A MAN WALKS INTO A BANK, rubbing his throat. He is dressed in a groovy coat and humming stuff into the air. What a gas! He doesn’t unwind his scarf, man, ’cause that’s working too.
What do you do? he thinks to the head of the lady in front of him. It’s a long line. He thinks questions of each of them. He thinks things like How do you do? What do you do? and Why do you do? which is just a question his old English teacher kept hammering home. Ha! Why indeed.
But the woman in front of him he really did just wonder what. What do you do? Never mind she was a kind of maid he bet. Not a maid but maybe a nanny. He met a nanny once and the nanny was about that height, which is to say, there is a height for a nanny in this poor man’s mind.
Anyway, the man walks into a bank and finds himself behind the nanny who he thinks is a nanny due to her height, which he estimates by looking from her to the doorway where the measuring stick for robbers is. Because he’s worked for a long time in precise measurements, he tries to calibrate the measuring stick beside the door with the world around it. He is, himself, six feet and two inches, but he had never measured from his top point to his eyes, though he estimates, correctly, the distance is 4 ½ inches. That would mean he should be looking at 5’ 9 ½” on the ruler (and he is).
But the man is feeling so good he’s a little sloppy on the swivel of his head. His head bobs a little, man, in between his laser-like straight-edge eye measurements and the air above the back of the nanny’s head. And that’s because of the song in his car, the song singing: Well, when will I be back home?
Soon, man, soon. He will be back home soon. There is just this stop at the bank before the trip. The song is more mournful than the man’s own celebratory mood. He’s going home free and clear, with no bones to pick, no scores to settle, no money to beg, no bills of any kind. Just love there, man. Just love.
Why don’t some of these beautiful creatures around him look to him with questions? Why doesn’t the nanny, for instance, turn around and open up her smile? But she can’t be the nanny, though she is so similar — the eyes in his swivelling head measured her too tall. She is too tall to be that nanny, but never mind she is a nanny here — they are all people in his world, man, and he loves them all.
They have the weight of the world on their shoulders. He sees it, and he knows it’s because they are hanging on to their precious egos, and he almost slipped, in fact, when he thought of the nanny ahead of him, the perfectly dressed little woman who reminded him of a nanny he’d dated long ago. Let’s be honest: he was obsessed. She gave him a new world and he believed in all of it, man. But he lost himself. He was gone.
It still caused a little pop in his head. It still opened a little space in that hollow cage of signs. He had lost himself, but not the right way. The right way was love, man, not desire. It had taken so long for him to learn, but that’s okay. This is no race. And then this small woman in the bank line almost triggered a relapse. He wanted briefly, before the desire could form into words, that nanny to be his nanny. He knew he could love her now.
He felt like he hadn’t eaten for a long time, a long long time. Something odd was on the inside of his sleeve. It was, oh yeah: he’d been to the blood bank. That’s the kind of bank to be in. That’s giving, man. Through his sleeve he pulled the little cotton ball from his skin, then shook his arm, trying to loosen the cotton, trying to drop it out of his sleeve and into his hand.
The others in the bank were all on the same journey. The old guy behind him wanted new stuff for his home. He had big gold rings on his knuckles. He smelled the baby smell of old men who’d done well, clean and powdered, with nothing but time. The sharp woman walking away from the other teller, jabbering into her tiny blue-and-grey earpiece — somewhere deep down she must want peace. We’re all the same. We’re all the same.
The man in the groovy coat wanted to hug them all to him and share this journey. He smiled. The nanny-sized woman in front of him was quick. There was a flurry of paper in and out of her worn purse, then she left the counter. He was still smiling as she turned around. She was not smiling, but she was very happy. Her eyes were alive, that’s it; mischievous. That’s okay, he thought. You play your tricks my little nanny. We can all love you without wanting anything back. He swivelled his head on a plane perfectly parallel to the floor and kept smiling at the nanny, then turned back to the teller.
His head bobbed a little as he set his gloves on the counter. He didn’t look at the teller. I love this coat, man, I love this scarf, but I wish I could’ve been in the rat pack. I could be as cool as any of them, watching that little nanny walk away, going home, for no reason at all. He bobbed his head, then remembered where he was and smiled at the teller.
She looked at him with a closed mouth and handed him a slip of paper with precise handwriting in blue ink: You have a gun. If I do whatever you want, I won’t get hurt.
But this is impossible. Is it possible? He looked behind himself. Has he misunderstood the way time works? Could he be going backwards? This is his world, isn’t it? He felt his back pocket for his deposit slip. The teller shrieked. Everyone was on the ground. There were screams all around.
It’s not that he hadn’t paid attention. There was so much of greater importance with which to occupy his mind — the good feelings, man, the vibe that he was responsible for, the shit that made him live — it’s true, there was so much of greater importance than the quick flight of papers between grabbing hands.
His hands had held each other sometimes, as he had watched the nanny he had dated, in the old days. Actually, she is the only woman he has loved. Actually, his grief at losing her was what eventually led to his discovery of this new way to live, which was, to be honest, working beautifully.
