The Bank Read online

  The

  Bank

  Bentley Little

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  Baltimore, MD

  2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Bentley Little

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7

  Forest Hill, MD 21050

  http://www.cemeterydance.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-775-5

  Front Cover Artwork © 2020 by Elderlemon Design

  Digital Design by Dan Hocker

  PROLOGUE

  1932

  Theo sat next to his dad on a hard seat in the bank president’s office. He had never been inside the bank before, and the surroundings were intimidating. The walls of the high-ceilinged room were paneled in dark expensive-looking wood, and the space was larger than their entire house. The president’s desk before them seemed the size of a small boat, and the man himself was big and fat and didn’t look as though he’d ever had a hungry day in his life.

  The president gave a cursory glance to the papers Theo’s dad had given him, then dropped them on top of his desk as though he found their touch greasy and unappealing. “I’m not sure what you want me to do here, Mr. Gianopuolos. My loan officer thoroughly examined your case and provided you with the reasons why he didn’t think it feasible for our bank to lend you the money you requested.” He spread out his hands expansively. “I’m not sure what you expect me to do here.”

  “Overturn his decision.” Theo’s dad leaned forward in his chair. “This is a good idea, Mr. Jones.”

  “Times are tough, Mr. Gianopuolos, as I’m sure you know. The bank is not in a position to take irresponsible risks.”

  Theo could hear the frustration in his dad’s voice. “This is hardly irresponsible. And it’s barely even a risk. Yes, times are tough. But that’s exactly why this sort of business has such potential. The location I’ve chosen is down the block from the movie palace, on the same side of the street as the First Baptist Church, the biggest church in town. People will be walking by the restaurant constantly. And, as I explained in my interview with Mr. Thompson, I plan to leave the front of the restaurant open, no wall, like a grocer’s. That’s the way they do it in Europe, although they have tables on the sidewalk. They call them cafés.”

  “As I indicated, there’s really nothing I can do here. If I start overruling the determinations of my staff, they’ll lose confidence in their ability to make decisions, and our entire system will cease to work. I have to trust my employees to do their jobs, a sentiment I’m sure you can understand, since if you had your own business, you would have to trust and believe in your employees as well.”

  “But this is a good investment!”

  “Be that as it may…”

  His dad took a deep breath. “I understand that you might not believe in this idea, but if I could just show you—”

  “Oh, we believe in the idea, Mr. Gianopuolos.” The president leaned forward. “We don’t believe in you.”

  His dad was taken aback. “What?”

  “That name. Gianopuolos. What is it? Greek? People aren’t going to want to buy food from a Greek. Not in this town. We want real food here. American food. Now, while the bank could not support an establishment that had tables on the sidewalk which would impede pedestrian traffic, your idea of a restaurant with an open front is intriguing, and if the right man came along, we might see fit to invest…”

  Theo tuned out the president. Next to him, his dad had slumped in his chair, and when Theo hazarded a glance in that direction, he saw a look of humiliated defeat on his father’s reddening face. He wished his dad would jump up and punch that fat banker right in the nose. But his father was not that kind of man, and such an action would only get them kicked out of the bank, possibly arrested. As he’d learned already, even at age eight, rich people had power and poor people didn’t, and if you didn’t stay in your place there would be trouble.

  So his dad had to sit there and take it, and afterward he shook the bank president’s hand, thanked him for his time, took back his papers, and he and Theo left the office. They walked, defeated, through the lobby toward the front door. Were the tellers smiling? Were people laughing at them behind their backs? It sure felt like it, and Theo wished that someone would rob the bank and take all of its money.

  His dad must have misinterpreted his anger as disappointment. He put an arm around Theo’s shoulder. “It’s all right, son. We’ll be fine. Maybe not as rich as we could have been, but we’ll be fine.” He wanted Theo to believe that—he wanted to believe it—but Theo sensed a change in his father, a retreat from hope, a withdrawal into himself. It was a difference that showed in his voice, even in his walk, and Theo was afraid that change in his dad would be permanent, a fear that was to prove not unfounded.

  They walked out of the double doors onto the sidewalk.

  When he grew up, Theo vowed, nothing like this would ever happen to him.

  He would make sure of it.

  ONE

  1

  Dennis Whittaker, the Montgomery High School principal, a thin, stressed-looking man in an unfashionable brown suit, frowned as he looked from Kyle to Anita. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about your boy.”

  Kyle glanced at Nick, sitting between them and staring at his shoes.

  “If you’d tell us what he’s done,” Anita said crisply, “it might help.”

  The principal picked up a stapled sheaf of papers from his desk, leaning forward and handing it to her. “This is your son’s play,” he said. “Just look at the title.”

  Kyle leaned over to see the cover sheet. “I’m Taking a Shit By Nicholas Decker.”

  “The play consists of a young man sitting upon a toilet for an hour and a half, staring at the audience, repeating the title over and over again.”

