Bank

by David Bledin

  “That’s great,” I say with a nervous chuckle.

  It’s probably a harmless story, but I can’t help thinking as I watch her slice a wedge of sweet potato in two, Is she chastising me for not having the balls to quit as well?

  After we’ve finished eating and I’ve helped her take all the dishes into the kitchen, we settle back on the couch. Pulling her closer to me and kissing her, I taste the rosemary on her lips. We rub noses and she giggles, and we kiss again until she pulls away, her nostrils flaring slightly.

  “Anything wrong?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, laughing hoarsely.

  “God, it’s just that, I mean, I’m so unbelievably turned on right now.”

  I blink rapidly: Did she really just say that? She licks her lips sensuously. Yeah, she really just said that.

  From this moment onward I no longer doubt there is a God, a wonderfully benevolent deity who understands the concept of divine justice, the fitting reward for languishing under the very worst of His children.

  “Me too,” I whisper.

  She lies on top of me, and I run my hands down her back and caress her buttocks. Then she squirms her way down my body, fumbling with the zipper of my pants. She peers up at me with a playful grin before pulling down my jockey shorts.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this—”

  And then she’s engulfed me masterfully, and it’s like—fuck, to hell with analogies; how can you honestly verbalize anything so wonderful?

  Perhaps too wonderful, because in less than twenty seconds, I’m whimpering, “Please . . . stop . . .”

  But she doesn’t stop.

  “Fuck . . . please . . . nooooo . . .”

  I yank myself out of her in the nick of time, flipping on my side and avoiding the upholstery.

  “Jesus,” she says, touching her lips. “That was speedy.”

  I’m mortified, of course.

  “I’m so sorry . . .”

  She grasps the sides of my head.

  “It’s not a big deal. Please, please don’t have a hangup about this. When’s the last time you had sex?”

  “With myself?”

  She hits me over the head with a cushion.

  “I don’t know, at least a couple months now.”

  Looking coy, she says, “So then it’s completely justified. That is, as long as you have enough stamina for a second round . . .”

  “I, uh, I think I can manage.”

  After a short recovery time we’re rolling around on her bed. I nibble at her neck, and then she nibbles at my earlobe, and finally I press up close against her. I cock an eyebrow and she nods eagerly. A gentle nudge and I’ve slipped inside of her.

  With my first ejaculation out of the way, I’m able to ride this crescendo quite skillfully. This isn’t to say I’m a regular Casanova, but I can humbly state this: I’m the best I’ve ever been. A solid forty-five minutes later, after we’ve both achieved our shuddering climaxes, we drop down against the tasseled pillows and she kisses me.

  “That was amazing.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble groggily.

  I stroke her hair as she rests her cheek flat against my sweaty chest. Holy shit, I really fucking needed that. It’s as if everything I’ve put up with since I first started at the Bank, all the frustrations and disappointments and daily bouts with futility, have suddenly evaporated, leaving behind this glowing shell of holistic bliss.

  “You said you had to go back to work after this, right?”

  She tweaks one of my nipples and I gasp.

  “What’s that for?”

  “For not being able to sleep over.”

  “I promise this weekend. Saturday night for sure—”

  “I’m just playing with you,” she says, tweaking my other nipple. “Tonight was really great, though.”

  “Yeah, definitely. You mind if I stick around a little longer? Can I set the alarm for an hour?”

  She nods against my chest. I reach toward the alarm clock on the end table, scattering some papers to the floor. I lean down to pick them up, and a few of the headings permeate the dim lighting: University of Copenhagen, Columbia, Berkeley.

  “Um, are you applying to grad schools?”

  I can feel her breath tickling the hairs on my chest.

  “Yes. For next September.”

  I pull myself up so I’m leaning against the headboard. Even though I know it’s none of my business, I say, “And you were going to tell me about this when?”

  “Huh?”

  She gets into a cross-legged position on the bed, eyeing me curiously.

  “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “Not a big deal? Just a minor technical detail that you’re taking off in a couple months, that all of this has a ticking deadline?”

