Breaking the Bank (20 page)

“Can I see it?” he asked without preamble. His tone—soft, coaxing, intimate—made the request sound vaguely obscene.

Mia shrugged the Hello Kitty backpack from her shoulders, laid a sheet of clean white paper over the bar's surface, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves; she had to thank Solly Phelps for the idea. But before she could reach into the pack's zippered pocket, she dropped it on the floor. Her phone, wallet, and a tube of bronzer came skittering out. Mia grabbed for her things, but Weed was there first. He placed his hand on the wallet, which had flopped open. “Mia Saul,” he read from her driver's license. “Nice.” Mia hurriedly crammed everything into the backpack.
He knows my name,
she kept thinking.
He knows my name.
But the deal had already been set in motion; it was too late to pull out now.

Mia placed the bill down on the bar. Weed said nothing, but she could feel the hum of his interest growing steadier, louder, like the vibrations of a tuning fork. He leaned over, fingers hovering delicately above it.

“Here,” Mia said, offering him a second pair of gloves. “Thanks.” He put them on and lifted the bill off the bar by its two upper corners. “Fred, can you turn up the lights a little?” Fred, who appeared to be transfixed by the sight of so much money in so little space, blinked and dropped the sponge. “Fred?” Weed said again, in a patient tone. “The lights?” Fred shook his head ever so slightly, as if he were clearing it. Then he picked up the sponge, set it near the sink, and fiddled with the lights.

Apparently satisfied, Weed brought his face so close to the bill that he and Salmon Chase were virtually eye to eye. He examined the front, the back, the edges. Then he put it back on the bar.

“I'll do fifty thou,” he said, with the same detached calm he might have used to order a tuna on rye. He peeled off the gloves and set them neatly on the bar.

“It's worth over ninety thousand,” Mia said. “Then go to the guy who'll give you that.”

Mia felt Fred staring at her, but she didn't return the look. What was the point? She knew what she had to do.
Use it well.
It was time to start.

“Deal,” she said. She heard Fred exhale, big time. “I have cash,” Weed said, unsnapping his jacket to reveal a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt. It looked lumpy; she understood why when he reached up and under the shirt for what must have been a concealed pouch of some kind. He began extracting bills. One-thousand-dollar bills—in the now-bright light, Mia studied Grover Cleveland's heavy jowls and lip-obscuring mustache. When Weed had finished counting, he gestured for Mia to do so. Fifty bills, fifty thousand dollars. Again, she could feel Fred's stare, and this time, she looked back.

“Would you?” she asked. He took the stack, and she watched his lips move while he counted. When he was done, he gave them all back to her. The wad felt fat, almost alive, in her hands. Weed put on the gloves before picking up the bill and inserting it first between the
cardboard sheets and then into the envelope. Mia wondered where he would put it now and resisted the impulse—ludicrous, she knew—to offer him her pink-and-red backpack. Then she saw he had one of his own, a frayed gray affair, one that would draw no attention to itself whatsoever. He zipped the thing up, and Fred accompanied him to the door, where they talked for a minute. Weed didn't say anything to her, but then again, he didn't need to. They had successfully transacted their business; what else was there to say?

F
RED INSISTED ON
taking her back to her apartment on his motorcycle. Mia was surprised to see the thing—small, black, and glossy— parked at an oblique angle near the streetlight right out front. But then she was equally surprised to have a wad of thousand-dollar bills stuffed into her backpack, and two more wads each tucked into her boots; she could feel them shifting slightly with every step she took. It had been, all around, a night of surprises.

“I didn't know you had a motorcycle,” she said. “There are a lot of things about me you don't know,” he said, handing her a helmet.

It was scary, streaking down Fourth Avenue at three in the morning; trucks roared by, and all the cars seemed to be speeding. And it was freezing, though at least her head was covered by the helmet, and the front of her, pressed tightly against Fred's back, was somewhat protected by the contact. When they reached her building, she felt obliged to ask him up. She willed herself to ignore—and certainly not apologize for—the state of the lobby, which this month was showcasing a partial set of wrecked dining room furniture, all chips, gouges, and missing legs.

