Marcus counted the bills at home the night before, the way he always did. Fives in one stack, tens in another, twenties folded lengthwise because that's how he pulled them from his pocket at the end of each shift. He smoothed them flat on the kitchen table with the heel of his hand. Twelve hours of overtime looked like any other Tuesday deposit.
First Federal had three tellers on Tuesday mornings. He'd been coming in person since the branch opened on Garfield, back when it was still a savings and loan with a water cooler in the lobby. The water cooler was gone now. The lobby had a screen that cycled through mortgage rates.
The teller this time was a young man — Devon, according to his nameplate — who took the deposit slip and the cash with one smooth motion. He fed the bills into the counting machine without separating them by denomination first, which meant the machine sorted them, which meant Devon never touched the money twice.
Marcus watched Devon's hands. Quick, unhesitant. The kind of competence that comes from repetition so recent it hasn't thickened into habit yet. Three weeks, maybe four. Still counting under his breath.
The machine finished. Devon typed the total, glanced at the deposit slip, typed again. The screen between them showed Marcus's name and an account number and a balance that would be updated within one business day.
"Six hundred forty," Devon said.
Marcus nodded. He knew the number. He'd known it since Sunday night, sitting at the kitchen table after his grandson had gone home, pressing the bills flat. The boy had called to cancel their fishing trip. Something with his friends. Marcus had said of course, no problem, and then he'd picked up the Sunday shift because the house was already quiet and the overtime was there.
Devon slid the receipt across the counter. "Anything else today?"
Marcus looked at the receipt. Six hundred and forty dollars. It didn't say anything about the Sunday shift or the twelve-hour Monday that followed it or the part where he'd eaten both lunches in his truck because the break room was loud. It said six-forty and the date and a transaction number.
"No," Marcus said. "That's it."
He put the receipt in his wallet behind his license, where the old receipts lived until he cleaned them out. He'd clean them out eventually. For now they accumulated — small slips that recorded the same conversion each week: time into money, money into balance, balance into a number that didn't remember what it had cost to assemble.
Devon was already looking at the next customer when Marcus turned toward the door. The lobby smelled like new carpet. The screen was showing a thirty-year fixed at 6.2 percent. Outside, Tuesday was still going, indifferent to the transfer that had just been processed inside it.
Marcus pushed through the glass door and stood on the sidewalk for a moment. The receipt in his wallet was already just a receipt. The bills were already just a balance. The Sunday morning was already something that had happened to someone who wasn't standing here anymore — someone still at the kitchen table, pressing fives flat, knowing exactly what each one had cost and not yet ready to let the machine count them into nothing.