  Kyle took the pages from his wife and flipped through them. Sure enough, the directions and dialogue on every page were the same:

  KENNY

  (Grunting)

  Uhhh, I’m taking a shit. Uhhh, I’m taking a shit.

  “You know we can’t have this in our school. I don’t care how avant garde Nick thinks he is, this is just not proper subject matter for Montgomery High.”

  “Mrs. Nelson said we could write whatever we wanted!”

  The principal fixed the boy with a stare that brooked no argument. “This is not what she meant and you know it, young man.”

  “We’ll take care of this,” Kyle said, standing. “Thank you for bringing it to our attention.”

  Whittaker sighed. “I’m afraid it’s not as easy as that. With the graffiti on the gym last week and the paper doing that series on cyber-bullying, the board’s under a lot of pressure to crack down on troublemakers. And if they’re under pressure, I’m under pressure. I can’t afford to be lenient here. We’re talking a minimum two-day suspension.”

  “For writing a play?” Anita said.

  “For writing that play, yes.”

  Kyle tried to calm the waters. Knowing Anita, this could escalate quickly. “Couldn’t you just call it probation and let him stay? It’s honestly more of a punishment to keep him in school than to let him sta
y home.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Anita said. “My son is being suspended from school for completing an assignment in a way that you do not like, while students who did not complete the assignment at all face zero punishment.”

  “Those students will receive failing grades. And it has nothing to do with what I like: Nick here used profanity.”

  “So what sort of grade will Nick be receiving? Or is he to be punished twice by being suspended and receiving a failing grade?”

  “That will be up to the teacher.”

  Anita stood, and Kyle and Nick followed suit. “This is a slap-on-the-wrist offense, Dennis, and you know it. Drinking at school? Taking drugs? Stealing? Fighting? Those are suspension crimes. Using a bad word? Slap on the wrist, Dennis, slap on the wrist.”

  Nick seemed surprised to hear his mother address the principal by his first name, and Kyle realized that his son was probably not aware of the fact that the two of them had dated back in high school.

  In a small town, the past was never past.

  Without another word, Anita marched out of the principal’s office, Kyle and Nick following. The three of them walked past the counselors’ doors and past the attendance desk into the school’s main hallway. “Get what you need out of your locker,” Kyle told his son. “We’ll wait here.”

  Nick hurried away, stopping before a bank of lockers halfway down the corridor.

  “Dennis.” Kyle shook his head. “Did you notice how he said ‘upon a toilet’ instead of ‘on?’”

  She nodded, smiling despite her annoyance.

  “Still trying to impress you.”

  She hit his shoulder. “Knock it off.”

  He watched Nick open his locker and take out a book, putting it in his backpack. He lowered his voice. “I know we need to take this seriously, be sober concerned parents and all. But…Taking a Shit?” Kyle chuckled. “That was pretty damn funny.”

  “It was hard not to laugh,” Anita admitted, smiling.

  Nick had slung the backpack over his shoulder and was already returning. “Okay, so you need to take him home,” Kyle told Anita as he approached. “I have to get back to the store.”

  “I have to go back to work, too.”

  “I know, but Gary’s out today. There’s just me, and I’m already half an hour late opening. These days, I need all the customers I can get. Someone stops by and sees that the store’s closed, they’re likely to go online or—”

  Anita nodded. “I get it. I’ll take Nick.”

  “Take me where?” he asked, walking up.

  “Home,” Anita said sternly. “Where you will remain and do your schoolwork.”

  Nick nodded. “So how long’s my suspension? He said it’s a ‘minimum two-day suspension,’ but he didn’t give a maximum, and kind of left it open, it seemed like.”

  “Shit,” Anita said. “Wait here.” And she strode back to the principal’s office.

  Neither Kyle nor Nick commented on the fact that she had just uttered the same curse that had gotten Nick suspended, and a moment later she emerged into the hallway. “Two days.”

  Kyle nodded. “Two days.” They walked outside, where he pinched Nick’s shoulder and gave Anita a peck on the cheek. “See you guys at home.”

  He headed across the faculty parking lot to where he’d pulled his Ram truck in between two teachers’ cars, and Anita and Nick made their way toward the field, where Anita had parked her Kia in the visitor’s lot.

  2

  On his way downtown, Kyle had allowed himself the fantasy that when he got to the shop, there would be two or three people waiting patiently in line for it to open. But of course the sidewalk was empty, and behind the name “Brave New World” painted on the front window, the bookstore was dark.

  He pulled around the alley in back, his oversized pickup taking up two of the three spaces behind the building. Entering through the rear door, he switched on the lights as he walked in. From the safe beneath the bottom shelf of the small storage space next to the bathroom, he counted out money for the register before going up to the front of the store, unlocking the glass door and flipping the sign from Closed to Open. He popped a Mozart CD into the player behind the counter, and music issued from the speakers he’d mounted in the corners of the room.

