Chapter 18: Billy With The Good Nose
Before Theo stepped out, he asked if she needed help with anything. She stayed silent, then told him to leave, and rude as she was about it, there had still been an iota of consideration buried somewhere in the words. He let the door click shut behind him and didn’t push it.
Perhaps that much curtness was answer enough. So he set off for the bank without wasting time. He had meant to swing by the market for groceries and ingredients too, but right now what mattered was claiming the money.
This time he took the bus and got off at Dumphrey Avenue, the second busiest district in Meteor City. The busiest was Yellemite, where the Hero Association and a handful of esteemed guilds kept their halls. Dumphrey ran on quieter money: glass towers, valet lines, doormen who read your shoes before your face.
The one percent of the one percent lived in places like this.
And here he was in secondhand shoes, about to stand in their marble lobby and argue for money that was already his.
Meteor City Bank was a slab of brutalist architecture, white, propped up on high columns that carried the whole front of the structure. Theo walked in, and the place was already bustling with corporate motion: heels on polished stone, the low murmur of numbers, paper sliding across counters.
The air smelled of mint and sat cool against the skin, the kind of chill that came free with high ceilings.
He walked up to a glass counter, and the lady behind it answered him without looking up.
"Please pick a reference number. You’ll be called back, and you can lodge your complaint then."
Theo sighed.
’This is one of the reasons I hate coming to this place.’
He glanced at the queue already curling behind him and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Please, this is a bit urgent and I need it solved fast. My wife is in the hospital and I need the money in my account, but it’s frozen."
The lady finally paused what she was doing and raised her head to look at Theo through the glass. She studied his pale face, his dark hair, his dark eyes, with an unimpressed look. Not that Theo cared.
"The reference number, please."
Her eyes flicked to the table across from her, where the slips sat in a little tray. Theo dropped his shoulders and retreated to it.
A man in a black suit stood at the fourth counter in the same row, talking to someone behind the glass. He turned to look at Theo, then at the lady, and walked over just as Theo was picking up a slip.
"Hello. You seem distraught. Are you okay?"
Theo watched the man carefully for a moment. He had brown hair, properly groomed, one lock falling over the left side of his face, and dark brown eyes that would probably go lighter under the sun.
Theo hesitated.
"I just need this done fast. My wife’s at the hospital and I’m trying to unfreeze my account."
The man frowned slightly.
’His account got frozen? You have to be sitting on an absurd amount for a bank to freeze your account... he doesn’t look like he’s got much, though. I suppose Stella came to the same conclusion looking at him. But let’s not judge a book by its cover.’
He smiled.
"Let me assist you. Can I see your account and the message you received?"
Theo brought out Thall’s phone, its screen a web of cracks, and opened it. The man watched in silence, eyes on the broken glass, weighing whether he was making a smart call or throwing away his afternoon.
Then Theo handed him the phone.
He went quiet the instant his eyes landed on the screen. Then, digit by digit, something in his posture shifted: his back straightened, his grip tightened, and his eyes climbed wider by the second.
He paused. He turned his head slowly to look at Theo. Then he looked back at the phone. Then at Theo again.
’Crap! What? This guy... this guy. Faahkk, I’ve hit the jackpot! Thank you, Stella! Thank you for turning this man away!!! A commission like this doesn’t walk through the door twice a year!’
He straightened his suit and bowed ninety degrees toward Theo.
"Welcome to Meteor City Bank, dear esteemed customer. My name is Billy Jean, and I’ll help you process all of this. Would you like to follow me?"
’What... just happened to this guy...’
Theo was thrown by the sudden change, but relief won out — he’d be getting help, and getting it fast.
From behind the counter, Stella stared after them, brows drawn together. She watched her colleague walk off with the ragged boy and couldn’t stop turning it over: why had he switched up like that, for someone like him?
Still, a faint suspicion had already taken root, and that suspicion would not let her rest. Soon enough she left her post to poke her nose into the matter.
Meanwhile, Billy escorted Theo across the floor, past rows of desks and the heads that lifted to follow them, toward the office of the bank’s Managing Director. Most of the staff who caught sight of it couldn’t stop talking.
"That shark Billy. What gold did he dig up this time? Why’s he taking that guy to the MD’s office?"
"Bro, did you not hear about a certain account that got flagged recently?"
"How am I supposed to hear about that? Isn’t information like that supposed to stay between the technical team and the managing office? Have you been going around fucking Felicity, Edwain?"
"Bro, why would you even jump to something so nasty?"
"Because I remember how updated you were on sales back when you were fucking Yara. And Felicity’s prettier than Yara."
The young man chuckled sheepishly and pushed his square glasses up his nose.
"You think so too, don’t you..."
The moment it stopped being about the strange customer Billy had taken, Stella turned her ears away and stood in the hallway, staring at the elevator that ran to the top floor.
’That gold digger. It couldn’t be... he stole my customer...’
Theo settled into the MD’s office, Billy standing behind him.
Whatever sat on that cracked screen, it had turned a cold shrug into a bow. Theo still didn’t understand it, but he wasn’t about to complain.