He took his place in the line before a window. He was mentally extrapolating the trend line of one of J. M. Keynes’ debt charts when a chill voice said, “Well!”
He found that he had moved up to the window itself and the teller was waiting for his check. He flushed and said, “Oh! Sorry.” He tried to posh the check under the grill, but it fluttered out of his hand. As he stooped to get it, his hat rolled off.
At last recovering both hat and check, he stood up, smiled painfully and pushed the check under the grill.
The young man took it, and Jed Amberson finally grew aware that he was spending a long time looking at the check. Jed strained his neck around and looked to see if he had remembered to sign it. He had.
Only then did he notice the way the young man behind the window was dressed. He wore a deep wine-colored sports shirt, collarless and open at the throat. At the point where the counter bisected him, Jedediah could see that the young man wore green-gray slacks with at least a six-inch waistband of ocher yellow.
Jed had a childlike love of parties, sufficient to overcome his chronic self-consciousness. He said, in a pleased tone, “Ah, some sort of festival?”
The teller had a silken wisp of beard on his chin. He leaned almost frighteningly close to the grill, aiming the wisp of beard at Amberson as he gave him a careful scrutiny.
“We are busy here,” the teller said. “Take your childish little game across street and attempt it on them.”
Though shy, Jedediah was able to call on hidden stores of indignation when he felt himself wronged. He straightened slowly and said, with dignity, “I have an account here and I suggest you cash my check as quickly and quietly as possible.”
The teller glanced beyond Jedediah and waved the silky beard in a taut half circle, a “come here” gesture.
Jedediah turned and gasped as he faced the bank guard. The man wore a salmon-pink uniform with enormously padded shoulders. He had a thumb hooked in his belt, his hand close to the plastic bowl of what seemed to be a child’s bubble pipe.
The guard jerked his other thumb toward the door and said, “Ride off, honorable sir.”
Jedediah said, “I don’t care much for the comic-opera atmosphere of this bank. Please advise me of my balance and I will withdraw it all and put it somewhere where I’ll be treated properly.”
The guard reached out, clamped Jed’s thin arm in a meaty hand and yanked him in the general direction of the door. Jed intensely disliked being touched or pushed or pulled. He bunched his left hand into a large knobbly fist and thrust it with vigor into the exact middle of the guard’s face.
The guard grunted as he sat down on the tile floor. The ridiculous bubble pipe came out, and was aimed at Jed. He heard no sound of explosion, but suddenly there was a large cold area in his middle that felt the size of a basketball. And when he tried to move, the area of cold turned into an area of pain so intense that it nauseated him. It took but two tiny attempts to prove to him that he could achieve relative comfort only by standing absolutely still. The ability to breathe and to turn his eyes in their sockets seemed the only freedom of motion left to him.
The guard said, tenderly touching his puffed upper lip, “Don’t drop signal, Harry. We can handle this without flicks.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping the toy weapon centered on Jedediah.
Other customers stood at a respectful distance, curious and interested. A fussy little bald-headed man came trotting up, carrying himself with an air of authority. He wore pastel-blue pajamas with a gold medallion over the heart.
The guard stiffened. “Nothing we can’t handle, Mr. Greenbush.”
“Indeed!” Mr. Greenbush said, his voice like a terrier’s bark. “Indeed! You seem to be creating enough disturbance at this moment. Couldn’t you have exported him more quietly?”
“Bank was busy,” the teller said. “I didn’t notice him till he got right up to window.”
Mr. Greenbush stared at Jedediah. He said, “He looks reasonable enough, Palmer. Turn it off.”
Jed took a deep, grateful breath as the chill area suddenly departed. He said weakly, “I demand an explanation.”
Mr. Greenbush took the check the teller handed him and, accompanied by the guard, led Jed over to one side. He smiled in what was intended to be a fatherly fashion. He said, glancing at the signature on the check, “Mr. Amberson, surely you must realize, or your patrons must realize, that City National Bank is not sort of organization to lend its facilities to inane promotional gestures.”
Jedediah had long since begun to have a feeling of nightmare. He stared at the little man in blue pajamas. “Promotional gestures?”
“Of course, my dear fellow. For what other reason would you come here dressed as you are and present this... this document.”
“Dressed?” Jed looked down at his slightly baggy gray suit, his white shirt, his blue necktie and cordovan shoes. Then he stared around at the customers of the bank who had long since ceased to notice the little tableau. He saw that the men wore the sort of clothes considered rather extreme at the most exclusive of private beaches. He was particularly intrigued by one fellow who wore a cerise silk shirt, open to the waist, emerald green shorts to his knees, and calf-length pink nylons.
The women, he noticed, all wore dim shades of deep gray or brown, and a standard costume consisting of a halter, a short flared skirt that ended just above the knees and a knit cap pulled well down over the hair.
Amberson said, “Uh. Something special going on.”
“Evidently. Suppose you explain.”
“Me explain! Look, I can show you identification. I’m an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia and I—” He reached for his hip pocket. Once again the ball of pain entered his vitals. The guard stepped over to him, reached into each of his pockets in turn, handed the contents to Mr. Greenbush.
Then the pressure was released. “I am certainly going to give your highhanded procedures here as much publicity as I can,” Jed said angrily.
But Greenbush ignored him. Greenbush had opened his change purse and had taken out a fifty-cent piece. Greenbush held the coin much as a superstitious savage would have held a mirror. He made tiny bleating sounds. At last he said, his voice thin and strained, “Nineteen forty-nine mint condition! What do you want for it?”
“Just cash my check and let me go,” Jed said wearily. “You’re all crazy here. Why shouldn’t this year’s coins be in mint condition?”
“Bring him into my office,” Greenbush said in a frenzy.
“But I—” Jed protested. He stopped as the guard raised the weapon once more. Jed meekly followed Greenbush back through the bank. He decided that it was a case of mistaken identity. He could call his department from the office. It would all be straightened out, with apologies.
With the door closed behind the two of them, Jed looked around the office. The walls were a particularly liverish and luminescent yellow-green. The desk was a block of plastic balanced precariously on one slim pedestal no bigger around then a lead pencil. The chairs gave him a dizzy feeling. They looked comfortable, but as far as he could see, they were equipped only with front legs. He could not see why they remained upright.
“Please sit there,” Greenbush said.
Jed lowered himself into the chair with great caution. It yielded slightly, then seemed to clasp him with an almost embarrassing warmth, as though he sat on the pneumatic lap of an exceptionally large woman.
Greenbush came over to him, pointed to Zed’s wristwatch and said, “Give me that, too.”