The Orbiting Human Circus · WNYC Studios and Night Vale Presents

Naughty Till New Years: Thirdly... How to Disappear (Lessons I and II of III)

December 4, 2019·22 min·1 clip

Coco tells Mr. Chouinard that the janitor's storytelling created an overwhelming feeling of warmth and safety — and the episode reveals why: the janitor accidentally discovered stage hypnosis as a child to freeze his bullies.

The episode opens by recapping where the story left off: the janitor has vanished from the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower after telling Coco a story about a ballroom at the top. The narrator provides the first two clues to the mystery: the janitor has no memory of how he came to be at the tower, and he amuses himself by pretending he has a narrator and an audience. The episode traces three parallel storylines: Coco searching for the janitor, Mr. Chouinard following both of them in secret, and the janitor perched high on the tower's girders. Mr. Chouinard reaches the observation deck before the others by taking the elevator, hides in shadows, watches Coco and the janitor pass, and then cannot give voice to his silent scream. He walks out into Paris in expanding circles of panic, delivering a frantic private monologue about having hired one employee older than Father Time and another like a baby New Year with a mop. On the tower, the janitor tries to understand how speaking to Coco produced real words from somewhere inside him — words he did not consciously know. Childhood memories begin flooding back, released by the act of telling a story. He glances down and sees what he imagines is Mr. Chouinard by the Seine and wishes the man could feel as happy as he does. Mr. Chouinard, standing by the Seine, hears the janitor's voice from an impossible distance and slaps himself, concluding he must be going mad. The next day, the janitor eavesdrops from on top of the ticket booth as Mr. Chouinard tests Coco's night vision and hearing. Coco tells Mr. Chouinard that the janitor was a wonderful magician whose story immediately produced in him an overwhelming feeling of warmth and safety. The narrator then explains the origin of this ability: as a bullied child, the janitor accidentally discovered that saying something confidently incomprehensible would freeze his attackers long enough for him to escape. If the incomprehensible information was delivered in a way that made people feel they were about to understand it, and then extended into a good story, they would remain pleasantly frozen. This is what the janitor did to both Coco and, years earlier, to his childhood bullies. The janitor falls asleep that night with the happiest dreams he has had in years, including a dream of a pigeon named Mr. Cracker Man who only eats when its owner sings.

As heard by us

A vanished janitor turns an Eiffel Tower mystery into a tender, strange, quietly funny radio drama.

The janitor's disappearance at the Eiffel Tower gives the piece its charge, but the real pull is Coco left alone with a half-told account and one childhood memory that feels like the only usable clue.

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