I stepped into the chilled marble catacomb of the First Westside bank. I was clutching my sixty-dollar check from the local medical clinic, hoping my hand hadn’t perspired on it due to the heat outside. The bank teller, wearing a lavender pantsuit, with hair like scarlet wheat, greeted me as I approached her counter. “How can I help you today?” She asked, her tone melodic yet rehearsed, like a commercial jingle.
“Just cashing a check,” I said, smiling weakly as I grabbed the pen tethered to the counter and sloppily scrawled my name across the back.
“Birchwood Medical Laboratories, huh?” The teller asked, reading the corner of the check. “Do you work there?”
“No, I donated platelets,” I mumbled, hoping the admission didn’t betray how desperate I was for money.
“Oh, that’s great! It’s good of you to donate to those in need,” the teller said, as she laid three twenties on the counter before me.
“I don’t know if you can call it a good deed, considering they paid me,” I said, chuckling nervously as I put the cash in my pocket.
“Still, those platelets will help someone, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,” the teller replied. “I think we all need a little help every once in a while.”
And then she looked me in the eye and smiled. The corners of her mouth crested against her cheekbones, her lips gliding apart to reveal her teeth. Her smile both shined like a beacon and glowed like a fireplace on a cold night. It was a smile that put to shame the tight-lipped smirk of that white devil Andrew Jackson, who was now in my pocket three times over.
“Well, thank you. I appreciate it,” I told her. She smiled once more, then gestured to the man in line behind me to approach the counter. I turned towards the exit.
And perhaps it’s telling, how much that smile meant to me. How it stayed with me even as I left the bank and stepped out into summer once more. Perhaps it’s a sort of confession—of just how long it had been since someone smiled at me that warmly.
Hiatt Werling is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He graduated from Prescott College in Arizona in 2014, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. His work was previously published in the 2015 issue of Alligator Juniper. He currently lives in Brooklyn.