Ride the Titanic! (26 page)

‘Okay, okay, so I’m tired of living from fire alarm to fire alarm; flying here, driving there, arguing this, deciding that. It’s only going to get worse.’

‘So why turn down the Disney deal?’

‘What would you do?’ I say.

‘Won’t work, pal. Try again.’

‘Okay, then, what should I do?’

Her lips brush my ear. ‘Let me think.’

I want her to weigh my
Titanic
dream against giving it up for Disney’s dream job, big bucks, pipe and slippers, and a happily-ever-after, normal life. A tall order, but Geena’s a tall woman with a gorgeous smile and a steel trap mind.

She says finally, ‘Grayson’s trying to peel you off the project.’

‘Roger that.’

‘And once you go, then what? Can the others keep going?’

‘Lewis but not for long. I’ll take him to Orlando and get him mouse ears too.’

‘What about Pop?’

‘What about him?’

‘You can be so dense when I think you understand. What’s Pop going to do if you jump ship?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He’ll go to his grave believing Disney dumped him and grabbed you instead.’

‘They gave him a golden parachute.’

‘But he didn’t want to jump.’

‘So they pushed. NASA did that to you. Happens all the time.’

‘I’m not seventy-eight years old. What do you think will happen if you put on mouse ears in Orlando?’

‘He’ll kill me.’

‘For starters, and then he’ll die from a broken heart. This crazy ride of yours saved his life. All he talks about when he calls mom is, ‘
Titanic
this, iceberg that.’ And whenever he’s with Herbie and Scooter and the rest of his gang, my God, you’d think this thing was a living breathing creature, the way they go on.’

‘It is, because of them. I couldn’t have done it without their help.’

‘Then factor in Pop and his boys before you decide. If you leave, a lot of happy, creative geezers are going to start hitting little white balls on the golf course and cleaning swimming pools again.’

‘You’re saying I should stay for their sake? That’s nuts.’

‘I’m just saying we both know what’s waiting for you at Disney. Can you say the same thing about
Ride the Titanic?
’

‘I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen here.’

‘You will if you abandon ship.’

We look at each other for a long moment. Eye to eye. I can feel the answer in my heart. I put it in words. When I finish she just stares at me.

I add, ‘Are you really okay with this? My staying I mean.’

‘Depends.’ She falls back onto the bed, stretches her arms above her head and gives me that look.

‘Convince me.’

Travel to Vegas, roam the strip any day of the week, and sooner or later you’ll come upon a jumbled confusion of cranes, trucks, concrete and steel busily building a hotel, a high end shopping area, a casino do-over, or in our case, a ship that’s going to sink and come back again.

But rather than subject foot and vehicular traffic to the daily sight of construction chaos like the other building sites do, from the very first, we surrounded our ride site with scaffolding sixty feet high by six hundred feet long. Onto this we mounted a silvered Nylon/Kevlar fabric that acts like a supersized drive-in movie screen, upon which, during the daytime, our High Rez video projectors display a montage of historic photographs of the original
R.M.S. Titanic
under construction in Belfast in 1910: massive bronze propellers, raked smokestacks, the towering bow with her mythic name emblazoned in raised letters, and of course, triple-expansion steam engines that dwarf the mustachioed workers frozen in time from another world across the sea in Ireland.

But at night our slideshow changes from construction photos to a rivet-perfect, CGI version of the
Titanic
sailing full-speed across the Atlantic, complete with moving water, scudding clouds and the ever-deepening night sky.

At midnight the iceberg looms into view, grates along the hull and passes into the darkness. From that moment on, until April 15th, 2:20 am – the time the real ship sank back in 1912 – our animated version matches its death throes every thirty minutes, as it sinks, leaving bright bold red lettering floating above the empty sea:

Ride the Titanic!

Live the Adventure

Coming this spring

The animation was Ellie’s bright idea. It came to her while post-producing the green screen scenes she shot in Hollywood a year ago.

‘This way the ride will be buzzing in their heads long before it runs. Talk about a terrific trailer!’

‘How much will it cost?’ I said.

She shrugged. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’

‘Numbers.’

‘Under a million, but not by much, unless. . .’

‘Unless what?’

‘I can call in some favors.’

‘Such as?’

She patted my cheek. ‘You don’t want to know, but it just might rhyme with ‘Daddy.’’

It ended up costing a million-point-two – not a penny of which I paid, by the way – so whatever favors Ellie called in from her father is anybody’s guess. I don’t even try, especially tonight as I stand on the strip watching the projectors work their magic on the silver screen, with Ellie on my left arm, having flown out to Vegas to help register the projectors for the ride scenes at the hangar site, and Geena on my right, now fully recovered from our bedroom ‘meeting’ and gripping my arm in excited anticipation of what’s to come.

Geena leans across me and says to Ellie, ‘This is the trailer to beat all trailers.’

Ellie nods modestly. ‘It’s turning heads, I must admit.’