The apartment was dark and still. Eden was upstairs with Luisa's family, and Mia never left a light on just for herself—she hated to waste electricity. Feeling the emptiness of the apartment made her wish she owned an animal. Cat, dog, parrot, pig. She had a sudden memory
of the rabbit Lloyd had given her, its big rabbit self such a comforting weight in her arms when she'd held it, but then she banished the thought and turned to Fred.

“What a strange night,” she said. “What a strange guy.”

“No stranger than anyone else,” Fred replied. “No stranger than a woman who has a ten-thousand-dollar bill in her possession and can't say where she got it.”

“You promised not to ask about that,” Mia said. “Remember?”

“I remember.” Fred looked as if he wanted to do something—touch her shoulder, her face—but instead began unbuttoning his jacket. Mia took it from him and then dumped it on a chair along with her own jacket. She headed for the kitchen, Fred following along behind.

“I'd offer you a drink, but the strongest thing I have is grapefruit juice,” she said, nervously peering into the refrigerator as he hovered behind her. “Of course, it's practically time for grapefruit juice anyway, so why don't I—” She stopped; he had put his arms around her and was kissing her softly on her open mouth.
Oh,
she thought.
Oh.
The kiss was warm, but not overly insistent; he was clearly waiting for a cue from her. She knew, of course, that this was coming. Was this payback? she wondered as she let herself kiss him in return. Quid pro quo?

Feeling her respond made him a little bolder; he used one hand to press her body closer to his; the other traveled from her face to her neck to the opening of her shirt, just below her collarbone. He brushed the gold locket briefly, and then moved on. But then he pulled his mouth away from hers and said, “Okay?” into her ear.

“Okay,” she said back, wanting it to be true but not knowing for sure if it was. “Okay.” Now he was lightly rubbing one nipple and then the other. It felt good, and she liked him, so why was she so skittish? It wasn't like she hadn't had sex with anyone else since Lloyd had left her. Though she had been slightly drunk the few times it happened. No, make that very drunk. So that was the difference. She
was sober and was going to have to take full responsibility for what she was about to do.

“Maybe we could go somewhere and lie down,” Fred said softly.

She led him into her tiny bedroom—astonishingly, the bed was made—and they both stretched out. She heard the clunk of Fred's shoes as they hit the floor, but her own boots still had the money in them, and even though they felt uncomfortable, she was afraid to take them off.

“Your hair,” murmured Fred, touching it gently. “It's so pretty.” This is how it goes, she thought, all those first touches, first glimpses, the little revelations, the little discoveries. She knew that it was her turn now; she was supposed to say something to him. But she didn't have a thing to offer, so she closed her eyes, letting him unbutton her shirt and slip down the straps of her bra. The bra, at least, was sexy. It was this red lacy thing she had bought as a mental “fuck you” to Lloyd when he left her, and Mia was glad she was wearing it now, instead of one of the stretched-out, once-upon-a-time-was-pink-but-now-is-puddle-gray numbers in which she seemed to specialize. It was only when Fred pressed his lips to her skin that she started, without warning, to sob. She thought, uselessly, of Lloyd, both in the beginning, and at the sorry end. She thought of the first boy she'd ever kissed, at summer camp, his mouth, only recently emptied of spear-mint gum, a cool, wet surprise. And of Josh, in high school. Her mind was crowded with too many people; there was no room for Fred.

“What?” he asked, moving his face up and away so he could look at her. “Is it something I did?”

This only made her cry harder. “Jeez, Mia, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please tell me what's wrong.” He stopped when she put her open palm over his mouth.

“No,
I'm
the one who's sorry,” she said. With effort, she got the sobbing under control, but her eyes were still leaking tears. “I like you, Fred. I really do. And what you did for me tonight was . . . amazing.

Simply amazing. I'm incredibly grateful, and I want you to know that. But I guess I'm just not ready for—” She looked down at her partially unclothed body, at his knee pressed between her parted legs. “For this.” As soon as she said the words, she felt a huge, visceral sense of relief, like she'd set down a big sack of stones.

“That's all right,” Fred said, clumsily attempting to pull the two halves of her blouse back together. He didn't entirely succeed, and her breasts, encased as they were in red lace and poking out of the blouse, seemed faintly ridiculous.

