Let it Snow

She quickly settled the new addition to the family down, and all three of us continued our conversation in a more subdued tone. Kathrin seemed to thrive on the interaction between us, and for a moment it did make me wonder if this sort of thing was unusual for her. I did get the impression we would all be seeing more of her, since she finally revealed that she was now the manager of the bank in town. My friend and I took a quick look at each other when Kathrin was distracted with a new born in her arms. She went that cute pink again when Marlene and I congratulated her on her taking over at the bank.

Marlene admitted that she worked there for a year before child number two came along. I remember the conversation we had over a barbeque one Sunday. Marlene moaned about old Mr. Bingham just treading water at the bank, waiting for his retirement, and that same apathy was starting to seep down into the workforce. A part of me did wonder if Kathrin had been given the job to see if she could turn it around, or close the bank for good.

What threw me was Marlene inviting Kathrin to dinner the next Sunday. We both looked at Marlene who simply smiled back at us and also reminded us that she was due to leave the hospital the next day.

"So you two set your diaries for Sunday. Nick always brings wine and beer." She looked directly at Kathrin before saying, "You just bring yourself."

We both noticed that Kathrin was getting ready to decline the offer, but Marlene was a force of nature when she had to be, and I get the feeling that force of nature was seeping out of her at that very moment. More so when her hand sought out Kathrin's and held on tightly, causing Kathrin to look directly at her.

"Please come, and don't let the fact that I'm married to a cop influence you. After all, I wouldn't want to hear about all those speeding and parking tickets you could be getting for the foreseeable future if you don't come."

This time, all three of us woke the baby with our laughter. The nurse shooed us both out after that, telling us we were causing a disturbance. We tried to blame Marlene, of course, but that fell on deaf ears. She was sure milking the mileage out of just having a baby, a really cute one, though.

*******

The rest of the week was commonly known as auto-pilot for me. Work, home, feed yourself and bed. Repeat the next day. When I looked up, it was Sunday morning and I smiled, although I wasn't sure if it was because I was seeing my friends again, or Kathrin. She seemed to have taken on a life force of her own in my head, and although none of those images swayed even remotely close to pornographic, I couldn't say with hand on heart that I wouldn't mind them going there.

Kathrin had ignored Marlene's warning and bought flowers with her. The hug she got from my friend told us all she was forgiven. Both the girls practically locked themselves in the kitchen while Tony and I played with the children. I'm sure we both made as much noise, if not slightly more, than those little munchkins did. We would see both women watching us on occasion through the serving hatch; Kathrin sure had a cute smile that went straight to her eyes.

Dinner was fun, and feeding the munchkins was left to Tony and me while Marlene set about dissecting our new friend's life. Kathrin was a year older than us three, absolutely blasted a hole in all her classes at college and came away with a degree with honors. Hell, she even had letters after her name, as well as an open invitation to come back as a guest speaker. It was her love of numbers that got her that degree in accountancy. The faltering in her career came when she discovered that she was too qualified for most entry posts, and I suspected she also scared those who would have been her bosses, even in the infancy of an interview.

She ended up in international banking, and over time earned herself a reputation, this time as a no-nonsense boss. It was as she was describing herself that we all looked at her opened mouthed.

It took Marlene to ask her, "With all those qualifications, why are you here at our bank?"

Kathrin went a slight shade of red around her neck when she told us that she turned down a weekend conference at the company owner's weekend gateway, which was to be her downfall. Firstly, nobody said no to the boss and all the women were expected to "play nice" for the entire weekend if they expected to go any further in his company.

"When I turned him down, he sent for me the following Monday. We waded through the pleasantries and then hit me with, and this is word for word, 'Kathrin, look, no harm no foul. I still respect you. In fact, with your skill set, you're the right person to turn around a situation and make a real name for yourself. There's this branch that needs a competent manager. We'll give you 100% of the support you need to turn it around."

