95. The Traveling Carnival
July 3, 2008
When someone came up to the window with an invisible ticket, Kathi was supposed to give them a wristband and let them inside. It was part of her job description, but she still felt weird doing it. The invisible ticketholders had strange eyes.
“One please,” said a man whose eyes were open too wide. Otherwise he looked normal; he had too-short blond hair and wore one of those green polo shirts with the alligator on the chest. He passed her an invisible ticket. The invisible tickets always felt almost like nothing at all. Kathi took it from the man, ripped it in half, and put her half in a special compartment in her till, which held nothing at all except invisible stubs. She gave the alligator-shirt man an orange wristband and said, “Can I help who’s next?”
Most people paid with cash. A few had paper tickets. The kind you could see.
At the end of the day, Jesse and Mark would count the ticket stubs (both kinds), and the money, and the wristbands. If her numbers were off, they would give her a little reprimanding. But not much.
