Sam Flint had been the first person to take a 30 percent loan and the first to make a payment, but he wasn’t the only one. Barton was pleased with the rate of return he was getting from his borrowers. They were honest, the people of Spokane Falls. More honest than he’d given them credit for in the past. Even the man who’d wanted a loan to sell his fraudulent and probably dangerous lung medicine had begun to make payments. “Can’t make the stuff fast enough,” he’d said when Barton asked after his business. “I sell out by noon every day.” The banknotes were fun, Barton felt, but outside of the insurance check cashers, most people weren’t asking for large amounts, which meant Barton wasn’t taking large amounts home. Just a little walking-around money—someone needing to pay the grocery tab or the milkman, a dollar to slip inside a beloved child’s birthday card. It was the loans that really thrilled him.
Only once had anyone questioned Barton’s terms. It was a husband and wife who’d come into his office together, nice-looking folks. They’ll ask for something big, Barton had thought, and he’d been right. Anyway, it was the wife who’d gotten in his face when he said 30 percent.
“Now wait a moment,” she said. “My father’s in finance and I happen to know—”
But the husband cut her off. “Dear, perhaps this isn’t your place.” She was quiet after that and the husband signed everything he needed to sign with no further trouble, not even a look of concern on his part. They’d made their first payment already too, with Barton calculating his cut as soon as he saw them enter the bank.
Initially, Barton had no plan for what to do with his stolen money. The money itself was never the point. He wanted the power that came with the money and the satisfaction of taking it from a place that had rendered him small, pitiful, and childlike for more than half a decade. It was his Big Man money. Something to stand upon and feel himself taller.
But it was currency, still. And shouldn’t it be used as such?
Roslyn was the one to make him think this. He had someone else in his life to consider now. He decided he’d use the money to make his escape from Spokane Falls. He wasn’t going to be able to stay forever anyway. It was the chaos of the fire and its aftermath that had allowed him to steal from the bank in the first place. Once that chaos had subsided, Spokane Falls would take stock of its institutions. There’d again be oversight and attention to detail. He’d be caught. So, before that happened, he needed to be long gone. And that was what the money was good for. He and his lady would head out on a marvelous adventure.
He’d take Roslyn and they’d go east, back to one of the country’s truly great and established cities. There, they’d start a new life, together. They would pick new names, rewrite their own histories. He’d claim to be a baron, and adopt an accent. Roslyn could be an artist. Or better yet, an heiress. It didn’t matter what she was an heiress to. In fact, best perhaps not to specify. Let the neighbors guess. They would come up with far grander assumptions than anything Barton and Roslyn might invent.
If he could do this, Roslyn would be beholden to him not just for saving her from trouble in Spokane Falls, but for providing her with a lavish and wonderful lifestyle. Love is always strongest when it’s based in debt, Barton the banker thought.
“Have you ever imagined what you might want your life to be like if you were rich?” he asked her one night.
She seemed to consider this question seriously. “I think if I were rich, I’d like to use my money to help people. Children especially. I’d like to help children who need it in some way.”
“You are so wonderful and kind, always thinking of others,” Barton said. “But don’t you feel now is the time in your life when you ought to think of yourself? To take care of yourself first? For example, have you ever dreamed of living someplace other than Spokane Falls?”
“I have lived someplace else,” Roslyn said. “I’m not actually from here, originally.”
Barton nodded but did not hear this answer. He had slipped into a daydream in which he and Roslyn were riding in a carriage through some stately and well-lit city. They were wearing very fine clothes and their hands were clasped together as he imagined all lovers clasped their hands when riding in carriages. They were laughing. Barton did not extend his daydream so far as to know what the joke was, but in his mind he and Roslyn were having a grand and hilarious time.
“Me too,” Barton said. “But don’t worry. Someday I’ll take you there.”