You Don't Love This Man (3 page)

“You're all going to the hotel. Why are you doing your hair when it's supposed to get done at the hotel?”

The hair dryer erupted, undead, and I made it out of the room and to the top of the stairs before the machine was strangled silent again.

“Have you heard from Miranda?” she called.

“No,” I said toward her doorway. “Should I have?”

“Could you come here, please? And close the door.”

Warily, I returned to the bedroom, and pressed the door until the latch clicked in place.

“Her bed hasn't been slept in,” she said. “And I didn't hear her come in, so I don't think she came home last night.” She continued ministering to her hair in the mirror, as if we were doing no more than chatting in a salon.

“Maybe she slept at her apartment,” I said.

“Two of the bridesmaids are staying there. I called, and they said she's not there.”

“She's with Grant.”

“No. He doesn't know where she is, either.”

I heard voices and laughter behind me in the hall—Bradshaw's wife and daughters. They had never particularly cared for me, and I waited for them to finish galloping down the stairs before I said, “Do you want me to look for her?”

Sandra turned on her little bench to examine me directly. When she was younger she had used this expression to convey anger, but the crow's feet and smile lines that now filigreed her features transformed the look into one of attractively wry disdain. Before she answered, though, something shifted—it was a relaxation of her eyebrows, perhaps, or a slight dilation of her pupils—and she asked, in her amused-by-me tone, “But where would you look for her?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“You should go to the bank.”

“I could keep trying her cell, or call the gallery. I could call the other bridesmaids. How many bridesmaids does she have again?”

“Nope. I'll do that. Go to the bank.”

“Did she say anything to you last night? After I left?”

“I'm sure she's fine,” she said. “Take care of what you have to take care of.” She restarted the hair dryer, and I remained in place long enough for her continued silence to confirm that the discussion was truly closed.

It was. So I went to the bank.

 

I
SUPPOSE THE PUBLIC'S
romantic attachment to bank robbers—from Butch Cassidy and John Dillinger to Patty Hearst and local “gentlemen” bandits all across the country—stems from the belief that bank robbery is a noble act of defiance in the face of a corrupt social system. The persona of the bank robber isn't burdened with the repulsive deviance of the pedophile, the depraved insanity of the serial killer, or the arrested adolescence of the domestic abuser. Robbers of property seem empty-headedly compulsive—they steal the same make and model of car over and over, or snatch purses in the same way, or cut bicycle locks again and again. White-collar crime possesses the veneer of intelligence, but depends on deceits like counterfeit accounting or the cowardly resort to tax shelters, and often pays in stock options, debt financing, or other rewards too financially abstract to fire the imagination. What attracts the public to bank robbers is that bank robbers just want cash, and now. And so, the theory goes, we understand their motives.

This has not been my experience. And that experience began before I ever owned a suit, a car, a big-screen television, or any of the other trappings of my middle-class life. It began when the young woman with whom I had achieved the greatest pleasure of
my life appeared one day at my teller window on the arm of another man.

It has always struck me as odd that I noticed Grant that day before I noticed Gina. It may have been a question of geometry: he walked slightly in front of her, perhaps, or I was stationed to the side. I remember the bank lobby suffused in the narcoleptic lemony haze of a summer afternoon as a Muzak version of an old standard played over the lobby speakers. A lilting flute carried the melody, and as I wondered at the choice of instrument, a young man stepped into the bank. On the street, the eyes of a stranger will occasionally fix on me and light up until, after a closer look, the person either averts his eyes as we pass, or else smiles and admits with a laugh that he's sorry, he thought I was someone else. The young man in the bank approached me with that same sense of familiarity: he executed a modest little duck of his head as he handed me his deposit, but his conspiratorial smile and bright eyes were those of someone who knew me well. He had the high cheekbones and clear complexion of a television actor, and his hair was trimmed short and neat, despite those having been the ragged Carter Administration years, when men visited their barbers less often. It was his suit, however, that struck me with the greatest force. I had never seen someone my own age wear a suit other than to a graduation, funeral, or wedding, but this young man wore his tan slacks and jacket over a white, open-necked dress shirt with the ease of someone who wore a suit every day. The terms
class
and
classy
were so poorly differentiated in my mind in those days as to be entirely conflated, so although I had previously thought I was quite professional and well turned out in my powder blue dress shirt and tie, after seeing that suit, I felt my shirts and ties were no more remarkable than the uniforms worn by employees of fast-food restaurants.

I had already set the growling dot matrix printer to producing his receipt by the time I noticed that the woman standing next to him was Gina. Her straight brown hair fell to the small of her back, and she wore a simple black skirt and royal blue blouse that revealed her figure without appearing immodest. It had been two years since I'd seen her, and her brown eyes, heavy-lidded and wide set, possessed a harder intelligence than I remembered, while her body seemed softer and more relaxed. The transformation in her—the way she carried herself and studied the room, and her smile when finally we made eye contact—was the beginning of my realization that women in their college years are coltish and ungainly to any man possessed of decent aesthetics. “This is Paul. He and I went to college together,” she told the young man with her. Of him, she simply said, “And this is Grant.” Though she left the exact nature of her relationship with each of us unspoken, it seemed clear enough, so I was surprised when Grant cheerfully said, “We should get a drink together sometime.”

I said that would be nice, but before I could look to Gina for a hint as to how to proceed, he had turned her way as well, annihilating any chance of a private glance. “Where should we go?” he said, “Bristol's?”

She chewed her lip in feigned thoughtfulness. “That sounds good.”

“Do you know it?” he asked me. “Bristol's, by the river?”

