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Chapter Three: Have a Magical Day

The large empty living room feels like it's closing in on Carlos. He has four hours to answer 250 questions and he says if he spends too much time on any one question, it's curtains for him. Yet he is taking way too much time reading each question because his English comprehension is slow.

"Do you feel like you have a lot of stress on you right now?" I ask.

"Ah, yes." He inhales when he talks, as if letting out any breath makes it harder to talk English. If all this wasn't enough, Keila doesn't look happy and that bothers him. "Sometimes she feels like I do. That it's hard because she is getting a master's degree here and she can't work and get a good job," he says.

He was earning $24,000 in Puerto Rico, maybe $32,000 with overtime. A sheriff's salary would start at $39,000. She is fourteen weeks pregnant. If he fails the test, he can either give it one last try or give up and redo the entire police academy experience he had back in Puerto Rico. Neither choice is a good one, as it means additional weeks with no income and he's already feeling the pinch now. There is a baby on the way, he repeats again. He has to pass this test.

We follow Carlos to language class, where he begins by desperately asking the teacher if he would qualify for the intensive, faster class that meets several mornings. She tells him he's not there yet and his face falls. Today's topic is controversial issues, so they begin to recite phrases. "Let's raise the voting age," they chant. "Raaazing da boting ach." The Venezuelan commander looks more frustrated this time. He is very tired of being the pool boy and also wants to move up.

"If I can get a better level of English I'm hoping some doors open up for me," he says with a markedly reduced accent from just two weeks ago. Carol Traynor, the communications director for the college, tells me that some of these students are paying to take this class two, three, and four times. Everyone in the room is taking the course again after this session ends. The levels have optimistic names, like Intermediate Level A, B, C or Advanced Lower A. There are steps to climb in this process. Hundreds of students are taking them at any given time and the stakes are high for every one of them. I leave Carlos clutching a spineless workbook and calling out his drills with vigor.

That evening I book a room at a Disney hotel that is designed to look like a Polynesian village. You have to walk outside to travel between the many little buildings, which means walking in the aftermath of the morning's storms. The sprinkler system turns on automatically so it's fighting for attention with the rain. Small torches illuminate the walkways that are studded with these poles that look like totems. Everyone is walking around in flowery costumes that make them look like they might be in search of a spear. There's something uniquely American about dressing up working adults in funny costumes. The décor inside the rooms is very similar. Bedspreads with turtles and lamps with fake wood painted with the face of some sort of native.

The scene drives me to the bar for a Polynesian drink. Even the bars at Disney are full of children on vacation. The cacophony of voices with an undertone of children's music makes the place feel like it's humming. Even here, you see Puerto Ricans popping up all over the place. Either that or I've become acutely aware of Puerto Ricans in Orlando. They race around in Polynesian dress seating customers at the jam-packed restaurant or swiping credit cards at check-in.

This is one of the places Carlos has applied to work in case he doesn't pass his sheriff's test, in the massive hotel industry connected to Disney. His brother is already a chef at one of the restaurants.

They get a kick out of the costumes and the free-flowing laughter of people on vacation. They are silly guys and the silliness of all this stuff entertains them. I hope he passes his test, but it's a lot easier to picture him here rather than pulling over drunk drivers or muscling down a gang member.

The day he retook the test, Carlos already looked like a police officer. He was wearing his mirrored sunglasses and walking around with that confident cop swagger. But he was nervous, very nervous, and he was chain-smoking menthol Marlboro Lights.

Carlos had so much riding on this test he'd already failed once. He walked to the waiting area at the Volusia County Fairgrounds and stood apart from the other men and women. He smoked. He tapped his two number 2 pencils against one another. And he paced. He was an hour early for the 10:00 a.m. exam. He looked like a prizefighter about to enter the ring. When it was time to register he handed his glasses and cell phone to Kimberly, my producer, and said he'd see her in four hours before disappearing into the exam room.

The results were posted quickly, online. Carlos was almost as nervous as he had been the day he took the exam. He felt like he'd done better but bad news was pouring in like rain. Another potential job prospect at Disney had gone nowhere and he had not scored high enough on his English Pronunciation class to move to a higher level. His fiancée has her first sonogram in just two weeks. When the news came it was like those gray clouds that billow in the sky when it looks like it's stopped raining but really hasn't. Carlos had failed.

He walked somberly to tell his fiancée. Carlos needs a job. He needs to speak better English. Now he needs to take this test he's studied so hard to pass one more time. But there are some parts of his life that offer him certainty. He is staying in Orlando. This is where he lives now. He is not going back. Maybe he'll apply for a job at Disney. He's a sweet guy and his accent will matter less in a world where people are striving to have a magical day. I can almost picture him walking around the place, dressed in a floral shirt, and saying, "AH-LOH" over and over again.

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