ATM (short story)

This short story is set in 1982.

Erik is having his weekend. It’s Sunday, and he is going out for a drive, to the nearest ATM he knows. The bank he’s affiliated with, AusPlus, has no ATMs in his area. Erik lives in the coastal suburb of Scarborough, which has lots of hills, in a rental duplex he shares with his long-term girlfriend Georganne.

She mentioned before, when Erik got up to go, that she may need ten dollars from the machine, but also she might have some in her purse, but was too lazy to go to the bedroom and check. Erik is left in mystery on how urgently Georganne needs the cash, and he is yet to decide whether he will withdraw extra.

The nearest ATM he knows is located fifteen minutes away, in one of his city’s industrial areas. This area actually has a little section for residences, which resembles any other suburb, but people in this city still associate the area’s name, Dunworth, with factories and carpenters.

The car Erik owns is a brown Mazda sedan, that he bought new from the lot. It is coffee-brown and mid-range in its features, and Erik takes it to the carwash once a month. On the way to the ATM, Erik is listening to a cassette tape of wind chimes and Oriental instruments, which the man at the cassette shop on Martha Lane calls “ambient music”.

It was a totally new genre to Erik, which he was clueless on how to listen to it. But after a few drives, and a tiredness of his other tapes, Erik has found that playing this cassette tape makes him slow down in a pleasant way. This has made him come back to the tape, and pass on the AM radio talk-shows, which hardly hold his interest anyway.

Erik thinks the word “meditation” is a highly exotic term, and he has yet to relate it to the floating reverie he has while driving. Sometimes he wonders whether his driving career is a numbers game, before this ambient music affects his reflexes, and he winds up in a fender-bender.

At the ATM, Erik finds a parking spot parallel to the road, right in front of the ATM. The machine is fixed into a cream brick wall that’s right beside the entrance to the Dunworth AusPlus branch, which is closed til tomorrow. Behind the bank’s sliding doors is a corridor leading into blackness, its carpeted floor fading away with it. A pattern can be seen on the carpet, involving green and grey geometric stuff, which looks modern for this era.

Erik has to wait because a man’s already using the ATM, who may be a similar age to Erik, but he is taller and lankier. A minute into this wait, Erik hears a little beep ringing from the machine, and the man in front gives off gestures like something’s going pear-shaped. He looks behind at Erik, “Sorry mate, I’ve stuffed something up.” The lanky man has some stubble, and is wearing a black hoodie, T-shirt and jeans. He’s got a sort of strong Aussie accent. He adds, “I’ve been here for five minutes.”

After a moment, Erik asks “What’s the screen saying?”.

“It’s just giving me back my cash. I’m trying to do a deposit, and it won’t take it.”

“You mind if I give it a look?”

Erik gets the okay, so he breaks rank, and walks up to the man’s side. The ATM is very shiny and metallic, and has a title hung above it in white bold letters, “CONVENIENCE CASH”. Erik tells the man, who smells of a sweet lemon cologne, that maybe the notes he’s depositing are torn or creased. The man puts the notes gently in Erik’s hand, and it takes a second to see they all look fine. A few twenties and a fifty.

Erik says, “I can withdraw however much you’ve got there, and we just swap our notes. I’ve had that before. The machine finds a crease or something, and it won’t take my notes.”

The man seems hesitant. “Yeah, okay.”

The man presses a button or two, to complete his session on the ATM. He then waits while Erik goes forward. He starts watching over the quiet street. Erik chooses to get that extra ten bucks for Georganne. He does mental maths to sum up the amount he needs for him and Georgeanne, plus the amount the stranger needs.

A moment later, a stack of warm notes is given out by the machine, and Erik gives the man one hundred and ten dollars. The man gives a warm thanks, and Erik wishes him luck this time around with the machine.

On the other side of this street, there’s a little shopping centre. It’s probably got the essentials, like a supermarket, a butcher, and so on. Normally shops are open around eleven on Sundays, if they choose to open at all. Erik sees that the centre’s interior lights are on, and he crosses over, free of a specific want.

