There was only one teller at the counter. A man. Disappointment passed through her. She walked through the velvet ropes to wait her turn although there were no other customers. The male teller had his head down, arranging some papers. He made her wait several more minutes.
“Next, please.”
“Hello. I’d like to make this check out to cash.”
He peered at the check. “Are you visiting, ma’am?”
“Yes. My cousin.”
He did not smile at her. He was young, but his brown hair was thinning at the top. His face was narrow and white, his lips pale, like two aged scars in his face.
“It’s so hot over here,” she said, trying to make small talk. “I didn’t realize. The city is so cold in the summer.”
He nodded and did not move to open his cash drawer or ask what bill denominations she preferred. She did not like the purple pattern of his tie. He studied the check again. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
As he walked away, toward a row of desks at the back, and as he stopped to speak with another man, older and gray-haired, B. felt suddenly as if she had handed over her small child to a stranger. The male teller and the older man talked in low tones, the older man studying the check now; both looked over at B. She had an urge to run around the counter and snatch back her small child.
“Good morning, miss,” the older man was saying as he approached her, “there seems to be a question on the account—”
“I just realized, I’m late. I’ll have to come back.” She slid the ostrich-skin purse onto her wrist and backed slowly and casually away. She walked with the same casualness out the door. Eleven steps. Outside the sun struck her, harsh and bright. She opened the Mustang door, sat down in the seat, keyed the ignition and sped out of the parking lot in one fluid motion.
20
She did not go into her motel room, just sat by the pool in the scalding sun. She cried, watching the oiled rainbow swirls in the water. A housekeeper asked if she needed the manager; she shook her head. Her shoulders and scalp burned and her feet puckered to numbness.
The tears were not for the university man, she knew. They came from an alien, frightening place. When she finished, she dragged herself to her room, exhausted and cotton-mouthed as if coming through a desert. She lay on the bed and tried to think what she could do without the banks. What could she do without the banks? She clutched the bed, hearing the Johnny Mercer song until she fell asleep.
21
She did not call him from the motel. She waited, stalling, until she was back on the road. She forced herself off at a truck-weighing station. The sun was burning on the glass of the phone booth, the glare reminding her how much time there was to kill before lunch.
“Hello,” she said.
“Well,” Daughtry said. “Didn’t expect a call from you.”
The concrete sidewalk radiated more heat into the glass. Sweat gathered at the base of B.’s back, between her legs.
She tried again to remember his first name. It would not come to her.
“How are you?”
“You sound like shit,” Daughtry said.
She nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see her.
“How’s your granny?” he asked.
“Better. Thank you.”
“Bullshit.”
She looked down and noted the faintest film of semen still on her dress. She began scratching it off.
“It doesn’t matter,” Daughtry said. “I didn’t mean it. Truth is I’ve missed you.”
“Me too,” she lied. “Look, I need your help. I need more checks.” She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice.
She heard him light a cigarette, the paper crumpling as he sucked. “And here I thought you just missed me.”
The cigarette paper crinkling and exhales went on for several seconds before he spoke again.
“What happened to the other checks?”
“I lost them.”
He laughed. “Now I know you’re full of shit. What is it, drugs? You got an uncle in gambling trouble?”
She didn’t answer.
“Because it can’t be for the kicks. That would be too stupid: you don’t need the money but you wanna get dirty. You wanna be bad. Right?”
“It’s not for kicks,” she said.
“You’re a good girl. Period. Can’t change that. You should be glad to be good.” He exhaled. “I’d give anything to be good with you.”
“I’ll cut you in,” she blurted out. She ignored in her mind his pained face. She visualized only the checks.
“What happened to them?” he finally said. “You kill the account?”
“I think so.”
“See, now this is where I wonder what the fuck I’m doing. Giving them to you in the first place. Why I’m even thinking of continuing in this line with you, like a goddamn whipped twelve-year-old. Ditch the checks if you haven’t already,” he said. “Get rid of the ID.”
In his tone of warning she heard only, regretfully, that she would have to abandon the false surname. She’d liked her picture beside the meaningless name.
“I’ve missed you,” she tried.
His voice came out low and quiet. “The first time I saw you, I thought, it don’t matter what you say to her because she’ll never go out with you. I could have recited the goddamn Latin mass. You were like a painting behind glass, not the ones now but the old ones with queens and ladies in dresses, soft. . It’s ruined now, but I keep wanting to touch the glass.”
“Daughtry.”
“When are you coming back to the city?”
“I might not. I don’t know.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You wanna stay in the sticks?”
She was silent.
“You got no right to fuck with me,” he said in the low voice again. “I believed you, about us not being so different. So I’m asking you, please, don’t fuck with me.”
“I get this feeling,” she said finally. “I can’t breathe, I’m going to be sick. Just walking around the city makes me sick.”
“You should go to a doctor.”
“No,” she said, raising her palm to the hot glass. “You see, I’m not really sick. It’s just a feeling. There’s nowhere it’s better. Only the banks make it better.”
“You shoulda got married by now,” Daughtry said. “Had some kids. That would make it better. You shouldn’t be hanging out with guys like me.”
She knew he was fishing for reassurance but she was too caught up in her own thoughts. “I don’t know the reason,” she said faintly. Her palm hurt on the hot glass, but she did not remove it. “I’m not trying to trick you. You’re helping me. The checks help me.”
“You’re conning me. I’m gonna get conned in this deal, is all I see. Put out with the trash. Call me when you have a straight story,” he said and hung up the phone.
22
The grocery store was off an exit. A pink rectangular building with a revolving plaster pig on top. The lot was almost empty. She sat in the Mustang, waiting to feel ready. It might not be so different from the banks, she told herself. Maybe more fun, more transporting. She could buy pints of ice cream, apples. She watched a feeble-looking man totter out with a bag in the crook of his arm. She took the checkbook from her purse and wrote “Cash” on the top one and ripped it out. Then she did not move. She wanted another bank. But the image of the thin-haired scar-lipped teller broke through this thought. She forced herself out of the Mustang.