Lust Meter System: Conquering Beauties

They found the Ferris wheel by following the sound of it, the slow mechanical rhythm of it carrying across the park, and when they came around the corner of a food cart and saw it properly Liam stopped walking for a second.

It was tall.

Taller than it had looked from the entrance, the kind of tall that only revealed itself when you were standing directly beneath it looking up.

The gondolas moved in their slow circuit, some near the top catching the afternoon sun, the whole structure turning with the patient certainty of something that had been doing this for a long time and had no plans to stop.

There was a queue.

A long one.

It snaked from the entrance gate back along the path and curved around the corner, easily forty people, moving forward in the specific incremental way of queues attached to things that could only take a certain number at a time.

Tasha looked at it from the side, stepping slightly off the path to see how far it extended around the corner, her hand coming up to shade her eyes.

"I told you we should have walked faster, " she said.

Liam looked at her.

She was leaning slightly forward, trying to see the end of the queue, her hair falling across her shoulder with the angle, her skirt shifting slightly in the breeze that moved through this part of the park.

Her expression was the focused mildly frustrated expression of someone doing a calculation they already know the answer to.

’She’s completely different right now,’ he thought, watching her. ’This is not the Tasha who sits in a room and reads every person in it before deciding what version of herself to give them. This is just her, standing in a park queue, annoyed about how long it is.’

A smile came to his mouth before he decided to produce it.

"We can go on something else instead," he said. He turned and pointed toward a cluster of rides further along the path.

Among them a ride where large teapot-shaped gondolas spun in slow overlapping circles around a central point, passengers visible inside them, the whole thing moving with a kind of cheerful irrelevance to everything around it. "We can go on that one."

Tasha looked at it.

Then she looked back at the Ferris wheel queue.

"No," she said. "I want this one. I’ve never been on it."

"You do know it’s scarier than the haunted house," he said.

She scoffed, a short precise sound. "What’s scary about a Ferris wheel."

"The height," he said.

"I can handle height," she said.

She turned back to the queue and joined the end of it and Liam followed her.

They moved forward slowly, the queue doing what queues did, the conversation between them light and unhurried, the park continuing around them on all sides.

At some point she bought them both something cold from a passing cart without asking him what he wanted and handed him the one she had apparently decided he was having and he accepted it without comment.

They were really close now, just two people in front now, the entrance gate visible ahead of them and the ride attendant visible beyond it managing the gondola loading.

Then footsteps came from behind them, confident and not slowing down, and a couple walked directly past them toward the gate.

Tasha turned.

"Hey," she said. "We’re next."

The girl stopped and turned around.

She was wearing a cream silk slip dress, the kind that cost considerably more than it looked like it cost, hair in a high ponytail, large gold hoops, sunglasses pushed up on her head.

A guy stood a step behind her, big in the way that took maintenance, fitted white shirt doing significant structural work, already looking bored.

She was pretty in the way that had been maintained rather than arrived at naturally, and her expression carried the specific quality of someone who had rarely been told no and had stopped expecting it.

She looked at Tasha.

Then she smiled. Wrong kind of smile. "Who is this peasant talking to," she said.

Tasha’s expression didn’t move. "What did you call me."

"You heard me." Her eyes dragged over Tasha’s outfit, the specific kind of assessment that was designed to be seen. "Trying to look expensive in those fake things. Honey."

"That’s enough." Liam put a hand out, blocking Tasha before she could move, eyes still on Tasha, not the girl.

The guy behind her straightened up, arms with their own agenda, a jaw that had clearly been told it was impressive.

"Shut up, bro," he said to Liam, pointing at him. "Before I shut you up."

Liam looked at the pointing finger. Then at the face above it.

He said nothing.

He just looked at him with the specific expression of someone doing arithmetic.

The girl put her hand on her boyfriend’s arm without looking at him. "Don’t," she said, still looking at Tasha. "They’re not worth it." She turned to Tasha fully now, her chin up, her sunglasses catching the light. "Do you know who my father is?"

