With Help from Michael O'Leary Pt. 05

Chapter 21 "I Needa To Opena My Box."

Mrs. Enunzio came in the every Monday morning at 9am and Michael dreaded her weekly visit.

"I needa to opena my box," she said in the same words with the same monotonic inflection. Never did she say please or thank you. He had nightmares of her suddenly appearing behind him in the shower, in bed, when he was getting dressed or undressed, and in his car and announcing herself with "I needa to opena my box."

Never did she go to another teller. Instead, she impatiently waited for him to service a customer, reluctantly allowing customers behind her to go to other tellers who were free, just so she could abuse his good nature and ruin his day by waiting on her. He tried discouraging her waiting for him by prolonging the transaction with the customer before her, but that failed because she perched herself directly behind the customer, invading their privacy, coughing in their ear, and sighing aloud for them to hurry their transaction.

Then, when it was her turn, she slithered up to his window and stare at him until he acknowledged her. He always made her wait, counting his drawer or pretending to be doing other banking business. Then, when he was good and ready, he looked up at her.

"Hi, may I help you?"

"I needa to opena my box."

Michael took his time locking his drawer and clearing her desk before escorting her to the safety deposit vault.

Like an owl that spied a rat, she watched him pull out her box and, like someone staring at a magician hoping to see the clue to the trick, she watched him unlock her box and stood aside while she pulled it out. She took her box to one of the private rooms and closed the door. Then, when she was finished, she waited for Michael to see that she was done so that he could escort her back in the vault to lock her drawer away.

She remained staring at him watching him lock her box away before handing her the key. He never wondered about any of the other boxes, except for fat Mr. Girardi's box and Luigi Polli's box. Mr. Girardi's box weighed about 100 pounds and smelled like a delicatessen. Mrs. Girardi threatened to leave Mr. Girardi, who weighed more than three times that of his box and, even though he told his wife that he was on a diet, he never lost any weight. Michael believed that his box contained food, lots of food.

Luigi Polli lost an eye in the war and had a glass eye. Luigi looked so old that Michael wondered from which war, the Korean or Vietnam that he lost his eye, and was surprised to learn that Luigi lost his eye in the Gulf War. Michael suspected that Mr. Polli kept a collection of glass eyes in his safety deposit box because every time he left the bank after visiting his box, he fiddled with his eye, rubbing it and gentling positioning it with his fingers.

Every time Michael entered the vault, he imagined Mr. Polli's collection of glass eyes staring out at him through the confines of their metal coffin. He had nightmares of eyeballs flying through the air chasing him. He had nowhere to hide because wherever he hid, they could see. They followed him throughout the bank where, suspended in mid-air, they watched him work all day.

Now, he wondered what secrets Mrs. Enunzio hid in the Earth Bank's vault. He figured it was money, and by her miserable attitude, a lot of money. Then, he figured that it is where she saved papers, perhaps, something that showed evidence on someone who did not want it made public. He figured she was blackmailing someone and kept the proof there, in that little locked box.

That Monday, Mrs. Enunzio appeared before his window at 9:01am. He saw her enter the bank and tried to reach for his keys before she could say in that God awful voice, that voice that haunted him in his sleep, "I needa to opena my box."

Yet, quicker with her feet and quicker still with her words than he was with his keys, she appeared before his window.

"I needa to opena my box," she said.

Her voice shot through him like a car horn and continued to ring through his brain like a fire alarm. He wished he were back in South Boston working with his neighbors at Neighborhood Bank. He wished he was serving customers who he enjoyed helping. He wished he had never met this Mrs. Enunzio.

Michael's training in customer service was with the anticipation of the customers' needs. Although it was easy to anticipate her needs, she never gave him the chance to do that. She wanted control. She wanted him to jump and to take heed of her. She wanted him to serve her.

Perish the thought that if Michael saw Mrs. Enunzio walking through the door of the bank on Monday morning that he would not surmise that she wanted him to open her freaking safety deposit box. Yet, here she is again as if it was the first time they had ever met and as if it was the first time that she told him that she needed to get in her freaking box.

Instead or responding to her, he withdrew his reach for his keys and, looking at her as if he had never seen her before, said, "Pardon? How may I help you?"

