Bank

by David Bledin

  “I know. Still, what a sorry bastard.”

  There is a new emotion entering the fray. Dare I say it? A twinge of sympathy. It’s loathsome, really. The Sycophant was without a doubt my archnemesis, the bane of my corporate existence. I’ve plotted his demise in so many grisly ways it would have curdled the blood of even the most well-adjusted inkblot psychiatrist. And yet.

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Stockholm syndrome kicking in or something.

  I’m sitting at my computer, still in a daze, when the Philanderer sneaks up behind me. Thankfully I have a legitimate work-related spreadsheet open on my monitor.

  “Clyde, I’m going to need a favor.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Listen, I left my BlackBerry behind while scrambling around today. I called a few places but only got through to a bunch of immigrants jabbering away in whatever foreign language. I’ll need you to jump in a taxi and track it down.”

  He hands me a list. The Philanderer has had quite the busy morning judging from the potential BlackBerry hiding spots: a Starbucks way up north, a sushi joint to the east, a place scrawled as Julie’s Beaver Barn in the complete opposite direction. Checking out all these places will likely result in being out of the office for at least half the day. Sounds like a sweet field trip, though this doesn’t factor in the four sets of comps that still need to get churned out at some point.

  I’m poring over the list, trying to map out the best itinerary, when Postal Boy sprints into our office.

  “Hey,” he pants, “either of you leave a BlackBerry on my desk?”

  Bingo. I’m about to disclose the real owner, when the Defeated One reaches out and says, “It’s mine.”

  Postal Boy hands it to him before adjusting his glasses and sprinting back out of the room.

  “Run, Postal, run,” the Defeated One cackles after him.

  “What’s up with the Speedy Gonzales routine?” I ask.

  “He’s been doing laps around the office the whole morning,” the Defeated One says, tinkering with the BlackBerry. “The Ice Queen is riding him hard with some last-minute changes to a presentation.”

  I nod at the BlackBerry.

  “What, you plan on snooping through his messages?”

  “Of course not,” he says, waving the idea off. “What do I care about the Philanderer’s deviant porn subscriptions? It has to be returned to its rightful owner, don’t you think?”

  “You’re going to do that?”

  “No,” he says, tossing me the BlackBerry. “You are. That is, after you take off the next couple hours pretending to hunt it down.”

  I start to shake my head, but the Defeated One frowns.

  “Give me a break, Mumbles. Isn’t most of your work with the Sycophant? You think he’s going to swallow his pride and come down here just to check up on you?”

  “I’m not so sure about this . . .”

  But he’s right; I have nothing to lose. Before I have time to second-guess myself, I’ve grabbed my coat and I’m out the door. I knock back a double shot of espresso at Starbucks before I’m standing by the curb. A taxi pulls up and I’m about to enter, when in my peripheral vision, across the courtyard, there she is—the Woman With The Scarf, smoking beside one of the bronze cow sculptures. She’s dressed all KGB-like in a sleek black trench coat, a plaid Burberry scarf bunched tightly around her neck.

  For a second I’m seriously considering the stress-free alternative, jumping into the taxi to avoid what’s bound to be an incredibly awkward encounter, but no, she’s spotted me already. She gives me a lingering gaze, and now I have no choice but to walk over and say something.

  “Hey.”

  She greets me with a chilled ennui.

  “Hello.”

  “I, uh, I didn’t know you smoked.”

  The Woman With The Scarf exhales a pristine jet through closed teeth.

  “Why, you have a problem with it?”

  “Nah,” I chuckle nervously, “I’m an ex-smoker myself.”

  She rolls her eyes at me.

  “So, uh—”

  I’m fumbling through all the junk in my pockets, a nervous habit: keys, bank card, Twix wrapper, a tin of Altoids, something soggy.

  “—why haven’t you been returning my e-mails?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Oh. With work and stuff?”

