Mickey Mouse in Hollywood

The sun was shining and the air was mild and clear when Mickey Mouse closed the door to his modest flat, which an insensitive soul might've called 'dumpy', and started whistling his way down the six flights of stairs that would lead him out onto the street.  Mickey's flat was modest, of course, because Mickey was poor and couldn't afford a better one, and it was just a happy coincidence that he didn't much mind sleeping on an old cot half-filled with sawdust.  Of course, he wasn't so keen on the six flights of stairs and would've raised no objections to using the lift, but since the only lift in the place had been sitting two feet off the lobby floor for many moons and nobody had any intention of moving it, least of all the owner of the place – well, a person just can't have everything.  So down the stairs he went, all six flights of them, because his addiction to meals and having a passable pair of shoes to his name necessitated his going to work.
      It's worth noting casually that most of the time when a gentleman's place of employment expects him at nine, he might make an effort to show himself about the place in the vicinity of that hour.  Mickey felt that this was unrealistic.  It wasn't that he was dishonest, because he wasn't, but he did take a liberal view on things such as punctuality.  He hurried sometimes, of course, because conceivably there could be a purse-snatcher to catch up or a football game to join into.  But in his natural state, hurrying was as foreign to Mickey as anything on the dusty side of a schoolroom globe.  
      He was certainly doing nothing of the hurrying kind now as he wandered down the sidewalk taking a friendly interest in anything and everything that seemed like it could use some.  He was eating an apple, but this too was done with a relaxed air, as though he had just happened to found himself with an apple in his hand and supposed he might as well take nourishment.  He had just thrown the core away and was licking his fingers as he strolled past a vacant lot enclosed with a sturdy wooden fence, upon which was posted a notice of a lost dog and another offering VITA-MINE TONIC.  He glanced at both and dismissed them in seconds, because he already had a dog and no use for vitamins.  He put his hands into his pockets and considered whistling.  There was a set of battered trash cans next to the fence up ahead; Mickey thought, quite in the absence of any prick of conscience, that he could've thrown his apple there instead of into the grass, but no matter.  It would do equally well either place.
       For reasons that will presently be clear, the hands of time are now turned back.  At roughly the same moment Mickey was stepping off his sagging front stoop onto the street, a streetcar several blocks away was chugging to its destination and running ten minutes late.  None of this was of any concern to Mickey, but it was causing painful distress to one occupant of the car in particular, an undersized shrimp of a girl who was just then being crushed to death between a fat accountant and a grim-faced department store clerk reading a newspaper.  Minnie Mouse was a sweet, gentle creature, even if there wasn't much of her, with a ready smile and a musical laugh, although neither were very apparent at present.  She was a practical girl too, and thus she found herself questioning with greater and greater frequency her grand aspirations of being in 'the movie biz'.  It had seemed like such fun at first, a real opportunity.  Funny - not the kind you laughed at but the other kind - how none of her little daydreams had involved getting her shins barked and her feet stepped on in a hot, overcrowded streetcar which was running ten minutes late, a freshly mimeographed copy of Love-Call of the Smokies tucked under her arm and a rapidly approaching deadline for its safe arrival at the studio ("before  ten-thirty, Miss Mouse, if you please! ") hanging over her head.  Minnie had read this script herself, when it had been discovered that only somebody able to spell could properly exorcise the document.  Apart from her own interests in its successful completion, Minnie's private opinion was that it wouldn't be such a bad thing if filming couldn't begin on time – or ever.  There was nothing wrong with suspending your disbelief at the cinema, but somebody sometime has to draw the line somewhere.
      Oh well.  Hers was not, she reflected, to reason why.  The streetcar jerked to a halt and Minnie swayed forward, crushing her knuckles neatly between the pole and somebody's briefcase.  Her bottom lip quivered, but she stiffened it coldly.  No matter – if one makes it in the biz, one can afford to buy new knuckles.  She allowed herself to be jostled and shoved in the direction of the exit.  Anyway, it was a nice day, wasn't it?  Minnie stepped down onto the sidewalk.
