on the form, I flipped it over and wrote: “Please give me all your money.” The stupidity of the words made me chuckle, and allowed me to get back into myself. For another laugh I wrote “Thank you” and then flipped the form over and filled in the spots, save for my name and account because that would come later when I opened the account. And with my first paycheck in years and the hope for a new life, I stepped up to the next open teller.
“May I help you?” she asked. I handed over the slip. A second later, her eyes widened with a look of total fear, her expression reminding me of those times when I would walk up to strangers, begging them for spare change. But this time, it was confusing because I was a citizen with a real job and real money. All I needed was a real bank account and I’d be set.
“Is there a problem?” I said in a soothing voice, but it only exacerbated the situation.
Her face had turned white and her breath was caught in her throat. “P-p-please don’t hurt me,” she whispered.
“Why would I do…” I started to say, but stopped when I looked down and saw that I had handed her the deposit slip the wrong way. My joke was facing up and was no longer funny. I tried to explain the situation but she was no longer listening to me. She had opened her cash drawer and, with shaking hands, started to stack bills on the counter in order of denomination, the blue fives, the purple tens, the green twenties—probably the biggest stack of them all—a bunch of red fifties and about four or five of the brown hundreds. When she finished she backed a step away, her eyes filled with terror.
I looked about but everyone else was busy with their own work. I looked back at the teller and she had started to shake, her gaze moving back and forth from the stack of bills to me.
She was deathly quiet but her expression screamed, Take it! Take the money! Take the money and go! There was nothing I could do. I had robbed a bank, and considering my history, no amount of explanation or pleading would help me. A tear started to run down one side of the teller’s face and I knew that any second she would fall apart and my life, the one that I had worked so hard to get back together, would follow along with her.
I swept my hand across the counter, grabbed all the money and my note, and shoved them into my pocket. I turned and quickly walked out of the bank, jaywalked across the street, and pushed through the revolving doors of a downtown shopping center.
I walked in and out of shops, doing my best to look like an average shopper but I had no idea what the hell I looked like. When a clerk approached me to see if I needed help, I stammered, “I’m looking for a gift for my wife.” That statement made my shaken appearance okay; I was only a harried husband trying at the last minute to find a gift for his long-suffering wife.
I went through this charade a number of times, using some of the bills from the bank to pay for these goods. I was in the world but away from it, in that time of emptiness that I always fell into when I gambled, that time that has no meaning, no sense, just a debasing comfort that all addicts dream to return to, so they don’t have to face the harshness of their terrible reality.
Until that time, I had had no idea that another such place existed outside of gambling, and in a strange sort of way, it brought me a piece of freedom. From then on, when the pressure to gamble became too much for me to bear, I would visit a bank.
8
There was nothing new in the story the next day. It didn’t normally take too long for police to identify a dead body. Most people, even street people, prostitutes, drug dealers, and formerly homeless journalists, usually carried some type of ID, even if it was a driver’s license that was long since expired. What took time was finding a next of kin, a distant relative or close friend to confirm the identity of the deceased.
And Canadian law also stipulated that
“May I help you?” she asked. I handed over the slip. A second later, her eyes widened with a look of total fear, her expression reminding me of those times when I would walk up to strangers, begging them for spare change. But this time, it was confusing because I was a citizen with a real job and real money. All I needed was a real bank account and I’d be set.
“Is there a problem?” I said in a soothing voice, but it only exacerbated the situation.
Her face had turned white and her breath was caught in her throat. “P-p-please don’t hurt me,” she whispered.
“Why would I do…” I started to say, but stopped when I looked down and saw that I had handed her the deposit slip the wrong way. My joke was facing up and was no longer funny. I tried to explain the situation but she was no longer listening to me. She had opened her cash drawer and, with shaking hands, started to stack bills on the counter in order of denomination, the blue fives, the purple tens, the green twenties—probably the biggest stack of them all—a bunch of red fifties and about four or five of the brown hundreds. When she finished she backed a step away, her eyes filled with terror.
I looked about but everyone else was busy with their own work. I looked back at the teller and she had started to shake, her gaze moving back and forth from the stack of bills to me.
She was deathly quiet but her expression screamed, Take it! Take the money! Take the money and go! There was nothing I could do. I had robbed a bank, and considering my history, no amount of explanation or pleading would help me. A tear started to run down one side of the teller’s face and I knew that any second she would fall apart and my life, the one that I had worked so hard to get back together, would follow along with her.
I swept my hand across the counter, grabbed all the money and my note, and shoved them into my pocket. I turned and quickly walked out of the bank, jaywalked across the street, and pushed through the revolving doors of a downtown shopping center.
I walked in and out of shops, doing my best to look like an average shopper but I had no idea what the hell I looked like. When a clerk approached me to see if I needed help, I stammered, “I’m looking for a gift for my wife.” That statement made my shaken appearance okay; I was only a harried husband trying at the last minute to find a gift for his long-suffering wife.
I went through this charade a number of times, using some of the bills from the bank to pay for these goods. I was in the world but away from it, in that time of emptiness that I always fell into when I gambled, that time that has no meaning, no sense, just a debasing comfort that all addicts dream to return to, so they don’t have to face the harshness of their terrible reality.
Until that time, I had had no idea that another such place existed outside of gambling, and in a strange sort of way, it brought me a piece of freedom. From then on, when the pressure to gamble became too much for me to bear, I would visit a bank.
8
There was nothing new in the story the next day. It didn’t normally take too long for police to identify a dead body. Most people, even street people, prostitutes, drug dealers, and formerly homeless journalists, usually carried some type of ID, even if it was a driver’s license that was long since expired. What took time was finding a next of kin, a distant relative or close friend to confirm the identity of the deceased.
And Canadian law also stipulated that
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