June's mother looked at June.
She had sat up with Wendell and Linh until two in the morning, going around and around it, and in the end it was Linh who said what June already knew: You can't fight about whether it's real. It isn't. Fight about whether it's honest.
"Yes, sir," June said. "There's a line."
The crowd went dead quiet.
She reached under the counter and brought up the tackle box and opened it on the counter, right there in front of everybody. She took out the spool. She took out a fresh trick cup. She held the cup up so the health man could see the pinholes.
"It's one strand of nylon monofilament," she said. "It goes through two holes up by the rim, above the lemonade. It never touches it. I put a new piece of line up every morning before the gates open, because my grandma's notebook says to, and I use a new cup every single time, and the cup that floats is never used for anything else, and nobody drinks from a cup that's been on the line unless they want to, and they always want to." She took a breath. "And the line's above the counter, not over it. Nothing drips on anything. You can look."
The health man looked. He actually got up on his toes and looked along the runway with his nose about six inches from the awning, and squinted, and said, "Huh. I can't even— oh. There." He put a fingertip on the air and the line bent. "Huh," he said again. He looked at the cup a long time. He looked at June. Then he did something June didn't expect: he took his own pen out of his pocket and touched the pinholes with the tip, and looked at the rim, and handed the cup back.
"Single-use cups, food-contact surface not compromised, no overhead contamination," he said, writing. "I don't see a violation here, Mr. Kruse. Frankly, it's cleaner than your corn dog trailer was on Wednesday."
Somebody in the crowd laughed out loud.
Rollie's face had gone a dark brick color. "Fine. Fine. Health's fine. It's still a fraud. The sign says floating. It's not floating. It's hanging."
"Rollie," said Lorraine Pettit, without looking up from her clipboard, "the Butter Cow is not a cow, and nobody's sued over it yet." She looked at him over her reading glasses. "I've been watching Dot float that cup since I was nine years old. I knew it was on a string by the time I was twelve. I never once wanted my dollar back."
More laughter, louder. June felt her knees start to shake with relief.
"The lease, though," Lorraine said, and her voice changed, and the laughter died. "The lease is a different matter, and I'm sorry, but he's right about the rule. Concession leases are personal to the holder. Renewals for next year are signed on the last day of the fair, in person, by the leaseholder, at the stand, and the board requires the leaseholder to be able to operate. If Dot can't be here by five o'clock tomorrow to sign, the corner goes to the waiting list." She glanced at Rollie, unhappily. "And he's first on it."