by Dan Deweese
His face clouded into a tight-jawed expression of contempt so clear that I knew he couldn’t be aware of it. A second later he had replaced it with a mime’s version of hurt feelings, though, as with a self-pitying shrug he said, “Okay, so maybe you just don’t like me.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” I said. “I don’t know you at all.”
He sighed, lips pursed in frustration. “All right,” he said, “I understand. And believe me, I really respect that you’re protecting your daughter. I wish my own dad had half the commitment to being a parent that you have. But maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He returned to the porch. I returned to my office, where I spent the next half hour pretending to go through financial files while I waited for him to leave. But he did not leave. I continued hearing their wordless voices and staccato laughter through the open window as my anger spun restlessly, and I realized that though I had no memory of it, at some point I had brought the actual bottle of vodka into the office with me. Finally I wandered to the back door and asked Miranda if she could please come inside and speak with me. She sighed as if incredibly put out by this, and I walked back to my office telling myself that certainly I was my usual, composed self. Except, of course: part of me was not. But that angry self seemed separate from me, like an animal that had climbed into my lap and was content to sit there, purring, until a whispered command from me would send it bounding off toward a creature into which it could sink its teeth.
“What is wrong with you?” Miranda demanded when she stepped into the office.
“Send the boy home,” I said.
“We’re just talking.”
“I’m asking you to politely tell him to leave. You can blame it on me if you want.”
“He won’t go home.”
“He’s refusing to leave his pile of cigarette butts?”
“I mean he won’t go home. He’ll drive around or go somewhere else, because his stepfather’s a jerk and they don’t get along, so he doesn’t like it where he lives.”
“So you want him to move in with us?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Have you been drinking?”
“Not much,” I said. “But the better question is why you’re acting like this is the first boy you’ve ever seen.”
Her jaw tightened. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it,” she said thickly.
“And when did you start talking to me that way?”
“Since you started acting like this. If he were one of your stupid banking friends’ sons, you wouldn’t say anything.”
“One of my stupid banking friends’ sons wouldn’t be so dumb as to chain-smoke on my back porch before even meeting me.”
“Oh my God,” she said, laughing. “You don’t like that he smokes? You know Mom smokes, right?”
“Rarely.”
“Every day. Ask her.”
“It’s late. Please send your friend home.”
“I’m not a child anymore, Dad.”
“I never said you were.”
“You’re treating me like one.”
“You’re free to think that and to complain to me about it—tomorrow morning. We can take it up then.”
“Whatever,” she said as she turned and stomped from the room. Her steps retreated through the house, the back door slammed, and the indistinct voices from the backyard resumed.
I stared at a large, muscular black spider spinning a web across the outside of my window. His body was dark, save for white markings that formed a segmented cross on his belly, and he moved quickly from one side of the frame to the other, binding strands in a series of decisions that appeared haphazard at first, but which revealed a method soon enough. The creature continued its work as I listened to Miranda and her friend move through the house and out the front door, it spun out more silk as I heard a car start and drive away, and it tugged fitfully at its strands as I heard Miranda reenter the house and close the front door behind her. By the time she had thumped her way upstairs and slammed the door to her room, the outer crescent of what would clearly be a grand arachnid construction was complete. I was reluctant to move my attention from the spider even when I heard the front door again, followed this time by the familiar cadence of Sandra’s steps. “I just saw two cars drive away from the front of the house. Were we having a party?” she asked as she appeared in the office doorway. Her black tennis skirt and white collared shirt were so clean and unwrinkled that it was hard to believe she’d come from an evening of physical activity.
“There’s been a boy here,” I said. “And Miranda skipped her match because she claims she’s injured, though I didn’t see any evidence of the injury.”
“Who was the boy?”
“She said his name was Ira. They were talking on the back porch when I got home. The boy was shirtless.”
“It’s summer. And I know who he is. He works at the park, and I’ve seen Miranda talking to him before. You didn’t get uptight about it, did you?”
“Only if it’s uptight to wish visitors would wear clothing and not fill our porch with cigarette butts.”
“So he’s not the most cultured kid in the world. There are going to be boys now. It’s not like she’s going to date one of the sons of your banker friends.” I gazed impassively at her while she crossed her arms and blew a few strands of hair from her face. “There’s a spider watching you.”
“I’m aware.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if we won?”
It was obvious they had won, though when I dutifully inquired, Sandra gave me an excited summary of the entire thing before confirming the victory. I knew their win meant she and Grant had qualified for some kind of regional tournament, but when she told me where the tournament was held, I was surprised to hear the name of a city over a day’s drive away. “It’s a road trip, then,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You and Grant and who else?”
“One of the singles players. That’s all that made it.”
I asked if she wanted Miranda and me to go along, and she said it was up to me, but Miranda would have her own match here in town next weekend, so that was a problem, unless she was still hurt and wouldn’t be playing anymore anyway, and then of course she and Grant could lose right away. “So who knows what will happen,” she said.