"I needa to opena my box, she repeated. Bewilderment replaced her look of suspicion.

Her apparent puzzlement gave Michael the satisfaction that he needed to relieve the stress of complying with her rudeness. Mr. Florentino had a dentist appointment and would not arrive for at least another hour. Michael slid a signature card beneath the glass of his window to her.

"Please fill this out and I'll need to see two forms of identification."

Gina, the teller next to him, hid her smile by bowing her head to count her drawer.

"Whatsa matta for you?" She looked at the card as if human excretion stained it. "Stupido!"

"They knowa me," she said looking to the other tellers for help but they busied themselves with other customers. She looked back at him as if he had lost his senses.

"I coma hera every Mondaya to opena my box." She turned and looked for Florentino, but his office was dark. She filled out the signature card and withdrew her driver's license and social security card from her handbag.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot accept this," said Michael sliding the social security card back beneath the glass towards her. "Do you have something with both your picture and signature together on a form or paper, like a passport?"

She rummaged through her handbag mumbling to herself in Italian.

"Hera!" She shoved a yellowed picture back beneath the glass towards him.

"Luciana Filomena Carmela Enunzio," said Michael reading aloud from the car, "born October thirty-first, nineteen hundred and—"

"You opena mya box." The other tellers and customers turned to stare and she returned the stare that she received from the other tellers and customers before she redirected her attention back to Michael. "You opena mya box, nowa," she said in a hoarse hiss.

Michael slid the picture back to her and took his time getting his keys. He gathered his paperwork and took more time locking his drawers. Mrs. Enunzio rifled through her purse for her key. Her obvious frustration grew with her impatient wait for him to comply with her need to open her box. She mumbled something in Italian that Michael believed was directed at his family, specifically to his mother, because he recognized the word Mama. He promised himself to take a refresher course in Italian.

Mrs. Enunzio's demeanor appeared to soften when Michael walked out from behind his window with its raised platform. At 5'7" when standing straight and 5'9" with her 2" heels, she towered over him. She stiffened her backbone and, throwing back her rounded shoulders, straightened her postured to make herself appear even taller.

He unlocked and opened the cage to the safety deposit vault escorting her in and, as she would only be in the vault for her customary two minutes, as was her weekly routine, left the door ajar. He carried Mrs. Enunzio's box to a partitioned booth for her privacy and stayed within her sight watching and waiting for her signal that she was finished and ready for him to return her box.

Chapter 22 "No One Gets Hurt."

Michael heard loud voices outside the vault behind him and turned to see a man wearing a hat, dark glasses, and a fake beard approach him with a gun.

"Get down! And don't move!" He said. Michael fell to the floor and obeyed. "Park your ass on the floor, Granny," he said to Mrs. Enunzio.

Mrs. Enunzio withdrew her hand from her box and concealed her closed fist behind her black dress hiding it from his line of sight with her body. The wall of locked boxes commanded his attention. He tried several of them and then nudged Michael with his foot for an answer. "Hey, you got keys for these?"

Michael looked up from the floor to answer and saw that the man had been staring at Mrs. Enunzio who, still standing, stood as still as a cat stalking prey.

"Don't look at my face," said the man looking away from Mrs. Enunzio and directing his attention back to Michael. "Look at my feet." He nudged Michael's ribs with his foot. "Keys, you got keys for these boxes?" He asked, again.

"No, said Michael talking to the Nike log on the man's blue and white sneakers. "They require two keys to open. The bank only has one key and the customer has the other key."

The thief tried a couple of boxes, jiggling, pulling, and pounding them with the butt of his gun, but the locks held tight.

"C'mon, c'mon," said someone from outside the vault. "Seventy-five seconds."

"Okay, I'm comin'," said the thief. "You stay down and don't move," he said to Michael. "We'll be gone in a minute. No one gets hurt, here. No one gets hurt so long as they behave themselves."

"I know you," said Mrs. Enunzio without an Italian accent as the man turned to leave. "The fish eat the eyes of your no good bastard father for killing my babies."

Michael wondered if, in his fright, he imagined Mrs. Enunzio had said that without her Italian accent or if someone else was with them in the vault.

"C'mon, c'mon," repeated someone from outside the vault. "Forty-five seconds."

