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Show 381 they had gotten to the Hamburger Hamlet-on the way Lorin explained he was here only temporarily and had no plans to stay with the bank, which he afterward thought was saying more than he needed to-and they spent the lunch hour mostly looking past each other and wishing it were time to go back to work. In the afternoon he resumed his place at Mary's side. He watched her take deposits, cash checks, turn to the telephone beside her window to call bookkeeping and ask to have a hold put on the account for the amount she was about to give the customer standing in front of her, who, Lorin noticed, pretended not to be paying attention. He learned the mysteries of less-cash transactions and courtesy endorsements, and what a teller-exchange was, and which ledger you consulted to find out how much interest a customer had lost because a bookkeeper had posted a deposit incorrectly. When the bank closed its doors at three he followed her to an adding machine and watched her balance her cash and become irritated when she was over by a capricious figure-$3.78 or something like that-and eventually had to have one of the vault tellers come out and find the error for her. He concluded that the job held few mysteries. After drinking coffee with Joe Pirtle, who had just graduated from UCLA in psychology and who invited him to come with him and his wife to the Unitarian church sometime, he filed cancelled checks until five and then went to his car where he had parked it in a dirt lot that he had used when he was a student and was surprised to find still there, and drove home. He found something to eat and afterward wrapped himself up in a blanket and sat on a pillow in the corner of his room on the floor where he couldn't be seen through either window and closed his eyes while his ancestors began to gather over his head to talk about him. "Grace's boy, isn't he?" said Uncle Fred. |