  What he hadn’t told Anita was that Gary was out today because he was interviewing for another job, at the Costco in Sirena.

  Gary was not stupid. He knew that the store was struggling, and he knew that it might be only a matter of time before Kyle had to let him go. Sirena was forty miles away, but the starting salary at Costco was more than Gary was making now, after five years, and the benefits were far beyond anything Kyle could offer.

  Which was why Kyle had given Gary his blessing.

  Bookstores had been dying on the vine since the advent of Amazon, and while independent and used bookstores had hung on a bit longer than most of the chains, they were falling by the wayside as well. For awhile, Harry Potter, Twilight and other blockbuster young adult books that appealed to all ages had guaranteed at least minimum foot traffic. And children’s books had been consistent sellers no matter what the state of the economy. But phones and their game apps continued to significantly chip away at people’s reading time, and Brave New World was having a difficult go of it, especially since the junior college bookstore had expanded its inventory to include not only textbooks but general fiction and nonfiction.

  Some of the surviving chains now included Starbucks or Starbucks-like cafés in their stores, trying to encourage patrons to hang out and (hopefully) buy more, and in his most ambitious moments, Kyle had considered doing such a thing himself. His shop was adjacent to a narrow empty retail space that could easily be converted into a coffee bar/bakery with a wifi hotspot, but unless he won the lottery or received an inheritance from an unknown rich relative, there was no way he could afford to buy, rent or renovate anything.

  And even if he did, there was no guarantee it would work out.

  He could end up even more deeply in debt.

  Thank God Anita had a traditional job with an assured income. They couldn’t really survive on her salary, but if he could continue to limp along the way he had been, they should be able to get by. And, who could tell, maybe eventually things would turn around.

  Although that seemed less and less likely by the day.

  Kyle sat behind the counter and switched on his computer to check his emails. Spam mostly. Ads from publishers for upcoming releases. Offers from distributors that he would like to be able to take advantage of but could not afford.

  The bell above the door jingled, and he looked up expectantly, hoping to see a customer, but it was just the mailman. “Kind of early today, aren’t you, Gil?”

  “Doing the route backward. Thought I’d mix things up a bit.” The mailman handed Kyle a stack of envelopes and catalogs held together with a rubber band. “How’s business?”

  “Slow.”

  “Downtown ain’t what it used to be,” Gil agreed. “Hell, the postal service ain’t what it used to be. Thank God for junk mail, or I’d be out of a job.” He nodded as he opened the door and stepped back onto the sidewalk. “See you tomorrow.”

  Kyle waved goodbye and watched through the front window as the mailman continued up the street. Sorting through the envelopes in his hand, he came across an official-looking one from the bank and tore it open, frowning. According to the statement inside, he had not made last month’s mortgage payment on the store and now owed the payment amount plus a hundred dollar late charge.

  He specifically remembered writing that check. Now he was going to have to spend half the day on the phone trying to get this mess straightened out. “Morons,” he said aloud, as his first customer of the day walked into the store.

  “You talkin’ about the gov’ment?” Durl Me
adows grinned as he approached the counter. Durl had been one of his very first customers when he’d opened Brave New World, special ordering a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook. He and Kyle saw eye-to-eye on almost nothing, but theirs was a friendly, almost playful opposition, and Durl had turned out to be one of the store’s most loyal customers, continuing to order self-published right-wing conspiracy books as well as, incongruously, romance novels. “For my wife,” he always said, although Kyle suspected that was not the case.

  Kyle sighed. “No, not the government. The bank.”

  Durl shrugged, still grinning. “Same diff’rence.”

  “They say I didn’t make my mortgage payment.”

  “And you did.”

  Kyle nodded.

  “Now you have to call India to get it all untangled.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, have fun with that.” Laughing, Durl headed over to the stand of new releases facing the front window. He scanned the titles but obviously found nothing there to interest him. Motioning toward the alcove at the left rear corner of the store, he said, “Looks like you’re expanding your used section.”

  Kyle nodded. “I’ve been getting a lot of trade-ins lately. Mystery and romance readers go through books quickly. People like you—”

  “My wife.”

  “That’s what I was going to say. People like your wife speed through books. Makes sense to offer them a place where they can trade old books in for ones they haven’t read yet.”

  “Or they could trade with each other an’ skip the middleman.”

  Kyle nodded sagely. “Sure. They could do that. If they don’t believe in the free market and want to live in some hippie Communist world where no one owns anything and no one needs money and everyone just shares what they have, man.”

  Durl chuckled. “Y’ got me.”

  “I haven’t had time to put them on the shelf yet, but you might take a look in that box on the floor. Rene Wallace brought them in, and there’s quite a few Nora Roberts in there. Maybe there’s some Delia hasn’t read yet.”