In the Red (10 page)

W
hen Irina and Elena returned to the hotel suite at the appointed time on the afternoon of the day after they had seen the basement sex show, the party's guests were gone. A black woman in a blue dress with a white apron was clearing away silver trays that still held a few stray canapés, glasses in which the ice was melting into remnants of vodka.

“Elena, let me teach you about America,” Dragos quipped. “See? A genuine colored maid. One of the staples of this fine country.”

Nobody laughed, and the woman went about her work as if she'd heard nothing. Vasilii made eye contact with his new wife, and she went to him immediately. He ushered her into his room with his hand on the small of her back, closing the door behind them silently. Dragos and Andrei gave each other a look, and wordlessly Andrei led Irina into his own room of the suite.

On the coverlet of the four-poster bed lay a small burgundy booklet and a plastic card. “These are for you,” Andrei said, designating them formally with his hand as if they were priceless jewels. Irina picked up the booklet. It was emblazoned with gold lettering and an eagle bearing a sword and a mace, with a cross in its beak. The eagle had a coat of arms for an abdomen, and etched on this shield were two more eagles, what looked like a bull's head, a lion, a pair of some sort of fish. Dolphins. The lettering at the top read
UNIUNEA EUROPEAN
Ă
. At the bottom,
ROMANIA,
and then, slightly smaller,
PA
Ş
APORT
. Irina opened this unforeseen object to its first page and saw herself. A photo of herself. An accurate description of her height and eye color, but a falsified date of birth. A blank signature line. An unknown name.

“What is this? Who is this Vasilica Andreescu?” Irina asked.

“She is you, if you will have her.”

This was definitely the most peculiar gift she had ever been given. It made a great cold suddenly pass over her.

“What—what is this person for?” she asked of the strange passport.

“She is a good place to keep some money. A place through which to pass money,” Andrei explained. “And for this place we need a body.”

“You are giving me a passport and a bank account for a girl who doesn't exist. So that you can launder money.”

Andrei looked a little stung. “You don't like it?” he said plaintively.

This new identity would make her more than a girl who consorted with criminals. It would turn her into one of them. The problem was not that she didn't like it but that the prospect was rather attractive. The new name had the draw of a beautiful new dress. It had a pretty drape that gave her body an appealing shape. It promised that she might be seen in a new way by new eyes.

“You will seldom be asked to do anything or present your face anywhere,” Andrei said soothingly.

Irina picked up the plastic card, a bank card. “How much is in there?”

“A respectable amount. But you must understand this money is not at your disposal. If you move it in a way that is not consistent with orders, bad things will happen.”

Irina stopped breathing for several seconds. “You would hurt me?” she asked.

“No. I would not hurt you, darling. But I could not keep you from getting hurt.”

Who had come up with this idea? Was Elena, in the other room, also being offered an alternate self? Irina flipped through the passport again. “It's a very good fake,” she observed.

“That is because it's not a fake,” Andrei noted. “We know people. This is a real passport. As far as Romania knows, Vasilica Andreescu exists.”

So a nonexistent woman with Irina's face was a Romanian citizen. Here were her blue eyes, her pale skin, her curtain of wavy black hair. Here was her unsmiling, slightly puzzled expression. Irina couldn't even remember when this picture was taken. The perfectly blank grayish background did not give her a clue. Perhaps she could peel away the translucent film of her life and find beneath it the other's life, the life of this Vasilica Andreescu. Vasilica Andreescu, a world traveler. Well moneyed and of legal age. With a bank account like that, it was unlikely that she'd been thrown away by her family. She was not an orphan like Irina.

“I can't believe what you're asking,” Irina said.

“Look, you can be a girl from the old country.” Andrei's touch felt warm against her cold hand as he murmured into her ear, with something like tenderness. “You see, darling? A proper Romanian name.”

She was about to laugh and ask when he had gotten so patriotic when Dragos walked into the room and set a big black briefcase on the bed, where they were sitting. The way the briefcase sank into the plush coverlet made it look enormously heavy. Irina instinctively reached to put her hand on the fine pebbling of the expensive leather. She almost decided to spring the case open at that moment to see what was inside. But what did it matter? She would not pollute herself with knowing what was in it.

