Banked

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We needed a loan, a regular family loan. So I took a deep breath and entered the bank. A blast of air conditioning shot cold at my head.

The banker met me with a polite smile. He shook my hand and drew me into an immaculate office.

From the top drawer of a mahogany desk, the banker pulled out a large silver gun. The barrel gleamed. He pointed the gun directly at my head.

The dreaded application process.

I knew what to do. I pulled out my wallet and showed the banker how empty it was. I placed it on the desk. The banker waggled the gun at my chest.

I pulled the shirt off my back. Draped it beside the wallet on the desk. Crossed my arms against the air conditioned chill. The banker waggled the gun at my pants.

I turned out all my pockets. Produced a small set of keys. Placed them on the desk next to the wallet and shirt. The banker pushed a button, and an assistant entered.

"Assume the position," the assistant told me. The banker's gun gleamed. I spread my arms against a cold wall and was patted down, as if I might be hiding jewels in my flesh.

Then the assistant took my elbow and led me to the hard seat in front of the banker's desk where I was told to tilt my head far back. As I complied, the assistant pried my jaws apart and peered inside. "Nothing," he reported to the banker. "Nothing of value." And then the assistant stood dutifully by.

The banker leaned on the desk and waggled the gun in my face. For some reason I wondered if the gun had been made out of thirty pieces of silver, melted down and refashioned. "It's going to have to come off," the banker said. I reached for my head. The banker ordered my hands high in the air, then stood up and reaching over the desk, grabbed my fingers and with a single twist and fierce jerk, ripped off my gold wedding band.

Then the banker held the ring up to the light where it glimmered alongside the silver gun. The banker ran his fingers along the smooth surface and finally set the ring gently on my shirt next to my wallet and keys. I wiped blood from my finger.

The office grew colder.

I thought of home. My wife and children. We needed the loan.

The assistant swabbed my arm with alcohol, and stabbed in a long needle. Blood drained into a plastic pouch. Eventually, several pints of blood went onto the desk alongside everything else. Then the banker dismissed the assistant and we faced one another. On the desk between us lay the gun, pointed directly at my chest. I could almost feel it pressing into my sternum.

The banker leafed through dozens of documents spread around the gun. Though I had made the appointment only a few days ago, apparently the institution had obtained a blizzard of reports. "Two children, aged six and eight," the banker observed finally. "Do they work?"

I replied cautiously. "Sure, they do."

"How much do they bring in?"

"They work around the house."

"I see." The banker shook his head. "You do realize, Mr.-" The banker scowled, consulted the papers-"Peonne. You do realize that for someone in your delicate financial position-"

"I'll do almost anything," I told him. "We need the money for the house, the car, the children-"

"We all have lives to maintain," the banker cut me off. He flipped quickly through the documents again, then said, "Mr. Peonne, we cannot process a loan. The financial risk that you represent to the fiscal integrity of this venerable institution is simply too high."

"The fiscal integrity?"

"Of this venerable institution."

"But the little ones-"

"Life is hard everywhere, Mr. Peonne." The banker rested his hand on the butt of the gun. "You have my complete sympathy." He stared at my wedding band. "It's a mutual inconvenience, I assure you." He lay one finger on the trigger of the gun. "I'm sure you understand."

I reclaimed my wallet, the keys, the ring, my shirt. It felt daring, taking everything back of his desk. The banker stared at the gold band as I placed it on the undamaged finger of my opposite hand. I stood to go.

"Your blood? Mr. Peonne?"

I watched the gun. I talked to the banker. "There's no fee?"

"Look for it in your next statement."

So I gathered my blood in my hands, surprised to feel it still slightly warm. I pressed it to my cheek for a moment, then hugged it tight to my chest and walked into the bank lobby. At the frigid blast of air near the door, I stopped in the cold rush, my forehead going numb, blood congealing in my embrace.

A man came up beside me carrying a blood bag of his own. He tore off his shirt and dropped it through a small swinging door labeled "Blood Drop-Advance Fee Payment. Please Label." Then he punctured the plastic pouch and smeared blood all over his face and upper body before tossing the empty plastic down the chute.

I stood in the frigid air a few moments longer. By now a line of people had formed behind the man and myself. They had their own blood to dispose of, I figured, so I moved on, following the bloodied man onto the street where he seemed to blend in with everyone else, for as much as anyone noticed him. Were they all traumatized, I wondered, had they seen it all before? As if we were all splattered in blood, our own and each other's, to varying degrees and in various patterns that showed plainly who had been denied what-medical insurance, food insurance, love insurance, and more, so many of us shortchanged in so many ways. Is that what we were, all of us, rejects of the system? The system of the owners, by the owners, for the owners, so help us, god?

I followed the man for a while. He seemed to know where he was going. Then I lost him in the crowd.

I gripped my blood gone cold and thick and turned for home but found myself crossing in front of the bank. I stopped there and studied the cement and stone. It seemed peculiar somehow. I studied it carefully, the wood and tile and tinted glass. I studied the bank-the steel, the stone, the gleaming glass. It was quite impressive. Completely bloodless.