"Wow," Chuckie said. It was totally unusual to see a Top Gun star coming bouncing down the side of the building, yet what happened next was so blasphemously irregular that by the time the dumpy bank manager reassembled his sense of reality clearly enough to cry “No! Don’t! This is a bank!” Thomas Cruise had once again pressed the seat of his $5B Dockers to the expensive bank window. His fecal winds cascaded over the expensive glass like a lover's smelly touch. “Oh yes,” The pretend-pilot sighed, “just like grandma’s pudding!”
“This is madness,” Chuckie cried. "Tom Cruise, take your anus off my money bank! It is very crazy and obscene! Also you cannot do it!”
“Your bank refused to accept scientology,” Tom snapped. “I’ll sue!”
“No! No! Don’t!”
“Oh yes,” Tom sighed, loosing another fart, “And when L Ron and I own your precious money, maybe I will do this!” And with that, Tom Cruise spun around and rammed his groin into the fart-tainted glass, making a noise that sounded like “DOING!”
“NO!” Chuckie sobbed, “you can’t! Not to our money bank!”
“Oh yes,” Tom laughed, moving his hips like he was Elvis. “Your building likes it!”
“NO!”
“Yes, it likes it and it says...”
“It says what?”
“That I’m way better than you at this!”
“NO!" Chuckie bellowed, hurling a hole punch across the office. "I bought the strategy guide, Tom! I practiced day and night!”
“Shut up bank man,” Tom snapped. “Your building has been dry humped by Tom Tiberius Cruise! It will never be satisfied with your junk bonds!”
“That’s not true!”
"I bet your mortgages weren't even prime, little man!"
"Lies!"
“Shut up," Tom sneered, "or I’ll sue you!”
Chuckie felt faint. He'd never experienced anything like this. “Gee,”he said, grasping his chest, “I’m powerless! Won’t someone please do something!”
“I will!” A mysterious New York accent said.
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“John Travolta!”
“Put on some Kenny G music, bank man!”
Yes! This was a plan of action that would achieve something active! “iPod Activate!” the banker cried, the sounds of Kenny’s sexy sax filling the house of money.
“Yes,” John said, rotating his shoulders and strutting like a gorram disco star across the room, “Yeah, that’s it, money man! Your building has real nice banisters!”
“Thank you,” Chuckie blushed. “I have someone wax them every day.”
“Then clearly you wouldn't mind,” John licked each portly fingertip before wrapping them around the polished cherrywood. “If I -- straddle them!!"
“No,” Chuckie fell to his knees, shaking his fists at the uncaring light fixtures. “It’s obscene! Why!!”
“Oh yes,” Tom groaned, licking the window's metal casement. “Take that banister, John! Take him like you know he wants it!”
“Stop this madness,” Chuckie cried, jabbing the buttons on his desk phone with his portly fingers. “You stop this, and get away from my bank, or I will call someone!”
“Telling people of events that have occurred constitutes fraud and defamation!” Tom vowed. “I'll sue!”
“Hello,” Chuckie shouted into the phone, “Hello! Yes, I am a bank manager of a bank and there are two celebrities here who are up to no good! I need a firehose and tasers and also some guns!!”
Tom ground against the glass like a mad belt sander that was going to town. His bunny was almost to the tea party.
“Yes, they’re scientologists! What? NO, I don’t want cheesy bread!”
The operator suddenly went away with a “click.” “You disturbed my revelry,” Tom Cruise growled, pressing on the switch hook. “Coitus buildingus interruptus. I’ll sue you for that.”
“Fine,” Chuckie swallowed hard. “Sue me.”
“Oh I’ll sue,” Tom said, jabbing one perfectly manicured finger into the pudge beneath the manager's tie tack. “But then," he backed off a step, nodding wisely, "maybe I won’t.”
“What do you mean, Tom?” John Travolta asked, removing his nipple clamps. “We always sue. We are scientologists and we sue whenever sueing is something we can feasibly accomplish. Suing is sort of our thing. It's what we do with our day.”
