He was counting. Then the sky interrupted.
A Moment, Please
“Could you move the gold?” someone called.
Victor held up one finger without looking down.
He had reached an awkward number. Behind his chair, the coins were counted; beside his shoes, they were not. A voice from the street could move a number clean out of his head.
“Only the bars by the doorway,” the voice added.
“One moment.”
Victor began the row again.
Below him, Len stood outside his little repair shop, holding a wooden box against his hip. Three gold bars lay across the entrance. He had asked Victor’s men to leave that space clear when they brought the latest delivery.
The men had gone. The bars remained.
Len waited until the box grew heavy, then carried it through the narrow gap sideways.
Victor had not lowered his finger.
Above the Street
From the red chair, the arrangement looked splendid.
Banknotes made broad steps up to his feet. Gold caught the light between them, and a bronze bull stood on a bundle of certificates. Victor had turned its head towards the street. He liked the impression that it was about to charge.
His watch chain pressed against the waistcoat he had worn for the occasion. He loosened a button and leaned back, pleased with himself.
A woman passed below carrying a child. Near Len’s door, an old man gathered his blanket away from a trickle running along the gutter.
Victor lifted a corner of his own coat clear of the chair’s carved arm. The gold leaf could catch a thread.
Someone called from beneath an awning.
“Rain coming.”
Victor glanced at the notes nearest his shoes. He placed a bar across their upper edges.
There. Nothing would blow away.
An Unscheduled Inspection
He had just begun to laugh at the first enormous drop when the sky split open.
For one white instant, his magnificent waistcoat displayed an arrangement he had never ordered: ribs, spine, and two raised arms, all brilliantly accounted for.
His laugh became a shout.
Thunder struck the street. The bronze bull vanished from his sight behind a sheet of rain, and a shower of loose notes fluttered past the chair.
When Victor could see again, he was slumped against its wet red cushions. His hands shook. One shoe had gone; he could not remember losing it.
“Someone!”
At the shop, Len was speaking urgently into a telephone. He looked up, called back that help was coming, and stayed where Victor could see him.
Victor tried to answer. Another crack of thunder swallowed the words.
This time he waited, watching Len’s face.
Down at the Door
Later, with the storm passing beyond the roofs, two people helped Victor down to a bench inside the shop. Len brought a blanket. It smelled faintly of leather and the polish from his worktable.
Outside, coins lay bright in the rainwater. Nobody was counting them.
Victor looked towards his chair.
“Six hundred and forty—”
“Your name?” one of the people beside him asked.
He turned back.
“Sorry?”
“What’s your name?”
“Victor.”
Len set a cup on the table without moving the telephone far from his hand.
Victor watched him clear a space beside it. Through the open shop door, he could see the three bars still lying across the entrance.
“I asked them to leave your doorway clear,” he said.
“I asked them too,” Len replied.
Victor pulled the blanket closer. For a while, the only sound was the rain dripping from the awning.
“When they’re back,” he began.
Len looked at him.
“The gold. I’ll have it moved.”
He waited this time for the answer.
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