“So, what does the lady say?” Dragos asked Andrei. “Does she agree with our request?”

The two men looked at Irina, who looked back at them without opening her mouth.

“The lady says nothing,” Andrei replied.

“Good,” Dragos said, “since everyone knows that when a woman says nothing, she means yes.” He picked up the new passport and leafed through it, as if looking over a piece of furniture to check whether it was well built. “Ha!” he laughed. “Vasilica Andreescu, named after her two fathers. Very clever.”

I
rina cannot reach zero today. After closing time, she counts and recounts all the cash in her box but keeps coming out fifty dollars over. Balancing at the end of the day is usually a task that brings her a dull satisfaction: all those columns of numbers, which, in the end, add up to a perfect 0.00. No such luck today, just that accusatory +50.00. At least it's a round number. It is worse when she is off by some completely inexplicable number, like 13.56 or eight cents. With this tidy overage, she can fathom what must have happened. She knows that it is highly unlikely that she shorted any customer fifty dollars. That would have brought forth a howl of recrimination that she would have corrected immediately. It was probably a typing error when she was entering the amounts; perhaps she transposed a 3 for an 8 somewhere. A findable fault.

Usually when this happens, she is supposed to call over the manager. The manager counts all the cash once more. Then he and she, the unbalanced teller, go through all her transactions from the entire day, looking for the overage or shortage. Sometimes it can be found from this pass-through, and the mistaken record can be expunged and replaced with a correct one. Sometimes it cannot, and she must fill out an Out of Balance ticket that turns into a little black tick on her record.

But it's not so much the black tick that bothers Irina today; it's the time. She wants to go home. The prospect of sitting there flipping through papers and computer screenshots with her boss for another half an hour turns her exhaustion from the workday into a heavy weight in her body. There is another solution, of course, one that she has not yet seen fit to employ because she is trying to maintain the idea that she is a decent person. She could just take fifty dollars.

Of course doing such a thing would show up on Irina's monthly balance statement as shortage after central processing digests all her transactions and rights any errors. But that is just a sheet she will have to sign at the end of the month, maybe with a brief contraction of the brow and a grumbled comment from the manager. A tiny consequence. She would be accused of nothing. The sky would not tear open and thunder its judgment at her. Everything would proceed as before. That's one thing that she's learned happens after doing wrong: everything goes on just as before. You are not found out. There is a whole lot of nothing.

She would be fifty dollars in the red. But who cares? In the red is where she's lived her whole life.

Irina's fatigue is now crushing. The thought of time ticking away while the manager counts all the cash in her box, his thick body disconcertingly close to hers as he roots through her workstation—it's too much. She heaves a deep sigh.

She knows it won't do to simply take a fifty out and pocket it. There would be security camera footage. She'll have to be smooth and discreet, but she knows how. She swiftly fingers one of the bills from the correct compartment as she fits the lid over the cashbox she's pulled out of her register, slips it into the pocket from which she takes out the keys with which she then locks the top of the box. She performs this with the same blank face she always wears while wrapping up her day—the absence feigned this time, as the theft makes Irina completely present in the moment. When one is doing wrong, everything takes on a fascinating resonance—the weight of the box, the clang of the enormous vault locks, even the placid face of the manager. Even his “See ya tomorrow” feels portentous. She is familiar with this high. She knows that when she gets home and unfurls the fifty from her burning pocket, Ulysses S. Grant will flash her the sly glance of an accomplice. She hates that she knows and likes this feeling. She hates how much she looks forward to taking the money out of her pocket and having a good look at what she has stolen.

These days, Irina counts a lot. She does it with such fast, machinelike exactitude that the management puts her on the merchant teller line. She takes large cash deposits from local businesses, having to count everything by hand. It is more intensive work than the regular customer line, and she does not get paid more. But it's nice. She gets to know the merchants. For instance, the man who runs the bird feed store around the block always flirts with her. Sometimes when the line is long, he squats with his cash bag while he waits for her, dreamily tilting his head and looking much like an inquisitive parrot on a perch. There's also the plump lady from the cake shop who feels compelled to mention her fatness in every conversation so she can deliver her most valuable gem of wisdom: Never trust a skinny pastry chef. Then there are the church people, who speak softly and bring in the most cash.

