Becky gave one last regretful look, then began to turn away. Stopped, her eye caught by a small circular sticker next to the painting on the wall. “Hey. What’s this?” She tapped the number printed on the sticker.
“That’s the price of the piece.”
$540. Becky’s heart started pumping. For a moment the nearly matching figures, here and printed on the check buried in her office drawer, seemed manifested straight from her own mind. Don’t be crazy, she told herself. She waved at the man without looking at him and hurried for the door.
Waiting in line at First Federal, Becky thought about the Pierson Disaster, how most of the town had unreasonably blamed the bank for those drownings on the morning of its opening ceremonies, and that a faint hint of guilt and apology still hung in the air, eighty-plus years later. She hoped it might work in her favor.
It was a late October afternoon, and she was fourth in line along the dusty velvet rope. She’d timed her visit for the afternoon “rush” of storekeepers making deposits before the close of business. She had chosen her outfit just as carefully: new cream-colored boatneck sweater, pulled down over the pinned waistband of a thrift shop jersey skirt one size too big, and her favorite thin-heeled pumps, the ones she knew would tap smartly on the bank lobby’s polished flagstones.
Now third in line. She smiled back at Mr. Fornet as he touched his baseball cap. Repeated versions of the same old lines with the lounging security guard as she had on every bank visit she’d made in nine months on the job. Weather’s turned. Sure has. With our luck, there’ll be snow by Halloween.
The teller waved Becky up to the counter for her turn. “Where’s your coat?” she asked.
Becky made a shiver motion and set the forms and checks on the worn brass surface, a chest-high counter.
“You’re crazy,” the teller declared. “I even wore mine on a smoke break!” The bank was a long quarter mile down First from Town Hall.
“I’ll jog back. In my heels.”
The teller snorted. “Don’t kill yourself for them.”
Becky had studied this woman for weeks, had chosen her for a certain disdainful quality, a punch-out-and-get-the-hell-out attitude. She didn’t know her name but could picture her at Ladies Night with a group of fellow working girls, voice rising above the hubbub as she held forth on the latest idiocy of her pimpled creep of a manager. Becky leaned an elbow on the counter and watched the woman’s formidable mauve nails detach deposit slips, stamp checks, and tap on the keyboard.
An ancient fan slowly stirred the air a dozen feet above them. Becky made herself look away from the ring of lit windows lining the balcony, where the manager’s office must be.
The teller was processing the mistaken refund by now. Becky lounged against the counter and pinned her eyes on the Golden check—receipt separated, $542 added to a list on the teller’s screen, and set to the side in a growing pile. Wait, she told herself. Wait. One agonizing check more and then—
“Holy crap.” Becky slapped a hand over her eyes. “I can’t believe I spaced on that.”
“What?”
Becky reached over to tap the withdrawal form in front of the woman. “Getting that signed!” “Petty cash,” she’d filled out, as neatly as ever.
The teller picked up the form and studied it. “You’d think they’d put you as a signatory by now.”
Becky motioned for it impatiently. “I gotta run back up there before—” She glanced up at the clock and the teller mirrored her action, then winced.
“I’m screwed,” Becky moaned. “I was supposed to get it yesterday, but . . .”
“Nah,” the teller said, in a low voice. She scrawled something along the bottom of the slip and detached its receipt, putting the original on top of the pile of checks. As she opened the cash drawer, Becky whispered over the counter, “You’re saving my ass.”
“No worries.” The teller gave her a smirking wink that said it all: us against them. She started to hand over the piles of receipts to Becky, including the envelope of cash, and then paused, studying the amount. “Five hundred, huh. What are they going to do, go crazy on toilet paper and Sanka?”
Becky leaned in. “Hookers and blow.” The woman laughed outright and gave her the money.
Thank you, Becky mouthed, and backed away from the counter.
Her new evening routine, that next month, was to switch off the overhead and turn on her bedside lamp. You didn’t need to look directly at a painting, she found. In fact, sometimes it was better to move around in its proximity while pretending you had forgotten it was there. They weren’t the same, but she remembered the same delicious charge she’d once gotten from slowly, so slowly, pulling her trig text out of her locker while Cal Hartman eyed her. Turning a few pages, cocking a hip. Replacing that book, stretching up to reach a notebook instead. Her back to him, her whole body covered in sparkly invisible ions from his gaze. (Cal Hartman himself, though: bleh.)
Tonight was Thanksgiving, and Becky sat on the front of her bed in a turtleneck sweater and jean skirt, filing her nails. Her insides felt thick and sodden from the three-course “banquet” at the Palace Diner out on Route 4. With her father near silent the whole meal, there was little to do other than eat steadily from the thick white platters of food that covered their booth table: turkey and gravy, potatoes and green beans and two kinds of stuffing. Three slices of pie, one extra because the waitress was fond of Hank and counting on that big holiday tip. Which Becky had added to the bill.
She filed and burped and waited for the painting to work its magic. The office was closed for the next few days and the streets were full of noisy students home for break, but Becky’s room stayed the same—drafty, scuffed at the baseboards. For a moment doubt flared: not at what she’d done, but why she’d done it. What if it wore off?
“Daddy?” she yelled, not looking up from her nails. The late-night TV movie was the second Indiana Jones, and she could follow every chase or torture scene by the strangled sounds coming up through the floorboards. “You asleep?” To her surprise, the TV sound cut off, and her father’s heavy steps—same as always, even after the strokes—sounded up the back stairs.
Becky met him in the hall. “C’mere for a second.” She drew him in and gently settled him on the foot of the bed beside her. “All they did was wrap it in brown paper,” she mused out loud. “Secured it with plain old Scotch tape. I was expecting some big production, like . . . big box, thousands of those Styrofoam peanuts. But no.”
The actual transaction had taken place in a back office at the UIUC museum. The female clerk—no sign of that first man—hadn’t blinked when Becky produced her crinkled envelope of cash. Becky had had a whole story plotted out—my grandmother’s seventieth, we all chipped in—but in the moment of truth she forgot it all.
“I was so dumb,” Becky said to her dad. “She held it out to me and I didn’t even take it at first. I thought maybe someone else was supposed to carry it to the car. And, like, tell me how to transport it.” Or approve her setup, at least. She’d stuffed a lot of pillows in the back seat, including the ones in cornflower print behind them on the bed right now.