I looked towards both my friends and the anger in their eyes reassured me that they would see the same in mine. Marlene knew from her seat on the town council, and, of course, shared with us both that she would have a monumental fight on her hands to keep that place open.

It also seemed that the apathy at Mr. Arnold Bingham's branch hadn't gone unnoticed at the head office, either. Kathrin voiced what we all suspected: management had decided to send her to our neck of the woods in the hope that she would fail. We all read into that statement as also giving the owner a reason to fire her, as well. Although he wouldn't be stupid about it, the signs were there. Of course, Kathrin had been set up to fail.

Even the children's antics seemed to have kept them occupied as Kathrin's story came to an end, causing an eerie silence around the table. Marlene stared at our guest for all of a minute before standing and telling Kathrin to do the same. I had seen this in my friend only a few times in our lives. This was when she became a true force of nature and not even her own husband would dare to challenge her when she went there.

Marlene came around the table as Kathrin stood, still unsure why and yet the steel placed in that one word forcing her own body to do so. Marlene wrapped her arms around our guest and hugged her tightly, out of instinct perhaps, but Kathrin's arms sought the same comfort of my friend's frame and the hug was mutually shared.

I was still smiling when I looked at a confused Tony. He shouldn't have been confused, but he was. I put that down to his attention being divided between the conversation going on around him and entertaining the children. Little did he know at the time, that the gang of three had just expanded to four.

Over the weeks I heard from many sources that the bank was in trouble; as Kathrin put out one fire another would start. Marlene marched into the bank a week before Christmas and told Kathrin she was coming to her house for Christmas. Kathrin knew my friend a lot better, by then, and quickly figured that other than her going home for Christmas, refusal wasn't even going to work.

It was while we all sat down to eat that she told us that the bank was closing, come January. All three of us looked at each other and then at our guest. Given what Marlene had managed to glean from the town council and gossip, the bank's owners had steadily heaped more and more troubles onto the bank, and eventually given its own reason to shut it. We also figured that Kathrin had also been given her notice as well.

Marlene's hand sought out her friend's as she came to the end of giving us this news. She held on tightly and said nothing for awhile, just waiting for Kathrin to surface from her own gloom. Eventually, we all watched as her hand squeezed back.

Marlene's voice cut through the conversation the children were having, causing them to stop and stare at their mom. "Do you trust us?"

A tear trickled down Kathrin's cheek as she looked at every face at the table. We saw defeat in her eyes, she shouldn't feel like that, but she seemed too. We all knew what the company, or rather the owner, had done, and it was done out of spite, but the town council acting on information from Marlene watched and planned as well.

It was Kathrin's turn to look at her friend and say. "When I came here, I had nothing. Tony pulled me from my wreck of a car and put me in the safe hands of a grease monkey we all call Nick, and he shared his time and space with a total stranger. I came to you at the hospital to apologize for placing your husband in danger, and a friendship was born that day that increased to all three of you, and I will always cherish this. So yes, I trust you. Of course, I trust you all."

We all doubted if we had eased her worries, but we couldn't share what was going to happen later. She would find out soon enough.

*******

I had been to go on a long haul just after Christmas, round trip was ten days, I spotted Tony's cruiser parked in the spur that I used when Kenilworth Pass snowed up. He waved and I had time so I pulled over for a chat. It seems that three days after the Christmas holidays Marlene walked into the bank and sought out her friend, telling her they were going to dinner. They both walked to the local diner and sat looking at each other; I think Kathrin knew better than to ask about why they were there. Sometimes it was better to just let Marlene run at her own pace; it tended to get everyone there in the end.

"Do you like it here?"

It was an unusual question from her, but she waited her friend out, sipping on her coffee before she would say much else.

"I've traveled a great deal in a short time, seen many a board room and done plenty, but as Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, there's no place like home." Her arm cast an arc around the diner before she continued. "And then I came here and found a home, a real one. So, in essence, I like it here but I'm not staying. No matter what I do, the bank is dying, Marlene."