As proof, the drive-in-movie sized image of the
Titanic
is stopping traffic like it did the first night when word spread along the strip that the iceberg was about to strike. As a result, tonight, thousands of pedestrians and hundreds of cars gather around our construction site, waiting for the menacing image of the iceberg to heave into view. When it does, the crowd tenses as if some malevolent force swept the air from their lungs. Seconds before they were buzzing and muttering the half-drunk way revelers do when wandering along the Strip in the early hours.

Not anymore.

Ellie and Geena clutch my arms as the iceberg nears the ship’s fragile hull.

‘I know this sounds ridiculous,’ Ellie whispers, ‘But I hope to God it misses.’

Something in the tone of her voice tells me that if we do our job right, make everything work, don’t miss a beat,
Ride the Titanic
is going to be much more than just a Vegas ‘destination experience’ like
Blue Man Group
or
Cirque du Soleil
. It will become an emotional time machine that moves people so deeply they’ll buy tickets again and again to see if the tragedy turns out the way they already know it did.

The iceberg strikes the ship, shudders and grinds its way along the starboard side of the hull, and then vanishes into the night.

I whisper, ‘God rest their poor souls, and thank you God, for giving a poor soul like me such a great idea.’

Ellie says, ‘Going to be more than great.’

Geena kisses my cheek. ‘Already is.’

The crowd remains fixed in place as the final act of the trailer drama plays out in the cold Atlantic, when the
Titanic,
broken and beaten,
sinks out of sight. The crowd, silent up to this point, buzzes with conversation as they slowly disperse like the fog on the sea; one moment there in full force, the next, flowing along the strip in search of a new thrill.

Geena reaches around, grabs Ellie and pulls her away. ‘Time to be girls. Let’s head over to
Fashion Show.
Ever been there?’

‘I never say ‘no’ to shopping.’

I say, ‘Will I see you later?’

‘Maybe’ Geena calls out over her shoulder as they merge with the crowd, ‘Got me a hot date with a rich girl. What about you?’

‘Meeting with Xia.’

‘Tell her I said, Hi.’

‘I will.’

Ellie hollers, ‘And tell her, ‘Hands off Geena’s merchandise.’’

Their laughter blends into the nighttime buzz that rises up around me like a hum of happy bees in search of nectar, Vegas-style.

From inside, the
White Star Grand Hotel
is still a skeleton of what will become – in less than six months – a re-creation of the
Titanic’s
interior spaces, providing all goes well, which of course it isn’t at the moment. But at least to date, all fifty-three floors have been poured, partitioned, plumbed and wired. Plus, workers have nearly finished ‘skinning’ the hotel exterior with the blue-white, carbon fiber-reinforced plastic panels that create its unique iceberg appearance, officially making it the highest building in Las Vegas.

I spot Joe and Herbie, nose to nose, coffee cups in hand, sitting in director chairs in what will one day be the hotel’s reception hall and front desk. The night crews of plasterers and plumbers hurry back and forth, while the two old-timers seem caught up in a friendly argument. I try sneaking past them to the construction office where Xia is waiting, but Herbie spots me.

‘Where’s your hard hat, kid?’

Joe says, ‘He don’t need one. He’s Irish.’

They roar with laughter and I think, ‘For this I turned down Disney?’ But say out loud to Joe, ‘Why aren’t you over at the ride site?’

‘Shift change went fine, so Herbie and me decided we’re taking Max out to dinner. Gonna’ show that Italian kid some Vegas sights and sounds.’

I can’t resist. ‘He’ll love the early bird specials and the slots. Be sure to buy him a pair of those putty-colored shoes you old guys wear.’

Herb hops out of his director’s chair and pokes me in the chest. ‘Just because we’re old, don’t mean we can’t have a good time!’

I grab him by the shoulders, smooth his silk cravat and rub his wrinkled forehead. ‘Do you have any idea how beautiful you are when you’re angry? Give us a kiss.’

He twists away to Joe. ‘How’d you let a
schmuck
like this marry your beautiful daughter?’

‘Got me drunk on
grappa
, then promised one of these days we’d work together on the craziest ride in the world.’

Joe looks so happy. So does Herbie. Geena was right. I put some swagger in my voice, ‘You calling my ride chopped-liver?’

Herbie smiles and punches me on the shoulder. ‘You crazy Mick son-of-a-bitch. Joey, here, is knocking his brains out, getting your ride up to speed with Lewis. I’m busting my ass with Mr. Wu, making that fat Chinese son-of-a-bitch see things my way, and you? You’re stopping traffic with a runaway piece of steel the size of a house. You’re really something, Mikey-boy, you know that? This crazy idea of yours is coming together and just think. . .’ He reaches up and taps my head with an arthritic finger. ‘All this wonderful shit came out of that thick Irish skull of yours, except. . . .’ He stops and shakes his head sadly.

‘Except what?’

‘Just imagine how much better it would have been if you were Jewish.’

‘Or Italian!’ Joe shouts.

That sets them off again, and I leave the two old boys to bask in their well-deserved sunshine.

A highly impatient Xia doesn’t even bother saying hello, let alone invite me to sit in my dust-filled, paper-strewn, computers-everywhere construction office, currently manned by a solitary young female assistant who has enough sense to keep her head down and her fingers tapping away at her keyboard.