Personal Banking - 3. Chapter 3

I was face down on Mr. Phillips' desk, my hands tied behind my back with his necktie. He was pounding my ass unmercifully. "You've been screwed by every two-bit money lender in town. Well, now I've paid them all off and your ass belongs to me. It's my, turn, boy. Got it?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Whose property is this ass?"

"Yours, sir!"

"That's right. And I love fucking my property."

And the elevator door opened. Of course I can't have a few moments to daydream on my way to Mr. Phillips' office.

"Going up?"

"Yes." Well, if I'm going to be interrupted, I'm glad it's you. A little too much cologne for my taste, meaning more than zero, but where did you get those dark eyes, that long lean muscled body, that hair a few shades darker than black--

"Hello, Rich," he said, stepping in.

"Uh -- Do I know you?"

"No, I'm psychic. And you're wearing a name tag."

"Oh. Duh."

"Flaherty's. I've never eaten there. I'll have to try it. I'm Jose. Jose Molina." He stuck out his hand.

"Rich Andrews. You don't look Latino." Open mouth, insert foot.

It didn't seem to bother him. "Meaning I don't look Mexican? My grandparents were from Spain. Civil War refugees. Where are you headed?"

"I have an appointment with Mr. Phillips. My first loan payment."

"Oh, yes. Andrews. I remember from the loan committee meeting."

"And you're the Jose who was supposed to do my loan interview."

He shrugged. "I was out sick. I snoozed, I lost. Phillips was very particular about taking charge of your account. Now I see why." He faced forward. "Nate the scoutmaster. The Dudley Do-Right of the banking industry."

I snickered. "Scoutmaster? Is that anything like a Catholic priest?"

Jose's smile faded. "They're not all bad, you know. My brother's a priest."

How do I manage to get both feet in my mouth? "Sorry. Stupid joke. No offense."

"None taken. You're a client. We're here to serve. Here, take my card, just in case you have any questions and Mr. Phillips is -- unavailable." He slipped a card into my shirt pocket.

He got off a few floors below Mr. Phillips' office. I thought about the past week. I'd decided, just as an experiment, to keep strictly to the verbal agreement. At least, I did after one strange little moment.

I went out to celebrate getting my loan. I had a beer and, without thinking, ordered another. The bartender set it down in front of me and my right hand knocked it over. Just sort of twitched, and there my beer went, flying. The bartender said, "You know, you can drink them or practice karate on them, but the price is the same." I paid and mumbled an apology and left.

I still had to write down two beers in one day on my list of expenses. No. I didn't have to, I chose to. And I chose to write all my other purchases. I had them all in a little notebook, the saddest, dullest diary I've ever kept -- no weed, no booze, no fun.

My right hand still felt weird. I kept looking at it and remembering that handshake.

When Ms. Porter showed me in, Mr. Phillips stood up behind his desk and smiled as he reached out to shake my hand. Then his nostrils flared as he sniffed, and the smile disappeared. "What's that--?"

"Oh, I just met Jose in the elevator. He gave me his card. Nice looking man. Too much cologne." I took Jose's perfumed card out of my pocket and showed him. He clenched his teeth. Interesting. The unflappable Mr. Phillips is flapped. Ruffled. Disturbed.

"Oh. Yes, well, we're all in loans. We're all on the same team."

Yeah, I figured.

He sat and gestured for me to sit. "We've paid all your loans. I emailed you receipts from them. Did you receive those?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you. And here's the receipt from that friend of a friend." I gave him a hand-written note from the guy I'd come to think of as Big Louie. Not his real name. Eight hundred dollars plus interest paid in cash, and I still have all my unbroken fingers.

"Excellent."

"And here's this week's payment." I handed him a check.

"Great. How's it been going with tracking your money?"

I told him about that and showed him my notebook. And I told him about the beers, how my right hand refused to let me break our agreement. After that he was all smiles again. He relaxed and asked me about work, and I told him some of Stewart's better gems. and we just chatted. Then he had me come over to his side of the desk as he set up a budget for me on a spreadsheet.

I learned to look and listen at the same time in junior high school. Mr. Cooper's history class. I drank in every detail of his lectures and every detail of his physique. He caught me starting but he never caught me napping. I was his best student.

So I applied those skills now. I nodded and responded appropriately as Mr. Phillips asked me about my rent, my utilities, how much for this and that, and I leaned forward to look at the screen, closer to him, my chest touching his muscled broad back, and I nuzzled his thick neck, and he looked back, surprised, then grabbed me around the waist and dragged me onto his lap and kissed me, a deep, passionate kiss, and he kneaded my ass with one hand while he--

"Richard? Are you following this?"

"Oh. Yeah. Got it. These are essentials."

"Right. So that leaves you this much money for everything else -- entertainment, non-essentials. Think you can do that?"

"It's not very much."

"No, it isn't. What do you do for entertainment?"

"Oh, movies, an occasional concert, go out with friends, get high, get drunk, get laid, same as any lavender-blooded American boy. Sure does save a lot of money when I skip the getting high and getting drunk. And so far, getting laid."

"You didn't agree to celibacy."

"No." Time to take the initiative. "What do you do for entertainment?"

"I ride my bike a lot. Greenway, Cherry Creek. Weather permitting."

I looked down. "What would you say if I asked you out? On a date?"

Silence. When I looked up, his lips were still slightly parted, about to say something but not quite getting there. They finally did.

"Richard, any hint of a sexual or romantic relationship with a client would be a serious breach of ethics. I can't do that. I could lose my job. And it goes against my personal beliefs."

What? A thousand bankers in the Naked City, and I get the moral one? "What 'personal beliefs'? Are you a hard-core fundamentalist or something?" Oh, fuck, what if he is? Why do I lash out like that without thinking?

"I prefer not to discuss my spirituality with clients."

Well, then, he must not be a Christian, at least not like the ones around here. "Spirituality? Are you into some Eastern thing with chanting and incense?"

He got that little smile I'd seen before. "Is that what you think spirituality is?"

"I don't know. Everybody who talks about it seems to be selling some bullshit."

"Yes. That is frequently the case with the people who talk about it." He didn't try to argue, didn't try to convince me otherwise.

"I'm starting to think that little smile of yours means I've just said something really stupid."

"As I suspected, Richard, you can be a very perceptive young man."

Somehow, by the end of the appointment, I had decided to continue the experiment of keeping our agreement. My right hand probably wouldn't let me break it anyway. In spite of my stupid remarks, our third meeting had gone really well, if you don't count the fact that, once again, Mr. Phillips had neglected to have sex with me.

************

Stewart's shift overlapped with mine for a few minutes again, and I told him about Jose calling Mr. Phillips a scoutmaster, and about Mr. Phillips shooting me down.

"You mean he passed up a chance for a quick fuck just because he has morals and he doesn't want to lose his job?" Stewart shook his head. "I don't know what's gotten into this older generation."

"Of course I want a man I can respect, but does he have to be so respectable?"

Stewart's eyes drifted to the front of the restaurant. "Oo, baby. Come to table four."

I looked to the front, too, where Jose Molina was just being seated at one of my tables.

"Oh, I'll get this one."

"You're clocking out."

"I have time. That's Jose."

"The Jose?"

"The Jose. Stewart, I am going to seduce Mr. Phillips. He will be mine."

"Watch out, Mrs. Robinson. Here comes Benjamin."

"And the way I am going to seduce Mr. Phillips is to induce a little jealousy."