23

The place hummed with rushed lunchtime conversations, this break for a quick sandwich like a thing stolen. Jason spied a couple rising from their table, and he led Brenda through the maze of chairs and tabletops before anyone else could grab the seats.

Rosie moved sideways between tables. Her hand looked bare without the coffeepot she usually held. The waitress moved with intense impatience and unexpected quickness for someone in her sixties. She took orders and brought plates with urgency, as if the fate of the world rested upon the delivery of food while it was still warm. Jason caught her eye, and she got to them after being stopped twice.

From underneath her arm, Rosie drew a pair of menus and slapped them on the table, and with her hands free, she stacked the dirty plates on one arm and drew a rag around to wipe the tabletop. “Hi, Jason. Hi, sweetie. What can I get you two to drink?”

They ordered—Diet Coke for her and iced tea for him—and Rosie handed the plates off to a bin-carrying busboy. She jotted the orders down and slipped the pencil back over her ear, where it hid in the brown hair of what Jason suspected was a wig. “Nice to see you again, honey,” she said to Brenda and then winked at Jason and in two steps was clearing dishes from the next table, asking if the two white-collared guys wanted any coffee.

A group of BTB tellers sat at a table across the room, brandishing sandwich halves. Jason caught their eyes, and they quickly turned away.

Brenda’s eyes riveted on Jason. Walking across the street, he’d noticed how the sunshine made their emerald color glow.

She parted her lips. “So. Rough morning, huh?”

“I made a mistake. You don’t get to make many in this business.”

The busboy brought their drinks and slid straws next to them. Brenda peeled the paper back from one end and put the plastic tip between her teeth, drawing the paper sleeve off it. She stabbed the straw between ice cubes and into the black liquid. She lifted the glass and pinched the tip of the straw with her lips. It darkened as she sipped.

She brought her eyes back up. “We can talk about something else.”

“Good idea.” He pulled his eyes away from hers and looked over the room. At the lunch counter, one of his lenders made conversation with a businessman to her left. Trying to figure out if she could bring him on as a banking customer, probably. Every encounter was about the business, about dollars in or dollars out. It used to invigorate him, the way it absorbed his mind and interactions.

Brenda waited silently.

He uncrossed his legs and reached for his iced tea. He squeezed the lemon wedge, dropped it into the tea. “You still glad you moved up to my department?”

“Best decision I ever made. How am I doing? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. You’ve been terrific. I should’ve given you feedback before now. I apologize.”

“No, no. Don’t apologize. You’ve got so much going on, managing the teams, the whole office, your own customers. I don’t know how you keep everything straight.” She took another sip of Diet Coke, her lips pinching, cheeks tightening and then loosening into their curves.

“Anyway, the feedback is, you’re doing great. You’ve picked things up really fast, and when I give you something, I don’t have to think about it anymore. Good initiative. I don’t have to spend time worrying about backup. It’s been great.”

“Thanks, Jason. That helps a lot. Sometimes it’s like I’m swimming upstream. I’m still learning this business.”

“You ready to order?” Rosie’s voice.

Jason’s head jerked around. “How long have you been standing there?”

Rosie smiled. Her dentures were perfect. “I just got here. Don’t worry, honey; I didn’t hear a thing.” She tapped the nub of her pencil’s eraser against her order tablet.

“We don’t have any secrets.” Jason was about to ask Brenda if she knew what she wanted.

“Too bad,” Rosie said.

Jason looked at her. The finger that used to hold his wedding ring felt weightless. “Roast beef. On wheat. Cheddar cheese.” He looked at Brenda. “You?”

“I’ll have the Reuben.”

Rosie’s pencil went back to its perch over her ear. She took Jason’s menu and winked at him. “I’ll be back. You two behave.”

Jason watched her weave between the tables on her way behind the lunch counter. “What were we talking about?”

Brenda didn’t answer.

He looked at her. Her face blushed. She hadn’t blushed when Rosie had made that remark about a secret between them, but now, as Jason’s eyes held hers, the pale rose-petal color of her cheeks flushed a darker shade.

She looked at her drink. Her hand went to it but didn’t move the glass.

“Hey.”

She brought her eyes back to his.

“That bother you, what she said? I can go smack her around if you want.”

Brenda looked back to her drink, and a smile perked her lips. She shook her head. “No.”

“Come on—you know Rosie. She’s just having some fun.”

She looked up and her color began to fade. “It’s just . . . never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I . . .” Her lips tightened.

“It’s something personal. None of my business. You want to talk about banking? We can talk about debits and credits and general ledgers if that makes you more comfortable.”

“Oh, Jason, cut it out.” But she relaxed, shifting in her chair, and her face softened again.

“All right. You were asking about the wires earlier. You clear on why they call for my approval?”

“Yeah. You explained it really well. It seems like a lot of authority for one person, though. No offense.”