“I can wait.”

“You can?” she asked, rubbing at her wet face with her hands. “Really?”

“Uh-huh.” He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “Think maybe we should try to get a little rest? I could stay here with you and we could sleep, okay? Just sleep.”

“Just sleep,” Mia echoed, into his chest. Suddenly she was so, so tired. She shifted once, then twice, trying to find the most comfortable position and wondering, through the fog of her fatigue, why it was that the oblivion she craved was eluding her. Then she remembered— she was still wearing her boots, the ones with the thousand-dollar bills packed into their linings, tamped down like so many soft, silvery-green feathers.

E
VER SINCE THE
automated teller had given her the ten-thousand-dollar bill, Mia had not been back to the bank. She hadn't dared. The words
Use it well
continued to turn up—in a television commercial, mouthed by a trim middle-aged woman with china-white veneers on her teeth; in a magazine article written by a financial expert; splashed across a billboard on the West Side Highway—with an eerie frequency. So Mia still believed herself to be in the thrall of something not quite normal, and she was afraid to tamper with whatever it was.

But the Monday after she met with Weed, she knew she had to set aside her apprehension and march herself up there. It was either that, or keep fifty grand in a shoe box at the top of her closet, an option that she was willing to concede was neither smart nor safe. So she placed three of the thousand-dollar bills in the zipped pocket of the Hello Kitty backpack and set off with Eden toward school. Eden did not appear to notice how nervous Mia was—what if the bills were numbered or marked in some suspicious way? what if the bank teller started asking her questions?—but she did eye the backpack with a mixture of mild curiosity and somewhat stronger disdain.

“So you really like that thing?” she asked.

Mia just smiled and said, “Uh-huh.”

There was a line at the bank. Mia was actually grateful for this, because it gave her time to compose herself. Three people waited ahead of her; all of them looked irritated. Mia, however, was too freaked out to be irritated.
Inhale,
she instructed herself silently.
Now exhale.
There. Better.

Mia knew she could use one of the automated tellers, even
the
automated
teller, but she was too scared. A machine that made money appear miraculously might be a machine that made it disappear, too. She was not taking any chances. So she reached up to give the backpack a little goodwill tap, trying to arrange her face in an expression of bored yet patient detachment.

The teller was a young man with a slim-fitting jacket and a major attitude. But she saw him snap to attention when he saw the bills. She felt like her breath was being vacuumed out of her as she watched him call over his supervisor, a matronly black woman wearing a fuzzy sweater and a pin in the shape of a Christmas wreath. After a careful inspection and some muted discussion, the bills were deemed acceptable and deposited to Mia's account.

The paper receipt she was handed felt dangerous; she had an impulse to pop it into her mouth, chew, and swallow. Instead, she managed to walk through the double doors, out into the street, without totally losing it. Now she just had to do this, oh, maybe ten or fifteen more times. Christ. She would have to find other branches of the bank, make some deposits in the Bronx. Or Queens. Otherwise, she didn't think she could pull this off again, at least not here.

The next day, Mia checked her bank balance at a Midtown branch of the bank. The deposit, all three thousand dollars of it, was there. This emboldened her to make another cash deposit on Twenty-third Street, as she was on her way into the office, and still another, at a branch on the Upper East Side. Each time, the bills were inspected, discussed, and ultimately accepted. Fred even offered to make a couple of the deposits for her, which she was just desperate—or crazy— enough to let him do. Within a week, forty-nine thousand dollars— almost the entire amount she scored from Weed—was safely socked away in her account. Forty-nine thousand was not the sum she had hoped for; it was most certainly not enough for a down payment on a piece of property in a place where she might actually want to live. But it could help pay the rent in a different and better apartment,
an apartment that might convince her brother that she was on an incline, not skidding toward the bottom without any brakes. She started looking at the classifieds, checking out the options. Bay Ridge might have been an option, even though it was a long distance from Manhattan and any visible source of income she might generate. Bed Stuy would have been cheaper, but it was hardly an improvement in terms of neighborhood. Maybe she needed to think about leaving Brooklyn altogether, and striking out for the unfamiliar wilds of Queens or even Staten Island.