“No,” Tom said. “If this little... banker wants his bank back, maybe I’ll give him one chance.”
“Anything,” Chuckie whispered. “I’ll do anything to get Bankie back.”
“Alright,” Tom said. “One chance. Just one, you hear me little money man?”
“Yes,” Chuckie said, feeling each bead of cold sweat as it exploded across his brow.
“OK,” Tom said, “this is it, you hear me?”
“Tom,” John cried, “no!”
“Yes,” Chuckie closed his eyes, trying to drown out the mixture of shirtless Travolta and Kenny G that invaded his senses like circus peanuts and kim chee. “I hear you.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “This is it, bank man. Your one chance to save your bank through nothing but the skills and resources you have attained through decades of honest bankery.” He slid closer until his lips were nearly touching Chuckie’s right ear. "Are you ready?"
Chuckie nodded.
Tom's breathing calmed. "Okay, bank man," He leaned ever closer, his voice a dry, husky whisper. “What number am I thinking of?”
Chuckie clamped his eyes shut. In the darkness he could see himself as a younger, trimmer man walking through the rotating doors of the bank for the first time, feeling the lacquered grain of the banister under his palm, the nap of the carpet under his loafers as he ascended the stairs into the specular brilliance of faux crystal light fixtures on the marble-like linoleum. He could recall the buzz of his crt monitor; the perfect, sanitary angles of the white walls and fiberboard laminate desktop.
Chuckie's breathing slowed. He thought of all the pieces of paper that had found their way to his desk, flowing neatly from inbox to outbox -- a fountain of numbers-- outstanding balances, available credits, dividends, adjusted interest rates and calculated equity; all interpreted in decimal format with various periods or commas or percentage signs to mark their relative significance. So many numbers, and now all he had to think of was one. One discrete number in billions. Trillions! And those were just positive, real numbers. The number in question could be negative, possessed of any number of significant digits. It could be a variable number such as I, a complex polynomial such as 3x+2y^4, or a theoretically endless number such as Pi. An impossible task indeed. Yet if he couldn't do it, who could?
Chuckie Dorn's consciousness drifted into the cosmos like a rowboat on the tide. He was, all at once, Chuckie Dorn, the bank, and Tom Cruise's Dockers. His temporal anchor blurred as he spiraled through a fractal of multiverses, infinite instantiations of Tom Cruise's $5B Dockers, simultaneously classic pleated and slim tapered. Just as Chuckie's soul faded into nirvana like some manner of metaphysical urinal cake in the cosmic piss stream, a legion of Chuckies echoed back. Together they reached the harmonic resonance of matter, becoming one blinding laser point, a static, magnetic pole in space-time.
Drawing a slow breath, Chuckie opened his eyes. “Is it three?”
Though Tom Cruise's chiseled features betrayed no emotion, a lone eyebrow slowly arched. "Is that your guess?" The superstar asked.
“Tom,” John Travolta said.
“Did I hear you right,” Tom asked, his steely eyes locked on the money manager. “You only get one guess."
“Tom, let's just sue him," John insisted. "Sue him and then go on making sweet, beautiful love to his beloved moneyhouse."
“Yes.” Chuckie whispered. "That is my guess."
“I’m going to call you Numbers,” Tom said, ruffling the banker's sparse comb-over as he laughed. “I am going to name you that name I just named you right now because the number was three, you crazy mother.”
A wave of relief swept across the banker’s body. It was like an orgasm, only different. Different in that he did not loudly insist that he, indeed, was in the money.
“No!” John whined, dismounting and wiping off the udder cream. “Geez, Mav, this place had banisters!”
“Come on, John." Tom said, putting an arm around the Italian's sporadically hairy, greasy shoulder. "There’s a Starbucks across the street. Let’s blow this sad little moneystand and go dryhump a franchise.”
“If there’s a giant cup out front,” John said proudly, “it’s all mine!”
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