THE BENCHCOIN GOLD AND SWORDS

a love letter to the couch- where money goes when it has no place to sit

Rumor has it that Picasso pinned the Four of Swords tarot card to his studio door. Interpretations include bad speculations or advancement. The card at my door would be a sculptor at his work bench surrounded by eight gold coins. The bench signals jury or verdict. Apparently, the early Italian merchants conducted money exchange on benches in the open air. Sometimes I wonder how these signs apply to me.

At the end of every month ,a familiar sight on the curbs of New York are discarded lamps, couches and mattresses. There was a faded empire couch in the house that I put to the curb having no idea at the time it was hiding gold jewelry beneath its cushions. Wailing echoed through the walls and I wondered why the valuables were not secured at a bank.

My first bank in New York was in Little Italy. It had a beautiful soaring interior with dimly lit arched walls of soft mellow marble with hues of gold and rose. It has since been replaced by a big pharmacy chain with bright fluorescent lights. They pushed high volume prescriptions and flu shots. My new bank is less luxurious yet clean and well maintained with green carpet on the walls and fake marble on the floors. Real english ivy planted throughout. There was a machine where children could trade in their pennies. Lollipops for the kids, dog treats for the pets and free ball point pens available to everyone. A uniformed police officer with a badge was stationed at the door with a real gun. The bank felt safe .They were playing jazz. Which would have been okay , but this was smooth jazz. That was the first omen. “Whose playlist are we listening to?” I asked the teller, “Nobody from around here, it’s from corporate, we have to listen to that all day.”

Corporate made some attempts at being sustainable. I was impressed when the Union Square branch partnered with a local landscape company and installed vertical gardening in the entry. The smell of fresh earth and barnyard filled the vestibule. But I was a little unsettled by taking my money from an automated teller that was disguised as a tree. Then there were a series of unfortunate media campaigns. One was a small child pushing an empty grocery basket. Why was she alone -was the message that banking here was so easy that even a child could do it? Then there was a video. A man approaches another man and tussles him from behind pushing him into a pool, they tumble into the water laughing and splashing. The tag line was “No surprises from behind. We are in this together. Your money is safe with us!”

Slowly things began to change. The windows got sooty and the ivy wasn’t watered. There was no air conditioning in the summer, and it was cold in the winter. The stand-at-attention guard was replaced with a zombie that stared at a cell phone. The family-friendly coin machine was taken out. Then people started demanding bills in exchange for their coins. They waved socks filled with loose change; they were grabbing pens and lollipops and eating the dog treats and hurling insults as they stormed out. The bigger omen, what really alarmed me: they started playing country and western music. The message was loud and clear. Somebody did someone wrong and there were tears and heartbreak. I was getting scared.

On a recent Saturday morning I received a call from the bank. The message explained my branch was closing and I needed to remove or transfer my safe—immediately. Was this a prank?Astrology reports claimed Venus was about to move retrograde, a signal of money shake-ups and great sorrow. I thought my money and gold were okay in the bank. I looked at my tiny apartment, mentally arranging furniture I could do without.I rushed to my branch and met with the manager, who was now dressed in a sporty green velour track suit. It was fifteen minutes to closing. “We gotta pull this off quick,” he warned me—”

“Sit tight, I have Fidelity on HOLD.”

I had no idea what that meant but I had a twisted image of Fidelity hoisting a donkey piñata above Venus as she swiped wildly left to right and up and down with her wings. Venus blindfolded, with a bunch of grapes clenched between her teeth. The manager jiggled the keys in front of my face to bring me back to reality and then tossed them to a teller. “C’mon girl you got this.”

It was five minutes to closing and I had all of Saturday afternoon to find an empire couch.