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"Tell me again why we're doing this?" Matt asked Karen as she guided him through the crowded "streets" of Adventureland.
"To support Foggy," she said. "Now stop complaining. Line's coming up on your right, by the way."
"Does Foggy need supporting?" Matt asked. "Especially on our day off? I mean, isn't he an 'Internet sensation'?"
"I heard those scare quotes," she said. "Come on, Matt. You've never even seen him in action. I mean, heard him in...you know what I mean!" He grinned at how flustered she sounded. "Shut up. He's your best friend. And we're here, so act nice."
Matt pondered that as she brought them to a stop at the end of the line for the Jungle Cruise. He hadn't ever thought of Foggy as his best friend. Foggy had just been the first person to make any friendly overtures to Matt when he'd started working at Disneyland a few months ago. Seemingly undeterred by Matt's blindness and how standoffish he could sometimes be, Foggy had cheerfully taken Matt under his wing, introducing him to all of his friends - i.e. nearly every other cast member - and showing him the ropes.
Somehow, so fast Matt hadn't noticed it, they'd gone from eating lunch together at work to getting dinner several nights a week, to Foggy driving Matt to work when they had similarly-timed shifts and Matt brewing an extra to-go cup of coffee for the ride because Foggy swore that Matt's was better than Starbucks. Foggy had added an impressive number of movies with descriptive audio to his collection; Matt had started keeping Foggy's favorite weird blueberry sodas in his fridge.
Matt had never had a best friend before, but if this was what it entailed, he thought he could get used to it.
Somebody jostled him in line, and he wobbled and gripped his cane more tightly. He might like hanging out with Foggy, but that didn't mean he liked his job. At least working the information desk at Town Hall on Main Street was relatively quiet, and air-conditioned. Here, it was hot and crowded and noisy, and there was nothing to block the smells: the reek of thousands of sweaty guests under an August sun, the lingering grease of park food, the endless dirty diapers in need of changing. And here, at the Jungle Cruise, the fetid, swampy water of the artificial "river," and the sweet pineapple tang of the Dole Whip stand nearby.
Actually, it smelled like Foggy. Even on days he didn't work, he couldn't shake the lingering aroma of the park, perceptible only to Matt. More sweet pineapple than swamp, thankfully.
"It's not that I don't want to support Foggy," he said as they inched forward in line. It was longer than he would have expected, on this hot a day and for a ride that was not cool in any sense of the word. "I'm just not sure what you're expecting me to get out of a bunch of animatronic animals."
He'd never ridden the Jungle Cruise before, but he knew how it worked: guests boarded a boat steered by a cheerful skipper, who piloted them past scenes of animatronic wild animals while telling them terrible jungle-related puns. Matt could sense the animals, sure, but Karen didn't know that, and he could hear terrible puns from Foggy any time he wanted.
“Who cares about the animals?” she asked. “No, no, Foggy’s the main attraction here. You’ll see. Uh, hear.”
Someone tapped Matt’s elbow. “Are you talking about Skipper Foggy?” By her voice and height, Matt guessed she was a teenager - maybe fifteen or so.
“Um, yes?” he said.
She gave the kind of breathy sigh Matt associated with bobby soxers swooning over a young Frank Sinatra - not, well, anything having to do with the Jungle Cruise. “Isn’t he wonderful?”
“Uh.” Matt couldn’t vouch for Foggy’s skippering abilities - yet - but he didn’t want to badmouth his friend, who was admittedly wonderful in most other respects. “Sure.”
Karen elbowed Matt on the other side. “Told you.”
“I feel properly shamed for my use of scare quotes earlier,” Matt said, and she laughed.
The truth was, Foggy really was something of an Internet sensation, though Matt hadn’t expected to get proof of that within thirty seconds of standing in line. He’d always been a popular skipper for the ride, but a few months ago, someone had filmed his spiel and put it on YouTube - and out of nowhere, it had gotten thousands of hits. Other people had started filming him and putting it on YouTube, and since Foggy never did his routine exactly the same way twice, the hit count on all the videos kept climbing.