  “All of what? Look, we just started seeing each other. Do I have to run my future by you for approval after only a couple of dates?”

  She’s absolutely right, of course. So absolutely fucking right. And yet I’ve already slid off the bed and am hunting down my clothes.

  “I guess I should probably get back to the office. A lot of work due first thing tomorrow morning.”

  She watches me rooting around under the bed for my socks, my underwear, and pulling on my pants.

  “It’s flattering that you’re reacting this way, it really is. But I’ve got to tell you: I’m applying to environmental policy programs. It’s what I want to do more than anything else in this world.”

  “That’s great”—I slip on my shirt—“everybody has to follow their calling, right?”

  She shrugs matter-of-factly and says, “Yeah, they do.”

  When I’m fully dressed she walks me to the door, reaches over, and slides back the dead bolt. There’s no doubt in my head that I’m acting like a total moron, but I can’t seem to get past a puerile desire to clutch at her hand and beg her not to leave me, to ask her to scrap those noble aspirations to save the world from oil spills and forest fires, to move in with me in 1.5 years, marry me in 2, and bear our children 3.5 years later.

  “This whole evening, I mean, I don’t want to come across too forthright or anything, but this sort of connection doesn’t happen so often for me. I mean, I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before—”

  She leans in to kiss me. A forceful kiss, leaving us both short of breath afterward.

  I smile sadly and say, “Look, I know I’m being pathetic right now. I just can’t help myself, I’m really sorry—”

  She puts a finger to my lips.

  “Don’t overanalyze it. Just accept it’s been a difficult day with your friend quitting like that. Give me a call tomorrow when you’re feeling better about things.”

  “I will, I promise—”

  But the door has already shut behind me, the sound of the dead bolt sliding back into place.

  An e-mail waiting for me back at the office:

  From: TheCrazyBrit@theBank.com

  To: Me@theBank.com

  Where are you ? I’ve been ringing you up and you’re clearly not in. Puzzling because those final amendments to the comps were expected by 9pm—am I to believe you’re shirking on your responsibilities? Call me at home immediately. If it’s already the morning and you’ve just stumbled in, then I suggest you begin boxing up your belongings.

  It’s just too much. I stagger along the corridor and slip into the bathroom—empty, of course, as it’s one in the morning—push open one of the stalls, and slump down on the toilet. Combined with the overhead lighting buzzing away, the gray linoleum tiles, and the roll of one-ply toilet paper that comes apart when you wipe your ass, all of the past week’s events collide, producing an emotional sucker-punch: Clyde. The Crazy Brit. Postal Boy. The Woman With The Scarf.

  It comes out forcefully: a wretched sob before the tears gush freely down my cheeks. It’s embarrassing, kind of silly, I mean, I’ve never been a big crier; indeed, I can’t even remember the last time I cried like this. How the fuck did I get my
self into this mess? Where did my free will vanish to?

  I’m never coming out of here, I’m really not; they’ll have to beat down the door first. Three days as the official record by the analyst who locked himself in the bathroom is child’s play compared with what I’m about to attempt. I’m not finished with my breakdown before the bathroom door opens, and somebody shuffles into the stall next to mine. I hear the Defeated One’s voice.

  “Mumbles, is that you?”

  I suck back phlegm, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.

  “Piss off. Can’t you let a man take a dump in peace?”

  He hadn’t heard me before.

  “Whatever. Just be sure to light a match when you’re done. I don’t want to pass out from the fumes over here.”

  Twelve

  February, March, April: Three more pages of the Defeated One’s Pattaya Fun-Fun Girls calendar turn over. Their passage is lethargic, agonizingly slow, so even the glossy Thai sex kittens seem to grow weary of the process, and sigh with relief when it’s time for next month’s replacement to fulfill her duty.