“None taken. They give different approval authorities for people at different levels. You won’t see Billy approving twenty-million-dollar wires. But the head of the home office needs to be able to keep things moving if the bank is going to serve its customers. You can’t have a bunch of committees signing off on every transaction. Nothing would ever get done.”

“So on your word, they’ll send a twenty-million-dollar wire? Even if the agreement with the customer is different from what’s happening?”

“Yeah, technically that’s right. But you don’t make mistakes on things like that and keep your job. I have to make judgment calls every ten minutes. I have to know the customers, judge the risks of what’s being asked. If there’s a question, I call time-out and get the answer, even if it means missing a deadline. Otherwise, I make the call and move on.”

Rosie balanced two plates on one arm and held fresh drinks in the other hand. Jason took the drinks, and Rosie set the sandwiches in front of them. “Anything else right now?”

They shook their heads, and she moved off.

“That was pretty tame. She must have somebody else to pick on.”

Brenda picked up a sandwich half. “It must be tough, having to handle all that responsibility with those wires.”

He took a bite of his roast beef on wheat. The yellow mustard pinched the glands at the back of his mouth. He swallowed. “There’s really no other way. The wire room doesn’t have staff with the seniority to make judgment calls like that, even if they could stay on top of what’s happening with every customer. Only the bankers on the accounts can do that. With the loans we have out to them, we’re in touch with our biggest clients all the time, so if we don’t know what’s going on, nobody at the bank does.”

“But what if somebody wasn’t as honest as you? Couldn’t they . . . never mind, it’s ridiculous.”

“No—it happens. But there’s a little club out there called the FBI, and they tend to get excited when banks are ripped off. You’re not in this business very long before you realize that the feds show a lot of interest in anybody who steals money from a bank.”

“It would probably be impossible to get away with it.”

Across the room, Mark Cornwall’s assistant approached the lunch counter. Rosie handed a bag over. Cornwall didn’t leave the building unless it was on business. If he ate at all, he sent out for it.

Thinking about Mark made the roast beef taste sour. Jason set the sandwich down on his plate and went for his iced tea. He looked back to Brenda. Her eyes didn’t blink.

“It could be done. But I don’t worry about that. I trust our people, and we have limits that keep things within reason. What I worry about in this economy is getting our loans repaid. We’ve got some challenges right now.”

She’d only eaten half of her Reuben. The other half cooled on the plate before her. “If there’s anything that can be done, you’ll do it, I’m sure.” Her hands were folded in her lap.

“Something wrong with the sandwiches, kids?” Rosie looked much more natural with the coffeepot clutched in her right hand.

“Could I take this with me?” Brenda gestured to the rest of her sandwich.

“Sure, sweetie. What about you, Jason? You need a doggie bag?”

“No, thanks.”

Rosie reached for Jason’s plate.

“I’ll take that too, if you don’t mind,” Brenda said.

Rosie paused. She looked at Jason. “Okay with you, hon?”

He shrugged.

Rosie took both plates. “I’ll bag these up. Be right back. Any coffee for you two?”

Brenda wanted some, so Rosie filled her cup and moved off. Brenda emptied a plastic tub of cream into her cup and stirred it.

“Tell me if it’s none of my business, Brenda, but is everything okay? On the personal side?”

She glanced to the floor. “It’ll get better.” She blew over the surface of her coffee, took a sip, swallowed. She watched the cup carefully as she returned it to the tabletop. “I was seeing this guy. I thought it was going somewhere. He thought it was going somewhere different. I had to end it.”

“That’s tough.”

“It was the right thing to do. I need more than what he was ready to give. It’ll be okay.”

“I’m sure it’s not hard for you to attract attention. I guess just the right kind.”

Darker pink surged into her cheeks again. “From the right guy.” Her eyes wouldn’t budge from his.

The clamor in the room around them seemed to vanish as he stared into her eyes. They were caverns, green and cool. He could look into them for the rest of the afternoon if she would let him.

Rosie returned. “Here you go, sweetie.” She put the bag before Brenda and topped off the coffee cup. “Anything else? A little cupcake or something you two could share?”

“No, Rosie. That’s it.” Jason looked to Brenda, and her eyes darted from him. The blush in her cheeks hadn’t faded. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his slacks.

Rosie ripped the bill off her tablet and held it out to Jason. “The gentleman will pay.”

Jason took it from her and reached into his pocket.

“You kids have a swell afternoon. See you soon.” She turned her attention to the next table.

Jason held his wallet. He looked at Brenda. His mouth had gone dry. He wanted to drain his iced-tea glass but couldn’t seem to pull away from Brenda’s eyes. Where had he seen eyes that color before?

With an effort, he looked down at his wallet and pulled out a five for Rosie and counted out the bills he would need for the cashier. He sat back and felt those eyes reach into his chest. “Let’s go,” he said at last.