Read Online Merlot by Mike Faricy - Free Book Online

sweet,” Cindy said, about to
finish another glass of wine. She wiggled down ever so slightly
into her chair and felt a warm glow coming all over her.
    It was toward the end of the meal and she
pushed food around her plate, not really hungry anymore. He set the
bruschetta and salad plates on top of a stack of files on the
credenza. Candles flickered in the draft from the air conditioning
as melted wax dripped on the worn surface of the desk. In the
background, Kiss of Death pounded out their final set for the
night.
    He poured more wine into her glass, not that
it was empty. In fact it hadn’t been empty all night. He’d kept it
reasonably full. Every time he filled it she would say, “Oops, not
too much.”
    Eventually, she stopped worrying about
getting drunk and was cautioning herself about getting drunker,
although that didn’t seem to be working either. She was draped
sideways in the green Naugahyde chair, legs swinging freely over
the arm of the chair, shoes somewhere on the floor below. A
half-eaten plate of chocolate gateau rested on her chest. She
gestured with the wine glass as she spoke.
    “The money these fuckers bring in, oh Jesus,
I didn’t mean to say it that way.”
    “Customers?” suggested Merlot.
    “Yeah, the fucking customers, Tony. That’s
what the fuckers are, customers. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe it.
It’s sticky, all covered with sugar and fruit drinks. And it smells
like grease, you know all that shit they have at the fair. By the
time I get home I just peel my clothes off and take a long hot
shower.”
    “There’s this one guy, really weird, he’s
always eyeing up the tellers. Get this, he wears a Vikings jersey,
these really baggy shorts, a baseball hat and hunting boots or
something. Oh, he’s so gross,” she shivered at the thought.
    “He’s all sweaty, and at the bank about a
hundred times a day, always in a hurry. Know what we call him?
Porky Pig. That isn’t very nice. He has this crew cut and a Donald
Duck tattoo, I mean what’s that?” she laughed, took another
sip.
    “I’d want to take all my clothes off and just
burn them if he touched me.”
    “Sounds interesting,” Merlot said a bit
luridly.
    She didn’t react.
    “I smell like the fair after handling all
that money, and I haven’t even had my butt inside the gate.”
    “More wine?” asked Merlot.
    “I’d better not, I’ve got to be at work early
on Monday to count weekend deposits,” then inclined her glass so he
could refill it.
    “Tomorrow’s Sunday, you can sleep in,” he
poured.
    She seemed to think about that for a half
moment, sipping. “There’s so much of this cash from the deposits we
balance our drawers about ten times a day, haul the cash into the
vault. They separate it into the various denominations.”
    “You mean like Catholic and Lutheran?” he
joked.
    “No,” she said, not picking up on the joke.
“You know, tens, twenties, that sort of shit. Then they run it
through the counters, bundle it in master bundles of one, five or
ten grand, depending, so the couriers can haul it to Central.”
    “Sounds busy.” Merlot encouraged.
    “Busy, Christ,” she said washing the
declaration down with more wine. “You’ve no idea. We have to hire
extra people just to run this shit through the counters. Ha! That’s
real glamorous, sitting around card tables with five other people
in a vault with no fan. We used to have people supplied by Central,
but they’ve cut back on staff so many times they didn’t have anyone
to spare.”
    “So get this,” she said, lurching halfway in
Merlot’s direction spilling wine on her dress, hiking it well above
her hips. “I’ve got thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars
to count and I have to hire temps. You know how hard it is to get
good temps? It’s a nightmare.”
    “Last year,” she continued after a healthy
sip, “we caught a girl stealing. College kid. I felt really bad, I
mean it was stupid. She stole, I don’t know, a