MIKE SNORTS A LINE in his rental car, parked in the gravel carpark off the highway. Fantasyland sits in the distance. What he’s about to do is a leap, but his mind is screaming, make something happen, make anything happen. He stares into his own eyes via the rear-view mirror and feels a momentary return to form. He dusts his nose and gets going.
The Fantasyland entryway is finished—a pastel Disneyland ripoff—but it cuts a strange visage, too. Like a pink fence line separating the construction site from commuter traffic and the surrounding scrub. Beyond, Mike can see half a roller-coaster in progress and the fibreglass mountain from the other night. There are little clusters of scaffolding and motley powerlines. With night approaching, the place gives off an eerie energy. The workers are gone. It’s quiet. Just the echo of galah call and the distant drone of highway traffic and earth-moving equipment.
There’s no guard on the gate, so Mike slips through an open piece of the fencing. With no idea where he’s headed, he takes an unexpected tour, traversing laneways of poured concrete rendered as cobblestone. Eventually, the cobblestones give way to dirt and mud. Out the back of the site, he spots a lighting rig with two figures standing under the harsh beam. It’s Buddy Winters and his female assistant. Mike recognises her from the party the other night. She’s incredibly tall. Almost a foot on Buddy, who is built like a country hick.
‘Evening,’ Mike calls out.
Buddy and the assistant jolt and peer into the shadows.
The assistant immediately puts a hand out. ‘Who’s that?’ she says.
Shielding his eyes, Mike steps out. ‘Mike Nichols. We met at the Playroom the other day.’
Buddy whispers to the assistant.
The assistant says, ‘You need to make an appointment.’
‘The God Minister doesn’t do appointments and that’s who sent me.’
They both stand there and study him.
Gears crunch somewhere close by. An engine roars into high gear.
Buddy shouts over the noise, ‘What do you want?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘You can have five.’
Buddy insists on walking and talking. They traipse along an earth wall running the length of the canal. On the other side, under more spotlights, is Noah Winters. The old man is working an excavator back and forth, digging out his canal, as reported. It looks dangerous, like the whole set-up is about to go into the drink.
‘As you can see,’ says Buddy, ‘your political manoeuvring has done absolutely fuck-all to slow my father’s DIY project. All you’ve done is put him on night shift. The engineers are telling me that if he continues at this pace, it’ll be three years before the bloody thing is ready.’
Mike struggles to keep pace with Buddy. The man has long farmhand legs. ‘How does he have such a stranglehold on this? Don’t you have investors?’
‘Dad’s bigger than the investors. He doesn’t have to answer to anyone, not when push comes to shove.’
They come down off the wall and follow a paved line into a maze of palm tree plantings. Mike is sweating, breathing faster than he’d like. ‘You know, all over town, everyone’s telling me that the real problem is money, not your dad’s hole in the ground.’
‘Same difference.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Dad’s the majority stakeholder and while that’s in play, the contracts are all in his favour. His lawyer is an evil little prick.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
The assistant walking ahead of them forces out an angry sigh. She looks at her watch. ‘Mister Winters is not legally obligated to open the park until it’s completed to his satisfaction,’ she says.
‘Dad has never been satisfied a day in his life,’ says Buddy. ‘So, if the minister wants to speed things up, he needs to buy into this in a big way, and then swing his weight around.’
‘How? I don’t figure your dad’s selling up anytime soon.’
‘There’s a piece for sale. And once he’s legally outnumbered, which is possible, people can intervene on his behalf. But the way it is, I can’t control him.’
They’re at the rear of the park now, a long stretch of cleared land. Mike spots a set of lit windows in the distance. Talk is, the Winters family have owned this land for decades and Mike figures the lights are the family pad. Buddy leads him to a long steel gate and stands over it, a foot hooked on the gate’s iron rail. ‘Jenny?’ he says.
The assistant answers.
‘Piss off for a sec, will ya?’
The assistant wanders off into the grasslands in heels.
Buddy spits in the mud. ‘I need five million up-front and twenty-five points on the back end. That’s the sort of buy-in that changes all this. Thing is, Mike, no one has it in this recession. You’re here now. You’ve snuck in, cornered me in this dark field, so that’s your straight answer, okay? If the minister really wants this joint to open on time, he needs to cough up five mil and twenty-five points.’
Mike forces himself to pause.
There’s something else.
Why send the assistant packing?
Push him.
‘Buddy, I’m not a business guy. What are we buying and selling here?’
‘My stake in it. I want out. You buy me out and the other investors will come across, I guarantee it. They trust me, not Dad. Dad’s been cooked for a while now. My father will have to listen if you buy me out, or he’ll end up in court, and trust me, once you get that excavator out of his hands, he’ll go to pieces. So, you buy me out and wham-o, you can open the park next year.’
‘That’s a lot of money to fix one old man who can’t get his shit together.’
‘You’ll meet him one day and you’ll see what he’s like.’
‘I reckon I can help.’
Buddy shrugs. ‘Even crooked men can’t do much when the money runs out.’
Mike looks out at the rising moon.
He feels the fear creeping back in.
It’s too dark all of a sudden.
‘It has to open,’ he says.
Buddy takes a set of keys from his pocket and says, ‘If you can walk on water, Mike, now’s the time.’