      What happened next was one of those moments in which the film must be stopped and examined before a clear judgment can be made.  Minnie herself was never quite sure who the culprit had been.  Through the crystal clear glass of literature, the reader can observe without question that it was actually the grim-faced newspaper reader, who, having dismounted the streetcar and finding himself squinting into the sunlight, remembered an appointment he was late for and opened his jacket, tucking his newspaper inside.  His elbow, flinging out to make room, went straight into Minnie's back.  Besides startling her, this unexpected address blew her entirely off course, and as she jolted from the surprise of a blunt object in her spine, her arms opened and Love-Call of the Smokies  exploded into the air.
       "Oh!"  Minnie stood helpless for a few beats, stricken with the sort of dull paralysis one gets in these situations, perhaps from the assumption that if you can stop moving, the world will stop moving with you.  It doesn't, usually, and it didn't now.  Minnie thawed at last and found that she had to catch up with it.  She began with a crazed leap, trying to reclaim mastery of her own destiny, snatching papers out of the sky, stomping her feet down on the ones turning end over end across the cement, shoving them into one arm as she hunted them down with the other.  If only the wind would let up a little bit, perhaps it wouldn't be entirely hopeless.  Minnie dropped onto her knees to stalk the pages that were laying relatively still, and was about to sink tranquilizers into page one hundred and fifty seven when it, sensing the danger, threw itself onto an easterly current and flew up toward the sun and freedom.  Minnie reached out for it with a little cry, but it was too late.  In a moment it would be over the fence and lost forever.
      But wait!  Something was occurring.  Minnie hadn't been aware of the presence of anyone else on the sidewalk, save for the businessman who had trod heavily on page seventy-three (Minnie didn't have time to glare after him, so she merely pictured in her mind the face she would like to make), but she found now that she had a fellow traveler.  A loud clang alerted the immediate vicinity that he had just lifted his foot onto one of the trash cans lining the fence.  As Minnie watched, the quick-thinking fellow hopped up onto the can and used it as a springboard for a phenomenal flying jump.  The cap he was wearing fell to the ground, but he had the presence of mind not to stop for it; he reached out and just as gravity started reeling him in, he made a wild snatch and closed his fingers around page one fifty-seven.  His posture on the return journey was deservedly victorious, even as he failed to stick the landing and crashed backwards, sitting down hard and rolling back onto his elbows.  
      In spite of this dismount, Minnie was deeply impressed, and would have told him so, only at about this moment, a little wind came blowing in from around the corner and the remaining escapees started muttering amongst themselves.  "Oh!" said Minnie again, realizing that she had been sitting very still, and lunged forward to detain them.  Her hat slipped forward.  She pushed it back.  It slipped forward again.
      Mickey, meanwhile, because that's who it was, was entirely satisfied with his performance.  Nothing much in it, of course.  He'd just happened to come around the corner and spotted a skinny little nothing in a skirt scrambling about on the sidewalk, which naturally made him curious.  Seeing papers fluttering around like butterflies, and noting as how she seemed to take an interest in them suggested to Mickey that he ought to take steps, and that was what he had done, on the trash can.  He now got to his feet and dusted himself off, turning around as he did so to find the girl was right back to her old tricks again.  He was disappointed that she seemed to have missed his athletics, but he forgave her; girls are often silly like that and can't be counted on to recognize a good chance when they see it.  Also, her papers.  Mickey's foot went out automatically and stamped on one that was trying to sneak past.  He really ought to help her, he guessed, so he bent to pick up the one bearing the print of his shoe and then worked his way toward her rounding up strays.
      She was drawing in papers one by one when he reached her, kneeling on the sidewalk and murdering her stockings.  Mickey knew little of stockings, but he'd overheard enough about them to feel naïve sympathy for her anyhow.  He dropped to his knees too and helpfully slapped a hand over one sheet that was just out of her reach, sliding it toward her.  "There y'go," he said by way of introduction.  The girl didn't answer, but Mickey kept helping her anyway.  In another moment the sidewalk was clear, and Mickey held out his own little collection for her to take.  "Aw, that's all right, huh, kid?" he said, full of good chummy feeling for the little adventure they'd shared together.  "No ha-a-r…."
