Mickey is staring glumly out of the window, wearing a faded red robe with two big brass buttons. He inhales a long, crackling drag on his cigarette and blows the smoke toward the snow-capped mountains of the Disney ski resort in the Sequoia National Forest. “I brought him here two weeks ago to see the progress we had made on the place. Christmas was his favorite holiday. He loved getting the Park all decorated like a winter wonderland. This was his dream getaway.” Mickey’s eyes are watery and red, and they haven’t met mine since I entered the room two hours ago. “Do you know what it feels like to be born a grown mouse, into the bestfriendship of your life,” Mickey turns his steam and smoke from the window and talks to my shoes, “and then have to live on forever after your best friend leaves you?” I admit that I do not. I only knew the death of my grandfather, who raised me, but who was not my best friend by any stretch of the imagination. “He gave me life but forgot to give me the death as well. I don’t want to die right now, but it would be nice, at some point, to know…” Here Mickey trails off and ashes his cigarette into his empty scotch glass. His voice is no longer the cheerful, musical falsetto we have all grown so accustomed to hearing; now it is strained and reedy, smoky and slurred with fatigue. Walt Disney died three days ago at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Mickey isn’t handling it well. “Donald called me to tell me. Fucking Donald. Well, he’s got bigger balls than Roy, I’ll tell you that much.”
Mickey and Donald have a notoriously bitter relationship, each one living out the character the other wishes he could have been. Mickey, early in his career, had to back off the dirty jokes and sneaky tricks he became famous for so that people would see him as more of a family-friendly icon. Meanwhile, Donald overshadowed Mickey as the new unpredictable prankster; he was Disney’s scapegoat and everyone loved him for it. Mickey had to step back from the spotlight and act as more of a presenter, or “MC,” of Disney, rather than participate in the fun of Disney cartoons. “And now everyone expects me to step up and ease their grief, be the shoulder they can cry on, take control of the company. But what about my grief? I wasn’t fucking expecting this! It was supposed to be a goddamned checkup, for Christ’s sake!” I ask him what the plans are for Disney now that Walt is gone. “I don’t know,” he moans. “Last I heard, they were working on some jungle movie. But who wants to see a movie about that? Walt loved the magical stuff. Princesses and fairies to grant your every wish… Not some monkey kid with animals for parents. Where’s the royalty?” We talk a bit longer about the rocky future of the company, but Mickey doesn’t look very interested or hopeful. Someone knocks on the hotel room door. I answer it. It’s Minnie in a fur coat and net veil. She’s carrying a large, messy notebook and she looks as if she’s been crying too. “I just wanted to drop this off for Mickey. He should have it, ya know. Not that two-timing slimeball Donald. Mickey?” Mickey doesn’t turn his head. Quietly, so we can barely hear him from across the room, he says, “Get that tramp outta here.” Minnie looks sad but not alarmed. She raises her long black eyelashes to my face and says, “Tell him he needs to call Roy. He could never live with himself if he let Walt’s dream die with Walt. That’s not what the big boss would have wanted.” She hands me the notebook, turns, and sashays back down the long hallway. I shut the door behind her and walk back across the enormous room to hand Mickey the notebook. He looks at the cover for a long while, on the front of which is scrawled in big, boxy letters: “Walt and Mickey’s Magical World.” He leafs through it for a couple of minutes, sketches and scraps of writing falling around his frail body onto the floor. I begin to repeat what Minnie said, in case Mickey hadn’t heard, but he cuts me off. “For once in her silly life, the girl’s right. Hand me the phone. We’ve got a movie to make.”
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