ramp to the gelatin-filled landing sac in exactly 22.7 seconds. Marketing specialists had calibrated the time down to the decimal point—the ride needed to be long enough to make customers think they were getting their money’s worth, yet fast enough to seem dangerous and exciting.
Francis X. Kingsbury weighed considerably more than 110 pounds as he crawled into the slippery chute. Ahead of him, he saw the wrinkled bare soles of a child disappear swiftly into the tube, as if flushed down a rubber commode. Kingsbury pressed the button on the stop-watch, eased to his belly and pushed off. He held his arms at his sides, like an otter going down a river-bank. In this case, an overweight otter in a ridiculous Jack Kemp hairpiece.
Kingsbury grimaced as he swooshed downward, skimming on a thin plane of clammy water. He thought: This is supposed to be fun? The stopwatch felt cold and hard against his breastbone. The bright colors on the walls of the tube did little to lift his spirits; he noticed that some of the reds had faded to pink, and the blues were runny. Not only that, sections of the chute seemed irregular and saggy, as if the latex were giving way.
He took his eyes off the fabric long enough to notice, with alarm, that he was gaining on the youngster who had entered the Wet Willy ahead of him. Being so much heavier, Francis X. Kingsbury was plummeting earth-bound at a much faster speed. Suddenly he was close enough to hear the child laughing, oblivious to the danger—no! Close enough to make out the grinning, bewhiskered visage of Petey Possum waving from the rump of the youngster’s swimming trunks.
“Shit,” said Kingsbury. Feverishly he tried to brake, digging into the rubber with his toes and fingernails. It was no use: gravity ruled the Wet Willy.
Kingsbury overtook the surprised child and they became one, hurtling down the slick pipe in a clumsy union of tangled torsos.
“Hey!” the kid cried. “You’re smushing me!” It was a boy, maybe nine or ten, with bright red hair and freckles all over his neck. Francis X. Kingsbury now steered the kid as if he were a toboggan.
They hit the gelatin sac at full speed and disengaged. The boy came out of the goo bawling, followed by Kingsbury, who was studying the dial of the stopwatch and frowning. He seemed not to notice the solemn group waiting outside the exit: the earnest young ticket taker, plus three uniformed security men. All were breathing heavily, as if they had run the whole way.
The ticket taker pointed at Kingsbury and said, “That’s him. Except he wasn’t bald before.”
The security men, all former crooked cops recruited by Pedro Luz, didn’t move. They recognized Mr. X right away.
The ticket taker said, “Get him, why don’t you!”
“Yeah,” said the red-haired tourist kid. “He hurt me.”