  Stubbing out her cigarette against the copper flank of one of the cows, she says, “Yeah, work and stuff. It works both ways, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Then, why’d you ask?”

  “It’s just, I only, uh—”

  As I try to figure out how to end that sentence, the Woman With The Scarf eyes me with unquestionable disdain.

  “Look,” she says, lighting up another cigarette, “maybe this is going to seem a bit out of line, but I want to be upfront about this: The reason I’ve been avoiding you is because I don’t want to be dating a guy who’s not that into me, if you want to know the truth.”

  “What the—”

  “Let me finish,” she snaps. “My last boyfriend—he was working all the fucking time. And while I’m fine with ambition—I mean, I’m not fooling anybody, I’m a type A myself—after a while I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was driving me insane. So, bottom line is, I’m not putting up with any more half-assed relationships at this stage of my life. I just can’t do it, I really can’t.”

  “Not that into you?” I’m shaking my head in bewilderment. “What about my obsessive e-mailing? Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “Two e-mails over the last week,” she huffs. “Hardly obsessive. Look, I know you’re working hard, and I respect it in a way, but god . . . it’s like, I want somebody who can distract me from my own pathetic existence, not suck me into their own misery, you know?”

  My mouth gapes open and shuts, but no words come out. There must be something in my facial expression that invokes her pity, though, because she sighs.

  “I didn’t mean for it to come out sounding so harsh.”

  “Yeah”—I struggle to keep my voice from breaking—“but you’re just being honest. Speaking your mind, I guess.”

  She blows out a series of smoke rings, her head cocked back, before peering at me with a glimmer of remote sadness.

  “This is all just really fucked up, huh?”

  “What is?”

  She closes her eyes, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.

  “I thought I had this all worked out perfectly. I figured I’d just cut you out of my life and that would be that. But now, seeing you again . . .”

  She stands there with her eyes closed, her mouth pursed tightly. I reach into my pocket and remove the soggy substance, a strip of a burrito shell from lunch. I fling it across the courtyard, wiping my fingers clean against one of the cows.

  When she opens her eyes, I ask, “So, I guess this is the point in the conversation where I say my good-bye and leave you alone, right?”

  “Yes. I mean, no, don’t go just yet.”

  She takes a final puff and flicks the filter to the ground.

  “I enjoyed our dinner together, I really did. You seem like a nice guy. Slightly awkward, I mean sweet; god, I don’t even know how to articulate this properly. I guess what I’m trying to say is, and not doing a very good job at it, is that, well . . . I just don’t know about this.”

  Her lips form the most wistful of smiles, but at least it’s for my benefit, I think. My hands are back in my pockets, my breath visible in the cold.

  “So, what are we supposed to do now?”

  She shrugs. “You tell me.”

  “Maybe we can talk about this over coffee?”

  She shakes her head reluctantly.

  “What, another ten-minute coffee break and then leave it for another week? Because I told you already, I’m just not willing to accept that anymore—”

  “Then how about we get out of here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  �
�Exactly what I said. Do you really need to be at work right now?”

  She blinks at me in confusion.

  “My boss. She’s expecting some testimony reviewed by the end of the afternoon—wait a second, are you serious about this?”

  I’ve already clasped her hand and I’m pulling her away from the courtyard.

  “What about your evil taskmasters? Won’t they crucify you for disappearing on them?”

  “I’m not so sure they can buy the spikes at Staples,” I say with a shrug.

  We speed-walk past a congregation of bike messengers, past the roasted-chestnut seller outside Han’s Blue Diamond Chinese Gourmet, and I’m remembering the first time I ever played hooky. Eighth grade; I must have been about thirteen. Ditching math class to sneak under the bridge behind the bike trail, a place littered with condom wrappers and cigarette butts and the caps of Colt 45s, and smoke my very first joint with my best friend at the time, a gawky unibrowed guy named Dan Robert (the kid with two first names).

