Note – Another TFLN one-shot. Enjoy! This is, of course, for Amber, who is the Nadine to my Claudia. She really is.
The Happiest Place on Earth
(585) We've been at Disney 20 seconds and she already got the cops called over.
.: Florida :.
Johnny Zacchara was at Disney World.
Why?
Because all normal families took their normal kids for a normal family vacation at Disney World, where they wore normal vacation garb like cargo shorts and polos and sun dresses and sun visors, and ate normal things like snow cones and churros and spent lots of money on perfectly normal looking souvenirs.
And this week, at least, Johnny, Nadine, and Amalia were going to be just another normal family enjoying the theme park.
Minus the four bodyguards that accompanied them everywhere, of course.
He was probably being a bit hard on himself, resenting the aspects of his life that kept his family from being just another cookie-cutter suburban family, because Nadine didn't seem to mind. Dressed in a cream-colored sun dress and comfortable shoes that Claudia would have insisted on burning immediately, she appeared to be having a great time pointing out all the fun attractions to their daughter.
At five years old, Amalia Rayleen Zacchara was the perfect age to appreciate her first trip to the theme part, and her eyes were as wide as saucers now that'd spotted Cinderella's castle. Johnny grinned and slipped on his shades, taking her free hand so that she was situated between him and Nadine as they stood on Main Street.
"I guess we know which place we're hitting up first," he laughed, jiggling Amalia's little hand as Nadine smiled. "Let's go see the castle."
"Do you think Cinderella's really inside?" Amalia asked excitedly.
Johnny and Nadine exchanged glances. "Er, I think she and the Prince are on their second honeymoon," he hedged, "but they said it was cool for all of us to check out the castle anyway."
"That was very nice of them," Nadine agreed. "We never let people into Crimson Manor when we go on vacation."
Amalia seemed to accept their answer and half-pulled them along in her haste to see her favorite attraction. Johnny let her do so, making a mental note to be sure he got them reservations for that fairy princess breakfast or whatever it was when Snow White and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and the others had waffles with the patrons. Amalia would love that.
As his daughter pulled and tugged and dragged him along, Johnny was struck for a moment by how nice all of it was. Sure, he didn't give a rat's ass about princesses. And if he'd been told a few years ago that he'd be booking a Princess Breakfast or whatever the hell it was called, he would have shoved the person telling him that off a building.
A tall one.
But it was a gorgeous day, sunny and bright, and he was surrounded by other fathers wearing Mickey hats and being dragged around by their kids, and the air smelled like sugar and strawberries, and his wife and child were smiling, and this was really all he could have asked for.
"Hope you guys wanted to see where Prince Charming lives," he informed the guards seriously. Two of them cracked a smile; the other two rolled their eyes, but Johnny wasn't fooled: he had heard all of them bragging to the other guards that they were the ones picked to go to the happiest place on earth. He supposed you were never too old to like sugary foods and fast roller coasters and full grown men and women dressed as giant animals.
"All right," Nadine beamed. "Here we go, Li."
"John! JOHN."
He stopped stock-still at the sound of that voice and clenched his eyes shut, knowing who it was without even having to turn around. "Oh, no. Oh, please, God, no. Not her. Anyone but her."
Nadine and Amalia obviously didn't share his sentiments, because they both spun around and stood there in open-mouthed delight as Claudia stalked up Main Street, USA, in what was formerly the happiest place on earth, in four-inch tall red slingbacks. (They were her 'comfort' shoes.)
"Oh, my God, Claudie!" His wife's only flaw was how much she adored his sister. "What are you doing here?"
"Yay! Aunt Claudie!" Amalia was jumping up and down and, frankly, Johnny didn't think the situation called for it. What it did call for was a blow to the head. A sweet, merciful blow to the head…
His sister was scowling at him. Of course she was.
"What?"
"Aren't you even going to say hello to me? Jesus Christ, I shouldn't have to tell you."
"Hi, Claudie." His expression remained sour. "Don't take this the wrong way, but why the hell are you here?"
"I just picked the girliest thing in the park and figured you'd go straight for it, so I came to the castle," she replied, and he could tell she was completely serious, which irked him.
"Not the park," Johnny got out through gritted teeth. "The state."
"Oh." She looked at him like he was an idiot. "You said you were going to take them to Disney World at some point."
"That's not responsive to my question," he said, trying not to look too much like he wanted to strangle her for surely ruining yet another family outing.
This would probably be even worse than that time he took Amalia to the library for story hour and Claudia, who insisted on coming because she wanted to know what kind of culture her niece was being exposed to in 'this Podunk town," put on a very lewd puppet show for a bunch of four-year olds because the story teller was ten minutes late. It was only his position on the town council that kept all of them from receiving a lifetime ban at the Port Charles library.
"What are you doing in this state, Claudia?"
"…I had business in Florida," she said finally, flipping her hair and switching the cup she held to her other hand. She must have realized what she was doing, because she grimaced at it and held it out to Nadine.
"They gave me this thing of orange juice. Just handed it to me without my asking for it. Do I look like a homeless person? Ugh. I'm not drinking it, they probably poisoned it. You take it."
Nadine rolled her eyes (but drank the juice) as Johnny wondered if he could possibly convince Disney security that his sister was a terror threat. That seemed to be en vogue these days.
