All This Could End

by Steph Bowe

  Nevertheless, they are in a town where people still leave their back doors open and their keys in the ignition of their cars. Sophia is making them rob a bank where people are innocent and trusting and don’t expect bad things to happen, not to them, not to people they know.

  If Nina had the option of choosing between different methods of robbery, she would definitely use a note. All you need is a bit of paper, a pen, a banana in a brown paper bag, and you’re set. She’d write something like, Everything from the till into the bag, please, and I won’t shoot anybody. Have a nice day. A bank robbery done by note is subtle. You don’t get as much money, only the contents of one till, but you don’t attract attention to yourself. No one gets hurt. And the other customers often don’t even realise there’s a robbery going on.

  Of course, if it was up to her, she wouldn’t rob banks at all, subtly or otherwise.

  Nina

  Nina can’t help but feel that she’s contributing to making the world a more hostile place. The fact that she’s holding a gun to someone’s head is probably indicative of that.

  She accidentally makes eye contact with a teller, a middle-aged man, his face shiny with sweat. She looks away but wonders about his life. Does he have kids, a wife? Would his family even consider robbing a bank? Would he be able to empathise with her, understand why she has to do what she’s doing? She doubts it. At least it’s a quiet bank. Only a dozen lives ruined. Including Spencer’s.

  Not ruined, she hopes. They’ll be able to move on from this. Surely?

  Maybe the terrifying experience will compel them to live life to the fullest. Maybe they’ll have stories written about them in tacky magazines, with titles like Being taken hostage in a bank robbery changed my life…for the better! If she turns it around like this, she’s practically doing these people a service. Next week they’ll go skydiving and unashamedly declare their love for everybody. Will one of them someday write a brilliant account of this turning point in their lives?

  It’s more likely that they’ll have nightmares for the rest of their lives. Maybe they’ll wake up in a cold sweat at three a.m. every night for the next decade, thinking someone has a gun to their head.

  How could she do this to Spencer? Her arm’s starting to get sore, holding the gun up to his head. His breathing is shallow. She can’t speak to him properly out here.

  There are two other tellers in their crisp black bank uniforms. One is a young woman, perhaps only a few years older than Nina. She’s wearing blue eyeshadow. Her name badge reads Amanda. Amanda’s back is pressed against the wall, and she’s staring at Nina and Sophia, wide-eyed. The other teller is an older woman who’s opening the tills for Tom. Her blonde hair is pulled into a tight bun. She looks tired more than anything.

  Paul has already taken the bank manager to the vault and, apart from Spencer, there are seven customers on the floor. Sophia has herded them into a group near the back wall of the bank.

  If only these people did their banking on the internet. Why did they have to turn up as soon as the bank opened? Why can’t robbers call ahead? ‘We’re coming down in an hour; going to wave some guns, clear out the tills, the works. It would be nice if you didn’t have any pesky customers in the way. It can be somewhat traumatising for them.’

  There’s an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt and white shorts, his skin weathered. Sprawled on the ground, he looks anxious and uncomfortable. There’s a rotund, older woman with her head in her hands, her hair dyed the same shade of red as Nina’s and falling in a veil around her face. A short, wiry, dark-haired woman has her eyes shut and her arm around a boy who couldn’t be more than ten. Only a little younger than Tom. He’s wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt and his hair is uncombed.

  There’s also a kid with dreadlocks who looks barely older than Nina. He also looks stunned by it all. The last two customers are a couple—he is bald and stocky, covered in tattoos, and she wears glasses and perfectly styled hair. They look strangely calm.

  Nina needs this nightmare to end, for them and for her.

  Nina nods to Sophia. She still has the gun to Spencer’s head, even though she very much wants to take it away. ‘I’d like to do the vault. It’ll take a while for him—’ she nods to Tom and thinks for the thousandth time what a messed-up family holiday activity this is ‘—to get through the tills. You should get Dad to help him. Besides, I like doing the vault.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Sophia. ‘Do you want me to grab him for you?’ She extends her arms to take Spencer, as if Nina’s going to hand her a puppy, or a baby, or something.