Today Irina is absolutely overwhelmed by the church people: so many deposit tickets, so much cash in small denominations that her register is glutted with it. She cannot close her lower drawer. The whole box is so heavy with money that it threatens to tip over. When Amy walks by her, Irina grabs her sleeve and whispers urgently, “I need to sell to the vault. Now.”

“Holy shit! Look at that. How much do you have in there?”

“Probably fifty K.”

“Oh fuck. Yeah, close your window right away. I'll get a ticket.”

Irina puts out her
NEXT TELLER PLEASE
sign with a decisive
thunk
and quickly gathers forty K of the cash. She can't quite hold it all in her arms; on the way back to the vault Amy has to pick up a couple of bundles that fall onto the floor behind her. The
thwap
of cash on carpet makes several customers turn their heads. The two bankers hustle into the vault, shoving in the overflowing money.

“Jesus,” Amy says as she begins feeding the bundles of cash through the counter. “How many fucking churches do these church people do the books for? Religion is an excellent racket.”

“It was Easter last weekend.”

“They must have passed around collection buckets because plates can't handle this kind of volume. Hey, guess what other business must take in that much cash in small denominations?”

“Tell me.”

“Strip clubs!”

Irina cannot help but smile, and then asks if Amy has ever worked in a bank branch that had one in the neighborhood.

“Nope. I mean, I'm just saying. I mean, can you imagine getting all those dollars crammed in your G-string? You don't know where they've been.”

“What about us? We have to handle those dollars.”

“Gross. Shit—now I won't be able to count small bills without picturing them in some girl's ass crack.”

Irina laughs at the idea that many of the bills that were just handed to her from church collection plates had also been slipped into a dancer's thong. The cash looks so innocent fluttering through the machine, just bits of paper that either like or do not like being handled. If the bills are new, printed fresh from the Federal Reserve, the packets are too tight and the bills stick together, spectacularly jamming the counter. They have to be painstakingly counted by hand. All the tellers fight against this inevitability. They take the money and crumple it violently in an attempt to roughen it. They smack the packets hard against the walls, trying to loosen the bills. The higher the denomination of the bills, the harder the tellers smack them, the more the tellers roughen them: it's more important for the big bills not to stick, for an extra one not to be given to a customer by accident. The new bills are so sharp and crisp that they cut the palms of the tellers' hands as they are counted. The tellers hate the new bills, even if they're cleaner. They like the soft old ones, more like cloth than paper. From a G-string or not, the old bills are better; they go through the automatic counter with a smooth uninterrupted whir.

“Amy,” Irina says while bundling the cash, “have you ever been robbed?”

“No, but I used to work with this guy who was once. When the robbers came in waving guns, he was holding the night deposit bag. While they weren't looking at him, he dropped the bag in the garbage chute so they wouldn't get it. He was commended for saving the bank a bunch of money. I think they gave him football tickets or something.”

“But—what if he'd been shot?”

“I know, right? What a chump. Like I'd risk my life for other people's money.” Amy gathers some bundles, puts them away. “Okay, that's the ones. Give me the fives.”

Irina pauses before she hands over the fives. “Did he say what it felt like to have a gun pointed at him?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Amy answers. “He said it didn't feel real.”

Irina almost says that it felt real enough to her, but then doesn't. It's a close one, and it scares her. She almost inadvertently talked about Andrei. He is still so near the surface. At that moment, she envies, of all people, Elena. Elena used to have long, thick, beautiful hair. Then one day she got tired of it, cut it all off, and never missed it. Irina used to have long hair too, but most of it fell out. She chose not to see until it looked so thin and bedraggled that she had to cut it short. She still misses all the hair she has lost. It's stupid of her, this yearning for things that are gone forever. She hates it but she can't help it.

These days, Irina counts a lot. She does it with such fast, machinelike exactitude that later in the day, shortly before closing time, a wary customer asks her to count the money again, but slower. Twenty. Forty. Sixty. Eighty. One hundred. She lays each hundred dollars in a fan of five twenties overlaying the previous fan of five twenties. Then she gathers up the money, taps it into a neat little stack to hand over. The customer hesitates before he takes the money, as if he is somehow suspicious of her. Irina smirks at his leery eyes.

