Read Online Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis - Free Book Online Page A

tower.
    I prayed that something similar would happen to me.
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    J ACQUES LIVED in an empty room in the lodge’s basement, behind the manager’s office. It had one small window at ground level, which he sometimes threw a blanket over. On the floor was a clock radio and a queen-size mattress. The only other furniture was a dresser full of T-shirts and shorts. On the dresser was a picture of a babe. An older babe, but a babe—a redhead with an angry look on her face. The woman was Jacques’s dead wife. Or that was what we’d heard. Her death had left Jacques alone in the world. He missed her every day. He’d traveled all around the globe. Now he thought he’d settle down. He’d picked New Hampshire because he’d heard it was beautiful. Second only to Canada. He’d seen the park, and it had seemed like a great opportunity. A beautiful niche in the mountains. Cheap rent. He contacted the owners, and had them lend him the keys. He’d carried a sled up the mountain and ridden it down. He’d made up his mind right then. He didn’t see how such an incredible feeling couldn’t be a success.
    We were not excellent workers, mostly because we were stunned by the pleasure of one another’s company. Soon our legs became scraped from lifting sleds, and our arms grew sore and then muscular. Our skin turned gold. Our fifteen-minute breaks stretched to thirty. Instead of half price, our snacks were free, because the snack-stand crew, a lower echelon of workers who were trapped in grease and darkness, offered them to us that way.
    The waterslide had an office, a white cement room that looked out onto the pool through a window, and in it was a black vinyl chair that rolled on three silver wheels, the fourth having been lost, some water-stained pamphlets on how to perform CPR, and an enormous black stereo with two cassette decks that played a joyous cacophony of Megadeth and the Beastie Boys. This office became the site of passionate and private discussions, during which the participants leaned a chair against the door and propped a mat over the window.
    On the platform at the top of the lift, teenagers stretched into strange nature-worshipping poses and smoked cigarettes. Their job was to tell customers to raise the safety bar, to help them off the chairs, and to hoist the sleds from the chair backs, but when no customers were visible they sat in a circle on the platform and told dirty jokes and played cards.
    The mountain crew was always thirsty and sending someone down the hill for drinks. The waterslide crew was thirsty and hungry, too. As the youngest, I was chosen, no matter where I was stationed, to make the food run. Under the yellow awning of the snack stand, I’d order three large nachos with extra cheese, six raspberry slushies, three cheeseburgers, and five chili dogs. The server would pack everything into a shallow cardboard box, and I’d give him the soft, ripped bills I’d collected. He’d push them back. On my return along the sandy path to the slide, Jacques sometimes passed by, walking slowly, wearing shorts and an old polo shirt, tight under the arms. He’d look up and nod, appearing to see only me, not the box.
    I wondered how he could notice so little. I guessed he was preoccupied. He’d hoped we’d have six hundred people a day, and we hadn’t yet. He was always chatting up the customers and making lists of needed supplies, and every day at noon he drove to a different neighboring town to distribute brochures. He kept a few in the pockets of his shorts, and sometimes he’d absentmindedly shove them farther in, because the tips stuck out. He’d had them printed himself, and on the front was a picture of Amy Goldman. I could understand why. She was the most glamorous, if not the most beautiful, girl in school. Within a week of the park’s opening, she was dating Dave Z., the assistant manager and second-oldest employee of