The Fountain

            Ryan stood at the edge of the hotel fountain in slacking some line for the aquatic vacuum when he was tapped on the shoulder. Megan, the pocket-sized bartender, was behind him in all her beauty.

            “Watcha doin’?” Megan asked in a silly little voice that came off as mildly flirtations. They way she talked, it normally did.

            “Vacuuming. You clocking in?” Megan looked over the edge of the ledge and saw the mouth of the vacuum moving slowly about the floor of the lowest tier of the fountain. It had been picking of the coins, the metallic wishes from those who had stopped by. Her mouth went agape and her eyes went wide. “Why are you doing that?”

            “Cleaning the fountain,” he answered mechanically. The job was perfunctory, but this had been the only time anyone had asked about it. He normally got it done earlier in the day before anyone checked in, but he was a little late today. There were too many things to get done before hand.

            “You’re stealing wishes!”

            “If I don’t clean the coins, the drain gets clogged up.”

            “What do you do with the coins then?”

             “I, uh, dry them off and, uh, give put them in the safe.” Ryan shifted uneasy in his thick-soled work boots. 

            “But those are people’s wishes!” Ryan shrugged and returned to his job. He didn’t have a response for her that would placate her emotions. It wasn’t his job to think of any. It wasn’t his job to give a crap what those in the front office did with the money nor did he care for what the coins meant to those who tossed them in. He soon heard her walk away. This was just another task to get done on a long list of shit to fix. He extended his tattooed arm, giving slack to the aquatic vacuum, it whirred louder and it slurped up wishes into its greedy stomach.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.