My friend leaned back in her chair and said. "Care to explain why that is?"

With a shrug of her shoulders she did just that, telling her that Arnold Bingham's apathy had spread too deep. The company should have got rid of Arnold at least a year earlier, based on poor reports and complaints from the town folks. Even the town's own council had written a scorching letter to the bank's owners, and yet they did nothing, causing Arnold to believe he was immune.

"The owners are simply going to cut their losses, and soon. They may look on it as a tax break, or the owner may have other plans. Let's face it, he's not short of a buck or two. Yes, it may cost them in the short run, but the company will ride it out, and if need be, they will simply throw Arnold and then me under the bus if they have to, so they can convince everyone they did everything they could to save something they have all but cut loose."

Once again, Marlene let the conversation stew for a moment and then said, "Do you want to stay here?"

Kathrin laughed, but Marlene knew it was more from frustration than anything she had said.

"Of course I want to stay here, the whole town has made me welcome, but the whole town doesn't bank with us, anymore. Customers are coming in daily and closing their accounts, and the local businesses are taking their money elsewhere. Arnold Bingham may have started the slide, but it's almost like my being here has increased it and that's not gone unnoticed by my company."

Both women were left to their own thoughts while they finished their meal. They didn't see each other again until a few days later. By then of course I got both Marlene's and Kathrin's version of the same conversation. Me being tight lipped over what was about to happen was on pain of death from my friend, I just wished I could have been there, Marlene promised to phone me with the details when she could.

*******

The town council asked to see Kathrin in their chambers. She went expecting a roasting for the town's only bank deserting them. Marlene pulled her friend to one side and then into her office.

The coffee was good, but even Kathrin knew she wasn't here for a coffee break. "I brought you in here for a reason, if you stood in front of the town council then everything said would be found in the minutes, and for the moment, that is the last thing anyone wants."

As intrigued as Kathrin was about this turn of events she still sat and waited her friend out.

"What I'm going to tell you means you will either hate me or throw something at me on the way out the door."

Still unsure what to do, Kathrin, although intrigued, decided to say nothing. Marlene paused for a moment, sucked in air and continued. The bank under the leadership of Arnold Bingham had been sliding for some time. Some of the women there had worked with Marlene and cautioned her about what was going on since she once worked there.

Arnold would pull it around for a few months, but it would slide again. The owners were doing nothing with the complaints about their own bank, so over a barbeque the three of us hatched a plan to do something about it ourselves. Marlene took our idea to the town council, and the idea bore fruit.

"We all wanted either Arnold to pull it around or the owners of the bank to do something about the slide. No one did anything. The slide started to affect local business and some of the life-long accounts were being moved to the bank at Grand Springs. That's money leaving this community."

Marlene checked with a lawyer and applied for a license to open their own bank in town, ready for the day when the owner finally woke up and closed the only one around there. The town council knew that the lack of a bank would put the town on its knees. The regulatory authorities agreed in principle, but the sticking point was who would be in charge.

Kathrin was so engrossed that she almost didn't ask the most obvious question. "So whose name is on the license?"

Marlene's eyebrows rose in surprise that she had missed that part. "Oh sorry, Nick's is, or rather his company's name."

Her cheeks went an interesting shade of red and her body temperature rose.

"So Nick wants to see me out of a job?"

Marlene laughed, which confused her friend.

"Hell no. He wants you to take over the new bank once you got your head out of your ass and figured out why your boss really sent you here."

Marlene tried once again, starting from the beginning and detailing other events.

"Honey, the only reason the bank is still cash rich is because Nick and three other businesses from this town have kept their accounts here, that, and half the personal accounts, but all are watching Nick, and when he jumps, they plan to follow."

Marlene could tell that her friend was getting angry and came around the table to sit next to her. She went on to explain that Nick wanted her to take over control of the new bank, but that would mean her boss would personally see to it that her name was forever mud, a career that she had spent so long building would be destroyed and Nick wasn't going to allow that.

