Ride the Titanic! Read Online Free Page B

propulsion system, crew compartments and fuel tanks. Tearing out the rest of the interior proves harder, and when I finish I have broken fingernails, cut fingers and panting from the effort.
    Joe says, ‘You remind me of that guy going nuts in Close Encounters , building a mountain out of dirt. What the hell was his name?’
    ‘Richard Drefuss, and that was a movie. This is going to be the real thing.’
    ‘Oh yeah?’ Joe picks up a handful of scale passengers and holds them like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. ‘So what are you going to do to make it worth their while? Lots better rides at Universal, or Disney, or ever Six Flags. Cheaper too, I’ll lay odds.’
    ‘I told you it’s going to be in Las Vegas. There’s nothing out there but crazy.’
    A slow, cunning smile spreads across his peasant-like face. ‘You’d fit in there real good.’
    ‘So would you.’
    He shakes his head, place the little people in one of the model lifeboats on the basement floor and says somberly, ‘Make that phone call. I gotta’ go clean your pool.’
    Furious, I snatch up a lifeboat and jam it back inside the ship’s empty cavity. I find two more lifeboats, line them up single file, and the ride sequence comes to me in a flash, as though it’s been waiting ten years for me to open my big fat mouth and start talking.
    So I do.
    ‘I’m figuring a Mobius-strip kind of ride, like how Universal’s Transformers doubles up on itself and reverses twice. At least two stories, starting mid-ships, going forward, rising, going aft, descending and ending up here, right where the Carpathia will pick up the survivors.’
    ‘You got riders floating around in boats?’ Joe says. ‘What are you doing? Something like It’s a Small World but with ice and death instead of puppets?’
    I ignore his sarcasm. ‘They’ll be EMV’s.’
    ‘Like Indy’s ride?’
    ‘Better. And by the time they reach the end, the riders will have experienced EXACTLY what it is like to have been on the Titanic on that fateful night when the world ended and the legend began.’
    Joe grins. ‘You doing the voice track too?’
    ‘Audio is the least of my worries right now.’
    Marianna’s faraway voice calls, ‘Giuseppe, you got a minute?’
    We exchange a long look. Joe lifts his shoulders in a slow shrug, the way peasants do when surrendering to the call of their padrones . He turns and trudges over to the stairs. So much for selling a dream to a retired man who paints rocks for fun. But to my surprise, instead of abandoning ship, Joe cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, ‘I’m busy, carissima .’
    ‘Quanto tempo?’
    He whispers to me, ‘How long you figure this bullshit dream of yours will take?’
    ‘Two years.’
    ‘A while,’ he yells.
    Time doesn’t fly when you’re having fun, it vanishes when you’re doing something you love, especially with someone who’s just as excited as you are. As proof, the next time I look at my watch it’s almost noon. In the interim Joe and I have transformed the Titanic from a ship model into what looks like a ride designed by Dr. Frankenstein, but then again, mockups have no manners.
    We re-packed the innards of the hull with lengths of cardboard, red Solo cups connected with string to simulate the EMV (Enhanced Motion Ride) vehicles, and then filled them with tiny figures of people Joe borrowed from my model train layout in the other room, where he is at the moment, gathering lengths of flex track to use as guide rails for the prototype ride.
    ‘Any day, Joe.’
    ‘Coming.’
    ‘You’ve been in there forever.’
    The sound of running trains wafts through the still basement air, laced with the delicate, slightly scorching smell of ozone.
    ‘Still can’t believe how real your stuff looks,’ he hollers.
    I leave my work to pry him loose, but when I get there I have to stop and look at my trains. Some men have wine cellars. I’ve got trains. It gives me comfort knowing it’s there the way a wine