Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis Page A

they were never subtle or quiet and soon after they got there the police would arrive and shoo them away.
    Jacques Michaud was only renting the park, but he used his own money to replace the broken windows and repair the lift. He tore up the old nubbly blue carpet and put down a new nubbly blue carpet and restocked the cafeteria with frozen burgers and hot dogs, cases of soda, and industrial sheets of Jell-O and chocolate cake. He whitewashed the bathrooms and shower huts and planted cheap, hardy, orange brushlike flowers all around the park. Then he polished his car, a black 1956 Jaguar Mark VII sedan, and made stops at businesses all around the area, chatting up owners and dropping off batches of shiny purple brochures. Toward the end of this he drove to the Exxon station where my father worked as a mechanic and asked him if he had any kids, preferably daughters, who could work at the slide.
    I was fifteen, and a daughter, and my world was circumscribed. I was expected to earn not less than an A-in school. I ate dinner with my family every night at six and was in bed by ten. I was not allowed to ride in cars with boys. My parents had other rules, all with the same purpose: I could not be alone with a boy. I’d never been kissed. I longed to be kissed. I spent a lot of time at home, in my room. I was also shy, and when I spoke, sarcasm came out of my mouth.
    But I could work. My father believed in work, and he was intrigued by Jacques, enough to go on at length about the park’s likely failure. Too far from the lake, the motels. No one wanted a dry slide in summer. “He says he’s Canadian,” my father said. “But he doesn’t have an accent. To me, that means he’s brilliant. He seems like a good guy. But I just don’t think there’s any way he’ll make money from the park.”
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    I RODE MY BIKE to the interview. Jacques Michaud’s Jaguar was parked in the dirt lot outside the lodge. My father had said it resembled a Rolls-Royce, but it looked like a hearse. On the slope beyond the lot, gold grasses waved and the metal towers of the lift glinted white. The wires holding the chairs shimmered like mirages in the heat. A hawk floated in the sky like an ash.
    The lodge was so dark that I couldn’t see. But I smelled a cigar. Someone—Jacques Michaud, I guessed—said something from the corner. His voice was low but casual, as if he were utterly relaxed. He was sitting at a lunch table. He got up and pulled out a cafeteria chair and told me to have a seat. Then he sat back down. He had a dinner plate in front of him, with the remains of a ham sandwich on it, which he was using as an ashtray.
    His skin was dark and his hair was white. Pure white. But he wasn’t old—or he was, to me, but not enough to have white hair. He was forty, maybe fifty. It was hard to tell. His body was muscular—he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and his legs were brown, almost hairless, and thick.
    I was shocked that he wasn’t wearing a suit. I’d worn black polyester pants and a stiff white shirt, which was now wet from sweat, and I had had a lot of trouble pedaling my bike along the highway in my dress shoes.
    â€œWould you like a cigar?” he asked. He waved toward the kitchen. “I have more in back.” He took a puff, held it up, and read the tiny silver letters on the dark-red band. He squinted. “They’re not illegal,” he said. “But they’re pretty good anyway.”
    I considered cigar smoking disgusting and lethal. But I was looking at him and considering having one when he said, “I was kidding.”
    I nodded stupidly.
    He glanced at his watch. He hadn’t seemed to look at me at all. “You’re too young,” he said. “But I’ll hire you.”
    â€œYou haven’t even interviewed me,” I said.
    â€œWell,” he said. He put the cigar on the plate. “You seem like an honest person to