"You just happened to have business in Florida while we were going to be here," he said.
Claudia nodded. "Yes. I did."
"Bull-" he looked down at his daughter, who was eyeing all of them curiously. "That's not exactly the truth, is it, Claudia?"
"Of course it is," she replied flippantly, breezing past him and taking Amalia's tiny hand in hers. "I wouldn't say it if it wasn't. Let's see what all these gross-looking dancing animals are about. Come on, Lia."
"Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no." He was in front of her immediately, quickly taking his daughter's hand. There was no way Claudia was going to ruin this family vacation. With their luck, she'd probably punch Eeyore in the nuts or pull out Ariel's hair extensions or cop a feel of Aladdin in front of a large group of small children or…why did he know all these Disney character names?
There was no excuse for it, really.
Johnny glanced down at the five-year-old gaily swinging her hand in his.
Oh, yeah, that.
"Claudia, you are not staying." He ignored her offended squawk and Nadine's pout. Damn fool woman had no business pouting – she knew exactly what kind of trouble Claudia could get them all into. "Do I have to remind you of what happened the last time you came with us when we took Li somewhere? Do I have to remind you of the zoo incident?"
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, it's not like they can't get more gazelles from some country in Africa. And blood's not that hard to clean off of concrete. You should know that first-hand, John, really."
He closed his eyes, wondering if there was anything in the Safari Kingdom that he could feed her to. At the very least, it would be justice for those poor gazelles. Gentle, graceful creatures that they were.
"Claudia, I swear to God…"
"I'll be good," she chirped, and it wasn't entirely convincing. She brushed him away and once again took Amalia's hand, but the little girl didn't seem to mind being at the center of a game of Tug of War. "Look, Li, there's that Piglet animal you like. Oh, God, that costume's probably covered with the swine flu virus…"
She shook it off and slipped on her shades as Johnny watched her warily. "Come on, let's go get your picture taken with him."
Amalia started to drag her away and Claudia shot her little brother a look over her shoulder as if to say, See?
Johnny scowled and folded his arms over his chest, and Nadine came up and gently placed a hand on his bicep.
"You know, you should brighten up," she said, keeping a remarkably straight face. "We're on vacation."
He could hear the laughter in her voice and didn't appreciate it. "She's going to assault someone in the next ten minutes. I know it. I just know it."
"Oh, she wouldn't assault anyone in front of Li."
"She would definitely assault someone in front of Li," he corrected her. "She just wouldn't murder anyone in front of Li. She has more restraint than that."
The mother of a small child overheard that remark as she walked by and looked at him in horror. The bodyguard at his side moved forward a step, silently telling her to move along, which she did, dragging her son away so quickly that it was a wonder she didn't pull the little kid's arm right out of the socket.
Amalia was getting a hug from an oversized pig in a striped shirt, and one of the guards was taking the picture. After the first one, the little girl insisted that her aunt take a picture, too, and Johnny watched, impressed, as Claudia sucked it up and gave the stupid pig a one-armed hug while keeping her other hand on her niece's shoulder.
"…Well, she's making an effort, I'll give her that."
"She just wants to spend time with us," Nadine pointed out. "Is that so bad?"
"She's with us all the time," he groaned. "She's always dropping over at Crimson Manor, every single fucking day, she stays for dinner even when we hint that we don't want her to, she gets Amalia all wired up when we're trying to put her to bed, she won't leave when I'm sexually harassing you-"
Nadine burst out laughing, but Johnny wasn't done.
"She drops by when she knows we're having dinner with Elizabeth or Robin and mercilessly taunts them, she dumps out all the clothes in Li's closet and replaces them with ones she got her, she got herself added on as one of the guardian's of Li's trust fund – I'm still trying to figure out who I need to fire for that – she tags along when we want to take Li to the zoo or the library or the museum, she randomly shows up in New York when we're all there for the weekend, she followed us here to Disney World just to mess with my head and she – she – oh, my God, she's got Mickey at gunpoint."
They were both staring, in perfect open-mouthed horror, at his sister. Claudia stood with her back toward Piglet and her Glock pointed straight at the Mouse himself. Amalia was watching this situation develop with rapt fascination, which told Johnny that she was spending way too much time with her aunt.
"You think you can just go around touching people?" she demanded, her gun never wavering from the spot between Mickey's eyes. "That you can just sneak up on people from behind and try to give them a hug? Goddamn fucking mouse, just because you think you own this happy-sunshine-LSD factory doesn't mean-"
"Aaaaaand here come the police," Nadine sighed, watching as the Disney task force began forcing other park visitors back so they could diffuse the situation. The guards were trying to talk Claudia down and explain to her that all the characters at the park gave hugs, and she finally seemed to buy it.
However, that didn't prevent the police from immediately moving in and handcuffing her. Claudia squawked about sexual harassment and the second amendment and how her lawyer would bleed their company dry so fast they'd have to remove Walt from his high-tech frozen coffin into the freezer at the 7/11 down the street, and they dragged her away.
Amalia watched all this calmly, then looked up at Piglet and shrugged.
"Goddamn," Johnny growled, taking Nadine's hand and motioning for the guards to get his daughter and follow him as he attempted to extricate Claudia from this mess. "I knew we should have just stayed home and just Google Earth'd this motherfucker."
The End.