It seemed to be mostly local teenage girls behind the sudden phenomenon, since they started coming to the ride in droves. They’d let other boats pass them by, waiting for Foggy’s; often they went through the ride multiple times during his shift. Some girls who’d flown in from other states on family vacations actually cried if they discovered they’d arrived on his day off. Karen, who found the whole thing hilarious, assured Matt and Foggy that there was a thriving Skipper Foggy tag on Tumblr - whatever that meant - complete with breathless descriptions of tours with him, photos and drawings, and even fan fiction, which mostly seemed to involve Foggy rescuing the teenage writers from the perils of actual jungles, then gently punning at them while they swooned in his manly arms.
The whole thing struck Matt as entirely bizarre. Foggy, for his part, just shrugged and said he was glad they liked the ride.
He and Karen reached the front of the line and were stopped by the cast member in charge of directing guests to the boats. By his size, and by the faint tang of gun oil and whiskey under the fetid river stench, Matt knew who it was before he spoke.
“Hi, Frank,” Karen said. “We’re going to wait for Foggy’s boat, if that’s okay.”
Frank let out a sigh of the purest resentment. Matt wasn’t entirely sure how Frank had kept his job at Disneyland with his terrible attitude; Matt wasn’t exactly approachable, but Frank always seemed a hairsbreadth away from hurling a guest directly into the fake river. His tours were, according to Foggy, not particularly popular.
“Whatever,” Frank grumbled, and let Karen direct Matt to an out-of-the-way area while the next group of tourists filed past them and onto the waiting boat.
A couple minutes later a boat with a familiar heartbeat in the bow pulled up to the dock. Matt could barely pick out said heartbeat over the gaggle of teenage girls chattering away.
“Can I get a picture before we get off?”
“Ooh, me too!”
“I want a picture!”
“Can you sign my ticket?”
Foggy’s voice rose above the clamor. “Girls, please! We can absolutely take pictures, but like I said when you got on, no horseplay on the boat. So any horses, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave.” A soft round of giggles. “I swear, horses are always asking me for pictures, but I always say neigh.” Another round of giggles, louder this time.
Matt rubbed the bridge of his nose, under his glasses. This was going to be a long ride.
The girls took their pictures, got their autographs, and filed off. Matt let Karen lead him to the boat, though it would actually have been easier for him to board on his own. Still, appearances had to be maintained.
He heard Foggy’s heartbeat pick up slightly as he boarded, and smiled in response. Always nice to know that Foggy was happy to see him. “Matt! You made it!”
“Hi, Foggy.”
“Welcome aboard, buddy! Come over here, sit up front by me.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Karen asked, and Matt heard the swoosh of a dramatic hair toss.
“I hope not. The scent’ll attract predators,” Foggy said, and someone nearby laughed. “That’s right, no meat on the boat, please!” he said, raising his voice. “No turkey legs, no chicken fingers, and the only ham allowed on here is me.”
More laughter. Matt groaned, and Karen elbowed him. “Uh-oh, seasick already?” Foggy asked with a grin in his voice. “And we're not even on a sea. That's bad. Luckily I have a lot of experience piloting this boat. Why, before I got my license, I failed the skipper exam more times than anyone!”
Matt bit the inside of his lip. He was not going to laugh at this, no matter how gleeful Foggy sounded.
“And we're off. Everyone wave to Skipper Frank!” Foggy said, and the boat jolted forward before settling into a sleepy pace along the water. “Bye, Skipper Frank! Don't worry, passengers, it's not personal, that's just his face. He always gets so worried about my trips. I swear, you lose a couple boatloads of passengers and everyone starts to think you’re unlucky. Oh, speaking of which, do you know why they call me Foggy?” There was a chorus of “no’s.” “Good, that’s probably for the best.”
Karen chuckled as Matt shook his head. They passed under a canopy of trees, offering them some protection from the sun, and a cool breeze wafted across the boat as they turned a lazy corner.
“Oh, folks, this is exciting,” Foggy said in a hushed voice. Matt focused. Beyond the constant movement and whisper of plants fluttering in the breeze and the rush of the water beneath them, he could sense jerky, repetitive motion and the faint whirr of machinery. An animatronic. “That’s a rare Bengal tiger coming up on your left. These apex predators can jump up to twenty feet, but don’t worry - we have eighteen people on this boat so that’s thirty-six feet, way out of range.”
