Honest Work

It wasn’t that bad a day, all things considered. Frankie disliked working, and Katie eventually got bored, wishing she was spending her valuable time riding attractions instead of just standing in front of them. But convincing herself this was necessary to get there, she sucked it up and pushed through. Frankie did the very same thing.

Nothing like the smoker incident happened again, and Stamos assured them it wasn’t something that occurred more than once a day. Still, with the thousands of people coming in to ride the thing, Frankie couldn’t help but wonder if, mathematically speaking, a situation like that was bound to happen again at some point in her shift.

Rides in this park had to be built especially big to hold all the interested parties. They were also pretty damn huge everywhere else, of course, but in Venge City it was on another level. Through all her boredom-inducing work she eventually calculated this one to hold at least sixty people a round.

Sixty people would enter, another sixty would approach. Some would turn around to go again. Over and over, like she was stuck in a time loop. It was a gruelling experience, in that way.

As the day grew late and Frankie’s very eyesight was dimming, her and Katie’s burly boss finally approached them with his wallet out.

“Hey… good work out here today, girls. How long you gonna be in town?”

“We dunno…” Frankie moaned, eyeing the cash. “But, uh… I think that’s it for us here… one day fine by you?”

“Uh… well yeah, I don’t see why not. You did your fair share. Let’s see here… we were talking about pay a few hours ago… so you think this’ll do?”

When he held out the brick in his hand, it was like he was holding a bar of solid gold. Even though Frankie knew it was nothing more than a crumb of the cash handed over by their customers today, a tiny cut of the much greater profit Vincent was earning just by pushing a button every few seconds, she was just so overjoyed at the idea that, not only was this day over, but she was earning a decent amount of cash for it.

“Thank you… sir.” The girls both took their cut before they put it all in Katie’s bag anyway.

“Say…” the older sister piped up. “You think we could have a go on the ride before we leave? We can just join the next batch… Whaddya say, sir?”

Frankie shot her sibling a glance. They were already done here! They should just leave before enough time passes for some other stupid issue to come up!

“Oh, that’s just fine. Of course, little lady. You two hop right on up.”

Without a choice, Frankie stepped onto the ride with her sister and fifty-eight other people.