"Kathrin, we all want you to take over, build the new bank and keep it independent and in town like it should be, not open to the whim of someone a thousand miles away. But that would come at a cost. You would lose everything you have worked for, but in return, you would have job security for life, because we all know what a great job you would do with a new bank to look after."

Kathrin felt the weight of too much information in too short a time. She stood, hugged her friend when she stood and without saying a word, simply left.

It was almost a week before Kathrin phoned Marlene. They knew that she had flown back to company headquarters and fully expected a backlash. Only silence had prevailed, until that moment.

"Get the papers ready for me to sign. I've been officially unemployed for the last three days, and other than a nondisclosure agreement I've had to sign with regards to an issue I've been working on, it's taken me that long to finalize my own business."

Marlene suspected that her friend was giving her a sideways hint that she knew when the final nail was going into the coffin that was the town's bank.

What followed for Kathrin was the never-ending sound of the words "Sign here" on the first day of entering the building that was to be the new bank. The Farmers and Merchants Bank was born, and two of the staff from the old bank handed in their notice, effective immediately. Minutes later, a few folks watched as they carried their personal things in boxes to join Kathrin. Over the next week there followed a steady trickle of both business and personal accounts closing and new ones opening at the other end of town.

*******

Close to a month later, the phone rang at my desk, I looked through the open door of my office to see Carol, my secretary, getting up and walking over to my door before closing it. The phone was still ringing, so I had little choice but to answer it since it was clear that the woman I paid to do it, wasn't.

"Thompson's Haulage, can I help you."

"You can take me to dinner tonight if you want."

I smiled. I don't think Kathrin noticed, but I suspect Carol was now in on whatever this was.

"Okay, what are we celebrating?"

"You, finally plucking up the courage to ask me out. That would be a good start, and then perhaps you can take me dancing or the cinema afterwards, dependant on both our moods when we pig out on Giovanni's nice food."

I smiled again. "So you've also picked out where we're eating?"

I heard her laugh. It was cute and she was doing that a lot of late.

"Nope, but we are limited to where, since Giovanni's has a stranglehold on the best food in town. Or are you going all manly on me now and going to beat some meat and burn some real expensive steaks on the grill just to impress me?"

The pause lasted longer than even I expected. She gasped as her mind went over what she had just said to me. That's when Kathrin stuttered for a moment before going for damage control. As for me, I just burst out laughing.

"No. I mean the barbeque."

It was way too late by then; I was having trouble breathing I was laughing so much. It didn't help that the more Kathrin tried, the worse it all came out. In the end, she put the phone down. I waited for a moment, thinking she would phone back. After twenty minutes I gave up and went back to working on a haulage proposal.

When the phone did ring again Carol deigned to answer it. She mumbled a couple of words into the phone and then connected the call to me.

"You sad sack of shit. What the fuck did you have to do that to Kathrin for, you damn moron." The line paused for a moment before a frustrated growl emanated from the phone and then went dead on me. I looked in wonder at the phone. Marlene, at a loss for words? Now that's a first.

"She's been trying to figure out for days now how to get you out of the friend zone so she could have a crack at you and you go and pull the rug out from under her. Dammit, Nick, you can be a real moron sometimes. Just..." The last part came as a scream down the phone. "Just fix it."

I was, of course, left holding my phone away from my ear by then. It didn't stop me hearing the slamming noise as my friend daintily placed the phone back onto the cradle... sarcasm. I left it an hour before I phoned Kathrin at the bank. The person who picked the phone up told me she was busy and put the phone down.

I guess I wasn't a favorite amongst the folks at the bank at the moment either. The smile came a few minutes later, even more so when picking up the phone and calling Mandy's Flowers. It took a good ten minutes to explain to my old school friend why I needed to send flowers. She still charged me delivery, even though her shop was next to the bank. Mandy even told me she planned to charge me double for being an ass. I figured since I was going to be charged, I may as well get my money's worth and got her to put a note in with the flowers.