Your Animal Side

Eddie was sweating. He'd been told, before putting on the suit, to drink a ton of water, so much your stomach hurts, and he bet there was an extra ten pounds of perspiration in the cheap costume fur. It certainly smelled like it, but rule one of wearing the suit: never take off the head.

"That's an automatic write up," said Rob. "If you do it, and Faye finds out you subbed in without approval, you are off weekend hours, my friend. Good luck sucking up Tuesday tips."

"I get it, I get it," Eddie had insisted. "I'll stay away from French revolutionaries."

Rob frowned at him, the mascot suit looking like a crumpled, empty corpse in his arms. "I'm so serious about this. You cannot take your head off until you are back in the changing room. This place survives on appearances, and no parent wants to see a headless donkey on a smoke break. The minute you stop being a fairytale creature, you are just a grown man in a Costco costume, hugging kids at dick height. If that's the reputation we get, this place will shut down, and I will end you before that happens. If you're feeling faint, you can sit down, and someone will spot you, but do not take off your head."

Eddie knew that about appearances. He'd been given the same speech back when he was on trash duty, and how no parent wanted to take their kid to a landfill. He learned as a back-up ride op that no parent wanted "uh-oh" in his vocabulary. "This place runs on magic," according to the owner, Obie. "And any good magician works hard for a long time to make it look like they haven't done anything at all."

Eddie was all for keeping the magic alive. He'd come to this park himself, as a kid, and wanted the little terrors screaming through the place to have the same warm, nostalgic memories to buoy them through their own quarter-life crises. He remembered all the wonder he felt walking through the delighted shrieks in the funnel-cake fragrant air, and wanted the same joy for the kids who could feed their allowance to a rigged game and still walk away feeling like a winner. Eddie did his best to make everything perfect, but he'd only had the head on for five minutes before his nose started to itch. Apocalyptically.

And Rob wasn't kidding about the hugs. Thinking the kids wouldn't be as interested in him, as a donkey and not, say, a unicorn, Eddie was caught completely off guard by a five-year-old who ran up one of the suit's many blind spots, and was just slightly shorter than Eddie's belt buckle. His eyes watering, Eddie managed to keep to procedure: two pats on the back, then gently push the child out of the danger zone. Pat, pat, push, that was the rule. Lots of kids wanted hugs, but none of them got a long one.

There were a few other kids needing attention, and Eddie had to turn quickly in order to accept hugs from the side, then pat, pat, push the kids to a safe distance. Once he had a little room cleared, Eddie did one of the tricks from the scripted show: a hand-stand kick that sent both hind legs shooting into the air. Eddie quickly realized how much harder it was to land on pavement rather than the shock-absorbing stage, and his head, which hadn't quite been strapped on properly, had to be seized before it started to slip off. Still, the kids cheered, but there was an ugly, mocking laugh from a group of teens.

Teenagers were a source of anxiety for Eddie, since they were too busy being cool to have a good time, and didn't yet realize how that impacted everyone who lived and died by customer satisfaction. One of them, a boy with a hand in his girlfriend's back pocket, took a drag from his cigarette and used the hot end to pop a six-year-old's balloon. The little girl looked shocked, staring wide-eyed at the limp ribbon on her wrist, and her bottom lip started to quiver.

If Eddie had been working his regular shift, he would have been wearing no more costume than a lime green t-shirt, a ball cap sporting the park's logo, and a cheerful grin. The smile was important, especially in a situation like this, so Eddie could kindly lead the little girl back to her parents, and gift her another balloon. Today, however, Eddie was the donkey. He had permission to be an ass.

Theatrically crossing his front hooves in a huff, Eddie sidled up to the offending boy, and used one hind hoof to administer a light kick in the rear. There was no possible way it could hurt, but the boy was so surprised he jumped, and dropped his cigarette. Eddie crushed it out with a hoof and gave a punctuating nod, big ears flopping, and the little girl started to laugh. Actually, several people were laughing, including one or two of the teens, and the smoke-less boy was turning red. "Hey!" he shouted. "Where's your manager?"

Eddie put a hoof to his furry brow and used his plastic eyes to scan the crowd. Snapping to attention, he pointed to something behind the teen, and the boy turned to look over his shoulder. As soon as he did, Eddie kicked his behind again, then gazed innocently in the opposite direction as the small crowd laughed. Even the boy's girlfriend was sniggering behind her hand, and that made the boy withdraw his hand from her pocket, and ball it into a fist.

"Look you...ass!" the boy started, but Eddie put his hooves over the donkey's mouth in shock. This did mean he temporarily couldn't see through the dark mesh that provided his only air flow, but he could hear a dozen little voices saying in unison, "Awwwwww!"

The teen boy took a look around, and realized that the crowd of children had attracted a rear guard of parents, waiting expectantly to see what kind of example he intended to set. His own friends were a little distant from him, enjoying the show at his expense. The kid shoved his hands in his own pockets, and started slouching away, until Eddie used a piercing whistle to attract his attention. One hoof on his hip, Eddie pointed out the No Smoking sign.

"Nice one, Rob," said somebody, patting Eddie's shoulder. Eddie turned his head, but couldn't see who it was through the mesh of the donkey's mouth. "Come on, I'll walk you to the stage."