Was she talking so fast because they’d won the tennis match, or because the victory meant she had a chance to spend a weekend alone with Grant? It could have been both, or neither. Did I trust Sandra alone with Grant? Did I trust Grant alone with Sandra? Did I trust Miranda alone with boys, and did I trust boys alone with Miranda? I was tired. The questions made me more so. How had I become the house’s ill-tempered chaperone? I found no joy in being officially suspicious of everyone, and yet there I was, asking myself these questions.
The phone on my desk rang. I glanced at the clock—it was after eleven.
“You’re not going to answer it?” Sandra asked.
“Who would be calling me?” The second ring stopped midway. I studied the handiwork of my friend in the window—he was making impressive progress.
“Miranda!” Sandra called upstairs. My desk clock ticked off two seconds before we heard a muffled, aggrieved tone from Miranda’s room, at which point Sandra and Miranda began a shouted conversation between floors: Sandra asked who was on the phone, Miranda yelled down that it was no one, Sandra shouted that she should come down, Miranda asked why, and Sandra shouted even more loudly for her to just come down here!
“I’m sure the neighbors appreciate this,” I said.
“Now remember that if you make a big deal out of this, it will only make things worse,” she said sternly.
“He just asked if he could date her, and I told him our rule.”
A pained expression crossed her face. “Our rule?”
“We all agreed upon the rule.”
“She’s allowed to have fun, you know,” she whispered as footsteps approached.
Miranda appeared at the door in wrinkled pink cotton pajamas with large, jersey-type numbers on the front and back. The first time I’d seen them I’d said I couldn’t think of a single sport in which people wore pajamas, and Miranda had laughed in a way I’d found disconcerting. “Who was on the phone?” Sandra asked.
“No one,” Miranda said. “They hung up without saying anything.”
“The boy from the park was over tonight?”
“Yes.”
“How is he?”
“He’s super-great. Can I go now?”
“What did you guys do?”
“We talked. What’s with the third degree?”
“This is only the first degree,” I said.
Sandra shot me a dark look. “When did he leave?” she asked.
“A little while ago. Dad scared him away because he doesn’t like him.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” I said.
“Well, your father apologizes.”
The phone rang again. That time I picked it up quickly and said hello, but there was only a whispery static at the other end of the line. “Hello?” I repeated. “Who is this?” The static felt live, as if there was indeed someone on the line, listening. I hung up, somewhat forcefully. “No one,” I said.
“Can I go to bed?” Miranda asked.
I looked to Sandra, who shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “I’m tired, too.”
And then they were gone, headed up the stairs together, Sandra inquiring in sympathetic tones about Miranda’s ankle. My friend in the window had finished his outer two rings, and though that had taken him some time, I knew his progress would quicken as he worked inward, each ring becoming smaller and tighter, the spokes and ratchets more refined. He dropped from the top of the window to the bottom, suspended on a glistening strand, and I wondered at the phenomenon. How strange to think that out there in the night, there were thousands, maybe millions more of these creatures, spinning away at their exotic traps.
Somehow, I fell asleep there at my desk for what must have been an hour or two. I woke to gaze confusedly at the bent shadow of myself cast upon the wall by the jaundiced light of my old desk lamp, and then stood, straightening painfully. My glass lay on its side on the carpet, a wet stain spreading from its mouth. I restored it to the desk, and had almost left the office to head upstairs when I caught sight of the window: there, shifting in the breeze like a living membrane, was the completed web. Its maker was nowhere in sight.
I ENTERED THE BANK to the sound of laughter. A young woman was seated at Catherine’s desk, and I heard a male voice within my office, both of them laughing at something that must have been said before I entered. The police had left yellow tape around the teller area, but the woman at Catherine’s desk seemed unconcerned by the site’s designation as a CRIME SCENE CRIME SCENE as she stood to greet me, while at the same time a young man shot out of my office like an eager puppy. “Thanks so much for coming in,” he said as if I’d had a choice. “I understand today’s an important day for you.”
“Yes,” I said. “If we could get through this as quickly as possible, I’d appreciate it.”
“Absolutely,” he said, shaking my hand with the earnestness of a car salesman. He was John, he said, and his partner was Annie, and he assured me that they wanted to move quickly, too. Annie gave me a similarly energetic handshake, and they both stood there smiling, attired in stylish business casual clothing and possessing designer spectacles and flawless complexions and assertive speech patterns. I couldn’t help but find their aggressive competence off-putting. Perhaps it was sentimental, but I felt one should bring a sense of humility to the question of a robbery, some deference to the inscrutable convergences necessary for an event of that nature to occur. Something in John and Annie’s bearing made it seem they found the situation humdrum, a bit of a goof. I didn’t appreciate having my bank robbed—and I had no desire to get tangled up in it—but I appreciated less the attitude that the robbery was of no particular interest. The thief, at least, was probably taking it seriously, I thought. And John and Annie were supposed to, as well.
John extended his arm as if inviting me into a drawing room. “If we could go back into your office,” he said.
“Where is Catherine?” I asked.
“We’ve already spoken to her. She left a little while ago.”
Rain trickled silently down the outside of the branch’s windows as we tromped quietly through the dim, empty branch and into my office, where I discovered that John had already found the branch’s old combination television/VCR and had placed it on the corner of my desk, facing the room. The procedure manuals and incentive guides I’d previously had on my desk were piled sloppily on the floor in the corner.
“We’ve seen the images. They’re excellent,” Annie said.
“First, though, the video,” John said dramatically, pushing a button on the VCR. A gray image of our teller counter flashed onto the screen. The camera was overhead and slightly behind the counter, so that we were looking down on Amber’s long, corkscrew-curled hair as she counted cash and placed it in her tray. Something about the angle—watching from above is a deity’s point of view, I suppose—along with the low-quality black-and-white image made me feel we were watching events not from that morning, but from a more distant past, and a slight disorientation settled over me as I watched Amber quietly organize money. “It’s just a second here,” John said without taking his eyes from the screen. “It’s hard not to concentrate on your teller since you know her, but do your best to keep your eyes on the customer.” Mooncalf entered the frame then, in his suit, and making no attempt to hide his identity. His hair was trimmed short, he was clean-shaven, and he offered Amber a tight-lipped smile as he placed a torn sheet of paper on the counter and slid it toward her. His bearing struck me as familiar—I knew countless middle-aged men who wore suits and whose smiles were cursory or distracted, and I wondered if maybe Mooncalf had, indeed, kept an account with us over the years, and had moved quietly through the branch from time to time, making sure to keep himself inconspicuous. “Your teller placed him in his forties,” John said. “The angle makes height tough to estimate, but he’s probably a bit under average.” On the screen, Amber had the piece of paper in her hand, but wasn’t moving. The man tipped his head forward in a gesture meant to indicate the cash drawer she’d just finished preparing, though from the angle we were watching, the gesture seemed aggressive and vulgar, as if directed toward her person. She pulled money from her drawer and pushed it across the counter while the man pulled what appeared to be a tightly folded canvas bag from his back pocket, unfolded it with a few quick flips, and then, his fingertips touching nothing but the money and the note, slid all of it past his edge of the counter, where everything fell into the waiting bag. Amber’s movements were nervous and uncertain; Mooncalf’s were smooth. Amber paused, and the man pointed at Amber’s side of the counter, indicating the safe he clearly knew was hidden below. The branch I’d been at twenty-five years ago hadn’t had individual safes below the counter, but Mooncalf clearly knew not only when it might be easiest to hit my current branch, but also how things were arranged behind teller stands these days. Because the camera was behind Amber, we could see that her safe’s door wasn’t even closed—she had been moving cash from the safe to her drawer when the man walked up. She knelt, pushed the safe’s door the rest of the way open, and then stood and placed several paper-banded stacks of cash on the counter. The man slid them into his bag as she knelt to get more stacks, placed them on the counter, knelt again to get the last stacks, and then placed those, too, on the counter. The safe was empty. “She gave him the marked money and the dye packs,” I said. “Just like she’s supposed to.”
“He probably knows,” John said.
“That’s not the point,” I said, not quite managing to hide my irritation, but John just shrugged. On the screen, the man swept the last of the cash into his bag, turned, and walked away. Amber stood rigidly still, her arms on th
e counter, until five or six seconds had passed, and then she slowly lowered her head to the counter and covered it with her arms.
“He didn’t care the slightest bit about the cameras,” John said as he stopped the tape. “He let us watch him every step of the way.”
“Any recognition?” Annie said. “He almost certainly cased the branch beforehand. Can you think of any day you might have seen someone like him in the branch? Or any time someone came and left without doing anything?”
“No, I can’t remember anything like that.”
“There are better pictures from the post camera,” she said. “They’re on your service manager’s computer.”
“I saw them this morning,” I said.
“Maybe take another look, though,” John said. “As long as you’re here.”
I followed them out of my office and toward Catherine’s desk, where I could already see yet another image of a massive redwood floating slowly across her screen—she must have had hundreds, if not thousands, of similarly arresting images of those forest titans locked away in her computer’s files. John said something about how nice it must be for me to have my office at such a distance from everyone else, but I didn’t respond. I had obviously decided not to mention that I recognized the man on the videotape. Certainly that was in part because I was afraid it would mean having to spend more time with John and Annie than I wanted to, but I also felt that what had happened between Mooncalf and me twenty-five years ago wasn’t particularly any of their business. What information would I have been able to give them, anyway? This man robbed me twenty-five years ago. I know nothing about him, though, he was never caught, and it was all forgotten. They could figure that out on their own. It would be a good little test of their abilities, I thought.
