The Giant Wheel – Part 1: Stopped at the Top

The giant wheel had stopped with one cabin at the very top, and the man inside was holding the window with both hands.

"Hello?" called Klara, through the speaker. "Everything is fine. It is only the motor. It is very old."

"It is very high," said a voice.

She stood at the operator's hut at the foot of the wheel, in a faded red uniform jacket, with her hand on a lever that had refused to move for ten minutes. It was a warm September evening at the old fairground in Vienna, and the wheel, a hundred years old, red-painted, enormous, glowed against a deepening sky. Fairy lights twinkled along its spokes. The cabins swung gently, like lanterns on a line.

Klara was thirty, a wheel operator, brisk and cheerful, with dark hair in a ponytail and grease on her cuff. The man in the cabin was thirty-four, she learned, an actuary from Hamburg named Tobias, afraid of heights, who had bought a ticket on a dare from a colleague.

"I am sorry," he said. "I am not good at this."

"Nobody is good at this. Talk to me."

"About what?"

"Anything. What do you see?"

A pause. "The river. The roofs. A tram. A little park with a fountain." His voice steadied. "A great many chimneys."

"That is Vienna. Is it beautiful?"

"It is... yes." He sounded surprised. "It is rather beautiful."

She talked to him for twenty minutes, through the speaker, about the wheel, the park, her grandfather who had built the engine. He described the city, one rooftop at a time, as the sky went violet and the lights came on. When the motor finally caught and the wheel creaked into motion, she was almost sorry.

The cabin sank slowly to the ground. The door opened. Tobias stepped out, pale and astonished, brushing his coat.

"I did it," he said.

"You did it."

"I looked."

"Can I ask you something?" said Klara.

"Yes."

"Do you want to come back?"

"Green?" said Tobias, a cabin, a light.

"Green," said Klara, smiling. "Very green. Fridays, at seven. I'll hold the top."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Friday Rides.