  Ninety days lopped off my contract. One thousand four hundred and forty hours; it sounds weightier that way. The vast majority of the time, my eyelids feel droopy, like I’ve swallowed heavy sedatives, and my head feels like a barren wasteland with the iconic tumbleweed rolling past. After ten months strapped behind this desk, I can handle an analyst’s official duties without suffering any serious mental strain—comps and modeling and binding and stapling—along with the rest of the degrading tasks that come with being the Crazy Brit’s bitch boy. The remainder of the time, when I become more lucid, the quitting fantasies crop up in their various flavors: the elegant disappearing act, staying later than everybody else one evening, packing up my stuff, and leaving my keycard on the Philanderer’s desk; or the short-term satisfaction of the explosive meltdown, waving a hole puncher around wildly to send the Utterly Incompetent Assistant cowering under her desk, and smashing computer monitors and fax machines on a maximally destructive path toward the elevators; or, finally, a contemplation of infinity or the lack thereof, in other words, hurling myself out the window or in front of a subway car; far-fetched, surely, but I can finally understand those folks who do decide that enough is enough and wipe their hands of this sad, bleak world.

  On the subject of quitting, Postal Boy left after his two weeks expired. I’d patched things up by that point with a half-hearted shaking of hands over a late-night cup of coffee, but both of us knew it was more a social formality than anything else, and besides, shortly thereafter he moved to Chicago to start his new life as a brand manager for the launch of the dual-headed Swiffer. Postal Boy and Clyde were eventually replaced by the two Tools: Tool #1, a replica of the Star but with terrible halitosis, and Tool #2, another replica of the Star but with a serious case of acne.

  Tool #2 hovers over my shoulder as I demonstrate the correct way to program a VLOOKUP statement in Excel. I’ve taken over as Excel Guru, Supreme Master of the Way of the Spreadsheet, since the Star came down with a nasty case of pneumonia and has been out on doctor’s orders for the rest of the week, and the Defeated One left early to do damage control after a major blow-up with the girlfriend.

  It’s already eight o’clock, and Tool #2 still has a full twelve hours of work left. Despite the inevitability of an all-nighter, he’s enthusiastically jotting his notes down, sporting the new bie’s classic ensemble of a starched white shirt and Windsor-knotted tie. I’m tempted to impart to Tool #2 the True Reality, that all of his contrived efforts to impress our senior guys are utterly in vain, but decide against it. That is the sort of thing an analyst is meant to discover by himself, a futility best digested in solitude.

  After Tool #2 finishes his litany of questions, I reach over and grab my coat.

  Tool #2 sputters, “Where, uh, where are you going?”

  “Out for a bit.”

  Tool #2 can’t handle this at all and his eyes dart around the room in panic.

  “But, uh, I have to get this stuff all done for tomorrow morning. Didn’t the Crazy Brit say he needed this stuff done by, uh, tomorrow, and if I had any questions—”

  Was I really this bad when I first started here? Probably worse, now that I’m thinking about it.

  “Relax,” I say, trying to exude calmness. “Keep plugging away at the data and I’ll be back in a few hours to check everything.”

  “But, but . . . ,” Tool #2 gasps.

  I know I’m being cruel, abandoning him like this, but I’m already twenty minutes late to meet my folks for dinner halfway across town.

  “Just do what you can. Go check with the Prodigal Son if you have any questions. After all, he’s the associate now.”

  “But, but, he’s, uh, never around—”

  I toss on my coat and I’m already out the door.

  The Imperial Dragon House, a cavernous place in the belly of Chinatown, is beginning to show the wear and tear of its four decades. Gaudy paper lanterns dangle from the ceiling, plastic portly Buddhas smile from the perimeter, and there is a small pond at the front with diminutive goldfish that swish around lazily as if they’re high or drunk. The cuisine—something called “Seven Treasure Fried Rice” forms a miserable lump on my plate—is no more impressive than the decor. I’ve identified tendrils of chicken fat and soggy carrot as two of the treasures, but I’d be hard-pressed to name the other five. Anyway, it’s not the food that draws us to the Dragon every couple months; my parents met here in their early twenties, their courtship blossoming over greasy wontons, so the place is potent with nostalgic value.