When inside, he sees a bakery is open, and he buys one jam donut. Erik has had breakfast, but not enough of it. While the baker puts Erik’s money through the till, a thought crosses Erik that he could split the donut, and give the other half to Georgeanne. Or, he could have it himself later today.

Will he eat it in the car? The donut is covered in that frosty sort of sugar that needs a plate. Also, when walking off from the bakery, he sees that he forgot to get serviettes from the cashier, but he’s now back at the pedestrian crossing, en route to the Mazda.

From near the ATM, a growling voice reaches Erik while he’s crossing the road. He peers over while walking to his car, and he sees the hoodied man from before. He is in a ball on the floor, moaning. Another man stands above him, who is definitely responsible for that man’s state. This man is dressed more tidily than the hoodied one, wearing a baby blue sweater and grey trousers.

If anything, based on the vibe both men give, it seems much more likely that the trimly-dressed one would be injured on the floor. After seeing that the man who’s standing looks civil, Erik leaves the donut, wallet, and keys on the Mazda’s roof, and rushes around the car to them.

“Hey! Guys, what’s happened??”

The sweater guy says, while looking at the hoodied man, “This arsehole tried to give me fake cash.”

Erik comes nearer, and sees the grounded man holding his stomach. Maybe he has yet to get up or move much because he reckons he’ll just be overpowered or hurt again. Erik is baffled, and asks the sweatered guy, “What do you mean? What happened?”.

“This guy gave me fake money!” he says, raising his arms and showing that he’s holding two ziplock bags, like the ones used for schoolyard lunches, but each are packed with cash. He lifts one bag to Erik, “He has a bag of fakes, and a bag of real ones! He just swaps the fakes with people. That’s what I’m betting”. Erik is floored by this, since he didn’t see all this cash before, from the man he helped out.

“It’s really good counterfeit money, but I’m actually a numismatist who specialises in notes.”. The sweater guy sees Erik start speaking, and then interrupts because he has an idea for what Erik’s gonna say. The sweater guy adds, “A numismatist is into money. I’m an amateur expert in notes and coins. And I was luckily, for me and many other people, able to stop this fella with some liver shots, which are a specialty of mine in boxing class.”

Erik says to the downed man, jokingly but a little startled by all this. “You’ve had a lucky day. You tried jilting the only numis----money expert who can box. I thought you only had a few twenties on you.” Erik looks up to the sweater guy, “I swapped notes with him like five minutes ago, when I was using the teller machine.”

The sweater guy throws a curious look at Erik. “You best look at that money you’ve got then, man.”

A shocked emotion passes on Erik’s face, and he pops back to his Mazda’s roof, takes his wallet, and he pulls out the cash he exchanged from the man earlier. The sweater guy offers his service and takes look at each note. He asks Erik if he can hold the ziplock bags, while he holds Erik’s notes. The sweatered man is still keeping guard of the hoodied man by standing on his shoe.

He starts looking at the edges, patterns, and the “windows” in the notes. From the first second, he nods in disappointment. After a few notes, he just stops.

“You too. You are a victim of this ruse too, unfortunately.” says the man. He gives the “money” back to Luca, who gives back the ziplock bags, which were dirty and unpleasant to hold for him.

Erik says, “I was just at the bakery. I gave the baker one of those notes.” He looks at the hoodied man. “Thanks a lot, mate. You’ve been asking the same thing to everyone who comes here? That the teller machine won’t take your money?”

The hoodied man is upright now, sitting with his legs crossed like he’s on a playground. He mutters to Erik, “I have a sickness, mate. I got the itch. My dealer now knows when the money is fake, since he’s got expensive machines now. I got a bunch of fake cash that I can’t use anymore over there. He uses the machines because he doesn’t trust his customers. Where’s the respect these days? Thinking I’m a crook.”

The sweatered man stares at him.

The hoodied man says back, “If you use those notes I gave you, anywhere else, nobody would ever know. Please, let me keep some of it.”

“I’ll keep all of this.” The sweatered guy says, smiling. The hoodied man sighs and swears. “I won’t be able to eat today!.” He gets no reply. Erik feels uneasy.