      A moment.  When somebody goes from good understandable English to an unhealthy wordless wheezing halfway through a sentence, he should be required to explain himself.  In Mickey's case, this is simple.  What happened was the girl looked up.  That part wasn't surprising to him, because he had just been speaking to her, and looking up was only proper.  The unusual part, the part that melted his tongue and dried his vocal cords into corn husks was the fact that this girl was the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life.  Mickey stared at her, and she looked back, although with less of her eyeballs showing.  He had had, up to this point, very little gift for sensing when something momentous was occurring, but Mickey realized that this – this girl with big brown eyes and a pert nose and a fascinating pink mouth and a trim little figure that he wouldn't dream of calling skinny –  was something momentous.
      But he had been speaking.  What had he been going to say?  He continued almost automatically, although his voice had changed into a croak.  "…N-no harm done."  She smiled at him a little, which made his eyes get bigger and the opening in his windpipe smaller.  He tried to smile back, but his muscles were sluggish and clumsy, and the result was heavily lopsided.  That didn't matter.  A fellow needn't concern himself with trivialities when faced with goddesses in human form or whatever.
      It was really a shame that Minnie wasn't privy to these reflections.  She would've found them very flattering.  Also, it might've thrown into perspective certain aspects of his appearance, like the slightly mad glint in his eyes, and made her feel more comfortable to know that he was simply suffering bravely though the devastation of a sudden and absolute infatuation.  Still, he had a nice face and seemed friendly enough, if possibly a little slow, so Minnie smiled at her knees, hugging Love-Call of the Smokies  to her chest, before checking to see if he was still looking at her.  He was.  Minnie gave a tiny cough.  "Thank you," she said.  Mickey's smile widened, for he perceived this was an opportunity for conversation.
       "Yeah," he said.  "I mean, yer welcome," he added, ten seconds later.  Minnie nodded.  She might have said something else then; in fact a whole number of things might have happened then, if the Mission clock hadn't started to chime.  It was ten o'clock.  Minnie blinked and then started, jumping to her feet as she remembered that she had a life and employment beyond sitting on the sidewalk examining people's faces.  Moreover, she was late.  "Oh! Oh!  My goodness – I'm late," she explained, leaping to her feet.
       "Aw, gee," Mickey said, leaping to his own feet reflexively.
       "I've got to go."
       "Aw, gee."
       "Well, goodbye," Minnie said.
       "Aw, gee," said Mickey one last time.  "Bye."
       "G'bye.  So long."  Minnie edged past him with one last smile – yes, goodbye – and hurried on her way.  Mickey put his hands into his pockets and stared after her.  Gee whiz.  He found that his cap was lying on the pavement nearby.  He bent slowly to retrieve it.  Wow.  He turned around and started walking again.  Zowie.  She was a – a real pip.  A real peach.  He walked a little faster.  Boy, was she ever a doll – yessir, a real tomato.  Lookit the eyes on her.  Lookit that cute little figger.  Cutest voice he ever heard on a female, what a dish, oh boy.  Gosh.  Gee.
      And yet… and yet, there was something niggling at the back of his mind, something that was bothering him.  Mickey couldn't quite grasp what it was.  Yes, perhaps he could've been a little more suave, but he'd like to see another fellow who could handle himself better with a pair of brown eyes burning into him that way.  And everything was certainly in order on her end, nothing to reproach there that he could imagine, so what could be wrong?  He could only award himself full marks, the lady likewise.  Full marks for Mickey and full marks for… for….
      Mickey stopped.  Knowledge and understanding flowed forth from heaven and bathed him in their illuminating and embarrassing glow and the scales fell from his eyes.  He saw all things clearly.  In his rapture, Mickey had forgotten to ask the girl's name.  He did not know who she was.  He spun around to look back, knowing it was hopeless, but bound by honor to try – after all, fate might yet be kind.  It was not.  She was gone.  She was the only girl in the whole world and he, Mickey, had just misplaced her.  He squinted until he looked like a sick headache and when he couldn't squint anymore he kicked a pebble that was handy and frowned.  
      "…Nuts."