The front hooves were just cuffs of stiffened felt, so Eddie could still have the use of his fingers, and a hand slipped into his. Eddie still couldn't identify the hand, but he could see the bright lime green of a staff t-shirt, which he followed to Storybook Stage. He thought he'd left the changing room with plenty of time to walk the park before the show started, but it was easy for Eddie to believe, given the amount of sweat pooling in his least favorite crevices, that he'd been baking in the sun for hours. And his nose still itched.

It was cooler under the plywood shade behind the stage, but so much hot air had been trapped inside the suit that Eddie was radiating steam and body odor. His guide took him to the shielded area off stage left, where the performers who didn't have to wear five pounds of foam on their heads could get into wigs and make-up. Eddie's hand was dropped, and a long, black ponytail flicked across his vision. "God, I hate cool kids."

It was Faye. The shift manager intimidated the hell out of Eddie, who suddenly felt cold beneath the insulating fur. If she guessed that it was not Rob in the donkey suit, Eddie might spend the next weekend looking for a new job. Faye's long artificial lashes brushed her sugar-brown cheeks as she lit a black cigarillo with a butane flame, breathing in the smoke. Eddie held his breath to keep from coughing.

"Swear to God, Rob," Faye sighed, leaning on the prop table and flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. "Obie's driving me up the fucking wall. I can either be a smiley-ass little cheer bucket OR I can keep teenagers from dry humping in the gingerbread house; I cannot do both. It's an impossible standard. It's just so subjective, and the goal posts keep moving."

It was possible to talk, with the donkey head on, but even shouting, it would be hard to understand. Eddie had to hope Rob didn't talk much, offering up a mute, sympathetic shrug.

Faye exhaled a mouthful of smoke, then reached up and took the whole ponytail off. Eddie had guessed that it was not her real hair, but it was still unsettling to see, and Faye looked very fragile without it. With the casual ease of routine practice, she parked her cigarillo between his fingers. "I know, I know, it is what it is," she said, kicking off her tennis shoes. "I just hate being mean mom all the time. Obie gets to be everybody's friend, then he'll come whisper in my ear about enforcing the rules." She untucked, then completely removed her shirt.

Rob was probably gay, but Eddie definitely wasn't, and the last thing he needed was for the suit to get tighter. He didn't want to alert the shift leader to his distress, but inside the furry head, Eddie quickly closed his eyes. Well, he peeked. He did close them. But he peeked.

Faye took her costume off the rack and pulled it over her head, momentarily disappearing behind yards of raspberry satin. In the show, she wore painter's stilts, and the hem of her gown just brushed the stage. Without them, her skirts pooled around her bare feet, and she looked very, very small. She took her smoke back and turned her bare back to Eddie, who knew enough to know he was expected to zip her up.

Taking one last drag, Faye crushed out the black smoke stack and smiled. Eddie had seen her smile a thousand times, bright white teeth stretching up to her cheekbones, every cord in her neck involved in the effort of cheer. This smile was different. She smiled with the slightest bow of her lips, a small crease at the corners of her doe eyes. She looked a little tired, and perhaps a little sad, but brimming with warmth and tenderness. With her short hair, and her too-long dress, and her sleepy smile, Faye didn't look intimidating at all.

"It's so dumb," she said. "I just have all these memories from when I used to come here as a kid. Everything was perfect, everything was magical. Now I see how the sausage is made, I feel like it's up to me to make it perfect for everybody else. Truth is, there was probably trash on the ground and busted toilets when I was little, but I only remember the magical things. I hugged a hundred mascots, can't remember the smell."

Eddie put a hand on her shoulder. He pointed to her, then closed and opened his fingers next to the donkey's mouth, in what he hoped looked like a chef's kiss. Faye smiled her gentle smile and hugged him, leaning her head against his furry chest. Pat, pat, push, Eddie remembered, but he stayed where he was. Faye could have a long one.

The show went well. Eddie remembered his cues, his comedic brays, the handstand kicks to combat the evil queen Faye. All the mascots had an early curtain call, then booked it to the changing room, half a dozen sweat-soaked animals decapitating themselves to gulp down buckets of water.

Eddie waited until he was in the bathroom, then stripped out of the suit. His t-shirt was translucent, his hair sticking up in hedgehog spikes, and he peeled off his dripping socks just to feel the cool tiles under his pruning feet. Even though it didn't itch anymore, Eddie spent a luxurious amount of time scratching his nose.

Wiping his phone with a paper towel, Eddie sent Rob a quick text to say that everything was alright. Rob texted back immediately, "Pre-show talk with Faye?"

Eddie wiped the sweat out of his eyes to make sure he'd read it right. It was too specific to be an innocent question, and Eddie's hands shook as he texted back, "I could have been fired! I still could be, if she finds out! Did you even have a family emergency?"

"Why are you mad? I didn't do anything," came the next text. "You gonna ask her out?"

Alright, fine, Eddie did like her, but he was trying hard not to. The whole encounter had been thrilling, but completely inappropriate, an out-of-character episode he was going to blame on heat exhaustion. "She's my boss."

The three dots appeared, and Eddie made eye contact with the donkey's head, grinning at him from the pile of fur. The incoming text read, "You two are so busy being perfect, you can't see how you're perfect for each other. Break a rule. Ruin the magic. She's better out of costume, and you are, too."

Eddie texted him back, but the autocorrect changed it to, "Go Puck yourself."