  ‘I can handle both,’ says Nina.

  Sophia trusts Nina too much. She doesn’t seem to think about the logistics of things—sure, they cased the bank beforehand, checked the outdated security system, familiarised themselves with the layout. But she overlooks things. She gets distracted, and she doesn’t think about the obvious: Hey, maybe it’s not a good idea for Nina to bag the money from the vault while also holding hostage a boy who is most definitely stronger than she is.

  It is beyond Nina how anyone could ever enjoy stuffing someone else’s money into a bag, money that you can only get because you’re holding a gun to someone’s head. But Sophia smiles as if to say, That’s my girl. At least she doesn’t put up a fuss about changing the plan. The more banks they rob, the more times they get away with it, the less worried she becomes. She’s dancing around the people on the floor like she’s in their living room.

  Nina

  Nina drags Spencer through a door behind the tellers, into a narrow hallway, past a row of offices. She’s taken the gun from his head, and she’s got a firm grip on his arm now. She’s already seen the floor plan, knows where she’s going. Knows that only the bank manager has the authority to open the vault. She is convinced that’s too much power for one person.

  She just needs to keep it together until they get to the vault. The walls are beige and the carpet is dark blue and Nina is struck by how ordinary the venue is for her extraordinary situation.

  ‘I bet this isn’t for real,’ Spencer mutters, as he stumbles along. ‘I’m impressed. Such a coordinated effort. All those people seem genuinely scared, but there’re just very good actors, right? This is a TV show. This is like Punk’d but with real people, isn’t it? I’ve figured it out. This is just reality TV. Really elaborate, confronting reality TV. I’d watch it. Not so much fun being part of it. Now I know how Jim Carrey felt in The Truman Show.’

  ‘No,’ says Nina. ‘It’s not. I’m sorry.’ They’re at another nondescript door. She pushes Spencer in front of her, presses the gun to his back.

  ‘I bet we’re in The Matrix, then,’ he says. ‘Have I taken the red pill or the blue pill?’

  ‘Please be quiet for a minute. Open the door.’

  It’s a handful of steps to the vault. It’s a short trip, but it feels like forever.

  Nina gets to the vault just as the bank manager opens it. He’s shaking on the spot. He’s a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, and does not look unlike the bank managers she has encountered before. But doesn’t he also look like someone she knows? But doesn’t everyone look like someone else? He and her father turn and look at Nina and Spencer. Her hostage. The bank manager appears to become even more alarmed upon seeing Nina and Spencer.

  There’s so much in her head right now that it feels as if it weighs ten times as much as the rest of her body. She feels as if she’s tipping, and all of her memories are about to spill out of her head onto the carpet of the bank. It’s the sort of carpet that you get in an RSL club, in the area where the pokies are—navy blue and burgundy diamonds. She imagines all of her memories falling out and being able to leave the bank and start afresh.

  ‘She said I could do the vault,’ Nina says to her father. Nina continues to hold the gun to Spencer’s back, but she’s more relaxed about it now, just keeping her hand there for show. Her father has a sawn-off shotgun pressed into the bank manager’s back. And yet somehow he manages to car
ry on a conversation as if neither hostage were there. He has a couple of empty sports bags hanging from his other hand.

  Nina notices Spencer and the bank manager are staring at one another, terrified. The bank manager’s eyes bulge.

  ‘Really? You’ll be all right with that?’ Her father looks surprised. Sophia has always said that Nina would come around to the family business sooner or later. Right now, it looks like her dad was expecting it to be later. ‘She’s relaxed today, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do you want me to grab this kid for you?’ He glances at Spencer.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ says Nina.

  Paul looks back to Nina, and nods. ‘Be quick,’ he says, and she can hear the reluctance in his voice. He hands her the bags, then walks back towards the main room of the bank, the manager in front of him. Her father wants it to be over as much as she does, she’s sure of it. The bank manager turns and stares at Spencer as long as he can, then he’s gone.