  Though the Dragon is almost empty, we’ve been crammed next to the type of family that makes you seriously question any desire to procreate. The blubbering baby immediately to my right is perhaps the best of their lot, deconstructing an eggroll and squirting plum sauce all over the tablecloth while the parents scold the other two imps sitting across from them.

  I stir my gelatinous hot-and-sour soup and wince at the onset of a throbbing headache. How is it that my parents are able to tune all this out and stare at each other like gawky love-sick teenagers? My mom finally breaks off their lingering gaze and smiles sheepishly at me.

  “So, you’re coming to Annie’s play this Wednesday night? We bought a ticket for you already.”

  I look up from stirring my soup.

  “Huh? You know I never make social commitments during the week.”

  My mom shrugs. “I don’t see why you can’t just tell them you’re leaving for a few hours. After all, this is Annie we’re talking about.”

  Annie, my third cousin twice removed. I haven’t yet figured out why my mom does this. Every time we get together, there’s a play thrust upon me, or a graduation ceremony, or somebody falling off a swing set and landing in the hospital with a broken leg. Why is it so difficult to accept that Mondays to Thursdays are off-limits, and most weekends are doubtful as well? Why can’t my mom just be the bastion of unwavering support I really need her to be right now; moreover, why won’t she just envelop me in her maternal warmth and squeeze me back into the womb? I’m serious: I want to go back. Nothing to disturb me in that soft pink cocoon but the swishing sounds of bodily fluids and the muffled cooing of distant relatives.

  “You know better than to ask him that,” my dad chides between slurps of chow mein noodles. “He won’t stand up to them. Never has and never will.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  My parents share a conspiratorial glance.

  “I can’t believe—”

  The girl at the next table over starts howling after her brother clobbers her over the head with a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce.

  “So, you don’t think I stand up to them?”

  My dad frowns. “What can I say? Look at the evidence.”

  “I’m here right now, aren’t I?”

  “When was the last time we saw you? Three weeks ago?”

  “Five weeks,” my mom corrects him
. Thrusting her soup spoon in my direction, she says, “Two hours this Wednesday night—would it really kill you?”

  “I know you think I can just waltz out of there, but it’s not so easy—”

  My dad is shaking his head.

  “Heaven forbid you should leave your desk for two hours. What do you think would happen? Armageddon, right?” Throwing his hands up, he adds, “The entire free-market economy collapsing on the spot! Fortunes lost! GDPs wiped out!”

  “Not to mention no more fools willing to shell out five bucks for a latte at Starbucks,” my mom snorts.

  I can’t believe they’re going on like this. Here I am on a Monday night, taking valuable time out of mentoring the Tools, and all they do is mock me for doing what every parent could only wish their children would do: roll up their sleeves, find a job, and become self-sufficient. But instead of the pity I crave (oh, this sweet, sweet pity), all I get is their unwarranted condemnation.

  An explosion of porcelain beside me: The brother has pushed a platter of Moo Shu Duck off the table. The baby giggles and claps her hands as both parents lunge out of their chairs. Amid the maddening commotion, my headache reaches epic proportions until I can’t deal with the racket any longer, and I whip around.

  “Won’t you all just shut the fuck up?”

  It comes out louder than I would have liked. Substantially louder. Everything around me just freezes: the parents at the next table, my parents, the waiters in their goofy cummerbunds and matching pirate vests, the baby with a string of goo glistening out of one nostril.

  Motion returns with the father clenching his hands into fists.

  “You want to repeat that?”

  “He didn’t mean anything by it,” my mom says, smiling apologetically and rotating a finger beside her head. “Tourette’s, you know.”

  “Thanks,” I mumble.

  A man in a white smock, presumably the one who concocted this rice of innumerable treasures, comes storming out of the kitchen.

  “No trouble. No trouble. Leave now, please.”

  We’re ushered out of the restaurant past the pond with the drugged-up goldfish. Walking down the street and wondering how it got to be spring already—the weather is far too warm for the winter jacket I’m wearing—I sense an uncomfortable silence, until my dad speaks, shaking his head in bewilderment.