Rooms - James L. Rubart [128]
He would be standing outside their door tomorrow at 9:59 a.m.
CHAPTER 45
He’d have answers in one minute and thirty-two seconds. Thirty-one. Thirty. At precisely 10:00 Micah pushed open the bank’s front door. It squealed like a pig at feeding time.
The Bank of Astoria was small but comfortable. There was a sitting area with cloth chairs to his right, a stand with a large stainless steel coffeepot and packets of Coffee-mate creamer to his left. Caffeine? No way. It would push him off the chart. The adrenaline in his veins had already given him the shakes. The key to his heart’s desire? Bring it on, Archie.
“Looks like you could use some WD-40 on that door,” he said with a smile to an elderly lady behind the counter.
“May I help you?” She glared at him over the top of her tortoiseshell glasses.
“I’m here to look at a safety deposit box, thanks.” He pinched his lips together to stifle a laugh. “Here’s my key. The number is on it.”
“We know how these things work, sonny.”
He stayed silent as the Ice Queen shuffled over to a file cabinet and pulled the file on the box in question. When she came back, she had a new personality.
“Well, well, well. You must be Micah Taylor. Yes, yes, yes.” She turned to two bankers who sat at their desks ticking away on their computer keyboards. “It’s him. Micah Taylor is here. Right here! I told you he would show up, and now you all have to watch me fill my piggy bank.”
“You know me?”
The teller pranced toward the back of the bank with a dance step she probably did a good deal better thirty years earlier, too locked in to her jitterbug to answer his question.
A male employee that looked like Santa Claus with a buzz cut wandered over. “You’ll have to excuse Madge’s unorthodox bank behavior there.” He stretched his paisley suspenders, one thumb on each side, and continued. “You see, that safety deposit box has never been opened, and there is one, and only one, name authorized to use it. Of course that’s you.
“The box was first rented quite a few moons ago. Yes sirree Jim-Bob, it has gained quite a reputation over the years. We were given explicit instructions to do nothing with the box until you came and opened it, and we’ve all had a little bet going as to when—and frankly if—you’d ever show up. Madge had only ten more days for you to show before her guess was up, and since the cash prize to the winner has grown to a nice little chunk of change—good conservative bank investing over the course of seventeen years—you sure made her day just now.”
“You’ve had this thing for seventeen years?” Of course they had. Archie first rented the box back in 1992.
“Bank’s been bought out three times since the box was first registered, but it was prepaid for twenty-five years so it’s stayed put.”
Madge waltzed up to Micah with her eyebrows above the rims of her glasses, the smile still on her face, gold showing where she hadn’t brushed well enough when she was younger. “I have the box in the back in the private booths. Would you follow me, please?”
Micah was led into a tiny room with two booths. Madge gestured to the one on the left, and he stepped inside and pulled the curtain closed. The box sat in the center of the small desk.
He sat down and held his breath. This was it. Last contact with Archie. The final puzzle piece.
Micah inserted the key Madge had given him into the box and turned it, as if it were a Q-tip in a baby’s ear. It wouldn’t rotate. With slightly more effort the clasp opened with a light click. Part of him wanted to throw the lid back with abandon; another part didn’t want to open it at all. Rick was gone. So was Sarah and Seattle. Now Archie’s voice from the past was about to blink out.
He’d given up his world and gained his soul. There was no turning back. But where did it leave him? Cannon Beach without Rick and Sarah was poorly flavored. And there was the nagging question of income. He had little money left, and although the mortgage papers he’d gotten from Chris assured him the house and land were paid for, when tax time rolled around, he would