The weekend temp laid a notarized lease on the counter and the man who built the arcade went quiet
"Weekend temp. Go clean the glass," Bram Voss said, and shoved her into the doorframe with both palms.
Dana Whitlock has counted the till at this boardwalk arcade for three years while Bram hung his own name over the door, told every vendor he built the floor, and signed his rent receipts without ever reading the initials at the bottom.
The crew watched her clipboard and the coin tray hit the wet deck boards. Marcus kept his phone face-down on the bench and said nothing, because the wrong sentence gets the wrong person fired in September.
Bram flicked a hand at the cabinet glass and said it again, louder, for the vendors at the front.
Dana smoothed her canvas apron, reached into the bag she keeps under the counter, and laid one cream page flat beside the riveted serial plate on the change counter.
The stamp at the corner is a county recording stamp; the plate on the cabinet is stamped with the same two initials.
Bram's eyes went to the paper, then to the plate, then to the drawer where three years of his own receipts sit, each one initialed D.W.
He backed into the change counter and one boat shoe slid the fallen coin tray across the boards.
The crew's hands went still.
The next letter from the boardwalk association is already addressed to D. Whitlock.
How did the woman he called the weekend temp end up owning the machines he brags about? The blog below tells how her mother bought those cabinets in one bad winter, why the receipts were signed to D.W. for years without anyone reading them, and what Bram did at the bank the next morning.
Advertisement