He sounded so pleased with himself that a startled laugh escaped Matt before he could catch it. “Sir, this is no laughing matter,” Foggy said mock-sternly, but Matt could hear the smile hiding in his voice. It made him want to laugh again, just to make Foggy that happy. “Do you know where that tiger got those stripes? Prison! That’s right, those aren’t just cat’s pajamas he’s wearing. Which is good, because it’s not anywhere close to bedtime.”
It was nonsense. It was pure, unceasing nonsense, and Foggy delivered it with unmitigated delight, and Matt knew he was sunk even as he turned a renegade laugh into a somewhat painful snort.
No one else on the boat seemed to be resisting falling under Foggy’s spell. They laughed at every joke, no matter how terrible - and they were all at least a little bit terrible. They laughed as Foggy described a nest of cobras with the most longwindedly sibilant alliteration Matt had ever heard in his life, “translated” the pre-recorded trumpeting of elephants into a sonnet to the glories of peanuts, and had a lengthy argument with an ordinary duck who he claimed was “looking at him funny.” (At that last one, Karen leaned in and murmured to Matt that Foggy was in fact drawing the passengers’ attention away from some truly racist “tribesmen” animatronic on the other side of the river.) Karen was giggling helplessly, the teenage girls were leaning in towards Foggy like flowers towards a malapropping sun, and Matt…
Matt couldn’t keep a wide grin off his face, or laughter from bubbling up at each stupid pun or hyperbolic proclamation of incompetence. Foggy’s heartbeat jumped every time Matt laughed, which made him want to do it more.
Matt had never expected to want the Jungle Cruise to last longer, but all too quickly they were returning to the dock and Frank’s grumbled orders to guests to stay in an orderly line. It took a while for the passengers on Foggy’s boat to disembark. Like the last boatload, the teenage girls all wanted photos and autographs and even hugs like he was Mickey Mouse or Princess Aurora or some other beloved Disney character. One even asked Foggy to record her phone’s outgoing voicemail greeting, which he managed to cram about nineteen puns into over the thunderous beat of her delighted heart.
“Come on, Nelson, we’ve gotta get the next boat out,” Frank snapped from the dock as Foggy handed the girl her phone back.
“Yes sir, Skipper Frank!” Foggy said, then turned to Matt and Karen, the last people on the boat. “Thanks for coming by, guys. I hope you had boatloads of fun.”
Karen snorted and gave Matt a little nudge. “Definitely.”
“It was...more entertaining than I expected,” Matt admitted, though he suspected his expression was giving him away. Foggy always said he led with his face.
“I’ll take it,” Foggy said, voice bright and warm. He gave Matt’s arm a friendly pat. “Happy to deliver the river to you, buddy. Dock’s at your two o’clock and about knee height. Want a hand?” Foggy never asked if Matt needed help, only if he wanted it. Matt appreciated that for multiple reasons, not least because he never had to lie.
“Yes,” he said now, and let Foggy guide him absolutely unnecessarily to the dock, while Karen hopped up beside him. “Thanks, Foggy.”
“Anytime, Matty,” Foggy said. “Come back again sometime, huh? I can’t keep monkeying around by my lonesome here. Only the hyenas laugh at my jokes, and even then I feel like I’m barking up the wrong tree.”
Matt let out another surprised laugh. Trust Foggy to pull out a few last-minute puns, even as he squeezed Matt’s hand a little before letting go. “Text me later.”
“If a gator doesn’t eat my phone, you got it. Bye, Karen.”
“Bye, Skipper Foggy.”
Matt tucked his hand into Karen’s elbow and they stepped back from the dock, listening for a minute as Frank directed the next group of passengers onto Foggy’s boat. Foggy greeted them with a whole new set of ridiculous jokes, sending yet another batch of clearly infatuated teenage girls into gales of laughter.
Matt couldn’t help smiling. He still didn’t quite get the whole Internet phenomenon thing, but he was starting to see why it was Foggy, at least. He was funny, despite his terrible material, and charming, and gracious about the attention, and genuinely deeply knowledgeable about both jungles and Disney, and even people with normal noses had to have noticed that he smelled good, and…
Oh no.
“You okay there, Matt?” Karen asked, and her voice sounded far too knowing.
“Uh.” Matt swallowed and busied himself with unfolding his cane. Even as Foggy’s boat drifted back down the river he could hear the bright cadence of Foggy’s jokes, and his cheeks warmed in response. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
He was so screwed.