The Beginning by Tina Anne

chance.” He smiled at me. “But mother and son are in this together. I think we are an unbeatable team and we will only fail if we give up.”
    We continued walking and entered the gift shop together. It was dusty and the merchandise was old and faded. Frankie went in the back to start reading through the records, or hack the computer, or something. I stayed in the shop. I had over twenty years of retail and customer service experience of one sort or another, this was my area of expertise.
    My son had faith in me. He turned out to be a powerful and influential man. And a good man. The more I thought about him the prouder I became. We really did do a good job raising him. He turned out wonderfully. And for someone I hardly saw the past several years, I felt strangely close to him. He was a good kid and a good man. I loved him very much. I must make sure I tell him that today.
    I inspected the merchandise offerings thoroughly while Frankie searched the computer in the back for all the records that he could find. For my part I found cheap t-shirts with faded and peeling decorations.
    There was an assortment of cheap plush and toys, none of which had anything to do with the park. The mugs were cracked and chipped. There was nothing for infants or little kids anywhere. There were no snacks or disposable cameras for sale. Even our local amusement park in Pennsylvania had these. In fact, the only thing there was plenty of was empty space. Not only were there empty shelves, but the entire stockroom was empty. What was going on here? I stood and looked around in disbelief.
    When it was time to go we met the others and piled back in to the van. There was almost no conversation in the van as we drove. The others were busy using tablets, laptops, and phones. I was going over the faded t-shirts, dollar store style plush and cracked mugs I found in the gift shop. In my notebook I was writing a list of the type of merchandise I felt we should have. Maybe we could donate the existing merchandise to charity. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t want it.
     
    ***
    The meeting with the lawyer was short. Our experts gave a short speech telling how badly the area of the park that they examined was damaged or neglected or both. In addition, Frankie’s lawyer Pete made mincemeat out of Adolf’s lawyer, George. I got the feeling that Adolf was George’s only client, or at least the biggest one and George did not want to lose him. George did everything he could to ask for more money or to say the contract we signed at the restaurant was not valid. Every time George tried any of that, Adolf would jump in with a “No!” Every time Adolf said no, George looked like someone punched him in the face.
    We were willing to pay more money, but Adolf did not want it. He just wanted out and even more so, he did not want his estranged wife Barbara to have any possibility of benefitting. It seemed to me that George tried his best to stop Adolf from selling. It finally got to the point where Adolf said to George, “sell it or you’re fired.” We all just smiled at George as he gave in.
    George and Pete drew up a new contract. Just a formality, they said. They told us they would send it to the hotel for our signatures later. We told them we’d be there later this afternoon.
     

Chapter 6: Getting to Work
     
    We all went to lunch together, including Jerome. He was very interested in what happened at the meeting and what plans we had. In general, we had decided to shut the park down for about two months. Our experts were going to bring in teams to help fix up their respective areas of the park. In addition, we were going to build a parking garage. Not everything would be done in two months, but by opening day, the majority of it would be ready. The rest would be ready just enough to entice guests to want to come back when the different attractions opened.
    After lunch Jerome returned with us to the hotel. Frankie went to the front desk and booked all the