I said of course I knew it, by which I meant I knew that Bristol's was the bar where the city's local heroes and any real celebrities passing through town spent their evenings drinking scotch in leather armchairs. The last I'd heard, two Hollywood actors filming on location along the city's picturesque river for a few weeks had made it a habit to end their evenings in Bristol's. One of them,
if the newspaper's gossip columnist was to be believed, had even gotten into some trouble over a woman there.

“Friday evening?” Grant said.

I found myself completely unable to recall whether I had plans, or even which day of the week Friday was, so I said it sounded fine. Grant nodded happily and thanked me twice for my service, the second thanks a subtle suggestion that I pass him the deposit receipt the printer had disgorged and which I held stupidly in my hand. I handed him the slip of paper, he and Gina walked out the door, and I helped the next customer. My mind spun. I helped perhaps twenty minutes' worth of customers without being at all conscious of what I was doing, so absorbed was I by thoughts of Gina as I had known her in the past and of Gina as she had walked into the bank that day, and how she had changed, and how I had changed. I speculated on Grant and who he might be, and on what kinds of activities he and Gina could possibly pursue together, and I thought of Bristol's, and of movie stars and scotch, and Grant and Gina, and of many things. And then I was pistol-whipped and robbed of roughly two thousand dollars.

My memory of the rest of that day is hazy—the images I carry were constructed primarily from the reports of coworkers. I remember standing at my teller station musing on my encounter with Gina and Grant and, in all honesty, attempting to discern the odds of my ever having sex with Gina again. This involved mentally rehearsing conversations in which I convinced her we should indulge ourselves one more time. I wasn't requesting that she break up with Grant—in my fantasy life I am always courteous—because the two of them seemed well matched, really. I was just talking about one more time, what did she think? And I was practicing this conversation not only between customers, but between each step of helping
each customer, as in, Good afternoon, how can I help you?
I'd just like to withdraw fifty dollars, but you're out of withdrawal slips at the counter
. I'm sorry about that, let me get you one, there you go, because you have to admit that it was pretty good, wasn't it, I mean I think about it fairly often, I think we both enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. I'm not talking about getting back into the emotional depth of a full relationship, I'm just talking about finding out if that chemistry's still there, and if it is, enjoying it one more time from a different perspective, right? There you go.
Thank you.
How did you want that?
Could I get two twenties and a roll of quarters? It's laundry day.
You bet, and if you don't ever want to see me again after that, I think that's fine, I'd totally understand if you're uncomfortable, and I might be, too, so maybe we'll just have drinks this one time and then get together separately the one time for ourselves, and then we can go our separate ways.
Thanks
. You're welcome.

And so forth.

I recall three details of that day's final customer: eyes the pale blue of a frozen winter sky, dark stubble bristling from a pointed chin, and a black T-shirt featuring the image of a slobbering, monstrous creature beneath stylized gothic lettering that read “Mooncalf.” I was fairly familiar with popular music in those years, and at least vaguely aware of the goofy “heavy metal” music characterized by satanic prancing and the miming of animal cruelty, but I had never heard of this “Mooncalf.” So the mutant on the T-shirt's front, in concert with the pale blue eyes and dark stubble of the shirt's owner, served as the man's distinguishing characteristics when he looked into my own eyes and, speaking slowly and quietly, told me to give him all the money in my drawer. The words that had been running through my head before he spoke were something on the order of,
Now don't you think this was a good idea, don't you,
don't you?
, so because the man's directive was completely irregular to my experience of transaction-opening sentences and, strangely, slipped fairly unobtrusively into the imaginative situation I was absorbed in, it failed to register with me. My response was simply to look up from my computer screen, apologize, and ask if he could repeat himself. He looked into my eyes and said even more quietly, “I want all of the money in your drawer, right now. This is a robbery.”

That was when it finally stopped: the scene in my head, its soundtrack, and the autopilot consciousness that was completing transactions for me. I felt the muscles of my cheeks tighten as my vacuous work grin froze upon my face. What my coworkers told me happened next is that the man pulled out a pistol and, swinging it high in the air, brought it down on the crown of my head. I fell backward, the back of my head struck the floor—there was probably no pad at all beneath that thin carpet—and the world went out. The man leaped over the counter and, waving the gun in the general direction of the other employees, took the cash from my drawer, stuffed it into a canvas bag he pulled from the back of his pants, leaped back over the counter, and ran.

After he was gone, one of my coworkers attempted to rouse me. She told me she felt my hair was damp, and then noticed the scarlet corona of blood-soaked carpet expanding from beneath my skull. When I regained consciousness a few minutes before the police and medical personnel arrived, it was only in order to turn my head to the side and vomit.

 

C
ATHERINE WAS THE FIRST
to greet me when I entered the bank. Her diminutive stature and boyishly short hair lent her a
pixie quality enhanced that day by the immaculately pressed beige pantsuit she wore as she crossed the lobby to where I stood just inside the door. “You don't need to be here,” she said in a stage whisper.

“But I don't need to be anywhere else,” I said. “So tell me what happened.”

“It was standard,” she said, as if disappointed. “A middle-aged white guy in a gray suit came in right after we opened. He passed a note to Amber that said he wanted twenties and larger, no devices, so she gave him what was in her drawer. Then he apparently told her he wanted the cash in her safe, too, which she didn't even have to unlock, because she'd just come from the dispenser and was still putting her straps away.”

I was surprised to note a healthy number of freckles scattered across Catherine's cheeks. She'd been working as a service manager in my branch for ten years, but that was the first I'd seen of freckles, and they further confirmed my belief that she was rarely more than a costume change away from Peter Pan. And had she really hidden her freckles beneath makeup every weekday for a decade? The thought was unsettling. “How much did he take?” I asked.

“A little over six thousand. Amber's still shaky, but she's toughing it out. Charlotte and Tina are thrilled, I think. They're telling their versions right now, but neither of them even has a hair out of place from the thing.”