rectangle, because I knew I’d got that more or less right. I put the numerals in all four corners and put a circlearound the top left and a box around the top right. I put the oval with the portrait in the right place, and The United States of America and One Dollar too. This time I remembered that up at the very top of the bill were the words Federal Reserve Note , so I put those in, and I remembered that there were official seals on either side so I drew circles to the left and right of the portrait. I put a row of random numbers under the word America , and the words This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private under the word United . I drew a little squiggly line under each seal where the signatures were supposed to be.
She stopped me before I could finish. “No, that’s not it, either.”
I crumpled up the sheet and started a third one.
I drew the rectangle. I put the numbers in all four corners.
She stopped me right there.
“Nope,” she said.
I tossed the pad of paper away across the desk.
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“I want to teach you something.”
“What do you think this could possibly teach me?”
“I want to teach you to think about what you assume you already know.”
I glowered at her for a second. Chewed my lip.
Angela took a dollar bill from her pocketbook and put it on the table in front of me, faceup. Brand new. It couldn’t have been newer or fresher or crisper if it had just been pressed and cut yesterday.
I stared at it.
It was black and white. Only the serial numbers and the treasury seal were green. My eyes were stuck there, lost in the blackness and whiteness of the bill.
“Memory is a funny thing,” she said. “We remember American money as green, even though the fronts of the bills aren’t. But that’s not the lesson here.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off that bill.
She said, “This lesson is about trust.”
Then she picked up the green pen, stood up and walked away. Her coffee cooled on the desk and sat there until morning, when I finally got up the nerve to pour it out. The dollar bill stayed longer. I still have it somewhere. I keep it as a reminder of something. I’m not sure what.
The next day we went to work.
14
ATLANTIC CITY
I followed the short, twisty route through the heart of the city, reconstructing Ribbons’s getaway in my head. I could see him driving in front of me, pushing the limits of the shot-up getaway car until the chassis shook and smoke curled out from the hood. He was wrestling with the wheel. His rims sent up showers of sparks. Coolant and oil were leaking. But Ribbons kept driving. He had to. It was that or go back to prison.
Leaving the casino district was like dropping off the edge of the earth. Back there by the Boardwalk, the city was bustling with commerce. Five blocks farther down, the surroundings felt like a third-world country. In just a three-minute drive, I went from hundred-million-dollar penthouses to blighted slums. This non-neighborhood resembled a crack addict’s mouth; row houses stood out like crooked, rotten teeth with huge gaps between them.
I passed a broken fence the city had put up around the abandoned airstrip to keep people out. The place didn’t look like much—or anything at all, really. I might have driven past, had I not been searching for it. The Civic’s engine was the only sound. Nearby I could see a wholebaseball stadium with plywood over its windows and doors. I drove past another rusted fence that separated the landing strips from what had been the airport parking lot. In another era, there would have been security checks and floodlights and closed-circuit cameras every fifty feet. Now, the only floodlights would come in at night from across the thin saltwater inlet at the end of the runway, where the casinos cast long shadows over the bits of pipe and the blocks of concrete where the control tower had stood. Brown grass pushed itself up between the cracks.
The
She stopped me before I could finish. “No, that’s not it, either.”
I crumpled up the sheet and started a third one.
I drew the rectangle. I put the numbers in all four corners.
She stopped me right there.
“Nope,” she said.
I tossed the pad of paper away across the desk.
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“I want to teach you something.”
“What do you think this could possibly teach me?”
“I want to teach you to think about what you assume you already know.”
I glowered at her for a second. Chewed my lip.
Angela took a dollar bill from her pocketbook and put it on the table in front of me, faceup. Brand new. It couldn’t have been newer or fresher or crisper if it had just been pressed and cut yesterday.
I stared at it.
It was black and white. Only the serial numbers and the treasury seal were green. My eyes were stuck there, lost in the blackness and whiteness of the bill.
“Memory is a funny thing,” she said. “We remember American money as green, even though the fronts of the bills aren’t. But that’s not the lesson here.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off that bill.
She said, “This lesson is about trust.”
Then she picked up the green pen, stood up and walked away. Her coffee cooled on the desk and sat there until morning, when I finally got up the nerve to pour it out. The dollar bill stayed longer. I still have it somewhere. I keep it as a reminder of something. I’m not sure what.
The next day we went to work.
14
ATLANTIC CITY
I followed the short, twisty route through the heart of the city, reconstructing Ribbons’s getaway in my head. I could see him driving in front of me, pushing the limits of the shot-up getaway car until the chassis shook and smoke curled out from the hood. He was wrestling with the wheel. His rims sent up showers of sparks. Coolant and oil were leaking. But Ribbons kept driving. He had to. It was that or go back to prison.
Leaving the casino district was like dropping off the edge of the earth. Back there by the Boardwalk, the city was bustling with commerce. Five blocks farther down, the surroundings felt like a third-world country. In just a three-minute drive, I went from hundred-million-dollar penthouses to blighted slums. This non-neighborhood resembled a crack addict’s mouth; row houses stood out like crooked, rotten teeth with huge gaps between them.
I passed a broken fence the city had put up around the abandoned airstrip to keep people out. The place didn’t look like much—or anything at all, really. I might have driven past, had I not been searching for it. The Civic’s engine was the only sound. Nearby I could see a wholebaseball stadium with plywood over its windows and doors. I drove past another rusted fence that separated the landing strips from what had been the airport parking lot. In another era, there would have been security checks and floodlights and closed-circuit cameras every fifty feet. Now, the only floodlights would come in at night from across the thin saltwater inlet at the end of the runway, where the casinos cast long shadows over the bits of pipe and the blocks of concrete where the control tower had stood. Brown grass pushed itself up between the cracks.
The
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