  Nina lets go of Spencer and chucks the gun on the ground as if it’s burning hot. She knows so little about guns, and has never fired one. She can pick pockets and locks, hotwire cars, disable security cameras, steal and lie and con. But she has never let her parents teach her properly how to use a gun. Her parents were, however, the ones who put the gun in her hand. ‘Just for show’, they said. And she took it, because that’s what Nina has always done—gone along with whatever her parents said, legal or otherwise. But not after today. The gun is better than a knife, though. You don’t get a safety lock on a knife.

  It takes all the effort she has left inside her to stay composed while she’s decomposing.

  She drops the bags, then pushes the balaclava up off her face (something she is explicitly forbidden to do, on account of the security cameras and potential multiple witnesses) and inhales deeply. There’s not enough air in the vault. There’s not enough air in the world.

  She closes her eyes and pretends that she’s four months in the past, back when she was still friends with Spencer, back when she was not robbing a bank with him in it. Back when things felt more complicated than ever but, in comparison to now, were the simplest days of her life.

  ‘Shit!’ she says, pacing back and forth. The vault is small, and the amount of money is small, tucked away on shelves in little neat stacks. She holds her head in her hands. How could she be thinking about the money right now? ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

  Spencer

  Spencer exhales, pressing himself against the wall of the vault. This is too surreal, too dreamlike and trippy, for it to be reality. The cold concrete wall. The stale smell, like old bones and mothballs. Do dreams have an olfactory dimension? It must be real if he can smell it. Olfaction, sense of smell.

  And it’s too ridiculous. He hasn’t seen her for four months and now she’s robbing the bank? Nina—quiet, reserved, thoughtful Nina. Smart Nina. Not Nina the Crazy Hold-A-Gun-To-Your-Head Bank Robber. This is definitely too much for him.

  But he can’t leave. He needs to talk to her, ask her why she left, why she’s robbing the bank. Tell her he misses her. But it’s the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong everything. This girl he thought he’d never see again is right in front of him, a balaclava around her neck, about to rob the bank his father manages.

  ‘What is that?’ he asks instead, nodding towards the gun on the floor.

  ‘It’s…’ she stammers, distracted, ‘it’s a handgun. It’s a pistol.’

  ‘And is it loaded?’ He can hear the panic in his voice. ‘I don’t want to get shot.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about it. I’m not planning on shooting anyone. Especially not you.’

  ‘It’s very small. I haven’t seen a gun in real life before. Is Bruce Willis about to turn up?’

  Ten, twenty, thirty seconds pass—they feel like a lifetime—before Nina speaks again.

  ‘We’ve got three, four minutes, tops.’ She doesn’t look at him as she speaks. ‘Keep your voice low. And grab a bag. We need to get this done as quickly and efficiently as possible.’

  ‘What?’ asks Spencer. She hasn’t answered his question.

  ‘Help me.’ She nods to the cash, as she throws the bundles into one of the bags.

  Spencer stumbles forward, his breathing loud and erratic. He hopes his dad is okay. He hopes his sister is all right, at home, alone, and hasn’t burned the house down with a cooking experiment. He hopes his mother’s all right, wherever she is. He’s certainly not all right. Hands shaking, he stuffs money into one of the bags and thinks, I don’t want to be an accessory to this, whatever the hell is going on.

  He glances at Nina, but doesn’t want her to catch him staring. She looks older than he remembers. Which makes sense, of course—that’s what happens when time passes, people age, he knows that. But that’s not it. Still beautiful, but she looks exhausted. And her eyes?

  ‘Are you wearing contact lenses?’ he asks.

  She nods. ‘I’m not just trying out a new look for fun. They’re very irritating.’

  ‘You look like you have shark eyes. I can imagine you abseiling into a museum and stealing a Monet painting or something in that outfit. Bank-robbing seems kind of below you. No offence.’

  She doesn’t respond to this.

  There’s something darker about her eyes. Are his own eyes darker now, too? Has his mother leaving and his family falling apart turned him into someone else? Maybe not the sort of someone else who robs banks, just someone with a little less soul than he used to have, someone a little deader on the inside.