The man turned to confront Mrs. Enunzio facing her flatfooted. He gave her a hard look.

"And I know you." His hand kept his aim steady. "You had my father and my mother murdered, you vengeful witch."

Mrs. Enunzio smirked a sick laugh, a laugh that Michael had not heard since he asked Shannon Kelly to the prom when she laughed and said, "You're too short. Everyone will laugh at me."

"And why are you still standing" said the man to Mrs. Enunzio, "when I told you to put your ass down on the floor?" His voice interrupting her laughter became more enraged with each word.

Mrs. Enunzio tilted her head left and back and like a quick-draw gunfighter going for a gun, she jerked up her right hand. Perhaps, the thief thought she had a gun. Perhaps, he looked for an excuse to shoot her. Yet, before she could say, "Ehhh," and before she could tell him where to go with a look and without a word, he fired a single shot. Mrs. Enunzio lay dead on the floor with a bullet to her forehead.

Chapter 23 The Safety Deposit Box

Michael tensed, expecting the thief to fire a bullet in the back of his head. Fear drained the color from his face and he sweated waiting while racking his brain on how to escape death. He tried to think of all of those police shows that he watched where there was a bank robbery. Stay calm he told himself. Don't do anything stupid. He thought of Gabriella, remembering her loveliness, hearing her laughter, and believing that he would never see her, again. He knew that just as he did not want to live without her, he did not want to die without having had her in his life.

He wrote, Gabriella, I love you, in the dust on the floor with his finger. Now, when they found him dead, the whole world would know, Gabriella would know that he loved her.

He hated how foolish he had been in not asking her out. He hated his shyness in not telling her how he felt and declaring his love for her. He imagined her working with all those men in the Post Office and talking to all those customers and tossing her hair and giving someone else the look that she saved only for him. He imagined them staring at her beauty and lusting over her. He imagined them wanting to kiss her.

The thoughts of her kissing someone else sickened him and it made him angry when he imagined her in the arms of another. Bound to meet someone else, another man unafraid to ask her out and to declare his love for her, he feared the loss of her. Higher and farther away flew his beautiful butterfly, until he could no longer see her. She was gone.

Was it too late? Why would I choose to spend my life alone pining for Gabriella, who I could have had if only I had asked her to marry me? What is wrong with me? He thought all of his in nano-seconds as his life flashed before him.

He swore that if he came out of this alive that he would tell her how he felt. Only, now, he could not think of how to save himself. He felt sad that he never married and did not have a son like Little Ralphie or a daughter like Gabriella's Angela.

"Please don't kill me," he said finally, his brogue filled voice heavy with fear.

Angry that someone could come in his bank, threaten him with a gun, and murder him, he lay there in shocked disbelief. Still, he was not dead, yet. He had to do something to save himself, now. He had to say something to change the mind of this man from murdering him.

"I'm a man of God. I'm a good Catholic. I'm very religious."

The words came out of his mouth as if someone else spoke them. It scared him, until he realized that he spoke those words and not someone else. He did not know why he said it, but as ridiculous as it sounded to him now, it sounded more ridiculous to him later.

"I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I believe in good and not in evil." He waited, listened, thought, and said, "Surely, you can spare me. I did not see your face."

Even as he begged for his life, using God as an excuse to spare him seemed weak and sinful. His desperate fright embarrassed him. He, who was almost a priest, should not fear death, but should embrace it in an acclamation to his God and to his religion. Yet, he did not want to die. He wanted to live. He wanted to live the rest of his life with Gabriella; nothing else mattered, now.

Now, he understood why he could not become a priest. He did not possess the faith that he needed to carry him through a life that served the Lord. He felt like a failure and started searching within and questioning his life.

"What am I doing working in a bank? I'm educated, almost a college graduate," he thought. "My friends and family are right. I should have finished college, I should have gotten married, I should have had children and, then, I would never have worked for a bank as a teller. That is a stupid job, the lowest job in banking. I could have done so much more with my life. Now, some thug is going to end my miserable life."

He thought all of his in a few seconds talking to himself for no one to hear.

"Go ahead! I deserve to die," he said. "What a fool I have been" he said thinking that he was talking to the robber.

When he heard no response, accepting his fate, he prayed, at first silently and then, aloud.