  We begin exploring the relatively quiet intersections, observing how folks who aren’t trapped in office towers all day while away their lives: a troop of blue-haired ladies debate the merits of Oprah’s latest book club selection while draped over a Starbucks banquette; schoolchildren with ribbons in their hair cuss away like drunken sailors; a Chinese butcher strings up barbecued ducks in a sweaty window. We stop in to share a plate of noodles before slipping back into the cold, twisting and turning and laughing about random things, marveling at the minutiae in this jumbled, sprawling hodgepodge of a metropolis.

  Toward the end of the afternoon we find ourselves standing before a massive snowbank. It’s a miracle, this snowbank: white and powdery, with no yellow pee stains, in stark contrast to the refuse littering the rest of the street. The unmarred surface is just pleading for somebody to be pushed in. So, off she goes, though she drags me in behind her, rolling on top of me and shoving my head in it until I hurl her off my back. Eventually worn out, she turns to me, flecks of snow caught between her eyelashes.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  I pull her closer to me. “A hot chocolate, maybe? It’s getting cold in here.”

  She rolls on top of me again, her lips as frozen as the iced fruits you can buy at those posh confectioners, the candies that stick to your tongue before melting into warm goo.

  Pulling away, her face flushed, she says, “No, I mean, what are we going to do after this, with our lives.”

  Despite the spontaneous intimacy of our afternoon together, I can’t help thinking it’s kind of a silly question. I mean, it’s the million-dollar question, the one all human beings ask themselves at least two thousand times over the course of their abbreviated lives, but it’s weird she’d choose to bring it up now. Gently wiping the snow off her cheek, I refrain from defaulting to some smart-aleck remark and respond truthfully.

  “I really don’t know.”

  She eyes me skeptically, but I’m being serious; I’m not just copping out. Can anybody ever truly know what they’re supposed to do with their lives? Even those kids who knew, just knew, they were destined to become a first-chair violinist or a veterinarian—weren’t they ever plagued with doubt? Or is it what I’ve lately come to suspect, that you just fumble along, trying to make sense of this world, hoping that eventually things will come out right?

  “Do you really think you’re going to stick it out for the full two years?”

  “What, this banking job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think so. Maybe it’s stupid, but I like following through with things. You sign a contract and you stick to it. It’s the eastern European work ethic instilled in me by my grandfather or whatever.”

  “But what if you know you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing? That it shows complete lack of integrity?”

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t really buy into that. What is integrity? Jaunting off and saving little limbless beggar children in India? Eating organic foods? You work for any decent nonprofit and you’re still dealing with the same bureaucratic bullshit.”

  The Woman With The Scarf slips into a contemplative quiet. When I try to kiss her, she turns her head away; I’ve clearly said the wrong thing. Entombed in the snowbank’s muffled silence, I study her profile, trying to discern where I went astray. She closes her eyes and speaks in a voice that is barely a whisper.

  “You know I’m just messing with you, right?”

  Then she shoves my face in the snow again and leaps to her feet, running off in a gale of laughter as I lumber after her.

  Ten

  In ancient Egypt, it was believed that the god Anubis would weigh the heart of the recently deceased against the feather of Ma’at, goddess of truth and justice. If the heart weighed the same as the feather, then the deceased was granted access to the afterlife; if the heart outweighed the feather, the heart was consumed by a demon goddess, Ammut, otherwise known as the Devourer of the Dead.

  A cosmic balance: Over the millennia, across civilizations, theology has been constructed around a harmony of yin and yang, some variant of a supernatural feather ensuring our species stays right side up, navigating this earth with an earnest determination. As such, the accumulation of positive energy in my own little microcosm could not last long. With one side of the scale groaning under the weight of frivolous BlackBerry excursions and Sycophantless office spaces, the forces of the universe had no choice but to impose some sort of counterbalance.

  In other words: It was too much, too soon.