The sweatered guy says to Erik, “Let’s go speak to that baker you stopped by.”, and then he tells the hoodied man, “You stay right here mate, if you want to keep at least some of this, and buy yourself a sandwich. We’ll be back.” Erik and the sweatered guy head towards the crosswalk, as if they were having a dead ordinary morning. The hoodied man watches them, sitting on the tiled concrete. There is a little more traffic now, but this is as busy as it will get for today.

Erik feels his pockets as he walks, and then quickly excuses himself from his new companion, and goes back to the Mazda. He unlocks the car, and puts the jam donut inside. He takes his wallet with him, giving a final look at the hoodied man, whose attention is focused on gazing up the road.

The sweatered guy waits for Erik at the crosswalk, and together they jaywalk. The man shakes Erik’s hand as they cross, and says his name is Luca. Erik also gives his name. They sound like they belong at a high tea, compared to the growling of just a minute ago.

At the bakery, there’s a young Viet man doing something at the counter, wearing a white T-shirt and trousers, which look pristine. Someone can be heard in the kitchen at the back, likely a relative. Erik and Luca go to the counter, and the baker recognises Erik, thinking he has done some kind of disservice, like giving Erik a jam donut made of expired bread.

Luca gives a little explanation to the baker as to why they’re here. The accent that Luca hears, when the baker says “Yeah” while he hears their explanation, makes him worry that the baker might not understand much of what he’s saying.

The baker seems to follow along, since he goes on his own accord to the till, and opens it with a shiny key from his pocket. Given how quiet the shopping centre is, Erik was likely the last customer at the bakery, so his cash would still be on top.

The baker asks Erik, “You use twenty, yeah?”. Erik nods. The baker takes out a twenty, and shuts the till with force, like it’s a vault door, before returning to the counter and gently placing the bill on top, within reach of Erik and Luca. With this gravitas and slowness of getting this note from the till, the baker seems to look upon it like it’s a fifty.

Luca, who’s still holding the two ziplock bags, gives the bag of counterfeits to Erik, and he uses his free hands to rustle through the bag of real notes, and pull out a real twenty. The two twenties are laid out side-by-side, and Luca holds each one up, giving a little rundown of the tiny features of real versus counterfeit notes. He tries at the start to avoid using words with three syllables, and he talks with a slower cadence, but midway through his speech, he reverts to talking as if the listener was fluent.

As he gives his explanation, Erik wonders if Luca has some kind of savant syndrome. He briefly wonders what Luca does for a living. Whatever it is, he’s probably the best at it. The Viet baker nods firmly, taking Luca’s words at face value. He also maybe takes notice of the baby blue sweater that Luca is wearing, and thinks he is very civilised, especially for weekend attire.

The baker asks, “Do you have any more of these?”.

Luca says, “We took all of it from the thief.” He raises his hand with a ziplock bag, sees he is holding the real money, and turns to Erik, who sees the cue, and lifts the bag of counterfeit money to show the baker.

“Can I have some? Like a few hundred?”. Luca pauses, and his eyebrows slightly sink. “You can’t use this stuff mate. Nobody can have this stuff.”

The baker leans towards them, and becomes more discrete-sounding, and he also sounds more fluent in English. “I have debt I need to pay by the end of the month. I have no savings, guys. These people I owe, they have machines. They check every note. I want to take some from the till here, and swap it with some of these fake notes you have. Please, guys.”

Luca is a bit dazed by the baker’s persistence, plus he has some sympathy for him. He is leaned over the counter too, hearing closely what the baker’s saying. Erik chimes in, “Luca, for counterfeit notes, how high quality are they?”. Luca steps away from the counter, and turns to Erik, wary of his question. “They are very good notes. Uncommonly good.” Erik sees that Luca is less assertive here than when it came to subduing the hoodied man. Words seem to be more penetrable than fists.

Erik says, “If they go through everyone in the city, and nobody can ever tell the very tiny signs that the money is fake, what’s the difference then between that money and a proper note?”

