Polly grabbed my elbow. “Did you really see Nick?”
I was, like, What? I made my face all innocent and said, “What are you talking about?” Why didn’t she ask about Harry? Had no word gotten around about Harry, only Gretchen? That isn’t fair. But why would I expect anything to be any better for Harry than it is for me?
She looked hit. I said it again: “What are you talking about?” and she actually started to cry. She looked like a well-trimmed poodle with that coat on. “Nice coat.”
Her fists hammered me in the chest. I was up against the iron fence, and the hitting made my head bounce on the bars. It only lasted a few seconds. “My mother bought me this coat!” she said. Then she let go of me, and I guess I slumped.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll lay off the coat.”
“My mother bought me this coat,” she repeated. She crossed her arms as if I were going to try to take it.
“All yours,” I conceded.
We breathed at each other a little while.
“I just can’t believe that Gretchen’s dead,” she finally said.
“Old people die.” That tapping started again, behind me on the steps.
Polly opened her mouth like she wanted to argue about whether or not Gretchen was actually “old” but instead she asked one more time, “Did you really see Nick?” Like she really, really needed to know.
I thought it was sweet that she still thought he might be alive. Speaking of old, I was old now too. Because I’d been through something. I’d woken up thinking all kinds of people could be alive, and it turned out that none of them are.
I shook my head. Because I hadn’t seen him, not the way Polly wanted me to have. I knew that now. I’d seen him the same way I see Harry and Gretchen, and would keep on seeing them, the rest of my life. Why Nick would bother haunting me is anyone’s guess, because it’s not like I had anything to do with whatever stabbed him or pushed him or held him underwater. Maybe he was just haunting Cambridge, and passing me was incidental. That would fit, wouldn’t it? It’s not like I mattered enough for him to even bother.
“Nick’s dead too,” I said. What did she expect? He’s gone, he’s dead. The police had dredged the Cam, because they thought so too. Did she ever really think he was coming back?
It was the smack I’d fantasized. The shock on her face was hilarious. She must have really thought he was coming back. Up until this moment, when I said what’s been obvious for a long time. Of course he’s dead. People like Nick don’t just leave.
“You were going to take him back, weren’t you?” I hurled at her. “Never mind that he gets off with your best friend. You were going to take him back, and get on with being a tease and just holding hands.”
I stared hard, because this was fascinating. Look at her face: Things passed through it, things that could have become words but never got that far, never got that specific or that limited. That’s what art is for, for catching these looks. I wanted to draw her so bad my fingers vibrated.
Then she spoke, and all the variety and vastness resolved and reduced into two bullet points: “You’re not my best friend. And I do wish Nick was back.”
There was a flapping sound behind me, like a dozen birds had suddenly taken off from the museum’s roof. I didn’t have to turn around. They would be Harry’s canaries, round and fluffy and colored like Easter candy. When the beating of their wings died down, I did turn around. Gretchen was gone.
When I turned back, so was Polly.
I checked an ATM. The transaction was going to take “up to” two days, but that could mean today, so I checked. Everything was still the same. I was still in desperate need of money.
There are something like twenty banks in town and I passed, like, half of them. I checked my balance at each one. If I’d been on my bike I wouldn’t have done that, but with everything in slow motion what else was I supposed to do? I was on foot because someone had taken it.
Bikes get stolen all the time in Cambridge, and it’s not an idle thing. It’s not like they get stolen by people who’re going to use them. Then maybe someone who really needed a bike and had to get somewhere might be on mine. I could live with that. Maybe my bike would even be part of something important. But the bike stealing is more organized here. The person who took it is probably just selling it on, just doing business. Things like that make me sick.
I waited in a lot of lines. I pressed a lot of buttons.
Then, just like that: 10,003.45 pounds.
I looked over my shoulder. Did anyone see that?
I looked back. The number was still there. I jumped from foot to foot and shook my hands like they’d fallen asleep. Quick; end the transaction. No-celebrate! Withdraw cash. Buy something. Maybe one of those massively expensive coffees that’s really some kind of mutant sundae with caffeine.
I pressed all the right buttons. But it spat out my card without any money. I tried again; the balance was there, but it wouldn’t let me get at it. I grabbed the sides of the machine and tried to shake it, like when a bag of potato chips is hanging off the spiral in a vending machine. But this thing was, of course, embedded in the wall. There would be no shaking it.
The spiral with my money hanging off it wasn’t in this machine anyway. It would be in a computer somewhere at the bank. The account or transaction might have been flagged, and put on hold. Perhaps they’d been notified of the death by someone incredibly thorough. Maybe everything to do with them was frozen already. Or, no, really, it could just be that things hadn’t finished processing. Maybe there’s this stage where the amount is acknowledged but not releasable yet. Maybe that’s what they meant by two days and tomorrow everything would be fine. Right?
Just past Sainsbury’s there was one more bank.
I waited in line behind a guy with a guitar on his back. He stuck in a card and punched a lot of buttons but nothing much happened, so he opened up his bag and rooted around in it. He got another card and held it in his teeth while he rebuckled the two straps on the front of his bag without taking off his bulky gloves. One side he got but the other one squirmed away from him over and over. He stood there, between me and the machine, wrestling with this stupid bag buckle while I rocked from side to side. The card stuck out of his mouth like a tongue. A mom with a stroller passed between us and rolled a dirty wheel over my shoe.
Finally he stuck the new card in the machine. A ten slid out.
He got out of my way. I pushed my card in the slot and pressed the right buttons. The balance was there.
I tried withdrawal again. Ten had worked out pretty great for the guy in front of me, so I tried it too. Press, press, press, press, whirr… money. Money.
Ten pounds.
I pinched it between my fingers and tugged. It didn’t give right away so I pulled with both hands so hard that I rocked back into the person behind me. “Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t get out of the way. The machine asked if I wanted another transaction. Even with the money free I knew I couldn’t get at the whole of it until tomorrow. A machine wouldn’t be able to give that much; I’d have to wait in line and ask a teller nicely. It was already after five.
I just stared at the small piece of it that was in my hand. It was suddenly weird to me that it wasn’t green. I’d been using this colorful money for over a year now but it was suddenly weird. It didn’t look like money. It looked like a magazine ad. Like a travel agency poster. A poster for Tahiti, my own Tahiti, my own place to get away and grow into something that I knew I could be if people would just stop getting in the way.
I mashed the money into the front pocket of my jeans and whirled around. I thought I’d heard Gretchen’s cane, but it was the person waiting behind me, tapping a pen against their card.
I rubbed my forehead. It was just a pen tapping a card. And the birds at the Fitzwilliam could have been any birds. There are lots of birds in Cambridge. Harry never wore a hat like that at all. I was just getting all “Tell-Tale Heart” about things because of the waiting. Everything could be explained away, except Nick in that car. I’d seen Nick for sure.