  ‘We only really have one option,’ says Nina. ‘And you’re not going to like it. I don’t like it, but I don’t have a lot of time and I can’t think of anything better.’

  ‘What’s the option for? What are you talking about?’

  Nina swallows noisily. ‘I can’t just pretend that I don’t know you and breeze out of the bank. I can’t risk you telling anyone. We use our real names all the time—I’m still Nina Pretty. It wouldn’t take them long to find us.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ Spencer asks. ‘I swear to God, I have nothing to gain by telling the police that I know you.’ His hands are shaking uncontrollably. ‘You know me. You know I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I can’t trust anyone, Spencer,’ she says.

  ‘Why?’ he asks.

  ‘Why can’t I trust anyone?’

  ‘No, I get that. I mean, why are you robbing a bank?’

  ‘Because that’s where the money is.’

  Spencer

  Spencer is trying to avoid hyperventilating, or passing out, or otherwise drawing unnecessary attention to himself. The bags are packed, the vault now bare of cash. He doesn’t know what will happen next but everything that comes to mind is horrible. Terrifyingly horrible.

  ‘Are those your parents? The bank robbers?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Nina.

  ‘Wow. And who’s the skinny one?

  ‘That’d be Tom.’ She doesn’t look at him.

  Spencer almost laughs. ‘Monica’s going to love this.’

  ‘I’m going to have to tell my mum, Spencer,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to, but I don’t know how to deal with this. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘I could not understand less.’

  ‘The risk is too much, and even if I am trying like hell to get away from my parents, I do not want them going to prison because of me.’

  ‘That’s my dad out there,’ Spencer says. ‘He manages this bank.’

  ‘Oh God, no,’ she groans. ‘I knew I recognised him.’

  ‘I thought you might figure it out yourself. Considering how panicked he looked seeing his son with a gun to his head.’

  ‘Everyone always looks that panicked,’ she says.

  ‘You’ve done this before?’ He’s incredulous. ‘Are bank robberies a regular occurrence in your life?’

  ‘I shouldn’t tell you. You know me, you’ll go to the police, and I don’t know how Mum will deal with this.’

&nbs
p; ‘Your family is so messed up,’ says Spencer.

  ‘I know. What do I do?’ She knows it’s not really the time for rhetorical questions.

  ‘Dad won’t recognise you,’ Spencer shakes his head. ‘He has a shocking memory for faces, and he’s not in a good state right now.’ He begins to list in his head all his favourite words beginning with P. Panacea, a solution for all problems. Panoply, a complete set.

  ‘Clearly,’ says Nina. She picks up the gun and waves it. ‘I wouldn’t expect anyone to be.’

  Spencer tries not to flinch. ‘No, not just this.’ He shakes his head again. ‘Before then, too. Did you ever get my emails?’ He keeps thinking of words starting with P: Pastiche, an art work combining materials from various sources.

  Nina nods, winces. ‘It’s unfortunate your mother is the one that left. If my mother had spontaneously decided to disappear to the Pacific Islands we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.’

  She pulls the balaclava back over her face. ‘We have to go back out there. Mum will probably start panicking. She’s a bit…’ she pauses, considers, ‘highly strung.’

  Spencer nods. Penumbra, a half-shadow.

  Nina puts a bag over each shoulder, then nudges Spencer forward, holding the gun to his back again once they’re outside the vault. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers. ‘I really don’t want to do this.’

  He believes her. Petrichor, the smell of earth after rain.

  Do you really need the money that badly? Spencer wants to ask. Is it your mother, is this why you do it? Just for her? But he’s too freaked out of his mind to say anything. Plethora, a large quantity. Propinquity, an inclination.

  The main reason Spencer had come to the bank today was to check in on his dad. He’d figured that if he was going to get through to his father anywhere—to try and wake him up to what he was doing to Monica, to their family—it would be at work. At home he’s nothing more than a TV-watching, two-minute-noodle-eating zombie.