Luca looks stunned by this proposition that Erik seems to be teaming up with the baker on. Erik adds, “Only people with machines can tell, and those machines are probably very fancy and expensive, I’m guessing, so they are rare. It’s like a game that most people aren’t in on at all, so if you believe it, then it’s real. These will circulate forever, don’t you think?.” Luca is looking down the corridor, still dead quiet on this Sunday morning. He is thinking.

After a couple moments, Luca promptly turns and tells the baker, “We’ll be back in ten minutes. Hold on.” Luca and Erik walk towards the shopping centre doors, almost at a comically urgent speed.

“I probably won’t go back. Just needed him to get lost.” Luca mutters.

Erik feels for the baker’s predicament much more than that of the hoodied man, because the baker was upfront, civil, pleading, and above all, didn’t try dupe them. Also, when Erik visited the baker earlier, he was offered a complementary second jam donut, but he declined because he felt one was gluttonous enough. As they approach the crosswalk again, Erik asks Luca what he’s got in mind.

Luca bluntly says, “No idea”. Erik has nothing to add.

The two guys head back across to the ATM, where the hoodied man is lying flat down, hands clasped under his head like he’s gazing at clouds in a park. However, his face says otherwise. He looks like he’s passed through some panic in the time Erik and Luca were away, and there’s an aftermath feeling of misery from that minor yet intense episode. Maybe the man he owes money to is a big dog, a pitbull among a clique of Rottweilers.

The Sun is shining from higher up in the sky, and the morning chill has retreated somewhat.

“You’re a bloody idiot, mate!” Luca shouts to the hoodied man, and prods him with his foot. “We just called the cops, and you’re done now. You move, and I’ll choke you out.”

The hoodied man props himself up, shock in his face.

Luca adds, “Kidding, mate. But we were talking about it. You know, I don’t think we owe you crap. There’s heaps of people like you, in a pickle with a drug dealer.”

He crouches, putting the ziplock bags behind him, ready to act if the hoodied man tries a single bit of cleverness.

“Why do I give a shit about helping you, giving you my real money, and then leaving me with counterfeit, while you piss off, to go screw someone else over all over again? I’m turning this money into the police. I won’t tell that it was you, so you get that going for you, at least. Play it straight with your guy, and he might respect the honesty. Be as honest as you can. He probably won’t care, and may come eat your heart and lungs, but so what? Go to a hospital, a mental ward even, hide away for a few weeks.”

The hoodied man swears under his breath, and hits the tiled pavement with his palm. He rubs his face very firmly, disoriented by this blow to his plans. Luca is really set off by this reaction, and gives a look of puzzlement, mixed with anger.

Erik wonders if Luca is that easily set off by facial slights, and has some sort of eternal chip on his shoulder. Later on in the morning, after this ordeal is all sorted, Luca vaguely wonders that if this weakness could maybe explain his heavy investment in kickboxing and numismatism, as a means of releasing this chronic build-up of steam, and in turn, putting it into domains that interest him.

Maybe Luca is just hamming up his behaviour because it’s cathartic to do so, and maybe a bit addictive, once you get a taste of the empowering feeling. Especially in a situation where one can do it in the name of “putting crooks in their place” and “doing right by the law”, so it’s in a way, fully acceptable and even very appropriate.

Luca stands up, and kicks away the bags to be well out of the hoodied man’s reach.

“You tried screwing me over, and Erik here. Why do I care about donating real cash to you? Why would it bother me at all, if you get your legs crumpled with a bat by your Mr Escobar? Why?”.

There is no reply from the hoodied man.

“There’s no reason to help you. Piss off, right now, you shit.”

The hoodied man gets up. He knows he’s powerless, and also he clearly holds resentment. He walks off backwards, very quickly, with the agility of chronic stimulant users. He’s muttering some words nobody can hear, which are certainly related to what’s gone down. The hoodied man then turns around and faces where he’s going, and goes around the corner of the bank.

Luca nods to Erik, to go over to his Mazda. They go there, and Luca scans the roof, before drawing a dissatisfied look.

“How about you open your boot? No wind.”.