"Dear God in Heaven, please have mercy on my soul..."

The louder he prayed, the more it dispersed his fear. Now, at peace with himself, it no longer mattered if he lived or died. Accepting his fate, he had given his soul to God. He wanted to die. What lay ahead of him in death had to be better than what he had on Earth, which was, he felt, nothing. He know he had had lived a good life and would go to Heaven. He would miss his family, of course, his friends, and his beloved, Gabriella, but he looked forward to seeing those people who had died and he missed.

He remembered Mrs. Walsh who, as a child living next door to her, gave him candy every time she saw him. He remembered Mr. McCormick, who told stories so scary that he could not wait to see him again for his next installment of fright. He wondered if his old dog Angel was waiting for him in Heaven. He hoped that Angel did not annoy God and the angels, too much.

Fear returned like a fever as soon as he stopped praying and thinking of those who waited for him in Heaven. He thought about Gabriella, again, and his heart hurt. His body burned with the love that he had for her. He thought of Little Ralphie and his stomach hurt. Who would protect him? His work here unfinished, he needed not to die, just yet. He thought of his customers at Neighborhood Bank. He wondered if Mrs. Sullivan with her endless scratch tickets scratched herself a winner. He wondered about Mr. Foley and if he got a job, finally, or if Mr. Shea was ever able to buy himself a car. He wondered if Mrs. O'Reilly ever had that operation or if Mrs. Duffy's twins ever made it to college. He smiled at the satisfaction that he would have the biggest wake and the grandest funeral at O'Connor's Funeral Home.

He wanted to peek to see if the robber still lingered but he could not see without moving his head up and back. He listened for any movement, but only heard his own quick breathing. He looked for any surface that would reflect the image of the murderer behind him. The bank had painted the vault an olive green. Mr. Florentino chose that color because it reminded him of his hotel room where he stayed in Venice, but his shade of green looked more like pea soup. Nothing reflected. He closed his eyes and waited.

It felt like hours before he had the courage to turn his head to look, when it was only a few minutes after the men had fled the bank. He never heard him leave. He crawled over to Mrs. Enunzio and felt her for a pulse. There was none. He crossed himself, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," and was about to pray for her when he saw her open safety deposit box on the counter above her head. Curiosity made him stand and larceny made him walk to it.

With the knowledge that there were no security cameras in the vault, he reached inside and felt around with his fingers while keeping watch that no one walked by the vault. He listened and watched for anyone walking towards the vault. His heart raced. Perspiration ran down his face and disappeared under his collar. His fingers touched nothing but the cold metal bottom and sides of the box. His heart stopped racing. He stopped sweating. He peered in. The box was empty. He knew that the robber did not take anything from it, did not even know Mrs. Enunzio had her box out as she concealed it with her body. Even after he shot her and she fell, he may not have seen it due to his agitated state.

He looked down at Mrs. Enunzio and saw a speck of paper peeking out from her fisted left hand. He knew that it must be important, must be of some value for her to conceal it from the thief. He eyed the open vault cage and listened for footsteps. He heard none. Again, his heart started racing and sweat appeared over his lip. He bent down to Mrs. Enunzio and twisting a small white envelope from her grasp, he stood and stuffed it in his pant pocket. He stepped back and covered his face with his hand. The horror of what he had just done sickened him.

Had it not been for the small entrance wound her eyebrow and the blood that pooled around her head, Mrs. Enunzio looked like she slept. The contrast of her lying so peaceful with the vivid recall of her murder weakened his legs. Except for the countless murders that he had seen in the movies, he had never before witnessed a violet act. When he looked at her again, he saw bits of her skull and hair splattered across the wall behind her. He thought he was going to be sick, but he did not. He tried to erase his image of the gaping hole in the back of her head.

He felt faint and sat on the vault floor with his back to Mrs. Enunzio. His ears ringing from the single gunshot, the sound of it that forever echoed in his head made him dizzy. The heavy stench of smoke hung from the ceiling like a dark cloud promising to linger over him for the rest of his life. The memory of her death, the conversation between Mrs. Enunzio and the murderer, he knew, would never leave him. He tried not to look at her, wanting to forget the image of her laying there dead. He put his arms around his raised legs and silently prayed for her soul.