She is thinking about a small key she has packed away in her things that she brought with her when she left Andrei. Should she carry the key on her? Should she work it onto the heavy ring where she keeps all her other bank keys? Would using this key push her back into the past or propel her into the future?

The key is so small and discreet, a tiny golden presence with the number faintly engraved on its handle: 21012. A palindrome.

Yes. She will carry the key on her. At least until she figures out whether opening the box the key is fitted for is a good idea or not. Whether it is a step backward or forward.

Sometimes buried things need to be dug up again to be put to rest forever.

Meanwhile, the man who just left Irina's teller window with a twice-counted bundle of twenties walks away with her message. Eventually, it may reach you. Eventually, he will spend the money.

This morning, Irina had written on one of the twenties she gave him, in a fast scrawl right across Andrew Jackson's face:

You never were
.

Artificial lighting. The low white noise of quiet human voices discussing money and its movement. The flutter of paper. A sore lower back from standing all day. The muscle memory of a rote task endlessly performed with an absent mind: Greet customer; accept papers; perform transactions with automatic fingers dancing on the ten key, spilling numbers on the screen so fast that they look uncontrolled but are not; count cash if there is cash; tear receipt tape from machine with a deft flick of the wrist and hand it to the customer. “Thank you. Have a good day.” The serration in the machine's dispensing slit makes perfect tiny teeth on the thin paper. Irina was told to say, when trained for her job at the bank, “Thank you. Have a nice day.” For some reason, the word “nice” does not suit her, so she substitutes the word “good.” It seems less simpering, more sincere—even with the customers for whom “Have a good day” means “Fuck you.”

The greeting when picking up the phone is also scripted. It has a certain rhythm that always makes it come out in a singsong. But lately a growing spirit of mischief has made the syllables a touch malleable in Irina's mouth. Sometimes, when a supervisor is not within earshot, Irina says with all the cheer she's been instructed to put in her voice: “Thank for you calling Hell's Cargo. This is Irina speaking. How may I help you?” So far no ear has chosen to register her improvisation.

There is a lull in the influx of customers. Irina distractedly fingers the edge of the collar on her sober houndstooth blazer. She thinks of the stitches there. She thinks of the stitches everywhere, all over her, down to her underthings. The hands that put the stitches there. The unconscious memory written into the musculature of those hands, their rote tasks. The artificial lighting. The white noise, the loud continuous ticking of the sewing machines. The ticking lulled the hands into a kind of rhythmic trance. Sometimes only the exhaustion and the aching joints from the repetitive motions told the hands that they had been there working the entire day. Hours were swallowed. Time hovered, then skipped. Slowed, sped, then disappeared in crumbling chunks.

The woman with these hands liked that all the other hands in the factory belonged to women like her, even the boss. Men would not bother with her at her age. The hands had a handsome bone structure, but the flesh was worn past tautness. There were veins and lines, an emerging frailty. There was a safety in aging, in not being looked at anymore. Safety in being able to cast your eyes on anything you liked without it being interpreted as some kind of invitation by some man on the hunt.

The slightly rough cloth passed easily between the fingers on the nimble, practiced hands, the hands that had made this jacket so many times before that they could do so without input from the brain, or even the eyes. This jacket, the jacket Irina might have taken off the clearance rack in a windowless, big-box store. This might be the jacket that Irina had selected as looking suitably bankerly for her new nobody job in her new nowhere world. Where did the tag say it was made? She would have to take it off to check.

Then, one day, there was a man pacing the floor of the factory. The hands did not remember hearing that the woman who supervised their sewing would be leaving, yet there was a man now. Younger than the woman who owned the hands, but not too young. Wisps of thinning hair at his crown, perpetual half-moons of perspiration at his armpits. His close presence made the hands skip nervously, his breath hissing past the neck of the woman who owned the hands. He called the woman who owned the hands by her identification number, not by her name. He clearly knew her name; he was just playing with her. Her eyes looked up at his smug face, a great weariness creeping over the hands. How nice it would be if this man were not here.