Erik manually unlocks the Mazda’s boot. It springs up, but it is too low and slow to hit either guy in the chin. If they were a few inches smaller, they might have flinched. The boot is clean, clearly vacuumed sometime recent. There’s a street guide for Perth from last year.

Luca respects this tidiness, but never says. He thinks that them two are maybe friend-compatible. The trenches, like the kind they’ve found themselves in today, can be the perfect cooking pot for friendship. No room for much politeness, just truth. That’s how Erik and Luca both made many mates in their lives, from the trench warfare of high school English, and woodworking.

Erik asks gently, on the timid side, “You gonna go now to the station? I’d come with, but I have a busy morning.”

Luca turns round to double-check if the hoodied man is near. He is gone completely, so Luca turns back to the boot and says, “That’s fine, Erik.” He is busy spreading out the counterfeit money on the boot’s floor. “I don’t think I’ll be going. Well, I’m unsure right now.”

The notes look so fresh, despite them just being in the possession of someone who probably skips showers.

There’s a bit of silence, and Erik senses something having formed within Luca, which looks like quite the pivot from his behaviour since meeting each other. Luca pulls on his nose with an urgent awkwardness, like he’s got the sniffles.

He says, “Most people don’t have machines like the people that he and the baker were talking about. Most people, most shops. With drug dealers and big-time businesses, like jewellers, it would be a more worthwhile investment for them, than for most stores in Perth. That guy we just met, they’re trashy. We were going about our day, not trying to scam anybody, and now…this has fallen into our hands. What do you think?”

Erik says, knowing where this is going, says to break the tension, “You better be saying my name with a K.”

“What?”

“It’s not the normal spelling of Er---never mind.”

Luca returns to his idea. “This is, in ninety-nine percent of all places, free money. It will never be recognised. If everybody who handles it thinks it’s real, then it is. It maybe needs some creasing, but that’s for later. I’ll count how much is here.”

After a minute or so, in which Luca counts twice, he says that he counts three thousand, one-hundred, and forty dollars. He says this figure under his breath, as though them two standing like this at a car boot, looking at cash, has not already given off a peculiar energy. “We can split this evenly, I won’t be greedy.”

Luca sees Erik gazing at the ground, his mouth bent into a dismayed sort of look.

Luca goes on, “If it’s not appealing to you, you can keep it and just think about it. Or give it to me, if you want. You can get my home number, but I’ve got no paper. It’s a lot, what you’ll be getting. It’s a bloody blessing. We are good stock, I know we are, and we could do with some blessings. I definitely could.”

Erik rests his arm on the boot lid. He tries to adopt a demeanour of some assertion, in how he’s hesitating, but he thinks that Luca can maybe see through it. Since Erik has hardly eaten today, he feels like he is too low on mental fuel to gauge the specific tone he’s giving out. He worries he looks to Luca about as firm as a paper bag in the wind.

“Luca.” Erik suddenly cracks a smile from the audacity of this offer, and the strong sense that Luca can see through his attempt at a distant façade.

Luca pounces, “--We’re not talking tens of thousands, mate. This isn’t grand fraud. Dole bludgers get more off the government over years than this. People that get elected make a bigger blunder of spending than this. How much they waste on other countries and shit like that. What’s half of this? I forgot the total number.”

“Three thousand and something.”

“Yeah, so that’s fifteen hundred bucks each, or so. Of what’s real money for most people, basically everyone. Just don’t buy drugs with this stuff, or go buy an engagement ring, because those places will take your head off. You know, the printing machines and stuff they use to make these is almost the same as at what they’ve got at the Mint. It’s just made in a different building that’s probably some crook’s house. I know fake notes to a tee, Erik, and you know what gave this away?”

Erik shakes his head.

“They all look fine. They just weren’t creased enough. They were too neat, and I think because the guy looked like shit, those two observations just didn’t go together for me. If these notes are from us, and we crease them up a bit, then who thinks twice?”

“Yeah, I hear you. My jam donut is probably melted in the bloody car.”

Luca is taken aback by this unrelated comment. Out comes a smile, and a pretty polite and mundane comment, which feel jarring after this talk about fake money.

