Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

Behind him he heard his secretary, Helen, enter and turned to see her carrying a bouquet of lilies in a crystal vase. A beam of the expiring sun shot through the globe of water in her hands, spraying light across the dark portraits over the couch and dancing briefly on the paneling.

“Who on earth are those from?”

“Me,” she said, clearing a place on the coffee table. She was a tall woman and had to bend nearly to a right angle to adjust the stems, her hand reaching up to brush her graying hair behind her ear. Most women her age at the bank had cut theirs short and wore skirts and jackets of a uniform blue or black. Helen, who was English, looked more like a tenured scholar in some branch of the humanities, dressed in formless cotton trousers, a turtleneck, and a red cardigan.

“What for?”

“It’s your birthday.”

“Oh. I suppose it is. That’s kind of you. Unnecessary, certainly. But kind.”

“They were supposed to arrive hours ago but they should last awhile,” she said, stepping back to appraise her arrangement. The phone on her desk rang and she returned to the other room to answer it.

Down below, the last rays of sun passed over the heads of the pedestrians to fall evenly across the wall of a building at the corner of Liberty and William, which until recently had displayed a mural of Seurat’s La Grande Jatte —a set painting for, of all unlikely things, a Hollywood movie shot in the financial district. They had left it up after the production and Henry rather enjoyed having the mural there to remind him of the original, a painting he tried to visit whenever business took him to Chicago. One habit of his, at least, of which his sister would approve.

Two months ago, back in August, Charlotte had found a new cause for her paranoia: what she claimed to be the theft of documents from the house, as if they hadn’t simply been swallowed up in the general chaos. She’d gone so far as to call the police to request an investigation, which they quite reasonably declined to open, this in turn only heightening her sense of persecution. Concerned that her rate of deterioration was increasing, Henry had got in touch with a neighbor, whom he’d asked to phone if she saw anything awry. The woman had called four times since. First it was a dozen saplings delivered in burlap wrap and left to die in the sun; then branches stacked at the end of the driveway to prevent cars reaching the house; after that, the collapse of one section of the barn roof, through which rain now poured; and finally, the dogs howling at all hours. Last week, he’d gone ahead and hired a home aide. While at a conference in Basel, he’d got a call on his cell phone from her saying Charlotte had barred her at the door and told her never to return.

“You don’t have a lot of options,” his lawyer had told him. “If she gets violent, we can talk.”

“Are you expecting someone?” Helen called from the other room. “There’s a woman downstairs. She says she made an appointment.”

He knew there had been a reason for him to tarry here on a Friday afternoon but he hadn’t been able to recall what it was.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s my fault. I forgot to mention it.”

A few minutes later, Helen showed Evelyn Jones into his office.

With some reluctance, she placed her handbag on the coffee table and, flattening the front of her skirt onto her thighs, perched on the edge of the couch.

“Can we get you something? Coffee, water? Or something stiffer for that matter?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine, really.” She looked about the room with what struck Henry as genuine marvel. “It’s not what I was expecting,” she said. “This building.”

“Yes, it’s a bit unusual for the neighborhood. It’s modeled on a Medici palace. You saw the wrought iron? Rather fanciful, I suppose. But the idea of a central bank was still new back in the twenties. I think they wanted to make a statement. You’re sure I can’t offer you anything to drink?”

“No, thank you. I know you’re busy. I’m probably interrupting.”

“No, just wrapping up the week. I’m not traveling for once, which is a blessing.”

He remembered now that when she first left a message a week ago he’d guessed it was an inquiry about working at the Fed, which while a rather direct approach wouldn’t be unheard of and would account for her nerves. But noticing her rigid posture and pursed lips he wondered if there wasn’t something more than that to her visit.

“We get them from the Met,” he said, following her eyes to the paintings. “We loaned them a bar of gold back in the seventies for some show or other and they’ve been kind enough to let us borrow from their basement ever since. The one problem being my predecessor decided the appropriate policy would be to hang only paintings by artists from the Federal Reserve’s Second District, a somewhat limiting condition when it comes to the history of art. But there we are.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Not at all,” he said genially, beginning to perceive the outlines of the thing. “Do you have another appointment after this?”

“No,” she replied, surprised by the question.

“So you’re not in a rush?”

She shook her head.

“I tell you what. Since this is your first visit here, allow me to show you something.”

He stood up before she had the opportunity to decline, holding his arm out to guide her back through his office door.

“Helen, I’m just going to take Ms. Jones downstairs. We won’t be long.” He led her along the arch-ceilinged hallway, their footsteps silent on the thick carpet. “Did you fly down?” he asked, as they stepped onto the officers’ elevator.

“No, I took the train.”

“Yes, it’s far more civilized than a plane these days.” He allowed a few floors to pass before observing, “When they built this place they dynamited their way a few stories into the bedrock of the island. It was one of their great precautions. Turns out it was the only foundation strong enough to bear the weight.”

The elevator doors slid open and they made their way down the windowless passage to the security officer’s desk.

“Charles,” he said, “are the tours over for the day? I was going to show this young woman around.”

“It’s all yours, sir,” he said, leading them through the ten-foot, cylindrical airlock and into the antechamber. “Will you need any help with the stock, sir?”

“No, I think we’re fine,” Henry said. He unlocked the inner gate with his own key and ushered Evelyn into the vault, clicking the gate shut behind them. At the center of the room stood the metal scales still used to test the purity of the gold. Beside the scales were two pairs of magnesium shoe clips worn to protect the officers’ feet lest they should drop a bar in transit and crush their toes.

“We’re eighty feet below the sidewalk here. Thirty feet below sea level. Go ahead,” he said, gesturing toward the rows of floor-to-ceiling metal cages that lined the walls, numbered but otherwise unmarked. “Have a look.”

His guest glanced at him first, inquisitively, as if an elaborate trick might be afoot, but then succumbing to curiosity she approached one of the cages containing dark-yellow bars ten feet high and twenty deep. After a moment, she turned to look down the aisle, taking in the sheer number of separate compartments.

“It’s the largest accumulation of monetary gold in the world,” he said. “In fact, it’s a decent-size chunk of all the gold ever mined.”

“And all this belongs to the government?”

“No. The Treasury keeps our reserves at Fort Knox and up at West Point. The vast majority of what you see here is owned by foreign central banks. Most countries in the world deposit with us. We’re just the custodians. When governments want to do business, they call up and we move the gold from one cage to another.”