"Who the hell is your dad," Tasha said.

"That’s exactly what I’m saying," the girl replied. "You don’t know. Which is the whole point." She reached into the small designer bag on her shoulder and produced a card. Gold. Literally gold plated, the kind that existed to make a specific point in specific situations.

She held it up between two fingers.

The ride attendant at the gate made a sound.

Someone in the queue behind them said something low.

Someone else said something louder. "Is that a gold card? I’ve never seen one of those in real life."

"She’s actually serious."

"That’s insane."

The girl was smiling now, properly, enjoying the specific warmth of being the most interesting thing in a space. She turned it slightly so it caught the sun.

Liam looked at it. He had not seen one before either and it showed somewhere in his face, the brief processing of something genuinely new.

Tasha looked at the card.

Then she reached into her own bag.

She produced a card and held it out without drama, without performance, without any of the energy the other girl had brought to the same action. Just held it there.

Black. Matte black. The kind of card that didn’t need to be gold because what it represented was past needing to make a point about itself.

The air around them changed.

The girl’s smile did not leave her face but it changed quality completely, the warmth leaving it and something else replacing it, something that lived considerably closer to alarm.

Her boyfriend’s posture shifted, the deliberate bigness of it deflating slightly, his arms finding somewhere less assertive to be.

Nobody in the queue said anything.

The ride attendant stepped forward and opened the gate. "You two can go ahead," he said, looking at Tasha and Liam. "Right this way."

Liam looked at the gate. Then at Tasha. Then at the gate again.

He walked through.

They sat across from each other in the gondola, the safety bar coming down across them, the attendant checking it and moving on to the next one.

Liam looked at Tasha.

"What was that," he said.

She was looking out at the park below them as the wheel began its slow movement upward. "Don’t worry about it," she said. "Enjoy the ride."

"Tasha."

"Liam." She looked at him with a slight smile. "Let’s just enjoy the ride."

He looked at her for another moment.

Then he looked out at the park spreading out below them as the gondola rose, the paths and the rides and the food carts and the people all becoming smaller and more ordered from up here, the whole thing making a different kind of sense from this height.

"The view is actually nice," he said.

"Liam," she said.

He looked at her.

She was looking at him with an expression that had shifted from the composed Tasha of the black card moment into something considerably less composed. Her hands were in her lap, one of them turning her bag strap over slowly.

"I want to tell you something," she said.

He looked at her. "What."

The wheel stopped.

Not a slow deceleration.

A sharp stop, the kind that had no warning, and both of them moved forward with the momentum and grabbed for the safety bar at the same time, their hands landing on it simultaneously, the gondola swinging slightly from the abrupt halt.

They looked at each other.

Then they looked at the park below them, considerably further down than it had been a moment ago.

A voice came through a speaker somewhere on the structure. "Attention guests, please remain calm and stay seated. We’re experiencing a minor technical issue with the drive mechanism and our team is working to resolve it. We appreciate your patience."

Liam looked at the speaker. Then at the park below. Then at Tasha.

"So we’re stuck up here," he said.

She looked at the view around them, the park spread out below, the city visible beyond it in the afternoon light, the sky wide and open above the gondola.

She blushed.

"This is actually great," she said quietly, almost to herself.

Liam looked at her. "How is being stuck on a broken Ferris wheel great."

She didn’t answer.

She crossed the small space of the gondola, closed the distance between them, and kissed him.

He went still for a second.

Then he kissed her back.

She pulled back slightly and looked at him from close range, close enough that the details of her face were all present at once, the blue of her eyes and the black of her hair and the expression on her face that had stopped being managed.

Then she moved and sat on his leg, settling her weight there, her hands on his shoulders.

She looked at him. "I’ve been waiting for that," she said.

Liam looked at her sitting on his lap with the sky behind her and the park below them and the gondola swaying very slightly in the breeze.

He smiled. "Makes sense," he said.