“Bugger. This is a nice clean car, Erik with a K. I never bring food when I drive unless it’s all wrapped up.”

Luca then counts all the notes again, to split it up for them two.

Erik is stuck on the spot, his face in a deadpan way. He thinks he is stuck here watching Luca because he is too polite to assertively decline the money, end this interaction, then go off on his day. He could be back at the house with Georgeanne, by now, had he not gone off with Luca back to the baker to play detective. Erik’s hesitation about this offer from Luca has a lack of any adrenaline or stress underneath it, very likely from eating so little this morning.

If he was better fed, Erik would likely be more argumentative, he would have parted ways with Luca at the first syllable about keeping this “cash”, and drive off while eating his jam donut. Erik would be too hungry to eat the donut on the side of the road somewhere, like he normally would with messy foods. He would rather get crumbs of icing over his sacredly-clean seats, to get that energising hit of sugar and carbs.

“I’ll be back in a second.” Says Erik.

He unlocks his car, checks his seat for any stains from the jam donut, sees none, and then he takes out his wallet. He heads back to the ATM, which is unoccupied.

Luca looks up at him, then goes straight back to counting, which he is doing much slower this time. He is hunched in a way that may hurt his back, but maybe his kickboxing conditioning is helping him here. It helped him subdue the hoodied man, steal some counterfeit cash, and count them in a cramped boot. It has lots of applications in this particular situation.

The interface of the ATM is formidable and clunky. It has a stainless-steel finish, and says in bold, capital letters above, “CONVENIENCE CASH”. Did you know the first ATM in Australia was set up in Sydney, in 1969?

Erik normally goes in the bank itself to withdraw cash, but since it’s a Sunday, he has to read the engraved instructions on the ATM, all in capital letters probably because it’s cheaper to engrave, and outsource his task to this machine, rather than a smiling lady with a beehive. Erik takes his card out, and this whole activity of withdrawing from the ATM feels refreshing in how mundane it is, after what he’s gone through.

He follows the instructions, which have gotten a bit more familiar over time, although this is more through his muscle memory than him paying attention to what he’s pressing on the machine. It’s like a way more mundane version of a pianist running through a familiar sonata, which Georgeanne happens to do, in her paid role within a Perth orchestra.

Erik already withdrew from the ATM before. The money he withdrew is currently with Luca, being laid out in the boot. Erik knows this, but he felt very underpowered while being right with Luca, in the tractor beam of his persuasive skills.

Back there, he felt too insecure to ask Luca for the bag with the real money, and take from it just the amount he came here for. On top of that, he would need to ask Luca to take the money out his boot and leave, so he can drive off. Those tasks felt crushingly heavy, right now. He also, despite having no ties with Luca, did not want to disappoint him by rejecting the money, and look too morally square and bland.

From over here, by the ATM, Erik feels alone enough to get his conscience back somewhat. However, he still needs to walk back to the car, and this clarity and assertion may crumble when he reaches it. Erik currently feels a seedling in his mind, about how minute this counterfeit money is, when compared to the total amount he will earn in his lifetime. He suspects that his mind will continue to grow that thought once he returns to Luca, and it will be too gigantic and tempting to resist.

Erik turns and looks at Luca and the Mazda, which is about ten or twelve metres away. From over there, Luca’s voice would only reach Erik if he shouted, and a shout would likely sound much less charismatic and dominant. Erik looks back to the ATM, and he continues his withdrawal. He takes out twenty dollars. He then scratches that, and chooses to withdraw fifty, since twenty feels too little for a visit to the ATM. Maybe this can save him another visit to the ATM in coming weeks.

The ATM starts buzzing when Erik confirms his desired amount. It sounds a little like a washing machine. Erik vaguely reckons, while waiting, that the ATM’s casing absorbs lots of the electrical and mechanical whirring and whatnot, since he imagines more to be happening inside than what he hears.

This machine takes quite some time to produce the cash for Erik. It’s humming and whirring away. Maybe ATMs just take longer on Sundays. Erik hopes that it’s only halfway done.

THE END