But when he and the nanny had been together, he seldom heard her words. Instead he might watch the thin hair on the top of her lip and wonder why on her it was lovely; why could he look right at it in wonder, why could he also stare for long moments at the birthmark on her shoulder blade and feel nothing but desire, despite the way this patch of skin the size and shape of a rodent was repulsive on its own? But he knew the answer was simple — she bore it, and it tasted like skin, like her all over again. He might stare at the thin wrists holding the bowl of latte to her lips and be amazed, as if she had engineered the entire fragile machine, only to reach the obvious conclusion that no, she was human, and had grown into her body as simply as he had. Still, that this delicate condition was not hers alone, that it was for us all, that bodies were being broken and destroyed every day, today, on this earth — it only made his love grow.
Of course it was unhealthy. He knew that now. Love doesn’t need to know, man. Love doesn’t look so closely; love doesn’t need to explain. It just doesn’t need. Keep your ego out of it, man. And playing it all back, looking at it all over, that’s natural, but keep the word should out of it — you can’t fix the past. There’s no such thing as should.
He learned it all, but he couldn’t forgive everything.
When he and she had spoken, now and then, her perfect smooth skin had swelled briefly below her brown eyes. It was a normal human response; it was an adjustment made on countless other faces. But because he had held the back of her neck in his hand, and because that hand had travelled down to her shoulder, to her cheek, down again to the tips of her fingers, and again, because he loved her, he wanted to take a thumb and touch that spot below her eye, and soothe it.
But it was gone so quickly, and meanwhile her voice continued its usual operations, her smile returned. Had that small look been sadness? Where did it go? Did he imagine it?
But he doesn’t want to be fixed of this — he should have touched it. That sorrow should exist so physically, that it should be hidden, that its description should not love him . . . this was too much. He could not forgive her for this burden unshared. He would have worked, man, he would have worked.
But what does it matter, because the shrieking also brought bullets. It was a lucky shot, through the kneecap, from behind. Jesus Christ, man, shut that off. That hurts. I’m sorry. All sorts of things and through the pain he heard someone yell and oh no, they wanted him to put his hands somewhere and holy fuck it hurt so they were fluttering, man, they were fluttering; they shot up around him, even though it was only air, so if he were a rhino they would have just drugged him but no, that’s what he thought, no, for a man just going home given some strange note, it’s got to be bullets, it’s got to . . .
The craziest thing: he was propped up in his bed, with his thin hospital gown on. Think positive, man, think positive. It was warm. He felt clean and there was his mother in a chair at the foot of his bed. He smiled at her, but then the craziest thing:
He was looking at six faces on a page. One cop held this in front of him, the other cop watched his eyes intently. He laughed. Where is my coat?
He kept laughing, looking into the cop’s eyes, not looking at the paper at all.
We’ll try later, the cop said, and his partner pulled the paper away.
It was just that funny, and then his mother was there, shoving a straw into his mouth. He obediently sucked the water and then started laughing again. He was choking and spit water onto his chest. Fuck, he said, turning red. Why did you do that?
His mother smiled sadly at the cops. It’s the drugs, she said. It’s not really him.
Hey, it’s the drugs, he thought. That’s true.
Okay okay, he said. It’s just the drugs. I can do it now that I know. Show me the nannies please!
No, his mother said, and the policemen left through the door. Oh. It did feel good. Oh, they had left four bullets in a plastic bag on the table. Don’t tell them, Mom. That’s our evidence.
Wait a minute. It only felt like one. Whose bullets are those?
He smiled and asked his mother. Whose bullets are those?
They’re yours honey, and this is your kneecap, she said, pulling a jar from her purse.
Wait wait wait, he said. Show me that again. It was a security tape being shown on the monitor above his bed. The nanny spoke briefly to the security guard at the bank door, then two seconds later the guard pulled his gun and fired four bullets.
Is all that necessary? he asked.
Concentrate on her face, the man with the remote said. Is that her?
I mean the bullets. I only felt one.
There were four.
I know that. I see those little pops from the gun, right? One, then a gap, then three more.
Four bullets.
Why?
The cop used the remote to pull the tape back to the nanny. Look, we’ve got a blow up of this one, he said.
You know who it is, the man said.
Yes.
Okay then.
He was still angry at his mother for giving the bullets to the cops. She sat at the foot of his bed still true, still smiling, still watching out for him. No, if she were watching out for him the morphine would be on its way right now. These cops wouldn’t ask dumb questions.
We have the woman in question.
All the while, tape keeps rolling. It’s from all the angles. He sees himself in his groovy coat falling to the ground. His hands are there in the air but they’re moving. Stop it. He knows they should stop, he knows to lie still with his hands where they can see them, but one falls and stretches again to the ceiling, dropping a dark, bloodied swab of cotton into his mouth.
More bullets follow, of course, and he doesn’t care about the nanny at all.
Let her go, he says, and his whole body hurts. Let her go, he says, feeling all his wounds. Then his mother’s there with the nurse, looking ragged but trying to smile.
Don’t let them take that tape, he whispers to her. Don’t let them take the bullets or the tape.
His mother’s smile fades and as he feels the morphine begin its work she puts her hand on his forehead. Shhh, you can keep your kneecap, she tells him. You should have been kind.