  I stroll in with my morning coffee, and my Spidey Sense goes off: Something is definitely not right. For one, the Sycophant’s office is no longer empty. The present occupant, a man with a scalp struggling to retain its sparse blond curls, his pallor as pale and sickly as if he’s spent the bulk of his life preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, is already hunched before the monitor, his fingers a blur as they skitter across the keyboard. Stacks of paper are piled neatly around the room, and a picture of Piccadilly Circus at sunset hangs above a collection of plaques and certificates. A seamless integration; he must have moved in over the weekend.

  I tiptoe past the office without rousing his attention and switch on my computer. The Defeated One is already settled in with the Wall Street Journal and a brownie. He’s bound to have the scoop.

  “Who’s the replacement?”

  The Defeated One looks up from his stock quotes.

  “Not sure yet. They shipped him over from England. Poached from Barclays, if I heard it right.”

  “A pity they found him so soon. Though he’s bound to be better than the Sycophant, huh?”

  “Don’t jinx yourself, Mumbles,” the Defeated One says, turning back to his paper.

  I nod at the brownie.

  “What, now you’re eating chocolate first thing in the morning?”

  “Piss off,” he says, licking his fingers. “Leave my breakfast cake out of this.”

  It’s after lunch when my phone rings. An unfamiliar extension. A curt English accent on the other end:

  “Would you mind dropping by my office?”

  “Of course—”

  He’s already hung up on me. A minute later, I’m sitting across from the man who will eventually come to be known around these parts as the Crazy Brit. It’s the eyes with their pale blue irises that give it away, of course, his gaze darting about the room before boring into you with an unflinching intensity, literally setting the hairs of your neck on end.

  He could be the product of a repressed upbringing perhaps, a true man of his country. Age nine: a runtish lad staring out the window at the mossy Sussex countryside, longing to escape the home-schooling of his trio of ruler-wielding aunts. Straight out of a Roald Dahl novel these she-banshees are, hooked noses and mouths full of blackened teeth, beating him bloody senseless whenever his saintly but blissfully naive parents leave on their automobile excursions to Marks & Spencer. Age thirteen: reciting Chaucer at some formidably preppy academy before a
bow-tied professor with a poorly concealed erection, distraught none of the other boys will invite him along for a hand-rolled smoke and a game of gin rummy in the boiler room (we found out later the Crazy Brit actually went to boarding school in New England, but no matter; it’s far more gratifying wallowing in these gratuitous Old Empire stereotypes). Age twenty-one: resigning himself to the reality he’s to be no Keats, no diplomat like Churchill, just another of those well-heeled types rushing along Bond Street with the omnipresent umbrellas, sighing with immense sorrow when they stop in for an afternoon tea of Earl Grey and watercress sandwiches.

  You see, the Crazy Brit has devoted his life to i-banking—entering the industry as an analyst and working his way up from there. It’s a difficult path, indeed; any sane person would finish up those two or three years and get the hell out of there, never to return. I mean, can you imagine a decade of this crap? Fuck, I’d go crazy too. While an ignorant majority would argue he is a success story—one of the youngest vice presidents at the Bank, barely over thirty and already rolling in close to half a million in comp—the Crazy Brit embodies the bitterness of his experience: a decade wasted busting his ass, not a penny left by the trio of aunts (those horrible beasts having squandered his inheritance on foul medicines and bullwhips after his kindhearted parents, naturally, plunged off a cliff in a horrible accident), while those pompous pricks from the prep academy inherited massive fortunes simply due to their minor noble pedigrees.

  But back to the present. Sitting across from him, trying to avoid direct eye contact, I’m observing the Crazy Brit juggling seven things at once: blasting off an e-mail, listening to his voice messages, whipping through a file folder, buttering up a bagel, skimming the employee manual, tinkering with his CD drive, and organizing the framed pictures of a baby swathed in pink. Fifteen minutes tick by and he hasn’t yet acknowledged my presence. Finally I break the silence: