23 Minutes

by Vivian Vande Velde

  She passes by the mother with her two children. The boy is tugging on the mother’s arm, and both children are whining to go into the candy shop. While the mother is explaining the evils of refined sugar and of ruining one’s supper, Zoe fights the juvenile inclination to stick out her tongue at all of them.

  As she runs, she tries to remember the sequence of events, who came in when. Boy Scout must have been in the bank already, since his clothing was not wet. She can’t picture where he might have been standing: Pouring himself a cup of that complimentary coffee? In the vault-like room where safety deposit boxes line the walls? In the sitting area waiting to talk to one of the important bank managers who have little offices of their own, where they discuss opening or closing accounts, getting loans, and whatever else bank people talk about when customers want privacy? Truth be told, the bank was fairly busy, and she hadn’t noticed him until she backed into him. And that happened after the man who would turn out to be the robber practically plowed into her when he came into the bank. When, exactly, would that have been?

  But none of that is important at this point—or at least Zoe hopes it isn’t.

  She slows down a few steps short of the entrance so as not to be running near the bank, which she instinctively recognizes might potentially be a suspicion-arousing thing.

  Still, the running and the nervousness have left her out of breath as she pushes open the bank door.

  The bank guard is just as displeased to have her walk through that door dry as he was to see her come in wet. He obviously perceives her as trouble.

  Finely honed sense of who bears watching, Zoe reflects, knowing the armed bank robber will pass the guard’s scrutiny.

  Still, she approaches the guard, because that is what she’s come here to do.

  “Excuse me,” she says, even though she already has his attention.

  He nods, the barest minimum civil response.

  “I need to speak with you.”

  No response at all to that. By which, on reflection, she takes him to mean: Well … clearly you already ARE speaking to me. And I am not yet beating you away with a stick, though I reserve that option …

  Life is so much simpler when you don’t have to talk to people.

  She says, “There’s a suspicious man …” She is thinking, This is not going to work. She should leave now. Not look back.

  Not watch the news tonight.

  Or for the next couple days.

  Why is she always jumping into things?

  The guard asks, “Suspicious in what way?” His eyes narrow. “Has someone been bothering you?”

  It takes Zoe a moment to realize what he’s asking.

  And in that moment, the guard seems to have second thoughts. He’s taking into account the look of her, with her blue ponytail coming loose from its elastic, her clunky combat boots, and her t-shirt (old to start with, even by thrift-store standards, and now lumpy from the folder beneath it, not to mention sweat-spotted from her running, despite the coolness of the day). The shirt says “Guns N’ Roses,” which she assumes was a rock band from somewhere near the dawn of time, and she wonders if the guard’s memory goes back far enough to know who they were, or if he’s simply thinking it’s bad form for anyone to walk into a bank with a shirt that has “Guns” written on it. She guesses he’s realized she’s older than he thought at first glance, and that he’s thinking: Who would ever bother HER? And, in fact, he modifies his earlier question by asking, “Has some stranger been bothering you?” Like: Of course you have scary acquaintances, and I don’t want to get involved in that.

  Zoe says, “No. But … I think there might be somebody planning to rob the bank.”

  “Excuse me?” the guard says frostily, not sounding convinced. Sounding pretty much the exact opposite of convinced.

  “I saw a man with a gun …”

  This is a mistake, because the guard demands, “Where?” and Zoe doesn’t know from which direction the robber is going to approach.

  She glances back over her shoulder, looks left and right, and in that movement clearly loses all credibility with the guard.

  “Ha, ha,” he says. “Very funny. Except making a false report can get you in serious trouble.”

  “No,” Zoe says. “Really. He’s going to rob the bank—”

  But the guard has taken hold of her upper arm, and he is moving her—somewhere between not gently and not roughly—to the door. Talking with her is so important to him that he takes the time to hold the door open for someone else, a woman who is leaving the bank. “Have a nice day,” the guard tells the woman, proving he can be pleasant after all. Just not to Zoe.

  “Really,” Zoe repeats.

  But the guard cuts her off again. “Yeah, really,” he says. “Stuff like that can really get you in trouble.” He’s still holding the door open even though the woman has stepped outside, because someone else is coming in.

  For a second, Zoe doesn’t even recognize the customer who may well have saved her life, and it isn’t until he removes his sunglasses as he steps indoors that she sees it’s Jacket, aka Boy Scout. Well, the first thing she sees is that the sunglasses probably cost more than her entire outfit, not that she feels sorry for herself or anything. Then she sees that, apparently, he only responds to clumsy girls who step on him and drop papers with reindeer names at his feet—which the people at the group home would probably call An Issue—because he’s looking down at his own envelope of papers, and he doesn’t even see her or that she is being officially escorted from the bank.

  The guard finally releases her arm. “You, young lady, could get in serious trouble for that kind of nonsense. Do yourself a favor and knock it off. If you’ve got friends watching in the hope of seeing me get all flustered, tell them to knock it off, too.”

  He pulls the door shut between them.

  Now what?

  Zoe presses her face against the window in time to note Boy Scout going into one of the offices that border the waiting area. Probably seeing about a loan to afford his expensive clothes.

  The guard raps his knuckles against the glass, making her jump. Once he has her attention, he points at a “No Loitering” sign.

  At which instant the rain starts.

  Of course it does. She thinks of it as heaven spitting on her.

  What now? Zoe hopes she has put a suspicion in the guard’s head. Not about herself. That she knows she has accomplished. But about a robbery. She hopes the guard will take a closer look at the people coming into the bank. That he will notice how the twitchy man with the big raincoat is hiding his face. And his hands.

  And that, being prepared, the guard will be able to do something before the situation gets out of control.

  Zoe crosses the street and stands in the doorway of the card shop. Only half out of the rain, but positioned so she can see up and down both sides of the street.

  One of the card shop clerks, a girl who looks only marginally older than Zoe, holds the door open as a middle-aged customer scurries out into the rain, carrying a package and a breeze of the store’s scented candles and potpourri with her.

  Zoe must look very pathetic—either that or business is incredibly slow today—because the clerk calls out to Zoe, “Why don’t you come on in out of the wet?”

  “Thank you,” Zoe says. “I’m waiting for someone.” She figures it’s best not to mention that the person she’s waiting for is a sociopathic murderer.

  As though to help her with this waiting-for-someone alibi, a car pulls up directly in front of the card shop. Just as Zoe is mentally urging the driver to move on one further parking space so as not to block her view, she catches a flash of red as he places a Red Wings baseball cap on his head, then pulls up the collar of his tan raincoat before getting out of the car.

  She could rush out of the doorway and try to trip him. But she’s not convinced:

  a) that this would deflect him from his intention of armed robbery, or

  b) that he wouldn’t be annoyed enough a
t her to take out his gun and shoot her, or even

  c) that he couldn’t easily walk around her.

  As the would-be bank robber crosses the street, Zoe flings open the door to the card shop and shouts, “Did you see that? That man has a gun! He’s walking into the bank! Someone call 911!”

  There are two clerks: the girl who took pity on Zoe’s wet state and an older man. There’s also a woman customer wearing hair rollers, who has been looking at the display of area attraction memorabilia: mugs and caps and teddy bears with I Rochester, NY t-shirts. (Who wears hair rollers anymore? And who buys souvenirs of Rochester, NY?) They all seem to take her seriously, with the two women engaging in some high-pitched fluttering, and the guy picking up the phone behind the counter.

  The time is slightly later than when Zoe made the call from in front of Tops ’n Totes two blocks away. And it’s a respectable-sounding older man making the call. Will this somehow make a difference?

  There’s nothing more she can accomplish here. Well, nothing good, Zoe thinks. There’s always the potential of these people taking a closer look at her, deciding she’s not to be trusted, telling the police, “Never mind.” It’s better to leave before any of that can happen.

  “I’m going to check his license plate,” Zoe announces.

  “No!” the male clerk shouts at her, thinking only too late to cover the phone receiver in consideration of the 911 dispatcher’s eardrum. “It’s safer in here. Valerie, go lock the door. All of you, come back here behind the counter.”

  The young clerk, Valerie, clearly feels she’s already too close to the door, and that the man with the gun who’s been spotted on the street might have second thoughts about robbing the bank and choose at any moment to turn back and take on the card shop instead. Her wide, terrified gaze shifts between the door and the counter, and she remains exactly where she is, her feet rooted to the floor.

  Zoe could grab one of the light-up musical pens from the display to record the license plate number on the back of her hand, or on the folder which is still tucked safely beneath her shirt. But she seriously doubts things will ever resolve themselves in a way that the police will be trying to track this guy down. She might need the number if she’s to play back this story line, this twenty-three-minute interval, but if so, she will start—yet again—at 1:16, in front of the hat and purse boutique, dry and numberless, exactly as she was the first time she passed through 1:16. Only her memories will have changed.

  Mostly what she wants is an excuse to be out on the sidewalk, even though everyone in the card shop most assuredly thinks this is a bad idea.

  Ignoring their protests, Zoe steps outside and to the back of the car. HDP 347. She memorizes the letters by assigning them a mnemonic: Highly Deranged Person. Zoe isn’t very adept at numbers, but tries to commit 347 to memory.

  She is aware of the woman with the hair rollers tapping on the glass of the store door, trying to motion Zoe back in. The sound is reminiscent of the bank guard knocking on the window and indicating for her to move on, but these people are concerned for her safety, and that makes Zoe feel twinge-y in all sorts of ways.

  But, despite the way she’s standing behind the robber’s car so her new friends won’t become suspicious of her and let that suspicion overflow into the conversation with 911, despite that, what she’s really doing is making sure she can see into the bank through the bank’s big plate-glass window.

  The robber walks in.

  The guard whom Zoe warned is no longer distracted by Zoe’s shenanigans at the table for the deposit/withdrawal slips, and is busy chatting up an attractive woman in her twenties and doesn’t even notice the robber.

  But the other person Zoe isn’t there to distract, Boy Scout, he sees. And does he go about his own business, or—noticing something is wrong about the man—very sensibly get out of there, or sound an alarm, or do any other prudent thing? No, of course he doesn’t.

  In a moment, too fast to tell exactly what’s happened, not without being able to hear, there’s a confrontation between the two of them. The robber pulls out his gun. Shoots Boy Scout. Shoots the guard. Shoots the attractive twenty-something. Shoots one of the tellers.

  Crap crap crap, Zoe thinks.

  On the street, she notices an oblivious young woman pushing a baby stroller at top speed to get out of the rain, making a dash for her car, parked directly in front of the bank.

  “Man with a gun!” Zoe screams at her.

  The woman skids to a stop.

  One life. One life saved.

  Zoe hears more shooting from inside the bank.

  She puts her arms around herself and whispers, “Playback.”

  CHAPTER 6

  TIME RESETS TO 1:16.

  Standing in front of Tops ’n Totes, Zoe considers her options.

  All right. So it’s no use having someone call the police from the card shop once the robber makes his entrance. That’s too late to have an effect on anything: of itself, neither a good decision nor a bad one.

  Letting the robber walk in while she watches from the safety of outside … that definitely comes under the heading of bad decision. It resulted in four deaths right away. And he was still firing his gun when she played back time.

  That’s right up there with her first playback.

  Zoe tries to back away from the thought that the original twenty-three minutes—the original story line—involved the fewest number of people getting killed: just the gunman, and one victim. Forget calling him Jacket or Boy Scout; she’s beginning to think of him as the reincarnation of the premier bad-luck president, William Henry Harrison, who couldn’t make it through an inauguration without catching his death of a chill. Her guy can’t make it through a bank robbery.

  I can’t choose who’s to die, Zoe protests to herself. She’s always hated those morality questions thought up by philosophers and psychologists who want to torment their students and/or patients: If the whole village can be happy at the cost of one child’s life, is that child’s life worth it? What if the whole village can be happy at the cost of two children’s lives? What if …?

  What kind of stupid-ass question is that? Zoe asked in sociology class. (A required course, or she would never have been taking it.) If the villagers are so damn happy, why can’t they find a way to accommodate one frigging kid?

  She’d gotten a failing mark for that particular essay. As well as a stern talking-to.

  Now here she is with that one theoretical child on her hands.

  It doesn’t help that he’s no longer theoretical. She’s met him. Admired his hair, his smile, his kindness. His ability to name all Santa’s reindeer. He is, for all intents and purposes, William Henry Harrison, Junior. She determines that this is a most suitable name, and this is what she’ll call him. She sifts amongst William, Will, Bill, and Junior before settling on Mr. President.

  She doesn’t want to go back to that original twenty-three minutes. She doesn’t want Mr. President to die, nor does she want to weigh how many lives she would consider his to be worth. Besides everything else, she is totally aware that all it would take would be one little slip on her part, one thing done slightly differently, and she herself might end up getting killed. No way to play back from that. She also reflects on how Mr. President stopped to be kind to her inside the bank, yet didn’t even notice her this last time, when she’d been confronting the guard in the doorway.

  Not that this means she wants to throw him under the wheels of the robbery bus.

  The housemother she used to have, the one before Mrs. Davies, used to complain that Zoe was too impatient and rushed into situations without thinking things through. Like the time Zoe sprained her ankle and the doctor told her to keep off it for forty-eight hours. But she got bored after a day and went out with her friends, making the injury worse so that she ended up being confined to the infirmary for a week. Or like when she’d been grounded after she borrowed (yes, it was without asking, but she fully intended to return it) the ID of one of the you
nger-looking social workers in an attempt to convince a tattoo artist she was eighteen. Or when she was too eager to move into her newly painted room and didn’t wait as long as she’d been told to before hauling her stuff back in—resulting in a streak of white on the seat of her jeans and a butt-shaped smudge on her wall where you could see through to the old puke-green color. “Heedless of the future,” this particular housemother used to intone, in the solemn voice of someone speaking from the pulpit.

  But this time Zoe is planning ahead. She needs to replay the original story line—but only up to a point. This time, she tells herself, I’ll know what’s coming. I can be standing farther from the teller counter. I can try to keep everybody safe. I can draw the guard’s attention to the robber right away.

  I will not be an idle bystander.

  She’d been an idle bystander with her parents at the Counseling Center when she was thirteen, and she had promised herself then that she would never again be so useless.

  Exactly how she’ll accomplish all this, she doesn’t know, but the key will be to make sure Mr. President is at a farther distance from the robber. She hopes this will keep him out of harm’s way and, by extension, will keep the others in the bank from becoming victims of the robber’s ire.

  One more try, she tells herself.

  This will be it, no matter what. Mr. President, nice smile and all, has to take his chances.

  She looks at the folder she’s once again holding, the folder she’d thought—only this morning—that she had risked all to get her hands on. She mentally snorts at herself: She’d had no idea what all was.

  But she’s not yet willing to part with it. This will be her last go-around, she promises herself. Besides, apparently she needs these papers to get Mr. President’s attention.